Smeg and Lasers: A Red Dwarf Inspired Adventure.

Creating your character

I’ve put together a PDF for you to use when making your character. Grab a few D6 dice and roll to see what comes up. First, you’ll choose your species and sub-species, then your sub-role, and finally—most importantly—your character’s goal. The sillier the better! Anything drawn from the Red Dwarf universe will be brilliant.

Preparing for the session

Tech & Table Rules of the JMC We’ll be playing on Discord — I’ll send you a link to the server before we start. That’s our main hub for voice, text, and keeping the banter flowing. You don’t need to be a tech wizard to join; if you can press “connect” and unmute yourself occasionally, you’re already qualified for deep-space exploration. We may also use Foundry VTT to show maps, handouts, or the occasional exploding GELF. I’ll walk you through how to hop on when needed — it’s browser-based, so no downloads required unless you want to get fancy. So: just make yourself a Discord account, test your mic, and be ready to join the crew. Everything else, we’ll sort together. The Jupiter Mining Corporation doesn’t exactly do “efficiency,” so don’t stress the details.

What Thee Silvery Bard brings to the table

This is not a game of grimdark tactical warfare or painstakingly counting rations — this is Red Dwarf. Expect ridiculous situations, snarky banter, and an irreverent dive into the far reaches of deep space, where humanity’s last survivors are a hologram, a slob, a neurotic android, and a creature evolved from cats. You’ll face bizarre sci-fi problems, malfunctioning technology, and existential weirdness — usually with more sarcasm than strategy. As your GM, I lean hard into humour, character-driven chaos, and the “Rule of Funny.” I do character voices (with varying degrees of success), use music and sound to set scenes when it helps, and fully expect players to come up with solutions that are more clever, silly, or downright desperate than anything I had in mind. The dice and rules matter, but if you make everyone laugh, I’m happy to bend them in the name of a good gag.

How Thee Silvery Bard creates a safe table

Safety at the Table Comedy is fun when everyone’s in on the joke, so I put player safety first. Before the campaign starts, I’ll share a simple Lines and Veils document to make sure we all know what topics are off-limits or need to be handled with care. In Session 0, we’ll talk about tone, boundaries, and what makes Red Dwarf–style humour fun (and what doesn’t). During play, we’ll use X, N, & O cards digitally (or via quick private messages if that’s easier). You can hit pause, fast-forward, or rewind the story whenever something isn’t sitting right. After sessions, I do a quick aftercare check-in — either a chat or message — to make sure everyone’s leaving the table feeling good, not awkward. If you enjoy leaning into flawed but loveable characters, solving problems in ridiculous ways, and laughing at the sheer hopelessness of deep-space survival — all while knowing the table has your back — then welcome aboard the Jupiter Mining Corporation.