Hi there!

First off, a little update to this quickstart. A few big changes:

• Gaining your Background doesn’t give you a smattering of Attributes anymore. Instead, you get to grab another Trait. This can be another Profession’s thing, something from things that hint at a less savory Profession, or things that indicate where you came from.
  • To support the latter two categories, there’s 7 more traits now. More Attributes is something you’ll gain by proper leveling later past this level-0 quickstart.
• Escalation and combat have a different interaction. Escalation now adds to all Toughness-coded actions and subtracts from all Focus-coded actions (which was in v3) but crucially, all combat actions are coded to Toughness (melee by default), Reflexes (ranged by default), or Focus (usually “steady aim” style weapons).
  • You’re not trained soldiers by default, you’re regularish people, being good at shooting isn’t a thing that adrenaline helps you with. If it’s something that means your hands have to be steady, it’s probably the opposite! One of those aforementioned Background traits (Combat training) makes it work the old way again: if you ARE a trained soldier, well, that’s a bit different, isn’t it.
• Energy Harm/Resistance no longer exists. Anything that was Energy is now just a gun (laser pistol -> pistol), is now a smaller amount of Hazard Harm (Supercharger used as a weapon), or is now Kinetic (Peacekeeper.)
  • This one is for a handful of reasons: it had a huge overlap with Hazard conceptually and having too many Harm types made getting resist armor a little cheaper. If someone has Kinetic or Ballistic Resist armor now, it means a bit more as a result, and Hazard Resist/Vulnerability is going to come up in combat more as well: if someone has a big laser now, it’s an immediate threat, as a big laser should be in a hard-ish sci-fi setting!

Secondly, a third quickstart has landed, courtesy of the Indie NASA TTRPG Adventures and Sci-Fi One-Shot Jams! Escape from the surface of Europa as the twin forces of corporate maneuvering and corporate malfeasance threaten to squeeze you out.

Hi there! I made a big update to how Liminal Void works! You can see some previews of what I did in my newsletter post here. The big changes are:

• Static Assets from Profession/Background are out, attribute spending is in.
  • You have 3 Attributes, of which a Profession gives you 5 and a Background gives you 3 more. You can spend them to use them as Assets and regain them by taking various painkillers and stimulants and supplements, which is probably extremely healthy and good for you.
  • The previous ones that basically just always gave you +advantage bonuses were not really in keeping with the rest of the game’s “constant attrition” vibe, and these ones better answer the question of “why don’t they apply to combat rolls” (because now they can, if you want!)
• Tools and Weapons work completely differently.
  • Some tools still have some low-key combat stuff but it’s not much. Mostly they’re just…well, tools. All of them have a capital-A Ability - kind of like a PbtA move or something - that highlights a specific thing that tool was designed for. You can also just spend Charges use them as incidental Assets as before too.
  • Weapons are a bit less uniform as far as 1-ammo/3-ammo spends. There’s a generic “Fire” action now and all of them call out how it’s used in addition to having (usually) 2 moves. In general they feel a little closer to like, actual weapons instead of things that give you powers.
  • Instead of 3 Ammo/Charge abilities, we now have the concept of Let Loose. This represents stuff where you push your tool’s battery to the limit or hold down on that gun’s trigger a little too long to do something stronger - use that exoskeleton to do a hulk-leap, bore through a metal wall with your drill, spray and pray with your PDW, etc. You spend a random amount of charges/ammo (d6), which can explode (on a 1-2, so you’re spending at least 3) and disable your weapon/tool if you’re super unlucky.
• I updated the two scenarios to match (and the second scenario, The Graveyard Buckle, has been combined into this page). Because I took the liberty of licensing the incredible Victor Merino’s sci-fi portraits last summer for commercial use, Escape from CICP-1 now looks a LOT better too - all of those names in the module have faces now!
• A relayout!

Hope you enjoy. Let me know if you give it a shot!

Hi there!

I put out a v2 of this quickstart. It has the following changes:

• Has a slightly more proper cover now for both the rules and quickstart scenario!
• Made a few typo/clarification fixes
• Added a few things to the quickstart that came up in play (nothing big, just “you can try doing this” kind of stuff)

Until next time!