GM: Sam Tillis
Players: Sean Nittner, Adrienne Mueller, Ryan Fox Squire, Avery Krieger
System: Death in Space
Pitch
The universe is dying, collapsing eternally in a slow grind toward eternal nothingness. Heralding that collapse is the Void, a strange presence that infects & corrupts. The Gem War ruined this system: stations lie semi-abandoned as trade dwindles and dries, and petty gang leaders fight like dogs over the ragged scraps. But for you, there’s still a shred of hope. You’ve scrimped and saved and spent every last holo to your name on an old, ramshackle spacecraft. If you play your cards right, you can get it off this miserable iron hulk of a station. Play your cards wrong, and you might just meet your death in space.
So you bought this ship on the cheap, right, from these medium legitimate scavengers. They told you they had it docked up in Aurum 80, a forsaken corner of the Aurum sector of the Iron Ring, this moon encircling belt of old space-craft, satellites, asteroids, and junk like a fractured space station. You hitched a ride to the dump, and miraculously its real: the ship is here and its yours. There’s just three problems.
- It’s been here for a fucking minute. Along with the hub comes a docking fee debt of 500 holos owed to this cat Ezra Pascal & their gang of cred dealers.
- Ship’s broken and won’t actually fly until it gets some repairs.
- Ship has no fuel, even a little bit.
Solve those three things—debt, damage, & fuel—and you’re free in the black to carve out a life for yourselves on your own terms.
Our band of Ne’er-do-wells
Reggie Pops, a punk who was here see a super nova, swallow handfuls of drugs that make the universe implode, drink and dance till the world burns away. She was here for a good time, not a long time. She also won the ship on Aurum 80 and brought Delta-34 Clone Byrne along to help her procure it. (Adrienne)
Archie, a prime specimen of Delta-34 Clone pod. He worked out. He knew tech, but he was lost in the world without the rest of his pod, so he sought them out, starting with Ay-Ron, who was also a promising member of the pod. Still, he sought more. (Ryan)
Ay-Ron, a sub-prime specimen of Delta-34 Clone pod, who was neither on the winning or the losing side of the Gem War and decided that was how he liked it. Resisting all attempts to gain his allegiance to an organization or cause. (Avery)
Byrne, a sub-sub-prime specimen of the Delta-34 Clone pod, who finally found his calling in isotope coding for vacuum resistant flora, but that gig went south and now he was following Reggie Pops around (Sean)
Some favorite moments of the game:
- Meeting Archie, then Ay-Ron, the Reggie Pops all in the same, increasingly cramped, closet.
- Arriving on the dilapidated Aurum 80 and making our way to our first contact and debtor Ezra Pascal. She had a real tough exterior, but as we kept coming back to her she warmed up to us, and us to her.
- Immediately deciding we’d side with the the drug dealer Monotone Tynall before learning anything about him, and them immediately regretting it.
- Roy’s engine room and greenhouse. Hot, stuffy, and cramped.
- Space walks tethered (temporarily) by duct tape.
- Ambient porn on the screens to disguise said space walk.
- Making a deal with Monotone and the immediately betraying him to his former friend Ray.
- Learning their dark backstory from the alluring Hina.
- The ways Hina made Reggie Pops see stars. Sunken deep into her udon noodles.
- How Ay-Ron offered gum to everyone as a way to pacify the situation. In the end, after he died, we found he even offered gum to Archie, who wanted that feeling of validation and friendship the most.
- Meeting the server Raz and giving her a place on our ship.
- Rescuing Zatch, a sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-prime specimen of the Delta-34 Clone pod from the throws of Non-Phis, and having him show up to save us at the end.
- Forcing Monotone and Ray to reconcile at gunpoint, the way all best friends are made.
- The external pressure of Thoren Regoza, who couldn’t kill us via long distance comms, so she shot one of her officers for letting us through.
- Archie convincing Monotone that he could hack into Ray’s networks and thus getting a chance to access Monotones computer, and using his access to suppress the dozens of alarms we were setting off and cover the viewing windows with porn to hide Byrne’s space walk.
- Ay-Ron’s death by bullet-to-brain to save Reggie Pops.
- Failing to open a door and getting sparked in the face (3 damage) and later crashing into the ship in my EVA suit (3 damage) and being really happy that one the one good roll I had in character creation was Hit Points (I started with 7!).
- The sweet ass maps and our tactical approach to moving through the statoin.
- Using up every piece of gear I could get my hands on including an EVA suit, military grade light sticks, an extreme weather tent, a multi-tool, most of my air-canister, and duct tape.
But for me, by far, the most delightful element was getting pricked with a needle while digging through trash for apple cores and feeling weightless, promoting Byrne to put on their EVA suit. Since I was wearing it the suit everywhere I went, it didn’t look strange when I needed to wear it to out an airlock. And because I had inadvertently taken the drug that simulated Zero-G I was already acclimated to it! Hot damn!
Thoughts on the Game
Though not officially a Borg, Death in Space feels very Borg like. Try not to roll. When you do, try to get a 12 or higher. When you don’t, bad things happen. It was less menacing that Mothership (which is trying to disembowel every five minutes) but still pretty rough. We lost one character, but mostly that’s because we initiated violence.
I really liked the adventure. It had a fun mix of skullduggery, social interactions, world building, and opportunities to side with one or more factions. It also had a ticking timebomb in the form of union rep Thoren Regoza.
Some good lines from the game:
- Yeah, plans change. Call Roy and get him down here.
- You never apologized!
- Want some gum?
- I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’ll go with you.
- Sit!
- What are you doing? Delivering incense. <insert huge miscommunication about the nature of incense>.
- We’re not bozos. We’re clowns!
- What’s a 5’2″ girl to do other than three clones at once?
- Us carbons (the term for clones in this game) aren’t meant to last long. I’ve been here longer than most. I’ve seen good people die, bad people live, and mediocre people <shrug and gesture to all the parties involved>
- The elevator broke. (Said with a straight face after taking the plasma torch to the controls)
