Liminal Void

Liminal Void #

Welcome to the 24th Century #

With the discovery of wormhole transit and the first few successful jumps, humanity is spreading across the solar system. Thriving, vibrant colonies have been established on Mars and Ganymede. Stations have been set in orbit around less inhabitable moons and planets, or as waypoints for travel.

But the rich and powerful grow richer and more powerful, and over time every government crumbles in favor of corporate rule. With the discovery of a new frontier comes exploitation. Workers are sent to far-off mining colonies or refineries, either for meager pay or as punishment for crimes in a colony or station. Stations are expected to find ways to extract profit in exchange for food, oxygen, and water. Owners of officially registered independent ships are rare, as corporations control all travel through the wormhole beacon network, and the crew of a ship in the right place can drastically shift power relations between planets, stations, and colonies.

Quickstart #

This quickstart is the first thing I’ve made with Total//Effect! It includes:

  • Instructions on creating Level 0 characters: Regular people who have suddenly found themselves in an extremely not-regular situation. They’ll have to use their skills, numbers, or previously unrevealed backgrounds to find their way.
  • Some basics to get you started: Rules for playing and running the game, as well as 6 Professions, their starting equipment, and some other stuff that can be found in the accompanying scenario or elsewhere.
  • An introductory scenario, Escape from CICP-1: The characters you make here are not yet among those ranks of independent ship owners. At the start of the quickstart scenario included here, they are employees of the Ceres-Io Extraction Company. CIEC has stationed them in a prefab station for collecting ore and processing it to extract hydrocarbons (Ceres-Io Central Processing 1, or CICP-1). Their day is typically very dull: do your tasks, eat at the mess hall, head to your quarters to sleep. Today, however, is different. As raiders stream into the station and its reactor suddenly starts to fail, they’ll need to find a way to get out to stay alive. Those who survive will find themselves in space, without a job and outside society…In short, adrift in the Liminal Void.

Full game coming probably early 2024!