Space Station

Frame · Frontier and mystery thematic

Life on the outermost edge – technology, isolation and the thin line between control and catastrophe.

Design question – Imagine your game is set on a space station. What keeps the station running, what goes wrong – and how far away is Earth?

Associations

• Typical Activities – Repairing, Managing, Researching, Surviving
• Typical roles – crew (hierarchical and interdependent), radio contact with base
• Typical spaces – modules, corridors, airlock, control room, view of Earth/stars
• Typical conflicts – system failure, repair, discovery, isolation

Atmosphere

claustrophobic, sterile, awed (the view into space), tense

Coherence

Implied Activities: Repairing, Managing, Researching, Surviving. Mechanisms: Action Points (limited crew capacity), Event (system failures), Hidden Role (a saboteur?), Cooperative Play (surviving together). Ludic Organisational Structures: political order (chain of command), economic order (resource scarcity: oxygen, energy).

Compatible with

• Solitude (AT-03)
• Uncanny (AT-14)
• Dread (AT-17)
• Duel (SI-02)
• Pursuit (SI-03)
• Neutrality (SO-04)
• Cult (SO-07)
• Marketplace (SP-13)
• Ice Desert (SP-24)
• Prehistory (TM-01)
• After the Catastrophe (TM-10)

Tension with

• Village (TH-05) – 200 people on a station, over generations. A village in space emerges – with village gossip, festivals and generational conflicts, just without an open window.