Every Redshirt has a regular job before being sent to meet their destiny in The Meatgrinder, and in Void Hunters there will be three separate tables to generate one for your level-0 character: Military, Corporate and Civilian.

Which table you use will be up to the guy running the game. They may want to keep character generation focused on one table for their campaign, which may be specifically centered around military expeditions to expand the borders of the empire, corporate survey teams seeking new resources for exploitation or civilian traders prospecting in the void to find the big haul that will make their fortunes and allow them to retire in style. On the other hand, they may not care where your characters come from and may allow Civilian Contractors to sign on the Military Ships with Corporate survey teams.

Some of the tables allow for cross pollination of occupation types, so a military expeditionary team  may well find a Corporate Liaison on board their ship and there is special occupation, Weird, on all the tables that allows for the more off the wall possibilities, like Rogue Synthetics, Alien Infiltrators and Corporate Spies.

All occupations start off with some very basic equipment and some, like Synthetics, have special rules or abilities. For examples, check out the Military Occupation Table…

MILITARY OCCUPATION TABLE

The Synthetic is a unique class that really didn’t have any analogies to DCC in specific or OSR games in general, but it is not alone in that regards. The Commanding Officer is another class that doesn’t really fit neatly into the OSR pigeonhole.

It’s like a Cleric, but the healing abilities are all psychological not physical. It’s like the Warlord, with excellent leadership abilities that enhance the party, but more educated and skilled than combat intensive.

It is the lynchpin of any team, and, like the Cleric and Warrior, its absence is sorely felt when no one takes up the role. Here is the current version of the class…

COMMANDING OFFICER

HIT DICE

D8

TECH BASE

General, Combat, Transport

EDUCATED

Officers are more highly educated, and have access to knowledge that is typically restricted to specialist crew-members. At level 1, they may choose any one additional Tech Base.

COMBAT DIE & COMBAT MANEUVERS

Officers have a Combat Die just as Soldiers do. Although it is smaller, it functions in the same way.

LEADERSHIP DIE

Each Round, an Officer may add their Leadership Die to one other character who is within communication range (verbal or visual) and actively following their lead. This die may be added to that recipient’s Action Roll for that Round only (they may not be saved from Round to Round).

Actively following the Officer’s means that the Officer Character has given the recipient some instruction at some point before their Action roll and they are actively carrying it out.

At level 3 and above, the Officer may ‘split’ their Leadership die into two or more smaller dice. The only restriction is that a D3 is the smallest die that can be split off in this manner and any remainders are lost (a D10 split 3 ways would become a D3, D3 and D3, for example). They may assign these extra dice as they see fit, but may only assign one to any single individual per Round.

LEAD FROM THE FRONT

Instead of using their Leadership Die for the round to give orders and encouragement, the Officer may lead by example, passing their Will save to do some extremely unnerving task like entering  and alien infested hulk, leading a charge against a band of space pirates, or any other daring act the inspires their comrades. They may do this a number of times per Mission equal to their Level.

Any character (except Synthetics) following them and doing the same Action gains a x1 Enhancement on their roll for that Round only.

CONFESSOR

Officers may use their Leadership Die (or dice if they split it) once in the Psychosis phase to help a crew member (except Synthetics) to either avoid picking up a new permanent psychosis or to help remove an existing one.

All characters in Void Hunters start out as Redshirts. A Redshirt is a level-0 character with a lowly occupation, and they go through the same Character Funnel winnowing process as DCC characters. After this, Void Hunters assumes that they receive some sort of promotion and spend some years training for, and gaining experience in, a new career: their Class.

Void Hunters will introduce 6 new classes for science fiction gaming using the DCC rules set. Classes not only determine the basic DCC sort of things, like Action Dice, critical tables and special abilities, they also determine the type of technology the character is familiar with, their starting equipment and the particular type of mental instabilities they are prone to while out in the void.

SOLDIER

The Soldier is the DCC Warrior in many ways, with the best, all around fighting ability of any class (including Mighty Deeds of Arms) and the highest Hit Die. The resemblance ends there, however, as Soldiers are not just talented fighters or fierce barbarians, but highly trained combatants, most with a military background of one sort of another, be it regimented army sergeant or gun-for hire mercenary.

