Sometimes games, even very good games, can fade into obscurity. Then there are games that are popular over and over again, and different groups of players, or unique circumstances, conspire to reintroduce the game to more people. One of Mayfair’s success stories is its cooperative game Star Trek: Five-Year Mission, which continues to attract new players.

Five-Year Mission started life as part of a game review at Protospiel Ann Arbor, an annual convention of game designers who attend the show to garner feedback and suggestions on designs that they’re developing. David Whitcher, the designer of Five-Year Mission, played several sessions at the venue and received very positive reviews for the game, which had been themed as a British sailing vessel game, with players playing the roles of sailors on board a ship.

At the end of the show, David approached us and pulled us into a corner. “This game isn’t really about ships,” he mused, and pulled out a small packet of cards that revealed the Star Trek theme. Admiral Nelson became ‘Captain Kirk’, and the true nature of the game was revealed.

This wasn’t as large a stretch as one might imagine. Mayfair was publishing Star Trek Catan at the time, and the licensing allowed the company to potentially publish other games in the Start Trek universe (or, more specifically, the ‘Original’ Star Trek universe — no reboot allowed — minus the animated series). Typically, designers are discouraged from chasing a licensed theme for their prototypes, but in this case, already having the license and being eager to produce more games for the Star Trek world worked very much in David’s favor.

The game engine is simple: players become Starfleet officers on the Enterprise — either Original Series crew (Kirk, Spock, McCoy) or Next Generation crew (Picard, Data, Crusher). Each turn, a new mission is revealed that requires a combination of dice to be resolved. Players have a dice pool they roll and manipulate to complete those combinations. A variety of complications — timed missions, damage to the ship, injuries to crew members — all serve to challenge players to make the right decisions to solve the target number of missions before failing a set number of missions (or the Enterprise taking so much damage that the game cannot continue).

The game came to Mayfair largely in the form that it was published. The cooperative nature of the design was attractive, since we didn’t have any other true cooperative games in our line, and the game allowed players to be easily added and dropped, even in the middle of the game (simply add or subtract a crew member and keep boldly going). Because Star Trek is widely recognized, the goal of Five-Year Mission was to make it a lighter game so that players who weren’t active gamers could enjoy and eventually beat the game regularly with practice.

One of the biggest changes was actually a small one. Cooperative games often suffer from what’s called “alpha gamer” issues, where one player directs every other player’s turns in order to succeed. Often that player is correct about the actions needed to win the game, but it can be frustrating to players who want to make their own choices. The answer was simple: the inclusion of a set of cards that prevent communication at the table until the mission it’s attached to is resolved. Alpha gamers can get rather frustrated when this effect is triggered in the game, but it means that experienced players should teach new players HOW to play the game — how to look at the missions and effect in order to get the most out of a turn — rather than simply telling them what to do.

Five-Year Mission had a massive launch at Gen Con 2015, with an added bonus: Marina Sirtis, the actress who played Councilor Deanna Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation, was available for fans to sign copies of the game. David recalls, “Mayfair, mostly me, demoed the game for over 450 people that weekend. Doing the signing with Marina Sirtis and having the game at the charity event was the high point.”

The game sold very well, and settled into a long-term place in our Mayfair family of games, but then another cultural phenomenon surfaced. Since its debut in 2012, TableTop has been one of the highest-profile board game shows on the Internet. Created by Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton for the Geek & Sundry YouTube channel, the show features a variety of entertainers and host Wil Wheaton demonstrating both how to play, and how much fun it is to play, board games.

Mayfair Games has a history of being featured on TableTop, but Season Four was special with the inclusion of Five-Year Mission. One might think that a Star Trek-themed game would have an advantage in the game selection process, but the wide variety of games that are available to demonstrate means that some very specific features are needed for a game to qualify for the series. The requirements that the show uses include being family-friendly, good component quality, a strong balance between strategy and luck, and fits the player and time requirements of the show. Five-Year Mission met all those criteria, and Mayfair was excited at the prospect of having the game appear on the show.

One of the requirements was that a company representative is to be on the set in order to assist with teaching the players off-camera, and being able to verify that the game is being played correctly onscreen. We felt that there was no one more qualified to watch over the episode taping than the designer, so David was whisked away to Burbank, CA to sit in during production.

“The TableTop crew was very friendly, as were the guests,” David recalls. “The game producer — that’s actually a job title — and I taught the guests how to play just prior to shooting, with Will popping in to say ‘hi’. They completed the instructional game handily.”

The actual studio surprised David. “You’d think that the sound stage would be huge based on the play area, the spot where they do the asides, and the couch for the losers, but it’s very compact, like a large, 2-car garage.” David was also surprised by how long it takes to create a half-hour of video. “The 35-minutes of the show you witness in the end took half a day to shoot. There were times when they’d cut to make sure lighting and sound were on point, but many more cuts were to make sure the game was being played properly, usually at my prompting.”

So, Star Trek: Five-Year Mission is once again in the spotlight, now as an Internet star. When Mayfair prints a game, the hope is that it will be received well and find a way to maintain its popularity over many years. Five-Year Mission has once again delivered on its promise of fun for generations of gamers!

About Star Trek: Five-Year Mission:  Designed by David E. Whitcher for 3-7 players, ages 10 and up, and plays in 30-45 minutes.  MSRP: $35