Star-Shock is a rules-light, retro-futuristic tabletop role-playing game inspired by the science fiction of the 19th and 20th centuries, set in the year 2040. The setting captures the imaginative vision of a bygone era, before our modern scientific understanding of the world, with a deliberately mysterious and wacky setting. The aesthetic of its world is sometimes referred to as Raygun Gothic. This repo hosts the game source; the rules, setting, print-outs, and GM content used to play the game. The core mechanics of this game are called the "Helium Engine", and are currently being developed in-situ, within this game.
- An "atompunk" / "raypunk" retro-futuristic interplanetary setting.
- A simple, flexible, 2d6 based Dice System, with four attributes and thirty-six unlinked skills.
- Mechanical depth with a relatively shallow learning curve
- A Two-Background system, that offers character customization without overwhelming new players.
- A comprehensive system for Spacecrafts, including Combat and Upgrades,
- A highly extensible XP System that allows GMs to incorporate their own ideas.
- A well-organized, accessible Setting to serve as a jumping-off point for GMs.
- An intralinked, sorted Markdown wiki, that is much quicker to navigate than a traditional manuscript.
If you are interested in this game, this is the recommended order to read the categories:
- Setting
- Rules
- Planets
- Spacefaring
- Player Resources
- Items (optional)
If anything seems unclear to you, you have questions, or you have an idea, please open an Issue so we can improve the game. You can also check out the Contributing section below on how to make your own changes to the game source.
- Spacecraft Sheets
- More NPC Stat Blocks
- Fine-Tune XP Abilities
- Level 4 and 5 features, costing 10 and 15 XP respectively
- More Backgrounds
Made by Ben Kantor, with help from:
- Ben Soroos - Copy Editing
- Traveller TTRPG
- Dark Heresy TTRPG
- Have Space Suit-Will Travel
- The Storyteller System
- Star Trek: TOS, TNG, VOY, & DS9
- The science fiction of Andy Weir
- Jupiter Ascending
- Stellaris
- Starship Troopers
- Pulp Science Fiction Magazines:
- Galaxy Magazine
- Science Fiction Quarterly
- Amazing Stories
- 1984 Magazine
The Star-Shock game source is an intralinked markdown wiki, written and edited using Obsidian and published on Github. If you want to suggest changes, fork the repository, make your changes using the online or a local editor, then submit a pull request to have your changed merged into the game. Contributers can fix errors in the source, add clarifications, or suggest new content to be added. Below are the basic principles of the game source, that should be followed in all pull requests.
- Gameplay systems should all expand on the core of the system (attributes, skills, 2d6 checks, etc...), as well as on other mechanics, and should leave room to be expanded upon.
- Mechanics should also use common themes, for instance the values of the values 3, 5, 7, and 10 are far preferred to other numbers.
- Rather than require strict detail on how things work in each exact circumstance, the GM can be trusted to determine the correct course.
- Sometimes multiple methods of ruling can be provided with the GM free to choose, other time a "usually" or "often" can be added, implying that in some cases the GM will need to improvise another route.
- Pages should contain a maximum of 1500 words, pages larger then that need to be split.
- The Markdown Style Guide should be followed, except for the spaces after lines and empty rows before and after headers, both of which can be skipped.
- For rules and setting pages, h2 headers should be used, with optional h4 subheaders.
- For list pages, h3 headers should be used, sometimes with an italic line after them adding flavor.
- Bullet points should be used for lists, or sets of independent rules/facts.
- Lines should not be indented by more then one column from the main list.
- Leave an empty line between the last bullet point and paragraph text.
- Lines can be separated by a dash to indicate an explanation, with the first part bolded.