Chart Your Path Among The Stars: Sandbox Scifi Survival
Strap in for cryo-jump! You're up! —Coin is short, air and ship fuel low, your lives cheap. —Grab a job off the relay and cash in quick, mercenaries!
TYPE
SYSTEM
LANGUAGE
EXPERIENCE
AGE
$15.00
/ Session
Details
Weekly / Tuesday - 11:00 PM UTC
Mar 10 / Session 17
Session Duration / 3–3.5 hours
4 / 5 Seats Filled
Report Adventure
StartPlaying Money Back Guarantee
If your game doesn't happen, we guarantee a refund. Just reach out to StartPlaying Support. Refund Policy
Schedule
Meet your party members
4/5
About the adventure
[New? Demo the game with us: Your FIRST SESSION IS FREE!] Your team will crew a ship on the galaxy's edges seeking "for hire" notices in order to fund your existence and satisfy your itchy trigger fingers and wanderlust for new experiences —all while managing the stress of dealing with inevitable disasters, obstacles, and traumas of life in space. 🚀 Choose odd jobs to SURVIVE your time between the vast empty, the shoestring stations, and the scheming megacorps. 🛰️ Think quick and pay attention to clues and signs to SOLVE problems that get in your way at the worst time. 👾 Work together and be clever, not brave, to SAVE your allies from unimaginable horrors that hide around every other godforsaken asteroid and laboratory. If you're lucky, then you might just be successful at one, maybe two, of the above. —No one said the life of a mercenary crew of space marines, teamsters, scientists, and androids would be easy. ⭐ You choose your missions. ⭐ You decide which of your crew (characters) participate on each one, while others stay on the ship trying to de-stress, heal, and train. ⭐ Your actions determine who loses and who profits. You could investigate a science-facility that's gone dark, stop a serial-killer on a space-station, prevent a rogue-AI from killing hundreds, go on another alien bug hunt, lose your mind to a mysterious artifact, join a medical-experiment gone wrong, get involved in a tense union-strike, or just deliver a simple package... Sooner or later everybody pays —Merc, hero, survivor, villain, fool? —no matter: the stars of the galaxy's outer-rim are indifferent and the space colder: sparsely known, haphazardly explored, barely inhabited . . . but big business, callously corrupt, extremely dangerous —ain't that a kick in the battledress pants. [Beginners and experienced players welcome.]
Game style
Sandbox / Open World
Theater of the Mind
Puzzle / Mystery Focused
Roleplay Heavy
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(12)
Less than a year on StartPlaying
32 games hosted
Highly rated for: Creativity, Voices, Teacher
About me
Call me David or, as most of my friends call me, Demo (from my username). I don't play as many board games or draw as much as I used to because of gamemastering, but that addiction is good news for my players —which could include you! What makes me a GM? Raised eyebrows? Strange voices? Source-material mash-ups? "Yes, and..."? Compelling hooks and tense scenarios? "No, but..."? Intriguing mysteries and puzzling obstacles? Callbacks to party impacts on the world? Deadly and dynamic combats? Respecting players, their time, and interests? Reveals of backstory integrations? Et cetera and potpourri? —Iocane powder? I wouldn't bet my life on that last one, —but together we can sharpen our TTRPG chops and have fun at the same time. When my board gaming friends wanted to try RPGs, the only one willing to GM was me. What I found out was that running games scratched my gaming, creative and crafting, as well as social interaction itches better than any other activity. Nothing else offers that same experience. I consider myself a student of many much more experienced GMs on the interwebs, (especially Professor DM, Sly Flourish, and the Alexandrian...) and also a student of everyone I game with —what twist or surprise are you going to throw at my prep and into our game?
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Standard rules. It's simple and quick: the character sheet has short steps connected by visible arrows, and we can fill it out together in just a couple minutes. Alternatively, the official Mothership App (available on device and browser) leads you thru the quick creation process or can be used to randomly generate characters. Or lastly, I can provide pregenerated character sheet PDFs for you. I recommend each player create 2 characters to start our campaign to fill out the crew (because the game is deadly and to allow characters to have more downtime for recovery and improvement).
What to expect
Preparing for the session
REQUIRED: Discord, a decent microphone, some way of rolling dice. OPTIONAL: Webcam, Mothership Companion App (Webcam is a benefit to help reduce crosstalk, but not required.) There is an official Mothership Companion App (https://mothershipcompanion.com/) that can be used online or on devices, if you want to use it, but its not required —you can use a physical or pdf character sheet instead.
What DeMo brings to the table
My goal is to focus on the evolving story and the consequences of your actions. I try to GM with Rules as Intended first, Rules as Written second, and if we make mistakes, we keep rolling on —but I'm always on the lookout to make an exception for Rule of Creative when a player suggests something novel for the situation. I am a fan of you, the players, not your opponent. I use distinct voices and acts to differentiate the NPCs. I will share bits of art to help put your mind in the location. Combat will be handled theater of the mind. Ambient sounds and background music will reinforce the adventure's mood.
Homebrew rules
ABLATIVE WOUNDS: Players' first wound does not force a roll on the Wound Table. After their first session where they took damage, a character gains +1 Max Wound. CRITICAL STRESS RELIEF: A Critical Success reduces Stress by 1. EXHAUSTIBLE SKILLS: You may automatically succeed on a Skill Check using each of your Skills once per session. ONE TIME ADVANCEMENT: After a character survives their first session they may add 10 to any 1 Stat or Save. OPT-IN STRESS: Players can volunteer to gain Stress and make Panic Checks when they feel it’s appropriate, not just when I prompt it. TIME JUMPS: There will be time jumps in between missions/jobs that allow for players to engage in multiple downtime activities and long training for new skills.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How DeMo creates a safe table
Mothership is an intuitive rules-light system: I've taught it to a range of people in minutes. If there is anything you need me to put on my Lines and Veils list, please message me about it ahead of time. If you need me/us to stop / change the current conversation / scene, then just message or voice an X-card play; but be forewarned this is a survival game with a mechanic for mental stress and panic conditions, as well as a horror scenario that contains a variety of topics.
Content warnings
Safety tools used