They are, of course, trained in Weapons and Armor, but they also possess the MOS special ability, which allows them to pick up some very specific training as they rise in level, A Soldier does not start with Transport as a Technology Base, so they will never. for instance, be the all around driver, pilot and mechanic that someone with Transport is, but they might have an MOS in Tanks, giving them a d20 Action die in the repair and operation of those types of vehicles. They can even pick up very specific bits of Experimental technology with enough experience, like learning how to use and maintain a particular alien weapon. At higher levels, they can even pick up a special ability from another human class (i.e. not Synthetic) for a soldier who is incredibly stealthy or one who develops a single psychic power, for example.

SCI-TECH (formerly Scientist)

This covers all sorts of brainy folk with a very wide range of scientific and technical skills. They will have the widest Technology Base of all the classes and are the only class that get the Experimental Tech Base, which gives them the ability to decipher and deconstruct, bypass or utilize alien tech and then try and pass on that understanding to other classes. They will only start with a number of these, however, which will determine their specialty (starship engineer, research scientist, transport officer, etc.), but they will have the opportunity to learn more of them as they advance in level, until they become versatile in pretty much everything but fighting.

They are, pound for pound, the worst fighters of all the classes, having spent so much time amassing scientific, technical and esoteric knowledge that they have had little time for combat training, but they make up for it with their Gadgeteering special ability, which allows them to improvise devices using whatever is handy and lying around.

SCOUT

Jack Holloway from H. Beam Piper’s ‘Little Fuzzy’ is the inspiration for this class.

The Point Man for exploration teams, the Scout is a survival specialist who is also good at identifying potential dangers before they can do harm. Scouts are the second best fighters and also possess a wide Technology Base that allows them to function on their own for long periods of time. Their special abilities include an increasing bonus to AC (a sixth sense that helps them to avoid danger) and improved Stealth skills.

When it comes to dealing with sentient aliens who are not automatically hostile, the Scout also functions as a First Contact specialist, giving them a bonus on the Reaction Table when to trying to communicate with and befriend them.

OFFICER

The Officer is the team leader. In D&D 4E terms, you’re looking at a Warlord sort of character, whose abilities help to bolster his team, especially if he leads from the front.

Officers in Void Hunters also serve as the team psychologist, as the ability to lead a team in deep space is only as good as one’s ability to understand their innermost fears and desires, anticipate their behavior and head off any potential issues that might lead to…SPACE MADNESS! As such, some of their special abilities will revolve around ministering to the mental health of their team and helping to cure short term psychosis before it can fester into long term insanity. They are, mentally, the toughest members of the team with the highest Will Save for that reason.

PSYCHIC

This is an optional career, and the GM may forbid them on the grounds of realism, especially if he is running a campaign in a hard science fiction setting. They are, in effect, the Wizards of the Void Hunter game, but with very different power levels and restrictions.

Psychic powers are going to work in much the same way as DCC Magic in that there will be a ‘Psychic Roll’ based on Personality, and the result will be looked up on a table. There will also be corruption in the form of ‘Psychosis,’ various temporary and long-term mental disorders that the Psychic can pick up and may eventually drive them totally insane (and there are some things in the darker corners of the universe that will speed up that process).

The tables remain, but they will have a much different slant. Hard Sci-Fi Psychics are a recent evolution of the species, their powers barely understood by science. This means, mechanically speaking, that the curve of effect on the tables will be much steeper (and the tables much shorter as a result). The low end of the table will be rife with poltergeist effects and misdirected mental energies, with only the lowest results costing the Psychic the use of their powers for a time or knocking them out from the strain. On the other hand, unlike Wizard Tables, the higher end of the Psychic tables, the ones where a Psychic shows truly massive power, offer a chance for corruption/Psychosis just as the low ends do. At level 5, a psychic might truly start to frighten their team-mates, whom the Psychic no longer relates to in the same way, and a level 10 Psychic risks turning into an insane being of god-like power with every use of their powers!

Psionic abilities will also be grouped into Disciplines, and Psychics will be defined by a single discipline until they gain higher levels (3, 5, 7, 9), at which point they might branch out. This means that they will be much more focused than wizards and their role in the game will vary from character to character. One can imagine a Telepath being part of First Contact team (or used as an interrogator in a War Amongst the Stars setting, ala Starship Troopers); a Telekinetic acting as the ‘thief’ in a Hulk Recovery Mission, using their powers to unlock doors or grab potentially dangerous artifacts from afar; while a Pyrokinetic would serve as ranged fire support for a Military Special Ops unit.

