The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XVI: Death in Space

Death in Space (Free League Publishing)

$36.62 (currently) at Free League (print+PDF)

Information Link

Character Generator

What it is: Death in Space is part of the Stockholm Kartel array of games which all owe their origins to Dark Fort, the predecessor to Mork Borg. As such, Death in Space has mechanical parity with Mork Borg, Pirate Borg, Vast Grimm and anything else based on the same core mechanical conceits. Unlike these other games it is not entirely fair to consider it a Mork Borg-based system as Death in Space most decidedly breaks that mold and sets out to do things differently.

If I had to characterize Death in Space in one sentence, it would be something like this: it's an attempt to make a rules lite pick-up-and-go game system which manages to walk a line between pragmatic space opera survival and existential horror, all while providing enough base material to run a lengthy campaign. Death in Space can, like its relatives, work as a one-shot or beer-and-pretzels game, but it actually is meant for something longer, and emphasizes rules that encourage long-form campaign play. So while yeah, you can easily lose a character in Death in Space, the game does not necessarily assume that is how it's all going to go down.

The System: The best way to see what sort of characters are generated in Death in Space is to go click a bit on the character generator, available online (see link above). Your base PC has four stats: body, dexterity, savvy and tech. You have a range from -3 to +3, like in Mork Borg, this time generated by rolling 1D4 twice and subtracting the second roll from the first. You have secondary stats such as hit points and your defense rating. Unlike in Mork Borg, defense rating can go up or down here based on your armor choice, which is otherwise a static modifier and does not reduce incoming damage (so an armor class system, basically). You also pick an origin, which defines what sort of entity your character is in the game, and a variety of background/personality/quirk charts to roll on to flesh out your PC. 

Origins help greatly in establishing theme for the players. The Carbon are spaceborn and most comfortable in zero-gee environments. Chrome are essentially android vessels for ancient AI. Punks are humans as we understand them, tinged with rebellion and anarchy. Solpods are humanity slowed down by the liberal use of cryopods to prolong life and explore stellar phenomena that transcends any one life time. The last two are the most profound: Velocity Cursed, who have travelled at FTL between the stars one too many times and their bodies are beginning to "glitch" in and out of existence, then the Void, who are so profoundly changed by visions and exposure to the depths of space that they have lost their minds and possibly their humanity. It's like Dr. William Weir of Event Horizon is a good starting point for a character concept!

As important as your PC is, the even more important element in Death in Space is the hub, a ship or space station which serves as the base of operations for your group. The game provides some lengthy but still rules lite mechanics for building your choice of hub, which will in turn either be mobile (a ship) or stationary (resting possibly in the Iron Ring of the setting), which also in turn dictates some of the expected themes of your campaign. Like your PCs, the hub will have its own background and quirks. For example, a starship hub could be that it holds "A DNA-locked black box, which has never been opened," on a ship in which "an eerie transmission periodically blares out over communication lines and speakers with strange periodicity." So....possible material to explore and riff off of, right off the bat. 

Death in Space does not use Omens as Mork Borg does, but introduces Void Points instead. In the DiS universe the Void is a palpable threat, a possible manifestation of cosmic threat that is devouring the universe, but it also has mutational and bizarre effects. A PC gains void points when they fail tasks. These can be accrued (up to 4) and used to roll with advantage (what it sounds like) or power mutations. You get mutations through advancement (which in DiS is an XP-purchase based system), misfortune, or occasionally when the void begins corrupting things. If you fail on a check with advantage after spending a void point you have a chance of experiencing void corruption. This can entail some gruesome body horror effects or worse. 

Yet another key element of gameplay is the condition of the PCs' hub and the never-ending need to keep up on repairs and maintenance. This is a drive to encourage the group to explore and salvage the many, many wrecks in the default setting of the game. The rules here feel a tad "non rules-lite" to me but only in a minor way. 

