A short account of how the game developed.

The ideas that turned into Starship Marine started out in the late 1960s when I started to discover wargaming with model figures (well, toy soldiers actually, the Americans call them 'miniatures' apparently).

Being keen on Science Fiction, and fascinated by the brand new and amazing TV series 'Star Trek' , I started to explore the idea of fighting between crewmen in the corridors of spaceships when I built a scale model of a ship deck, inspired by Trek.

Of course in those olden days, no-one manufactured suitable toy soldiers, but some imaginative painting, and work with craft knives etc turned stalwart Airfix Commandos into crewmen of various types, and Airfix Paratroops into the first Armoured Marines. The armour bit was inspired by the powered armour described in Heinlein's original Starship Troopers novel (quite unlike the nonsense in the recent movie of the same name).. The main hassle was what rules to use. No-one was writing rules for SF gaming in the early 1970's, so I had to write my own. And to be honest they were rubbish (well, I was young...what can I say?). After discussion with my wargaming friends of the time, especially the late (and missed) Steve Hale and Andrew Barton, some ideas developed and I dumped my old rules (pages of incomprehensible tables and frankly silly ideas) in favour of some new and streamlined rules I wrote one afternoon on the back of an envelope (unfortunately for posterity, the envelope has not been preserved). They consisted of a simple fire chart and movement rules. Starship Marine has been born. In 1973 I used my school's roneo machine to duplicate copies fo the rules for my friends. The first ever set of Marine rules had been born. I found the original, rather dog-eared version the other day, and it can be seen, in all it's glory - here. Of course in those days one had more time to play games over and over, and before long we had developed a body of useful rules that bore a resemblance to the rules that exist today. Such was the interest then, that I had a few copies printed up and sold some. These were my first commercial set of wargame rules, and the year was 1975.

Since then, about every five or six years, the game has been brought out, dusted off, and revamped to reflect my current ideas on game design, improved presentation and general attitudes to life. In the late 1970's I devised a 'Privateer' add-on that allowed players to plunder the spaceways by piratical acts and boarding rich merchant ships. In 1977, Star Wars appeared - giving a huge boost to SF wargaming, and I was delighted to see a pure Starship Marine battle in the first few minutes of the film, as the Stormtroopers (just like my marines) burst through a door and gun down the hapless defending crewmen - who then try and run off! Another burst of playing etc ensued. By early 1978 yet another new, improved, version of Starship Marine was on sale.

In the 1980s, Privateer was re-vamped and SM had another facelift, with clearer printing, and some new graphics (especially an excellent new front cover by Alan Edwards).  The space pirate rules were integrated with the main rules - this was widely stocked by games stores world-wide at the time.

In the 1990s with the growth of Megagames, it was inevitable that I would run a Starship Marine Megagame. The first was inspired by the Fred Saberhagen Berserker stories and imaginatively called Berserker!, in which the Marines had to board and capture/destroy a huge robot-controlled space juggernaut. This was played twice in this form, and then was followed by Tranquillity Station, where the Berserker Robots attempted to do the same to a Human research station.

There was a gap, and then in 1996 we ran Serenity Station in which we sprang a surprise on the Marine players by not having a robotic enemy, but Aliens type enemy, with Predators thrown in for good measure - inspired by Dark Horse comic's Alien Vs Predator series. Based on the experiences with earlier megagames, I was able to revise and significantly simplify the rules, making them much easier to play (particularly when lots of players were involved).  This was initially a variant intended just for the megagame - but we liked it so much and it worked so well that this rapidly became the standard rules. The Streamline rules came out again in late 1998 in the megagame Berserker! 0101, in which a bunch of disreputable space pirates tried to capture a crippled Berserker! Super Battleship (with mixed success).

In all this time, SM has undergone five editions:

1975 First edition - cheapo corner-shop printing

1978 Second Edition - produced on a gestetner machine and with colour cover! A companion booklet with tactical advice and organisation tables was also published at the same time.

1981 Third Edition - with professional (ish) cover art, and printer by a printers. Included full rules for the Privateer campaign game. This one was sold quite widely in the UK and abroad.

1992 Fourth Edition (called Version 2) - A5 booklet form, with specific material about new things like logistics etc for the Berserker! megagames. Sold quite a few of these.

1996 Fifth Edition (called Starship Marine Streamline). Produced for the SM Megagame, Serenity Station - this actually simplified the game considerably, and removed some of the more complicated 'wargamer' type rules that, in retrospect, really added nothing to the flow of the game. This latest version is definately the one I most happy with, and it gets considerable use to this day at monthly meetings of the Full Moon Society, and, thanks to the internet, by enthuisastic gamers around the globe.  This edition is free on this web site.

The game has spawned a few spin-offs, such as the recent Starship Solder, planetside skirmish rules.

There is no prize for collecting all the editions.

Jim Wallman

London, UK, 2005