So psychics are more limited than wizards in some ways, but they don’t have to make deals with supernatural patrons, find arcane manuscripts to gain new ‘spells,’ and may eventually recover from their ‘corruption’ over time with the right psychiatric care. Like Wizards, however, their ticks and psychosis will slowly make them peculiar in a way that will make it harder for them to deal with the ‘normals’ that surround them. One day, they find themselves totally unable to relate to what are, essentially, dumb apes in comparison to them, from an evolutionary point of view, and may even find themselves at war with their previous team-mates and friends who are terrified of the Psychic’s power.

This of course, assumes that they live long enough. There are things in the void that hunger for the minds of the ‘gifted’…

SYNTHETIC

I deliberately used David 8 from 2012’s Prometheus as my illustration because while Ash, from that movie’s seventies predecessor Alien, is actually the same type of Android from the same setting as David, I think Michael Fassbender captured that ‘not quite human’ aspect so much better, and that is the image I want people to have of a Synthetic.

Game-wise, the synthetic class is the ‘demi-human’ class of Void Hunters. Better than humans in oh so many ways, but with a built in rarity that comes from a very limited place on the 0-level occupation table and a specific set of weaknesses or vulnerabilities that hinders them in unique ways as well. Being programmed to obey specific humans, for instance, and not being able to ‘heal,’ relying on others to repair them in many cases. I’m still noodling on this class, because I don’t want it to become an Uberclass, but I don’t want to betray their literary underpinnings by artificially weakening them, either. A few ideas I’ve had on how to approach them include:

1. Treat them as an Elf, basically giving them the abilities of two classes (Soldier and Sci-Tech seem the most likely) and slow down their XP gain in some manner to represent their lack of insight (the Basic D&D variation) or give them some serious vulnerabilities like the Elf’s aversion to iron (the DCC variation), or some combination of both.

2. Give them bonuses in STR, AGL and INT, but really nerf Personality and give them an automatic Luck of 0.

3. Some combination of the previous 2.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Those are my first rough concepts for the character classes for the game and, as you can see by the change of scientist into sci-tech, they are still evolving as Void Hunters simmers in the back of my brain. Some, like the Soldier and Sci-Tech, are very simple to design and will go quickly, while others, like the Psychic and Synthetic, will need careful crafting to make sure they are fun for everyone.

Note that I didn’t say, ‘balanced’ for everyone. I like classes to be powerful in their own, unique manner, even in situations outside of their sphere of influence where clever players, none the less, come up with unusual ways to utilize their abilities to overcome the challenges before them. Balance is a holy grail I do not pursue. Fun is my grail, and as long as everyone can play a different class and feel they got an equal amount of that, I’m a happy game designer…

As this is a supplement for Dungeon Crawl Classics, it will use the bulk of the DCC rules set for basic stuff like Attributes, Combat, Skills, etc. As a silence fiction game, however, we will need to add a few new rules to the game that are specific to that genre (as well as alter some of the existing systems, which I’ll be talking about more extensively in later posts), in much the same way as I did in Barbarians of the Aftermath.

TECHNOLOGY

Perhaps the biggest difference between a fantasy setting and a science fiction setting is the growth in the complexity of technology. Most people can be assumed to able to use almost 99% of fantasy technology (hammer & iron spikes, lanterns, tinder-boxes, ten foot poles, etc.) with specialists in a few specific trades, like blacksmiths and wainrights, and the most advanced technology, reading and writing, only available to those with the proper education.

In the modern day, however, we are constantly being reminded of how much there is to know and how little of it we actually understand. Sure, the smartphone is ubiquitous, but how many people can strip and clean a firearm? And of those, how many know to do the same with military grade weapons? And how many military weapons  are so complex that you can’t repair them in the field? We could make the same point about driving a car being different from flying a plane to flying a fighter jet and the differences in programming a website versus programming an operating system, but you get the point: technology has turned mankind into a species of specialists. So in the game, it just doesn’t make sense to let everyone use every piece of technology equally.

As such, each PC will have a Technology Base that will be gained from their class, based upon the type of technology they are trained and competent with. Their 0-Level Occupation will also provide them with one, very specific, piece of technology they are familiar with, which may or may not fit inside that Tech Base. In a way, you can think of the Technology Base as a skill set for the operation, repair and basic understanding of the principles behind devices that fall within that base (including alien tech that bears a strong resemblance to it). Those familiar with the tech roll a d20 as their Action Die. Those unfamiliar with it (but, considering the level of knowledge and experience needed to brave the void, probably cross-trained in it) roll a d10 as their Action Die, just as with skills in DCC.

