Game Design Research: Voyage of the BSM Pandora

Meanwhile, I'm researching and playing solitaire tabletop games. Today, I'm talking about this little gem:

Voyage of the BSM Pandora

I stumbled onto Voyage of the BSM Pandora (a solitaire space exploration game published in 1981 by SPI and designed by John Butterfield) while researching solitaire tabletop games, and I decided to play and analyze it purely for my own growth as game developer. I don't own a copy of this game, but I found a PDF of the magazine it was published in, Ares #6 I think, printed the game components, spray mounted the pieces and maps on chip board, and gave it a spin. I guess I should figure out how to pay the copyright holders of this game for the privilege of playing it. If that's you, let me know.

Things I love about Voyage Of The B.S.M. Pandora

Theme

The theme is innovative: an interstellar biological science survey mission (B.S.M.) is tasked with collecting alien specimens while avoiding loss of life to crew members. Gameplay includes exploring alien worlds, driving a rover around, looking for alien life and artifacts, and occasional combat. In short…freekin’ awesome! 

Art Direction

The game board is beautiful and packed with colorful information: a series of hex maps representing Planetary Environments, an Interstellar Display, a Terrain Key, Attribute Tracks and Time & Supply Tracks. Just looking at it makes me want to play the game.

Rules Clarity

The rules are clear and concise. The ink illustration on the first page immediately pulls me into the theme.

Paragraph Event System (as it pertains to promoting narrative):

The Expedition Event Paragraphs allow this game to straddle the line between pure strategy and narrative storytelling. The game is a cross between a hex-tile exploration game and a text-based “choose you own adventure” game. I’ve always wanted to know if this hybrid approach could work, and now I know. It does.

Things I’d change if I were re-making this game for me

First a disclaimer: I love this game. Butterfield designed a brilliant interactive experience that I’m studying and playing with enthusiasm. I’m not critiquing his work, but rather hypothesizing about how I’d modify and expand upon it for my own game designs.

My main goal would be simplification. I appreciate that this game appeared in a magazine that is geared towards hardcore RPG and tabletop gaming, but I think the mechanics could be streamlined without losing any depth of play. I understand the rules with perfect clarity, but I usually get lost in the bookkeeping, special case logic, and game piece management. In short, I love these types of games, but lack the mental RAM to fully get my head into them long enough to finish a session. Below are some specifics:

1. There are too many tables, each accompanied with special rules and modifiers, for my personal taste.

For instance, the Creature Rating Table just subtracts 2 from the die roll. I’d adjust all creature rating modifiers by 2 and ditch this table altogether, and make the die roll the actual rating, instead of referring to a table that just subtracts 2 from the die roll each time. 

I’d also replace the Combat Results Table with a simpler dice-based combat resolution system. The Differential Matrix just seems overly complicated to me.

The Supply Modifier on the Terrain Effects Chart adds unneeded complexity. The Supply Check is already complicated enough. This extra modifier doesn’t really add anything to the game in my opinion, and it seems random that you are penalized only on that specific terrain type, and only if you happen to be on it when a supply check happens to be triggered.

I’d also try to avoid multiple special case instructions that accompany each table. Referencing a table often requires re-reading the special case rules over and over again to make sure I’m not forgetting some modifier. I can handle looking at several tables or wading through special case logic, but dealing with both on a regular basis takes me out of the game too much.

2. I’d simplify Port Ratings and Supply Check. 

This is one of the most important game mechanics. The game is primarily about organizing ground missions by balancing port capacities with supply weights, and tracking supply expenditures over time. I would keep this mechanic but find ways to simplify it. Frankly, I dread the supply check, due to the complex tabulation of supply costs, dice rolling, and dividing one sum from another and rounding, etc. 

Instead, I’d calculate a single Energy Consumption Value for the Shuttle and another for the Rover based on their payloads each time they leave the Pandora, and use those values for the duration of each ground expedition. I realize that some tools may get damaged and some characters may die, but modeling these small changes in supply consumption every single time a supply check comes up is way too much work with no real gameplay value. Game mechanics don’t all need to be fun and easy. But it’d help if each was at least one or the other.

3. I’d reduce the game pieces required to play the game.

There are 100 game pieces. That’s a lot. It takes me several minutes just lay them all out by color and type. The creature pieces seem unnecessary. The game has no tactical combat, so there is no movement to track for the creatures. I’d probably replace all the creature chits with a single lookup table. Or, I’d consider having a deck of cards to represent the creatures. Using a card deck, the creature art could be more provocative and contain all ratings in a more readable form along with special instructions.

4. The Paragraph Event System almost works perfectly for me, but not quite. I’d keep it but re-think how it works.

I found myself driving around in my rover, and repeatedly failing to roll event triggers on the Expedition Matrix. I explored an entire environment (including an alien structure) and didn’t trigger a single event. The Exploration Matrix just feels too random. I realize this was done to make the game re-playable. But I’m not convinced all the work that went into making this game re-playable actually increased the replay value beyond 5 sessions. 

One solution to the random and sometimes repetitive (or even worse, uneventful) nature of the exploration mechanic would be to ditch the idea of re-playability. Maybe hexes have their own unique and persistent descriptions with explored and unexplored states as well as Paragraph Event triggers. Maybe in a game session you end up covering about 20% of the possible hexes, so after 5 or 6 game sessions, you’ve explored the entire game. If you die, you start over but only with minor content overlap. The world is still a sandbox, but it’s persistent instead of procedurally generated. The result would be a single-play experience that lasts 5 or 6 sessions, possibly with a richer narrative, less repetition, and simpler rules (fewer matrix tables, etc). My guess is that all the extra work that went into making this game replayable wouldn’t hold up for me beyond 5 or 6 play sessions anyway, so replacing the procedurally generated environments with hardcoded ones would alleviate a lot of bookkeeping and the need for several table lookups.

I think I’ll continue this thought experiment with a quick prototype. What if I could make the kind of games that I wish I was smart enough to play, but make them more accessible for simpler-minded gamers like me without compromising too much depth of play?

In summary, Voyage of the BSM Pandora is the first solitaire game that I've cared enough about to print, play, and write about. I highly recommend giving it a try. I look forward to researching and playing more of Mr. Butterfield's designs. I had a blast playing this game, and it's hard imagine some of its design ideas not making their way into my future projects.