In combat, unlike its sister games, DiS has the GM rolling for enemies in combat. Likewise, enemy stat blocks are a bit more complex (in the most modest way possible), to reflect the need for a tiny bit more granularity. There's a rather funny "true death" table in the combat section as well; players can narrate their deaths when they perish, or you can roll on the table to find out how the PC "really" died. I admit, most of the time it feels to me like the table is going to be unnecessary, but the results are so amusing that it is easy to imagine some players going for it just to see what "really happened!"

There is a section on starship conflicts as well, about four pages, based on range bands for abstract resolution. It's mainly aimed at providing for an efficient resolution mechanic that helps complicate the story, but if you happen to have Vast Grimm and want a decent starship conflict resolution system, I suggest cribbing it from Death in Space. 

The Setting: the next half of the book is setting content. The core setting is the Tenebris System, which is an ancient, overly worn and used star system with a wealth of useful worlds that have over the eons been drained of many resources. The core conceit of the setting is everything is old, worn, and nothing new is being manufactured anymore; this is a salvager society. A war left much of this and countless other systems devastated, divided and depleted of resources. Travel between systems is hard and costly, and ships line up to use the bridging buoy that marks the safest jump point out of (or in to) the system. While you can travel to other systems, the core book for DiS focuses exclusively on Tenebris System and its travails. 

While Death in Space does suggest a lot of horror and grim stuff will befall a group of PCs, the truth is its more of a setting for a dark scifi experience with a wider range of scenarios and events. The creeping threat of the unknown "void" is part of it, but many more weird and unpleasant things can befall a group, from something as simple as rival salvagers or pirates to something as horrifying as a dark cult summoning eldritch horrors.

Much of the base action happens around the planet Gliess Galo, where the Iron Ring can be found, a vast ring of debris in stable orbit. The debris is countless millions of prior starships and space stations from the endless settlers, belters, salavagers, miners and corporates who have come and gone from the system over endless generations. A hub station could be situated here easily. The book includes an introduction to one such larger station in The Ring along with an introductory scenario in which the PCs get engulfed in local politics-with-pistols.  

In addition to the core setting content are about fifteen pages of charts to roll on for creatures of the system, things corrupted by the void, encounters and threats in space and so forth. The back of the book includes a contractor/NPC generator as well as some modular ship design rules that allow the PCs to build up on and make their hub more effective over time; building up the hub and becoming more powerful agents in the system is a major end goal for the PCs.

The Supplements: so far one official supplement has been announced, but for most content you will want to look to itch.io for PDF support. Unlike, say, Mothership, Death in Space does not have as rabid a following (possibly because it does require a bit more time to sink in the details of its setting and play focus). The unique white-on-black technical drawings that make up a lot of DiS's character are extremely distinct and articulate, and unlike Mork Borg (which can use graphic design to put lipstick on a pig, if you will) it takes more talent to ape the art style and feel of DiS. Not as many 3PP are going to want to bother, I hypothesize.*

Who is this for? Death in Space requires a bit more time and effort out of a group than its sister systems. You can start a basic game quickly enough, but the majority of DiS is designed for campaign play, and you will get the most mileage out of it if you approach this with the intent of running at least 5-10 game sessions with it. I actually have a keen interest in doing so, and will report more on the experience when it finally happens.

Outside of that, I think any SF RPG fan would be incredibly happy to secure a copy of this book, with the caveat that despite some of its setting elements it is still firmly in the space opera subgenre and not really a hard SF treatment. It's a lush and incredibly well illustrated tome with excellent graphic design, though as usual be aware that the text is entirely "white text on black background" so you have been warned. 

In contrast, I suggest that Mork Borg fans may find Death in Space a bit much, as it is ultimately a more traditional style of RPG play, even if it still manages to be almost as rules lite. If you are mainly looking for a "pick up and play" game I suggest Vast Grimm instead....it's Mork Borg but with space trapping. Death in Space is more like.....Classic Traveller, but with a unique and spicy flavor (and easier rules). 

*After typing that I realized that the metric ass-ton of 3PP output for Mothership puts the WRONG stamp to my hypothesis.