Each piece of equipment will have one or more Tech Categories that define where it fits within the class structure of the game: General (which is available to pretty much everyone), Combat, Transport (planet-side vehicles & mechanics), Scientific, Robotic and Astronautic (spacecraft & engineering). There will also be three other Tech Categories that are so specialized that only those classes that possess them can figure them out and use them: Experimental (weird super-science type gadgets and alien tech), Psychic and Synthetic (everything to do with androids).

Of course, it should go without saying that these Technology Bases not only represent technological competence, but overall skills sets as well, so a character with training in Transport is probably a general mechanic as well as a driver, which means he would be the guy to call when the base AC is on the fritz. Need to fix a Cybertank, however? You’ll need a guy who is knowledgeable in both Transport and Robotics to get the d20 Action Die..

RESOURCES

Another difference in the two genres is that characters who pillage the void are not going to come home with ready to spend piles of shiny coins. They are going to come home with resources that they must sell, and nothing that you spend weeks and years risking death in the void for is going to sell for cheap. Combine that with the fact that certain equipment, like spacecraft components, are going to be exorbitantly expensive, and you can see how keeping account of money in bits and pieces can become a bit unwieldy.

Instead of that, each character will have a Resource attribute, which works like the Luck Attribute in DCC, in that you will have an Attribute Score that goes up and down as you use your resources and add to them, as well as a modifier that doesn’t change (to represent your lifetime credit rating based upon your past dealings) and is used for when you try to get things above your current Resource Attribute level.

Buying things is simple: if you have the Resources, you take it and then reduce your Resource rating accordingly. Characters can also pool their Resources to buy bigger things. You want that fancy new fuel converter for your ship? Better pool your resources, team!

If the item is outside of the individual or team’s current available Resources, you can always make a Resource Roll, which represents buying things on credit. In this case, with an added difficulty based upon the difference between the cost and the available Resources. The character with the highest Resource modifier gets to add that to the roll. If you succeed, you get the item on credit with minimal to no initial outlay, but must pay back the remainder with interest the next time you come in from the void, or else: consequences (which can mean a variety of things based upon the situation and nature of those with whom the characters did business).

Resources are also used when you are trying to use the power of your wealth to influence others. In such cases, a Resource roll is made just like a Luck roll and, if it succeeds, you reduce your Resources by 1 and get your way.

FIREARMS

Of course, firearms in science fiction would make a mockery of any fantasy arms and armor, magical or otherwise, due to high penetration power and rapid rate of fire often combined with a large area of effect. This of course requires a few new rules.

Damage for a firearm will be very similar to other ranged weapons in DCC. After all, they both poke holes in you, it’s just that one dose it faster, possibly does it to anyone else standing directly behind you and in line with flight path of the projectile and with little regard for cover or armor that isn’t specially designed to stop it.  Certain special types of ammunition might make hole a bit bigger (Dum-Dums) or even ‘splody (Gyrojet Rounds), but for the most part, the damage will range from d6 to d12 (with Hit Points representing more than physical damage, of course, but more on that later).

Rapid Fire is fairly easy to model and I’ll likely be doing that by allowing multiple attacks with decreasing die size. Soldiers will be penalized less in die size than other classes, making them a bit more effective.

Ranges are another thing you must take into account. The world record sniper shot is over a kilometer in distance, and energy weapons, like lasers, are unaffected by wind and barely effect by gravity so if you can see it and point at it you can hit it. As a result I’m thinking range is going to play little part unless it is Extreme, which I’ll probably define in the individual weapon descriptions.

Turning to the equipment side of Firearms rules, weapons will fall in line with their Barbarians of the Aftermath counterparts: general types and sizes, not specific makes and models. This, along with a number of upgrade kits, will allow for a wider variety of firearm types, with a minimal amount of rules,and without cornering the GM into any specific setting. I also intend for weapons to be sold in bulk. You spend a Resource point and get to outfit your character based on Armory points that can be spent on customizing your personal weapons stockpile (think Jane from Firefly). A team can do this to build up a communal armory for their ship.

As with Barbarians of the Aftermath, I’m not interested in turning ranged combat into an accounting exercise, especially considering the fact that a single Resource Point’s worth of ammunition could keep a platoon supplied for a month long operation. However, I do want to emphasize the Resource Management aspect of most dungeon-crawl style games. As such, I am looking at a method that mixes limiting carried ammunition but allowing for total reloads when the characters return to the ship.

When characters get into a firefight, no one calmly pulls the trigger for a single shot at their target. No, most folks throw a number of rounds downrange in the direction of their target without even thinking about ammunition expenditures, only stopping after the third or so ‘click click’ noise tells them their weapon is tapped. In the game this will be represented by an ammo check system built into the combat roll (in much the same way as Cleric Disfavor is built into their spell roll) which will occasionally empty their weapon. If they have reloads on them, they may take an Action to do so, but if they don’t, time to find an alternative.

Soldiers will have an advantage here. A trained soldier will learn to control their fire and keep track of their ammo expenditures. I’m thinking of either letting them reroll the first ammo check for a weapon or maybe reducing the number for every level they have in their class. Haven’t decided yet.

SERVITORS

Old school fantasy RPGs have henchmen. Void Hunters will have Robots! Basically, a robot is a henchman who does exactly what you tell them, as soon as you tell them to do it. They still require ‘payment’ in the form of maintenance, and they are very limited in what they can do based upon their programming, but you can send them into the dark corners of the unknown a hundred times or more and they will never object or leave your service (unless they blown apart, eaten or otherwise destroyed by whatever was lurking in said dark corners). Servitors will have some specific types and rules, but for the most part, that describes them.

Do not confuse Servitors in the game with Synthetics, who are self-aware characters and, hence, a PC class. Outside of their programming, servitors are dumb as a box of rocks and not self-aware… or at least not the ones humans build (although it might make for an interesting adventure if one did become self-aware through some bizarre in-adventure phenomenon, and turned on the crew for their crass abuse of it and its brethren).

PSIONICS

Psychics are, like Synthetics, an optional PC class which may or may not be allowed by the GM for their particular setting. I plan to base psychic abilities (‘powers’ seems an excessively fantastical word to use for the genre and level of ability I’m going for) on the DCC magic system with a few wrinkles to give it a totally different feel, but I’ll discuss this more in a future post dealing specifically with that subject.

SPACE CRAFT

Spacecraft in Void Hunters are largely a way to get around the interstellar sandbox of a campaign, along with serving as ‘dungeons in space’ for hulk salvaging missions.

In the former case, they serve as a mobile base for the PCs, a base that becomes more and more useful and allows them to take on greater challenges as they upgrade it or sell it to buy an even better craft. In a way, it is like a group magic item that levels with them so long as they are willing to spend resources on it.

As such, spacecraft will be modular in design, a base hull with standard components and a number of attachment points for various upgrades that will provide a bonus to the team in specific situations.

The combat rules for spaceships will be highly abstract and focused on what each character does during said combat than moving miniatures about a map, which is not the best representation of combat in a 3D environment anyways. There will be a role for all the available classes to play in space combat, which will be spelled out in their class descriptions; a series of potential maneuvers that might be employed, and a critical system for ships, but other than that, I’m still thinking on this one and will go over it more in a future post.

 SPACE MADNESS

Seriously. If you play RPGs, you need to see this movie.

Finally, Void Hunters would not be complete without a system for altering the mental state of the characters so that the effects of psychological horror can be brought into the game. After hearing about Torchbearer and how they are handling hunger, thirst and so on, I’m thinking of introducing a  number of mechanically defined states, like paranoia, fear, and so on that can be incurred during play.

Most will be temporary, and can be relieved by returning to the safety of the ship (if the ship isn’t harboring some alien monstrosity that is stalking the crew, that is) or by other means, like psychological counseling back at a friendly base station. Some, however, will have the potential for causing permanent psychological damage so characters who remain in the void for too long will start to mentally resemble the crew of Dark Star.

In this post, I’m going to break down Chapter 1 of the book, because it answers a lot of questions about what, exactly, the essence of Void Hunters will be in look, play-style and overall direction. In summary, Void Hunters will be:

A Genre Toolbox Supplement for Dungeon Crawl Classics

That’s a mouthful, but describes the book pretty accurately.

