Khai Tam Clue
A detailed adaptation of the Parker Brother's boardgame, Clue, Khai Tam Clue was a popular passtime for members of the USS Khai Tam from 1994 until 1997.
Origin
Sometime after the completion and publishing of the Technical Manual, Kevin McNulty was talking with some of his shipmates and hatched the idea of a variation on the Clue board game which would feature illustrations from the manual on the game board. Following the idea to its natural conclusion, the group proposed game cards with pictures of the current Command Staff and Department Chiefs, and weapons from the Star Trek universe.
Construction
Though everyone else was probably kidding, Kevin, of course, started on the new game almost immediately. He bought a copy of Clue from the toy store, and set about altering it for his own ends:
- He modified and printed out selected deck plans from the tech manual to stand in for the rooms on Clue's game board. He fixed each one to the game board with spray adhesive, and then over that fixed a piece of transparency film the same way to protect each drawing.
- He asked each Khai Tam staff member to bring their uniform top to the next meeting and took pictures of each for the character cards.
- He somewhat permanently borrowed a spate of Trek weapons from Jon Reddick's collection of Star Trek Playmates action figures to stand in for the weapon's tokens. He took pictures of each weapon for the cards as well.
- Being just before the digital photography boom, Kevin glued each picture to each card description, glued the whole assembly to the card back, then laminated the whole thing together.
- Finally, there were the "detective notebooks' to print, and the box to modify, and the game was complete.
Game Play
Playing Khai Tam Clue was no different from playing regular clue. It was a simple matter of substitutions:
