#rpgaday #rpgaday2019 - RPG a Day - "Space"

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Day 5 - SPACE

Space. 
Allegedly the final frontier.

The guys from the magnificent Grognard Files podcast (seriously, they are awesome, go and listen to them) have a thing fittingly called Prime Directive - GMing exclusivity for a game. Couple of years back in college one guy in our group decided to run Dungeons and Dragons 5e. Naturally that meant that if I wanted to run something it could not have been D&D.
I decided to run something completely different - science fiction.

So, for fantasy there is D&D, obviously. If you are into less main stream games there are Runequest, Warhammer Fantasy.
For supernatural horror the obvious choice is Call of Cthulhu.
But science-fiction? Nothing really comes to mind (Star Wars is science-fantasy, fight me!)

So I did some digging.

  • Star*Drive, an old TSR game, their own attempt at having a sci-fi game along publishing D&D. I read about it and kind of lost interest. That was not what I was looking for.
  • Traveller seemed overly militaristic and hard sci-fi for our group.
  • Starfinder is literally just Pathfinder in space and future.
  • Back then Star Trek Adventures has not been published yet.
And then, when I was listening to G*M*S Magazine podcast (go and listen to Paco Garcia as well, he's great) I found two episode interview with Sarah Newton (part 1, part 2) about her then upcoming game Mindjammer.


Mindjammer product line as per Kickstarter image

Mindjammer runs on FATE, but you don't need a separate rulebook because all the rules are already in the Core rulebook. It is a sweeping transhuman space opera set in a distant and scientifically semi-accurate distant future of year 17000(-ish).
I ran the free quick-start over a few sessions and since then I have purchased every single thing from the line (apart from adaptation for the new Traveller rules).

Accurate depiction of me seeing a Mindjammer product I do not own.

Cover of the novel is identical to the rulebook

I read the novel and I absolutely love the setting (another game published by Modiphius that I like? Interesting... ), it almost seems too much.
It is a total game, as in there is an overwhelming amount of possibilities so the best way is to select a small nook of space and start there.
Or just go with the published adventures that preset various facets of the genres you can run.

And this is how you go into the kind space I was looking for.

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