First of all it is a supplement. Licensing rules for Goodman Games prevent me from including the core DCC rules in the book, so you’ll need the main DCC corebook to use it as intended. This is fine by me, as we really don’t need yet another retro-clone variation cluttering up a marketplace filled to the brim with minor variations on old school D&D. In fact, as DCC uses the D20 license and hews closely to OSR rules paradigm (without actually being a pure retro-clone, which is why I like it so much), you will find a lot of rules material in here that will easily translate to your favorite OSR game and the rest should only require minimal conversion.

Second of all, it will be a Toolbox for generating your own setting. A lot of the book will help you to decide what assumptions you want to make about technology, aliens even player classes, to make your ideal campaign setting with advice and even random tables for moments of indecision. Folks who have read my previous book Barbarians of the Aftermath will understand the kind of toolbox that I’m talking about.

That being said, Void Hunters will have a much tighter focus than BotA, which was a great deal more expansive in theme, covering every sort of post-apocalyptic scenario possible. Void Hunters will focus is on a very specific subset of Seventies Science Fiction (which I will talk more about in a minute) that revolves around my personal Appendix N, and does not include Star Wars type Science Fantasy or Pulp Science Fiction (cause Lord knows we have enough variations on those).

That being said, it is a supplement for Dungeon Crawl Classics, the premier 1970’s Style Fantasy RPG, so that means the rules will be totally compatible with anything you’d like to pull out of that book. You want Vancian wizards making Faustian bargains with elder gods who must not be named while flying about in spaceships with android companions and barbarian tribesman from the planet Mars? Well, if you have both Void Hunters and DCC (and an inclination for kitchen sink innovation) it will be as easy as picking something from column A and another thing from column B and throwing in a little bit of Column C for good measure.

An Homage to a Very Seventies Form of Science Fiction and Gaming

A question I’ve been asked recently is ‘What do you mean by Seventies Science Fiction Gaming?’ Basically, the style I’m talking about includes the following elements:

A Bleak, Uncaring Universe

Look at this and try to tell me we were wrong to view Disco as a sign of the coming apocalypse…

One of the defining elements of the seventies is a darker, pessimistic (and some would say self-centered) view of the world that that was very much the ‘come down’ from the high of the sixties. Our psyches were darkened by the Vietnam War, the Watergate Scandal, the Oil Crisis, global cooling (yes, that was a thing), growing pollution and overpopulation worries, the threat of nuclear annihilation and Disco (hey, once you’ve heard every damned thing, from the Star Wars theme to Donald Duck turned into Disco, you’ll feel the same). This, combined with the rapid advance in technology and a growing realization that the universe was a lot more destructive and weirder than we’d ever imagined, gave a more serious, humanist tone to the fiction of the era.

As a result, much of the science fiction of this era, in books, movies and magazines, focused on the frightening advance of technology, the terrifying (but often breathtaking) unknowns of space, and the very well understood and depressing tendency for man to screw over his fellow man, even when faced with the total extinction of humanity.

There was a heavy emphasis on realism as well: the technology tending to hew more towards what might be possible in the next century rather than light swords and laser crossbows. In the same way, the search for extra-terrestrial life turned into an exploration of long dead or devolved civilizations and fighting off super-predators waiting to prey on the unwary. Science fiction became, in many ways, Dystopian, a violent rejection of the Utopian visions of the previous decades.

Space in these stories is dangerous and uncaring. The unprepared will surely meet a gruesome end and, when so much is unknown, it is practically impossible to be fully prepared. Especially against the mad pressure of extended isolation in an infinite void, the dangers of previously unknown stellar phenomena and the predations of undreamed of alien life and your fellow man.

That is the very essence of space in Void Hunters and will probably be re-worked for the back cover blurb. The tiny caption on the movie poster to the left, from the quintessential dark science fiction movie of the decade, pretty much sums it up…

Seventies Science Fiction Gaming

Science fiction gaming in this era was best exemplified by three games: Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World and Traveller.

Metamorphosis Alpha was basically a game of D&D in space. Take the concept of the mega-dungeon (in which the players explore an expansive environment from top to bottom over a long period of time, slowly growing in power until they conquer it fully) and overlay science fiction elements on top of it. The players were the primitive, devolved descendents of humanity sent into space on a great space ark many centuries previous, exploring it and all the new creatures and peoples that have evolved since then, slowly recovering the technology and knowledge they need to take control of the ship and find a new home world. Very much in the vein of the early 70’s television show The Starlost.

