Published by the Melsonian Arts Council, TROIKA! is a
science fantasy RPG sharing a wavelength with Michael Moorcock’s
Eternal Champion, Book of the New Sun, Vimanarama, Etched City, and
the Archive 81 podcast (I’ll talk about these later). Humanity escaped
the crushing grasp of Earth’s gravity a long time ago and things have
only GOTTEN STRANGER. Bollywood space gods plunging through eldritch
portals to explore the crystal spheres are the tip of the weirdo iceberg
when you thumb through the randomized backgrounds. Some quick examples –
questing knight, cacogen, thaumaturge, rhino-man, and monkeymonger for
starters. The setting is filled out and explained in item and background
descriptions, in the margins of the text like a Dark Souls or
Bloodborne game.
Mechanically speaking, it does everything you
want an OSR-style game to do – create tension and sense of danger – and
only uses the D6. It also leans on D66 tables which I’m a huge fan of.
The most unique design feature is how it handles initiative via a blind
grab bag, very similar to the system used in the miniatures game Confrontation.
You pull a token from a grab bag and the corresponding character takes
their turn, but there’s also an End Turn token so… someone might not get
an action that turn.
It’s elegant, it’s pretty, and gets the most out of the book-as-physical-artifact with tables inside the covers.
You can find a no-frills/artless version here under the SRD and a physical copy on Amazon here.
PROSPECT was released earlier this year and it’s a
space western focused on activities nearly always overlooked –
prospecting, mining, and claim jumping! Not gonna get too deep on this,
I’ll just say – if your favorite parts of Ridley Scott films are the
world-building via material culture and how the camera feels in the scene then you should carve out the time and watch PROSPECT before the year is over in…
13 days? That sounds about right.
You can watch PROSPECT on Hulu right now.
You can browse the props here and the concept art here.
More Fragged Empire brain fodder, this time TV series and film for feeding my muse. My focus tends to be who and why rather than where and how, so expect these to be on the soft sci-fi to space opera side of the spectrum. My books finally came in from the Kickstarter and they are beautiful. Wade Dyer definitely knocked the design and presentation out of the park.
Dark Matter, 1 season. On Netflix. Six unnamed troubleshooters come out of stasis in response to a shipwide alert. Trouble is 5 of them are amnesiacs, the 6th is a repository for all their conflicting memories. Hijinks ensue as they suss out who they were, where they were going, and what they were going to do. Outside of a general job per week structure, the metaplot dwells on identity and memory's role in determining self.
Farscape, 4 seasons. On Netflix. Astronaut John Crichton is launched to the weirder side of the universe after a test launch off his experimental propulsion system. Now he's trying to get home abd avoid capture by the space fascists know as the Peacekeepers. The spaceship is alive, & there's a ton of interesting drugs/biotech present in the show. Creature designs are also fantastic, this was Star Trek: Voyager done better by Henson. The show got cancelled so it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. I wonder what other great Australian television we're missing out on in the U.S.A.
The Expanse, currently airing. On Syfy.com. Based on the James S.A. Corey novels of the same name, this one is very hard sci-fi. Confined to our solar system, tensions escalate between the United Earth Government and the Democratic Republic of Mars while both polities keeps a collective boot on the throat of the Asteroid Belt, the source of all raw materials that feed the respective war machines.
Firefly + Serenity 1 season & a film. On Netflix. The little engine that couldn't, this series casts a long shadow. Nothing else encapsulates the synthesis of space western quite like it except maybe Cowboy Bebop. Anything else I have to say about this has been said more eloquently by someone else.
Cowboy Bebop, 1 season & a film. The other fantastic space western, nearly every episode is strong. Following a crew of perpetually broke bounty hunters, chasing the next big score or trying to cleanse the sins of the past. Sometimes both. Ship design, characterization, and world building details all combine to make this show feel lived in and real in a way few others do.
