Paul Grogan (rulebook guy) is Super Enthused (see his video comments)

Paul Grogan worked on ISS Vanguard’s rulebook and ship book for a year, but never got to actually sit down and PLAY the game!

Now he has the game and he likes it … A LOT !!! Actually MORE than A LOT! Listen to how he says it (I will try to put a transcript below the video soon) … I queued up the video to the right spot (transcript of his comments is below the video):

Transcript of his comments:

ISS Vanguard is a game that I have been massively massively looking forward to playing. For those who don’t know, I was professionally involved in the game. I wrote the rulebook, I wrote the tutorial… all of that stuff… I was involved with that game for a long time. I don’t know how long it was. It might have been a year… more than a year, I don’t know. We worked SO HARD on that project trying to make it as good as it could be. My role in that was writing and editing the rulebook and helping with the overall layout of the rulebook. Then, all of that work was done, it was finished and signed off. Then months go by while you are waiting for production. Then finally, I got my hands on the game. I got SUPER EXCITED about the game. This game checks a lot of my boxes. Tainted Grail was my number one most enjoyable narrative driven game… the immersion, the story, the branching storyline, everything about Tainted Grail I just loved. Mechanically, not so much. I thought the game had some issues. But from a narrative point of view I got so immersed in the setting of the story. And THIS is by the same team! And it’s Science Fiction! And it’s cooperative! And there’s a story. And there’s a massive massive amount of story and I am super excited to actually sit down and properly play the campaign and explore that story.. and get that character development… get that sense of improvement as you are improving the technology, you’re building this, you’re exploring new worlds, you’re doing all of this stuff. I didn’t get that from working on the rulebook. I didn’t get a chance to sit down and actually play through the game. So I was very very much looking forward to this one.

We did two play throughs. These are on the channel now if you are interested. The first one was sponsored by Awaken Realms (thank you very much to Awaken Realms for sponsoring that first video). But we all knew that we were going to enjoy the game so much that we decided to do a second play through in the evening where we continued playing the game. So, if you are interested in knowing more about ISS Vanguard … the first video that I created was a sponsored tutorial and play through where we basically explained how the game is played and we go through the tutorial mission. I would strongly recommend, if you are interested in the game, to watch that video. Or even if you’ve got the game, to check out the video because a few people might be playing something wrong and in that video I think we played everything right. We enjoyed it so much that we played it again in the evening.

The biggest problem is that when we finished that second game I had to put the game away knowing that I wasn’t going to play it again for a few weeks… because I loved it, absolutely loved it, and just wanted to play more. This is one of those games where I wish I could just say, I’m going to take off a week from work or two weeks off work and I’m just going to sit here and I am just going to play through ISS Vanguard.

The reality is that just is not going to happen.

I am planning to start the ISS Vanguard campaign (which won’t be streamed…) – we ARE planning on playing through the ISS Vanguard campaign and it is really good the amount of positive things about it from other people that have been playing through it. It is just fantastic. I really really loved it. It lived up to my expectations. But, I have only played through the first two scenarios, out of, I don’t know, 25 or however many we’re going to play, I’m not sure. So, we’ve literally just started. There’s so much game there. There’s so much to explore. You know… we brought back some alien specimens from the planet and I don’t know what it does! This is going to lead to something else and we’ll develop this technology and what’s that technology going to do. And we’ve got this research project… and we’ve got this situation to deal with… the amount of content that is available to the game and we’ve only just started! Really looking forward to playing more of that!