Gamma World was much bleaker and examined the dog eat dog world of survival after the near extinction of humanity in a nuclear apocalypse.It is the spiritual ancestor to Barbarians of the Aftermath in many ways. And while the post-apocalyptic genre really only took off in the eighties (when we were all certain we were going to die in a ball of nuclear flame or end up envying those who did) it got its gaming start in the seventies, and it seriously seriously struck a chord because, quite frankly, many of us didn’t think we’d make it to the eighties. The survival at any cost meme along with the man screwing over man theme was given cathartic life in Gamma World and influenced a generation of gamers.

Traveller was THE hard sci-fi game of the period, really pushing the realistic technology and humanist angles of seventies science fiction. Communication and travel were slow, so interstellar empires were non-existent or feudal in nature and player characters in the game were experienced soldiers, explorers and traders in a universe that revolved around exploitation of interstellar resources. Characters were the epitome of humanity in seventies sci-fi, opportunists who  did not measure success by experience (the inexperienced and unlucky didn’t survive to become player characters, which was emphasized by the fact that your character could actually die during character generation) but by what they took from the universe for themselves.

Of these, I’m going to take the dungeon exploration aspects of Metamophosis Alpha and mix it with the stark realism of Traveller and the survival theme of Gamma World. to create the ultimate modern take on Seventies style science fiction style gaming.

 The Void Hunters Implied Setting

Void Hunters will bake all of these influences into the rules to create something that is a bit more than ‘DCC In Spaaaace!’ but retains that DCC feel of gritty adventuring in a dangerous setting. It will also be an exploration game set in a dark and uncaring universe where explorers, traders and military expeditions dive into the unknown and find new resources to exploit, the remains of ancient, long-dead alien civilizations to explore and unthinkable horrors to survive.

In my next post, I’ll talk about some of the new mechanics that will subtly change DCC into a science fiction game…

I like to use my personal blog as a game design diary. I first started the practice on the Strange Stones blog site, with Barbarians of Heavy Metal, and I found it to be an excellent way of not only keeping track of my thought process as I work through the particulars of a game (without wasting and losing reams of paper), but also to invite comments from others that can influence the final product early on and save me a lot of work re-writing the final document.

The first thing I like to do is create an outline. I know a lot of writers who think outlines are unnecessary and sign of inexperience, but of all the things I learned in High School, I find the humble outline to be one of the most useful tools for organizing thought and speeding up the writing process. To this day I use them for script-writing, fiction writing, technical writing and game design. In the case of an RPG book, they make a convenient table of contents, like the one for my upcoming game, Void Hunters…

Chapter 1: Introduction
● How to Use This Book
● Setting Assumptions – What is Seventies Science Fiction?
● New Rules

Chapter 2: Characters
● Defining Setting Assumptions about PC Classes
● Redshirts – Level 0 Characters
● Soldier
● Scientist
● Scout
● Officer
● Psychic
● Synthetic

Chapter 3: Psionics
● Rules
● Psionic Disciplines
● Power Listings

Chapter 4: Gear
● Defining Tech Level in your Setting
● Acquiring Gear – Resource Checks
● Standard Gear
● Combat Gear
● Servitors
● Psychic Gear

Chapter 5: Starships
● Defining Space Travel in your Campaign
● Acquiring a Starship
● Running a Starship
● Fighting a Starship
● Starship Construction
● Starship Modules

Chapter 6: New Worlds
● Sector Generation
● Star System Generation
● World Generation

Chapter 7: Alien Menaces
● Defining Setting Assumptions about Aliens
● Random Species Generation
● Sample Alien Flora
● Sample Alien Fauna
● Sentient Civilization Generation
● Alien PCs

Chapter 8: Exploring the Darkness
● The Interstellar Sandbox
● Hazards of the Void
● The Planetary Sandbox
● Planetary Environments
● Lost Civilizations
● Hulks

Chapter 9: Missions & Campaigns
● Player Unit Organization
● Mission Generator
● Dungeons In Spaaaace
● The Wider Universe
● Mission 1: The Lost and the Damned (Level 0 Hulk Recovery Mission)
● Mission 2: The Pyramids of Pyxis (level 1 Planetary Exploration Mission)

This not only helps me to organize my book, but also gives me a good idea of about how long this book is going to be. About 160 pages, methinks.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to let Void Hunters come to a slow boil on the back-burner of my brain as I work on my other projects. I’ll be posting whatever bubbles to the surface here. By the time November gets rolling along, you should see a game slowly forming…