The vast majority of tabletop RPG campaigns are fantasies rather than science fiction. As Jason Bulmahn writes, “One of the reasons why I think fantasy is a dominant genre in TTRPGs is just how much of the core of it is public domain, gathered from centuries of myth and folklore. It allows each game to borrow from those core concepts and define itself by the ways in which it is different.”

It’s hard to have those same shared expectations of the world in a science fiction setting. Are there aliens, or not? Are there robots, or not? Is this hard science fiction or soft science fiction?

No wonder then that most RPG campaigns that are science fiction are based on media properties, because films and TV provide players with shared expectations: Star Trek, Star Wars, The Expanse, Alien—heck, even Space: 1999!

So only a small percentage of campaigns overall are homebrew science-fiction campaigns. Which means there has not been a tremendous amount of support for such campaigns.

Given this, I was excited to see that Lampblack & Brimstone has a new Kickstarter, The Perilous Void. Its publisher, Jason Lutes, was kind enough to share the working draft (90% complete, 123 pages) with me, prior to the crowdfunding campaign, and I’ve had a chance to read it in full over the past week.

Session Zero

Having run a homebrew campaign using Impulse Drive, we used Microscope for our Session Zero, not finding any resources specific to science fiction.

The Perilous Void offers its own system for running a Session Zero, reviewing and discussing each of the following in turn—

  1. The campaign frame (e.g., rebellion, wild frontier, age of discovery, etc.).
  2. The FTL (Faster Than Light) technology your campaign will use (if it is not set by your RPG system).
  3. Nonhumans, if any, with extensive tables to select from or to roll them up (descriptors, special abilities).
  4. Interstellar societies (20 types to choose from) and their composition.
  5. How the societies relate to one another (8 levels: allies, trade partners, rivals, etc.).
  6. This sector of the galaxy, including common spaceways.
  7. The home systems.
  8. An inciting incident (10 choices, none of which are “you all start in a cantina”!).

It’s actually a 19-step process in full. If your players, like mine, love world building, they’ll love the detail and options. (For a year-long campaign, I could see my players following this procedure, then doing a Microscope session to build out the timeline for the galaxy, then a character-oriented session a la Stonetop.)

Printable sheets to document your galaxy

Subsequent Sessions

The Perilous Void isn’t just for initial world-building (worlds-building?). It has resources for adventure hooks, locations, NPCs, and random details, great for session prep and supporting improv.

The planet creation system is incredibly detailed, yet abstracted enough to be suitable for gameplay, and makes me want to run a “planet of the week” campaign. 

But the system is fractal, as well. Early Star Trek often had one-dimensional planets with one race of aliens or with one settlement. Later Star Trek improved on this (e.g., two types of Andorians, more kinds of Vulcans, etc.). The Perilous Void lets you generate a range of communities: mega-cities, space stations, outposts, and villages. (If you want even more hard science detail for a specific planet, check out John Freeman’s Hard S.F. Worldbuilding Cookbooks.)

The Perilous Void has 9 pages on NPC creation, though it’s hard to describe NPCs from alien races that had to be rolled up earlier; the NPC Detail table might be the most generic in the book. (The exception that demonstrates how well thought out the rest of the tables are.) I also hope to play around with the NPC naming tables (described as “Generic Soap Opera”).

Continuing the language perspective, there’s two ways to name stars: “Generic Space Opera” and “Greek/Latin Mashup.” There’s also the obligatory technobabble generator.

The only tables I found missing were for robots (I’ve been using ideas from Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn for robots). And, while The Perilous Void offers plenty of resources for running a campaign, you may also want to check out Graham Walmsley’s advice on how to write science fiction scenarios. 

Since the version of The Perilous Void that I reviewed had placeholder art only, I’m looking forward to the final art from Keny Widjaja, whose illustrations I loved in The Perilous Wilds and Servants of the Cinder Queen.

A bit more about Lampblack & Brimstone: they have the most popular Dungeon World supplement, in The Perilous Wilds (recently revised), and the broadest selection of Dungeon World materials. They’re also the publisher of Stonetop (which I can’t stop writing about).

If you’re into science fiction roleplaying, I encourage you to join me in backing The Perilous Void.