5 Million Worlds Newsletter, #1

Issue 1, Sept 2023

Welcome to the 5MW Newsletter, a monthly publication about tabletop role-playing games and sf: speculative fiction, sci-fi, spooky fables, space fantasy, etc., etc. Generally, I’ll be shouting out sf games I’m excited about (mine and others), dip into inspiring sf media, and cover the development of 5MW the Space Adventure RPG.

I might also post some sf microfiction from time to time, idk.

What is 5MW RPG?

5 Million Worlds the Space Adventure RPG is my hack of Mothership’s PANIC Engine. I love Mothership and freaky horror sci-fi, but I’m a bit more of a soft sf kinda guy at heart. The vibes for 5MW are a sort of Star Trek meets Firefly vs. the Hainish Cycle meets the Culture. This is a more high-tech, “oops, we forgot Earth” deep future where dying isn’t the worst thing that can happen to your character.

The central mechanical concept is switching from Stress into Limit, and introducing a push-pull for the players to choose to use their Limit to do cool stuff when shit goes bad, or risk keeping it to use for their character advancement. So instead of a Panic Table, you have a Break Down which is akin the the Panic results in MoSh, and a Limit Break table which gives the players something cool to do to turn the tables (yes, I grew up playing FF, gimme a break, it sounds cool).

For now, it’s a lil pocketzine, available PWYW on itch with a starter scenario included. Christian Sorrell of Missives from the MeatCastle gave it a short review on TikTok when it was released too, if you’d like to check that out. When my current adventure writing work cools down a bit, I hope to start developing the full Limit Break tables for the classes, and Homeworld Loadouts. 

What current adventure writing, you may ask? Well…

Outer Rim: Uprising

Outer Rim: Uprising collects over 20 pieces from 12+ creators in a Lost Bay Studios bundle for Mothership RPG, all of which center on rebellion against the capitalist shits who try to control everyone. Let’s say it’s been a cathartic writing experience, and we hope you join in with the 1200+ followers on Kickstarter who are looking forward to this gaming experience. 

The Campaign Handbook and in-document interconnections help thread the scenarios together, and the individual pieces can also serve as one-shots or parts of an altogether different sort of table’s game. The Uprising team has been working on this project since January, making sure every piece can bring something special on its own and like Voltron, haha, do incredible things when put together.

I’ve written two parts to this bundle: Rusted to the Core and Bones on the Ground. They both tie into a rebel faction, the ARA: Android Rights Association, or Android Rebel Alliance, depending on who you ask. 

Rusted to the Core sends PCs into the clouds of gas giant Poe-V. The Androids running the fuel refinery aerostat have gone on strike. The players choose their role in the strike, but something the Hook Divers brought back has twisted their leadership and goals. With cover art and maps by Holly Jencka, this 16pg adventure presses the players in the oppressive atmosphere for the classic Survive, Solve or Save of Mothership.

I’ll dive a bit more into multiple pieces of Bones on the Ground in next month’s newsletter, so keep an eye out. Outer Rim: Uprising launches October 3rd on Kickstarter.

A Buncha Spaceship Deckplans

September is Spaceshiptember, or #SST23, a daily challenge to draft up a spaceship a day. Ok, I know twitter/x is the dumpster fire that burned downtown to the ground, but for real, if you’re into grabbing some inspiration for spaceships, check out #SST23. Spaceshiptember is more so meant for artists, but I started making a zine of ship deckplans, and promptly fell behind, haha. I’m this close to uploading the Week 2 update, though. 

Sneak peak at a couple ships for the next update! And the Rhino, a crowd favorite.

A Buncha Spaceship Deckplans is a 12pg (soon to be 22pg) zine that’s PWYW through September. If you pick it up now, you’ll get all the post-September updates for whatever you pay now. It’s very much a fast’n’dirty zine, but still quite useful, I think. My tentative plan is to take my favorites (and crowd faves) to turn into full-on Mothership-statted ships, add ship modules and weapons, and real artwork.

So yeah, a fun impromptu zine for everyone to grab real quick like if you want one. I’ll be updating this as the month rolls along, and a bit afterwards. Enjoy it!

What’s cool rn?

Outsourced, by Spicy Tuna RPG

• I’m a big fan of what Marco’s doing over at Spicy Tuna RPG (check out The Guac!). This book drafts a thriller conspiracy, which can weave into any Mothership campaign, and directly ties into Constant Downpour. If that wasn’t enough, it also has two horrific planets to die on survive. I had the chance to play a part of Outsourced just before the launch on PlusOne EXP. 

Afterwords: The Far Horizons Guide to Death

• An anthology of short games about death. Two of the four are SF, one involving a Shadow Mage and the other a Charon-like figure. This project excites me because it feels like it’s approaching tabletop games as art. Bonus: this is the work of Far Horizons CoOP who strive for fair pay, transparency, mutual support, and mentoring in the tabletop roleplaying game space.

I also recently backed FIST and Frontier Scum. Thinking it could be fun to see if my weird brain could come up with adventures for those. We’ll see, I suppose.

Next month

I’d like to dig into one of the four primary inspirations for 5MW RPG, what I find exciting, provocative and problematic with those works, and how I envision implementing those ideas into this space adventure game. I’d really prefer to write about what y’all as subscribers would most like to read.

Illustrations by Essy May, Mark Poutenis, Chris Airiau, Comfort and Adam.

Feel free to leave a comment and let’s get into it! Otherwise, see you in the Halloweeny season.