Landing on the Table
More tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) items added to the collection this week.
Brighter Stars: A CORTEX Prime Spotlights (Dire Wolf/Cortex, 2023). The author references Star Trek and The Expanse but I think I see shades of Babylon 5?
Brighter Stars is very much in the genre of aspirational, far-flung science fiction and space opera, but couched in the consequences of humanity’s growth into the broader galactic community. The player characters (PCs) are the crew of a spaceship, venturing into the unknown with the benefice of more advanced species who seem to be distant and watching their progress… but every choice they make when they meet a new civilization may have far-reaching effects.
The primary tropes presented in Brighter Stars are exploration and culture shock.
Brighter Stars, Genres and Tropes
GENESYS: Expanded Player’s Guide (Fantasy Flight Games, 2019). I still am looking for a system to use for my U.F.O./Space: 1999 home-brew game. With three pre-made settings to study for design understanding, and rules for creating a Setting using Tropes and Themes, as well as vehicle and adversary creation rules (plus a little magic) this seemed like a good supplement for inspiration.
The Solomons: Cut throat corporate war within a vast asteroid belt (Zozer Games, 2013). A setting for Zozer’s Hostile RPG rules set.
The Solomons is an asteroid belt, a Wild West free zone, where multiple corporations, nation states and private groups can establish their own asteroid bases, using them for mining, trade, salvage … you name it. Whilst most of these factions have established colonies or bases on individual asteroids, a number of others have sunk their investment capital into huge orbital habitats. These vast rotating cylinders enclose an-Earth-like biosphere.
Publisher’s Blurb
Solo Space Opera with Cepheus (Parts Per Million, 2023).
Sign up for the publishers newsletter and you get a pdf copy of solo rules for ALIEN: THE Roleplaying Game from Free League Publishing.
Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying (Osprey, 2020).
Those Dark Places is a rules-light, story-focused roleplaying game about the darker side of space exploration and the people who travel the stars in claustrophobic, dangerous conditions. Starships, stations, and outposts aren’t havens of safety with clean, brightly lit corridors – they’re potential deathtraps, funded by budget-conscious corporate interests and running on stale, recycled air and water. The stars may be the future of humanity, but they are also home to horrors and terror the human mind cannot comprehend.
Publisher’s Blurb
Horrors in Space
If you haven’t noticed, there is plenty of sci-fi horror RPG reaching my table. Can’t say this is happening on purpose, but between ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game (Free League Publishing, 2021), HOSTILE: A Gritty Sci-Fi RPG (Zozer, 2017), and now Those Dark Places: Industrial Sci-Fi Roleplaying (Osprey, 2020) I certainly have a few different game systems to draw upon!
RPG Works Referenced
Elliott, Paul. (2017). HOSTILE: A Gritty Sci-Fi RPG. Zozer Games
Elliott, Paul. (2023). The Solomons: Cut throat corporate war within a vast asteroid belt. Zozer Games.
Harenstam, Tomas (Ed.). (2020). ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game. Free League Publishing.
Hicks, Jonathan. (2020). Those Dark Places: Industrial science fiction roleplaying. Opsrey Games
Miller, Riley (Ed.). (2019). GENESYS: Expanded Player’s Guide. Fantasy Flight Game.
Rudin-Burgess, Peter. (2023). Solo Space Opera with Cepheus. Parts Per Million.
Young, Filamena. (2023). CORTEX Prime Spotlights: Brighter Stars. Dire Wolf Digital.
Feature image courtesy Dire Wolf Digital
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