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Wizkids is wasting no time with their Star Trek license. Their second Star Trek game in as many years promises exploration, discovery, and combat as fleets from the Federation and Klingon Empire face off. Does the game deliver? The D6G crew takes a close look in a detailed review.

But first, Raef had a chance to chat with a few different folks from various game companies at GenCon this year. He shares his notes and expeirences as well as a live interview with the folks behind the roleplaying game Mouseguard.

All that and our other not-too-horrible segments including:

- The Hollywood Minute
- Total Fan Girl
- Do You Ever Notice
- & More

Link to episode: http://www.thed6generation.com/d6g-ep-88-star-trek-fleet-captains-detailed-review-raef-interviews

Please let us know what you think!

RAEF... NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

You guys want a West Coast replacement?

Best part of the show: Imagining Raef as Luke Skywalker, and Russ as a Tauntaun.

Raef will be missed. You guys put out an awesome show that.

Sorry to hear that Raef is leaving...though I understand. I have a 7-year old playing flag football, and a 4-year old playing her first year of soccer (if you can call a bunch of ankle-biters swarming around a ball "soccer"). Raef brought a unique...um...style to the show - I'm glad we'll still be getting the Hollywood minute.

R.I.P. Hollywood
(Random in Perpetuity)

I'll miss Raef, but I look forward to seeing how you guys cope. Will there be a Raef Retrospective at some point? Or possibly Raef's Greatest Random Moments?

I'm right in the thick of the Fleet Captains review at the moment...but, wanted to chime in on the latest episode nonetheless.

Raef? Leaving? I can't say I'm really all that surprised. Given that the reviews for the past several episode generally had these two things in common: Raef hadn't played it and Raef rated it a 6 because he didn't have time to play it. The time crunch catches up with all of us at one point or another and priorities often have to be shifted as a result.

Raef, I'm certainly going to miss your unique contribution to the show. You often brought in a perspective that might never had occurred to me and I appreciate that. I wish you the best what's to come for you, your business and your family. Glad to know the Hollywood Minute will continue.

Russ and Craig, I look forward to seeing how the show changes and grows around the loss of Raef. If you want a midwest perspective on the show, I'll gladly offer my services ;-)

Russ, have you been following the development of A Call to Arms: Star Fleet from Mongoose (by way of Amarillo Design Bureau)? It seems to be shaping us nicely. If you want a more tactical miniatures game this could be the one. The core rulebook is due in November.

Now, back to listening (and wondering where the heck I'm gonna come up with a hundred bucks for Fleet Captains!)

It will be hard to see Raef go; he was/is an intregal part of what makes the triad special but I salute Russ and Craig for not throwing in the towell.

Is it true you are planning one final surpise episode broacasting from the roof of the Wakelin compound?

great show guys . Raef you'll be missed . good run on show . you will be missed !

Hello Folks:

Thank you very much for the kind words and well wishes. It really means a lot. I can already feel some nice buds of pure random joy brewing for the hollywood minute. And oh yeah, you'll hear from me now and again in the podcast chair as well.

You know I am looking forward to seeing the people who may surface in the 3rd chair!

Next on my project table is to just relax a little and paint some Vietnam FOW!

Raef out.

I know you guys - well, Nicole, anyway - are fans of the BBC's Top Gear. I wonder if you know how James May came to be a part of the team?

Their original third wheel, Jason Dawe, left the show (for various reasons) and so Clarkson and Hammond came up with the idea of inviting viewers to send in video reviews of cars and whoever sent in the best and funniest review would get offered the third slot.

I wonder if you'd consider doing the same thing? Throw out the challenge to your listeners: send in audio game reviews and whoever sends in the best/funniest gets a chance to join the show as the third wheel. You could even run several people in a series of "audition" shows.

R.

Great show. It's unfortunate for us, the listeners, that Raef will be taking a lesser role in the show.

It's great to hear how good Extra Life is going this year.

Raef who????

Just kidding, good luck in the future Raef.

Russ, did you have a chance to play Mouseguard with your kids? Just wondering how that went. TFG was talking about it during her segment.

Last night, I joined the club of those who have read 'Dance with Dragons'. On a side note, it's the first book that I read on a Kindle. Overall, in regards to the Kindle, I felt kind of let down. Things that bothered me:

1. It doesn't do page numbers. It was disconcerting to read 9 or so pages and still be only at 1%. Also, this makes it hard if you are planning on sharing the Kindle, as it makes it difficult to find your place again.

2. Only after I finished the story part of the book did I realize that there was a section about the various houses and members of those houses. It would have been nice to know that so I could have done more instant research about characters that I had forgotten bits about. Then, I would have had to learn to navigate the thing more proficiently, for it would not be so instantaneous going back and forth from story to appendix.

On the plus side, it was nice not to have to lug a 1000 page book about with me. The screen was very legible in all conditions, including reading it at night with a book light.

Also, I wonder how the Mouse Guard game went.

I'm sorry to hear you go Raef, but such is life. You did give out a distinct feel to the podcast with your comments. Hope you get more time to game later on.

Another great show, guys!

Raef, I'm sorry to hear you won't be on the show as a regular host, but I am glad to hear you will be continuing the Hollywood Minute. Best of luck with your personal and professional endeavors; from the sound of it, you will be quite busy!

I also really enjoyed the Star Trek Fleet Captains review! I got a chance to play this game with my Father-in-law over the weekend, and we both had a blast with it. I'm actually a bit surprised by how good the game actually is; I'm so used to Star Trek licensed garbage that it's great to see a company take it seriously and deliver on the promise of the IP. That being said, Russ, you're killing me with the mistakes in your Star Trek trivia . I'm willing to let most of them slide, but I can't let the one about the theme music pass by; the theme ultimately used for The Next Generation originated with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, not Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

Looking forward to Ep 89!

PS - If you guys are looking for guest host volunteers, sign me up!

Listened to the new TLC episode this morning. Dominion tends to be the number one game played in my group and we've found it's a great way to get non-gamers into gaming as it's pretty approachable and fairly easy to learn to play. That being said, I can see both of your issues with it as we do tend to play in silence (until one person starts winning, then the trash talk comes out).

I would also list Arkham Horror in your lists of games to be a guilty displeasure. Or really all Cthulu mythos stuff in general. Not liking Lovecraft and being a geek is almost as bad as not liking Doctor Who or the original Star Trek!

But you are spot on with MtG. I just don't get the appeal of that game.

Ruckdog wrote: I'm willing to let most of them slide, but I can't let the one about the theme music pass by; the theme ultimately used for The Next Generation originated with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, not Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

Yep, I misspoke. The theme I played at the start of the segment was the variant from V. However you're correct, the theme used in Next Gen was originally composed for the first Star Trek film and variants on that theme were used in all the original cast films.

Good "well actually..."

RussWakelin wrote:[
Yep, I misspoke. The theme I played at the start of the segment was the variant from V. However you're correct, the theme used in Next Gen was originally composed for the first Star Trek film and variants on that theme were used in all the original cast films.

Actually, that's not true either,sir.

TMP and STV both used the theme composed by Jerry Goldsmith, which was also used on TNG.

2&3 were composed by James Horner and were unique, as were the themes for IV (don't recall the composer) and VI (Cliff Eidellman). All they had in common with the Goldsmith score was the borrowing of the notes from Alexander Courage's original TOS theme.

Sorry. Trekkie + film score enthusiast = bad combo!

I am very bummed that Raef is leaving. He has been an awsome part of the show.

Fleet captains has been a big hit with our local group. I am looking to get a second copy just to paint.

We will miss you Raef! i hope this gives you more time for the family and games as well.

Kindle Notes for Gamers - Re: Craig's Comments on Kindle & Nook

I finally picked up a Kindle a couple months back and have been thrilled with it. I have mainly been reading "Appendix N" books and RPG rulebooks on it. Along the way I have found a few things that have made it especially useful. (This mostly applies to Nook as well.)

Definitely go with a black-and-white eBook reader.

Don't bother with the PDF viewer. Convert everything to native format (PRC or MOBI) and you will be much happier. I need large, clear type and reading glasses to prevent headaches.

The free Mobipocket Creator and Mobipocket Reader have enabled me to covert PDF files to Kindle-friendly PRC format. I can covert a PDF novel, generate the table of contents, write the PRC file, and e-mail it to the Kindle via Amazon in about 2 minutes. Note that Mobipocket Creator is Windows-only and cannot run if Internet Explorer 9 is on the computer (Windows 7). Under Windows 7 it needs to run as Administrator (properties, compatibility). Reader is better behaved. http://www.mobipocket.com/.

Mobipocket Creator can convert two-column formatted RPG rulebooks from RPGNow to native Kindle format. Calibre (below) is not so good for this.

A basic knowledge of HTML tags (just the simple ones) is useful in cleaning up books with Mobipocket Creator and Sigil, especially if you want the table of contents.

Calibre is an amazingly powerful, free eBook/eReader manager, and runs on Win/Mac/Linux. It converts formats-- most importantly from epub (Google Books) to MOBI (Kindle). A must-have and worth $upporting. http://calibre-ebook.com/.

Sigil is a free graphical eBook editor that reads epub format. It runs on Win/Mac/Linux. It is the powerhouse for cleaning up eBooks or creating your own. Convert back to PRC with Calibre. https://code.google.com/p/sigil/.

What about non-text (image-only) PDF's from scanned books? Tesseract-OCR is a free and decent OCR program that works on PDF's. Unless the books is unusually clean there will be a lot of cleaning up to do. Good for older publications from RPGNow. gImageReader (from SourceForge) puts a good front-end on Tesseract-OCR (also needs a dictionary file, link provided). gImageReader chewed through the 33-page copy of Promotions and Prizes I bought on http://www.rpgnow.com/ with no difficulty. Lots of clean-up to do, but I don't really care if it is perfect for a casual read. Impressively, it had no problem with the book being two-column, fine print, and not a very good scan. https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/. http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimagereader/.

Visit http://www.arthursbookshelf.com/ as well as Gutenburg US and AU for out-of-copyright stuff. Make a point of paying for current content (Amazon, RPGNow, DriveThruRPG, etc.) to keep the marketplace healthy. eBooks are very, very cheap for what you get. Black Library and Site Point eBooks work just fine on the Kindle, and Amazon will now let you store backups of third-party eBooks in your Amazon account.

Hope this is helpful and not a waste of space.

DP