These are not the rules for TBG. To the best of my ability this rules set is accurate. However, in this attempt to improve the ease of understanding and locating
information, some of that information may have been lost or partially altered.
However, the rules have now been proof read and mistakes corrected. In addition, the set
is now more up to date than the official one.
The Official Rules can be found
Here.
And I have redone them with an altered colour scheme
Here.
Each player is a new space captain, accompanied by four officers specialising in various areas of a ships operations, given an old and failing starship by mysterious aliens with which to make a name for themselves. Local space is a cluster of a hundred stars or so, containing about fifteen hundred assorted locations of interest: any other stars aren't accessible yet.
A typical turn consists of having the four officers taking actions, exploring for hidden opportunities, possibly a battle with another player or alien, and often ends with a jump to a different star for the following turn's adventures.
It's an open-ended game that imposes no goals - players choose what they want to achieve and play until they've had enough, or die in the attempt.
There are many routes for advancement in power, knowledge, wealth and skill, from wily trading to rushing the latest medical cures to where they're needed to pulling into orbit of an alien homeworld, opening all gun ports and suggesting a bank transfer be made.
Each player has one ship and one ship only. Any player using more than one ship is cheating and therefore is eeeeeeeevil.
Currency and energy are considered one and the same, energy being the most valuable resource in the galaxy. Consequently each ship has its total available energy noted in dollars ($) which it uses equally proficiently for purchasing ship parts and powering engines.
At the beginning of the game, you are presented with a starmap consisting of 128 detectable stars, set into a 2-Dimensional grid. Ships must always be in orbit of one of these stars - warp jumps and stargates link directly from star to star.
Once at one of these stars, a ship is deemed able to visit any location at that star during a single turn.
Each turn, each ship can meet only one other ship, be it a player, or alien, vessel.
Ships are given instructions as to what to do each turn using a webform that looks something like this.
Each of the following will explain a section of the rules. Whilst not necessary to read them in order, I recommend you do for the sake of clarity, especially as each section will assume any basic knowledge described in a previous one.
