Feb 11, 2025 1:31 am
In 2023, I backed a game on Kickstarter entitled Across a Thousand Dead Worlds. Long story short, the game had a couple of flaws (too many random tables, an obsessive need to micromanage one's gear inventory) and pet peeves which I've managed to come up with solutions to in order to focus on the fun stuff: Having ill-prepared characters battle hungry aliens and killer automatons in order to find inscrutable tech and shiny raw materials to cash in for coins to pay the rent and bar tab.
You can read more about the game here. There's also a quick start guide for character generation.
Background: All of those harbingers of environmental doom have come true. Earth is dying. The very rich have abandoned it for orbital cities and settlements on the moon and Mars. The rest of humanity scrapes by under the jackboot of megacorporations that have reduced us to serfdom. Exploring the galaxy is your ticket out of the slums (or elitist ennui) and into a better life.
Drake Industries discovered an abandoned alien base out in the asteroid belt with enough spaceships to go out and hopefully find the technology humans need to undo the damage that we've done to our home. It sends out independent contractors (thus avoiding the responsibility of providing employee benefits), nicknamed "Deep Divers," to carry out the dangerous, yet lucrative work, of hopping in a spaceship and heading to one of these alien worlds to see what they can find.
The spaceships come with a navigational database and an autopilot, so Deep Divers don't have to worry about flying the things. It also doesn't allow for people to hijack one and just roam the galaxy (sorry).
Tasks: The game has a simple d20 task system. Roll a 20 or higher and you succeed. A character's attribute score acts as a DM. So do Skills.
Combat is a little more complicated. Each player gets 10 Stamina points to spend on their actions with a standard attack costing 5 points. If you get knocked down, you have to spend Stamina points to get back up. At the start of each round, Stamina points reset to 10.
Combat rolls are opposed: The attacker must roll higher than the defender.
There are no hit points. If the damage inflicted exceeds a person's constitution score, they get knocked down. If they get hit while knocked down, they take wounds. Three wounds and you're dead. Armor soaks up damage and will often need to be replaced.
That's the game in a nutshell. If that sounds interesting to you, please comment below. The game is designed for 1-5 players (spaceships come in three sizes: 1, 3, 5). I've got some old adventures from other sci-fi games which I intend to re-purpose, but I only want to go through the work if people are interested.
Last edited February 18, 2025 12:32 am
