This simplified ruleset, written by us, is part of the Lo-Fi Space Horror TTRPG we’re making called Dark Space Society. It’s strongly inspired by Jesse Ross’s Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold, Diogo Nogueira’s Primal Quest, and Goblin Archives’ Liminal Horror.
It was designed to play adventures or modules from other well-known games in the genre, but with a rules-light system and an emphasis on modern, narrative-first principles.
You can read at https://darkspacesocietyrpg.com.
We are interested in your feedback and thoughts!
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Hi there, thanks for the ruleset. I have checked in both Spanish and English and it was a fun and interesting read.
I will start saying that I am by no means an authority about design and writing but I think I can help with some ideas and feedback.
First, about structure. I think the draft looks good, it has a nice nested organization that helps in explaining things, but it can be nested further I think. I also would like to see a summary of mechanics in the character creation bit (example: You start with 1 stress but I do not know what stress is for nor the max stress I am allowed to have). But overall it is nice, and it is still a really early draft I assume.
Second, on the contents, it looks really deadly! I love it, it feels like a Mothership + Cthulhu Dark blend (well, it is inspired by Trophy so it is understandable). Rules are a little bit convoluted and favor positive results from saves at stress cost probably, and this seems it is the main lethality source beyond monstrosities.
At some points in the mechanics (I am talking from memory and some things may be wrong) I would expect stress to go back to one, in particular after acquiring a Fallout, but overall it feels interesting.
For the Fate roll, if you value speed over mechanic beauty and coherence, I would just do a d6 roll in the table:
- No, and
- No
- No, but
- Yes, but
- Yes
- Yes, and
But this is just preference
To sum up, it is a nice early draft, looks quite deadly and characters are probably going to retire (heh) early in their careers. I would say it is an interesting ruleset to test with some classic Mothership modules like Haunting of Ypsilon14.
Nice one!
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Thank you for your thoughtful feedback! It’s great to see your enthusiasm and willingness to help improve the project. Your insights on structure and mechanics are very valuable, especially regarding the character creation summary and the use of stress. I appreciate your suggestion for the Fate roll too.
The rules are still in a very preliminary state, but I set a goal to release it now and take off that pressure of trying to make it perfect. I’m still testing and writing the rules. This kind of feedback encourages me to keep going, thanks so much again!
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Nice! I’ll keep an eye on the updates since it looks quite fun.
Thanks for your work Mario!
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