The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XV: Vast Grimm

Vast Grimm (Infinite Black)

Web Resource

$34.99 in print at Infinite Black

What it is: Vast Grimm is one of several game systems powered by Mork Borg as a core system, but providing an independent and customized version of the ruleset for a complete different hideous and unpleasant universe....this one in the far future at the end of time, where a cosmic elder force is devouring all of known space. Your players roll up a mess of very grim and unpleasant characters who seek a way to escape this doomed universe before it is devoured entirely, and them with it. Sound familiar? It should! It's a very efficient reimagining of Mork Borg in a wretched apocalyptic science fiction setting.

Vast Grimm is not by the Stockholm Kartel, so it has its own style and vibe going on, but it does show how the very distinct and specific formula of Mork Borg can essentially be reskinned and plugged in to any other setting, as long as you are embracing the weird and disturbing as you do. It is also worth noting that Vast Grimm has excellent graphical design and art standards, possibly the best of all the books I've looked at, rivaling Mork Borg, Death in Space and Pirate Borg as the best looking books in this subgenre.

The System: So I talked about the mechanics of Mork Borg before, and that information applies here as well in many ways. Vast Grimm uses the same stats, and some items such as omens are retitled Favors, but essentially still work as points you spend to influence play elements. In Mork Borg you have scrolls, which is its magic system of sorts. In Vast Grmm you have Neuromancy, which lets you use Tributes, that are either hacked (bad) or encrypted (good), and are essentially programming effects that have wide ranging effects and may or may not feel like magic due to corruption from the Vast.

The really interesting thing is seeing how far Vast Grimm goes in emulating the core conceits of Mork Borg. When I get around to reviewing Death in Space you will get to see a sharp contrast, as that system does not take Mork Borg and plug into it like a template or shell; it takes the core system and then breaks it in subtle ways. Vast Grimm takes Mork Borg and goes for a hard reskin. The character classes are fine examples, where each class reflects a miserable sod in this universe. You have the MAnchiNes, who are cyborgs, usually ex soldiers, who have noteworthy features such as hideous mechanical claws; there are The Lost, who practice neuromancy in isolation until they cannot escape the Vast Grimm's presence; the Twisted Biochemist, the Treacherous Merc,  the Emobot, the Devout, and the Harvester. You get the theme.....this is a world of mutants, cyborgs, survivors and the transformed. 

Where Vast Grimm shines is in its application of the Vast Grimm itself, and specifically the wyrms, which are the beings through which the Vast Grimm changes and converts all around it. The wyrms are parasites, and each one can have a different effect on its host. It is likely, even inevitable, that PCs will get infected as many monsters in the setting have a high chance of being infested and passing it on in any melee encounter. Once infected, the wyrms change the host, sometimes for better, other times for worse. It is probably worth mentioning at this point that there is a lot of squicky body horror going on in Vast Grimm; PCs are rarely going to be pretty or even identifiably human at times. 

Vast Grimm includes a lot of subsystems for SF specific stuff as well, such as a random table for determining the group's space ship. This is another contrast with how Death in Space does it, which spends a lot of time making the hub craft/station an important part of the PC's journey. In Vast Grimm it's treated much more simply, though and you pretty much have hit points, how fast it can go, and a list of potential weapons the ship is armed with that have no ammunition. No damage stats for these weapons are given, though some of the monsters in this game are definitely starship-sized threats, so I am a bit surprised on that.

Another SF-themed subsystem is pharmaceuticals, because of course in a crapsack world like Vast Grimm drugs are gonna be a thing, and the drugs of this campaign all come with weird potential side effects. There are 13 monstrous encounters in the book (as well as 6 wyrm subtypes), and more specifically for the introductory scenario in the back. The most interesting of the monsters is the Grimm, transformed end-stage results of parasitic infestation, they are the endpoint of humanity as the Vast conquers and devours all. 

The Setting: Being a reskin of Mork Borg, Vast Grimm has created a suitably wretched universe, now in space, and defined a rough area of play in the form of a corrupted star system (called The Verse), with a (short) discussion of each of the ten or so locations at which things are likely to happen. The Verse is really just a corner of a much larger implied setting (similar to Death in Space), but it also suggests that no one can really escape The Verse....this is the solar system, and everyone is stuck in here with the Vast Grimm. As time progresses, there is a chance the Vast gets closer to overwhelming all, and you check to see if the Prophecies of Fatuma come to pass, revealing new Torments....so just like in Mork Borg. 

