Xenosalvage
DMing the World Press has partnered with Menagerie Press to bring their setting, Xenosalvage, to life as a fully compatible DarkSpace campaign setting. We have worked alongside them to complete the development they had started and to bring in the same “simple, yet elegant” sci-fi you have come to expect from DarkSpace.
Xenosalvage is a TTRPG campaign setting that is compatible with DarkSpace, a sci-fi rules hack for Shadowdark RPG. After a century, the alien invaders have finally been defeated and driven away. Now, the remnants of Terra, what was once Earth, must rebuild and prepare for the retaliation that is sure to come. To do this, xenosalvagers crawl through deadly alien ruins and xenobeast-infested crashed UFOs in search of precious alien artifacts that might give the people of Terra an edge on their survival. (NOTE: Xenosalvage requires Shadowdark to play; DarkSpace is recommended but not required.)
DarkSpace Transmission 0.01.03 - The Triad
When Derek and I were in the early phases of talking about the rules hack that would become DarkSpace, we both wanted some sort of “mind power” that players could use. Derek wanted psychic powers due to human evolution and scientific experimentation for his blue collar spacers and I wanted The Force or magic for space opera and science fantasy. But both of us agreed that we didn’t want to just say the Shadowdark magic spells were now metaphysical powers. We also agreed that reskinning all of the spells into powers would be an unnecessary reinventing of the wheel. So, with that in mind I took the framework of our idea and settled in for a lot of trial and error.
DarkSpace Transmission 0.01.02 Design - Motivation
I first encountered the idea of alignment when I began playing tabletop role-playing games in the early 1980s. My introduction came through Tom Moldvay's Basic Dungeons & Dragons booklet. At the time, I found alignment to be a fun and fascinating way to look at the world. In that Basic set, just like in the Shadowdark RPG, there were only three alignments: Law, Chaos, and Neutrality.
DarkSpace Transmission 0.01.01 DESIGN: Androids
Welcome to the first deep dive transmission for DarkSpace. We’re going to be taking a closer look at the various aspects of DarkSpace and talking through how you can use them in your own game.
Androids
When we were bouncing around the idea of how to make androids, droids, robots, automata, etc. we were of two minds - androids are a species and androids are an archetype. As I was bouncing around the options, I finally came to the conclusion that they can be both.