Unlike most years where I flipflop between fantasy and SF every couple months, I've largely continued riding this SF obsession all year. Here is its newest progeny clogging up my game idea backlog. Non-all-caps names are working titles.
EON
Simple solitaire hexmap game. Follow the course of humanity's expansion and contraction among the stars as they discover new physics and space travel technologies, bifurcate and war against each other, Rogue AIs decimating vast swaths of their empire and rebuild it with nanotech, and other civilization-changing events, all from a breakneck galactic timelapse perspective.
Status: Current iteration is just not that fun in practice. The majority of playtime is taken up by updating those aforementioned vast swaths of hexes in pencil.
MEGASTELLAR VAGABONDS
or
SUPERNOVA REVENANTS
Overpowered Picaresque in A Posthuman Cosmos
Everyone's an alien, everyone's an edgelord, no one knows how anything works, or what anyone is capable of. Roam, marvel, wreak havoc, survive, repeat.
Status: I got too crunchy than intended with this, so it needs a heft realignment before it goes anywhere.
Titanic Bastionships
Loosely inspired by Chris' Titanic Bastionmechs project (because I can't seem to keep my hackin' hands off every new project of his), yet another attempt at a realish-tic space warfare game that is any fun to play. Build ships out of modules and components, use an elegant mechanic to roll to hit those modules.
Status: Quickly and unsurprisingly ballooned into an unwieldy mess due to The Iron Triangle of Analog Realistic Space Warfare Games - choose two:
- Dimensionality and resolution of positions and velocities in the battlespace
- More than two combatant ships, and/or independently tracked missiles, kinetic volleys, etc.
- Any amount of depth for literally anything else
THE ORBITAL MECHANIC
A System-Agnostic Space Travel Toolkit Inspired By Realism.
Simple rules for handling the counterintuitive vagaries of movement through vacuum near massive bodies
Handling space travel, orbital dynamics, and spacecraft design in a realistic but playable manner without falling prey to the Iron Triangle above by only being detailed enough for practical use in a TRPG instead of a simulationist wargame.
Status: Not much solidified yet, in a parking orbit until I feel like playtesting any of it.
Spacewalk Skirmish
Zero-G miniature skirmish combat between salvage gangs among a three dimensional battlespace with floating derelicts and debris, using armature wires that represent tethers and umbilical cables to place characters in arbitrary positions in open space.
Status: Really sticky idea in my brain, but I'm not sure how well it would work in practice. Currently takes the form of only a shipbreaking spacesuit customization and equipment build list, which I might just turn into a system-agnostic supplement or integrate into another project.
The Zachtron Probe Mission
Envisioned as a digital game in the style of Zachtronics (Shenzen IO, TIS-80), following the dramatic arc of a small, decreasingly funded team fighting and adapting to new tech to keep in contact with the one and only Voyager-like space probe in an alternate solar system and a world where no one cares about space anymore. Involving various types of programming challenges and robotic control minigames. Inspired by dying mars rovers and the crowdfunded attempt to regain contact with a comet probe.
Status: Will likely remain a dream game.
Shipbreaker Cardgame
Simple Solitaire (maybe MP) card-and-dice game
Set up up the layers of a derelict spaceship's hull by laying out overlapping layers of cards, each of which represents a different material or component, some of which are hidden on the card backs. Then use actions to gradually cut into and move them apart to extract the juicy reactor and other high-value modules without cutting a high power line or explosive tank.
Status: Not much to speak of beyond the concept yet, but it seems cute enough that I might return to it.
Long Arc SFRPG Framework
System-agnostic toolkit for framing campaigns that cover vast timespans with the PC crew either in cryostasis or spending absurdly long periods awake and isolated from civilization and how that affects them.
Status: Not much to speak of beyond the concept yet.
Crunchy Hard Space Opera Heartbreaker
Dump a bunch of bits from all of my nascent SF games (and others') into a box and shake it up, then let myself go Full Crunch Mode (as I tend toward naturally) and see where it ends up, just for a lark.
Status: Almost certainly fated to break up on re-entry, but some interesting ideas that might re-applicable elsewhere or reshaped into something tractable. I'll post some details about this next.
