In multi-player Fire As She Bears games, the fleet commander first creates a "signals book" with copies for each player on his side. This gives a hint of the historical issue of having pre-determined sets of signals available, but not necessarily the same ones the enemy is using. Next, at the start of each turn, the fleet commander sets up his signals with chits or color blocks next to his ship. The length of the signal is variable based on the commander's quality, which can be simulated with the rules already present in VaS and AoD. The players may not talk about their plans, and can return signals to follow the "orders" or to indicate they are unable to comply, or may even ignore the signals and do their own thing. While this may be more important to the age of sail ships of the line, it might add a bit of interest in a multi-player game where players run squadrons, and the fleet commander plans for the whole fleet to perform a maneuver. One signal, General Chase, opens it up for squadron or task force commanders to operate under their own intiative. With the signals books, this also opens up the way for misunderstanding and misinterpretation of signals, very much like the historical issues I read about. Use command checks with squadron commanders to see that they saw and carry out the orders from the fleet commander. The FASB Signals module is available as a download from the same source that carries VaS and AoD, so those interested should go there and look it up and make their decisions. This seems like a good thing to add when a game group has played a game for some time and has become too used to it. It should add a touch of spice to keep them interested in it.
Tom