The background on the setting, perhaps not unlike Mork Borg, is also a little confusing. There is the legacy of the enigmatic Fatuma, who prophesied the end of the world around which a cult has started. There is some event involving the Six who become They, which is always capitalized and never clearly explained, perhaps to lend mystery to it all or to vex the GM, or maybe to allow for creative freedom of interpretation, but either way it seems that (to me) the Six become They and in turn become the Vast, which unleash the wyrms, to create the Grimm. Or something like that. In the meantime, in a solar system somewhere humanity finds itself at the razor edge of extinction as a result, and there is a rumor of a fantastical Gate which generates a wormhole to another universe called the Gate of Infinite Stars. At the start of the campaign the GM secretly rolls to see which planetary body/location on the system the gate can be found, and if the PCs are lucky they might find it and either escape to a new universe or bring the inevitable destruction of the Vast Grimm with them. This is kind of neat....its a direct end goal for the PCs, and provides a long term arc for any campaign.

The rest of the setting is, similar to Mork Borg, inferred by the design and the descriptive elements. If you want a reference point for this universe, I am reminded of sources such as Heavy Metal magazine, the Metabarons/Incal universe, Alien Resurrection, The Fifth Element, and about half of the really schlocky scifi movies of the 80s. 

The introductory adventure in the book is a decent way to bring new players in to the setting, and provides plenty of exploration as the group seeks a piece of the Gate of Infinite Stars on the derelict research vessel Conundrum, which suddenly starts broadcasting its location. The race is on against other raiders and salvagers to find the relic before it is too late. Decent oppositional forces, a neat map to explore and several mysteries make this scenario worth playing.

The Supplements: Vast Grimm has several supplements so far, all from Infinite Black (here). "Adventures in the Volatileverse" is a magazine they publish with two issues out so far featuring new scenarios and content, and there is also a very nice GM's screen of comparable sturdiness and size to the Mork Borg GM screen. Indeed, the quality of the game is on par with its fantasy counterpart, and to be admired. 

Who Should Buy This? Well, it's fairly obvious to state that if you like Mork Borg and like the idea of an SF rendition of that game, then Vast Grimm is a no-brainer. If you are maybe put off by Mork Borg but still like the idea of a rules lite SF setting in a crapsack universe, I think you will find a lot to enjoy here. Unlike Mork Borg the Vast Grimm rules are more coherently stated; either that, or I am just getting used to reading these zine RPGs now and not noticing the vagaries of their design anymore.

Vast Grimm is an exceptional production, though, so if you just want a neat looking book this is totally it. If you have any interest in writing an RPG like this, its probably worth checking out Vast Grimm to see how they did it, and to also contrast it against how Mork Borg did it. Both systems effectively weaponize the concept of random tables and design, and use the economy of information to hint at rather than outright state the nature of their game worlds. I think in that sense Mork Borg is slightly better, if only because the weird future of Vast Grimm builds on some core conceits that are not entirely as clear as they might need to be for the SF setting it is in. 

Still, in the end, if you are only looking for a couple of these rules lite artpunk style RPGs to buy, I'd put Vast Grimm on my "must get" list. In many ways it is better than the closest competitor, Death in Space, which actually manages to be more involved in its own setting, but is also a more stoic approach to the weird future; indeed, while I can see running a long campaign with Death in Space, by contrast in Vast Grimm I can see it being an excellent grab-and-go approach to play, without needing so much to worry about; just generate a haunted space station or a twisted research base and you're off and running. In that regard Vast Grimm excels, much like Mork Borg in catering to a short form play session with long term potential, and I really like that. 

Free League Publishing - Swedish Gaming on the Brain (Vaesen, Mutant: Year Zero, Alien and Forbidden Lands)

A few games on my "backlog" list I published what feels like ages ago -- since my last blog post I have both contracted and recovered from the latest variant of COVID (my first time! Thankfully I was on my fifth vaccine shot), and among the list is Vaesen, which after I dug it out of the backlog I have been reading quite a bit of. It's not nearly as grim and existential as, say, Call of Cthulhu, but it is an ambient and moody universe with lots of gothic potential. I am thinking hard of what I can do with it.

When I was in Florida earlier this year I stopped by a great game store and snagged most (but not all) of the Mutant: Year Zero lineup, with only some modules and Mechatron missing (a book which Ebay asserts only one copy was ever printed so be ready to pay hundreds of dollars for it--yeesh). Luckily every book in the Mutant series is a stand-alone take on a segment of the post-apocalyptic world, and the core book is pretty much "Gamma World, using the Free League rules." Genlab Alpha is for animal mutants, and Elysium is a rather interesting take on the idea of pure strain humans and the M:YZ idea of vaults....pre-cataclysm colonies beneath the earth who weathered out the bad times, but are in turn slowly depleting their resources and creating gruesome level of social strain on their internal social controls. Interesting stuff.

That's all to say that in addition to reading up on Vaesen I am prepping to run Mutant; Year Zero soon. Probably after the current Saturday Call of Cthulhu arc concludes and my co-GM runs the next arc of his Pathfinder 2E campaign, but it seems like a no-brainer to me. We had a lot of fun with my guest Gamma World games, but as seems to happen so often these days, I really do like a bit more meat to my game systems, and the old school stuff is fun for a palette cleanser, but no longer sustains for long term campaigns. Mutant: Year Zero appears to be just the fix I need.

Alien RPG is also still looming, and I also dragged Forbidden Lands out of storage, having all but forgotten I had been collecting it, too. Forbidden Lands looks genuinely interesting, but the problem with any fantasy game system is that I am so invested in my own worlds and pursuing their stories that I just haven't quite pieced together how I would cobble together my own style of campaign from what Forbidden Lands has to offer. The game straight up tells you in the opening chapter that it knows some GMs will use it for their own thing, but the rest of the game proceeds to provide you with such a setting integrated take that it is hard for me to imagine how to extract it in a useful way; made tougher by the fact that its own setting is sufficiently intriguing. What I am trying to do is reconcile my "desire to run my own fantasy world my way" with the book's cool built in setting and style, and see if I can somehow mesh the two. I worry if I simply try to run it straight that I will become disaffected with it and lose interest, but on the other hand I am trying to think of it more like how I run Call of Cthulhu, which is itself fully immersed in the mythos, but is my own specific take on modern day horror with a specific blend of features distinct to my take on what the mythos would look like in the 21st century, borrowing as I see fit from Delta Green, ufology, modern notions of the paranormal, and a reimagining of those things which made more sense in the 1920's and 30's but maybe less so now (example: K'n-Yan is not a giant cavernous realm below Oklahoma, but is an other dimensional space through which certain ancient portals found in Oklahoma can take you; Pluto may not be the actual Yuggoth, but it definitely is a staging ground for the mi-go; tcho-tcho are not a deviant asiatic humanoid species but are genetically modified subjects who's experimental history is ancient and cross-continental; stuff like that). 

If I can do that: take the cool stuff in Forbidden Lands and then transplant it to something I can make my own, I think I can figure out how to use it. Because I do like the system, and I like how it structures a distinct exploration style of gameplay, and I would really like to try that out. 

Free League also distributes (though did not write) Death in Space which I am still thinking about. I feel like I am too much into the "science" part of science fiction to fully appreciate Death in Space, which is a sort of eschatological space-fantasy treatment with the feel of grim SF wrapped around it. It has some core conceits I just don't like, in other words. You don't need all that stuff to make a good SF horror game, as Mothership proves again and again. 

Meanwhile, back in the reality of "what I can actually run and find players for," D&D high level begins, hypothetically, tomorrow! Live! I hope I am not jinxing it (again) by saying this on the blog, as every other time I have triumphantly announced the return to live it ends up getting interrupted by work or illness, so fingers crossed.....