Hi all,

I’ve been wondering lately if it would be fun to use the Stars Without Number Revised Edition to play a game in the style of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and was wondering if so’e people here would like to try it with me.

It would be a slow posting game where I’d only be able to promise one story advancing post a week, but it would probably be more often most of the time.

For those interested in a Silly Space Game but unfamiliar with the rules, they are available for free as a pdf. They are also not hard to learn. It’s basically a stats and skills kind of game.

Obviously it would be a silly game, so there’s no need to take things super serious, though it is most funny when the silly stuff is taken seriously. It would be a game for all ages. So no adult or mature rating. The adult stuff might happen “off screen” or with a fade to black if needed, and cussing could be replaced with silly space cussing. It’s art of the genre after all. I mean everyone knows not to talk about banana’s near a Groxx from Plastrozoid 7, right? We all know what that means to them!
This message was last edited by the user at 15:52, Mon 25 Nov 2019.

In reply to Frili (msg # 1):

You sound like one hoopy cool frood who really knows where his towel's at!

I should actually be asleep but I’ve been thinking on how I’d handle this game and what influences it would have.

Hitchhiker’s Guide for starters, but also other space satire such as Red Dwarf and Galaxy Quest.

Besides Sci Fi I’d also highlight the fantasy satire of Sir Terry Pratchett in Discworld.

But even with these references there are still many ways to go, so here are a few I’ve been thinking on:
1) Psionic Academy aka Silly Harry Potter in Space
2) Psionic Ninja Academy aka Silly Naruto in Space
3) Space Force Academy aka Police Academy in Space
4) Space Probe aka Silly Star Trek
5) Silly Space Traders (no ”aka” needed)
6) Silly Space Janitors (no ”aka” needed)

There’s probably more possibilities I can think of, but I should really go to sleep if I want more than four hours of it.

I tend not to play in any game below Mature level, so Ive tried to avoid looking too closely at this thread but Douglas Adams, Gant/Naylor and Pratchett all in the same game? You are making this one hard to ignore, you know? Please dont add any Neil Gaiman as well or Ill be unable to resist the pull!

I think you have about triple the source material you want.  There are wildly different and conflicting version of space sci fi that won't be helping, pick one and run with it or there will be more confusion than fun.

Gaiman tends to go slightly too dark for my tastes, but there might be some influence I guess. I don't have much experience with him though. I've read Good Omens, seen the Coraline animated movie and read both of his "children's stories" he did with Dave McKean ("The day I swapped my dad for two goldfish" and "The wolves in the walls") but that's about it. Planning to someday venture into his more famous comics. (Sandman? American Gods? Something like that?)

Anyway, I'm curious what keeps you from taking on games below the mature level? Maybe we can see what we can work out?



These aren't settings for me, but examples of what type of humor I'd like to see. I'm a fan of satire, so these all apply, but I realize there are underlying concepts. I'm more a fan of Pratchett's humanistic optimism than of Adam's uncaring cold nihilism, so that's a talk that we could have at the start of the game with those interested :)

The main thing I'm looking for with the examples is the kind of humor, not the underlying concepts. I'l probably borrow stuff for talking about the game from other things, like Fate's session zero stuff with the Issue aspects as a kind of tags of what we want to see. Depending on what kind of story the group is interested in we could see about what we focus on. Also, we're mainly playing a game, not actually writing a novel, since that would be above most people's skill level I think. I mean, actual novels go through revisions and extensive rewriting.

The need to keep things PG-13 and dilute the creativity. I tend to do dark games. That doesn't mean I can't / won't write to PG-13 level though, and a game based on Douglas Adam's work fits a less mature rating anyway.

HHGTTG, Red Dwarf, Pratchett/Discworld and Galaxy Quest were all PG13 (or pretty smegging close).

But if you do want to go up a rating, you could go for a more zany version of Firefly?

Maybe I should look up what the distinction is between all ages and mature, but yeah I basically want it to be safe and accesible for all.

Anyway, last night’s lack of sleep is catching up on me and straight thoughts are hard at the moment. But yeah, it seems like there’d be at least two players, right? Which opens up a lot of other options/genres to satirise. Like, my first thought was like: Oh, two players! Silly Buddy Cops in Space! (maybe rereading some of Pratchett’s guard books) Or Silly Protagonist+Pet in Space: Which could be an Air Bud situation, or a K9 one or even an Iron Giant one. And we could reverse roles and stuff (like, on a planets full of giant robots, one of them finds a crashed human boy) Got some ET vibes as well.

Well, it seems I got my brain to storm a bit after all. lol. Anyway. I’ll see how much interrest there is this weekend, and we could probably start a game then.

FINAL POST:

I set up a game here: link to another game

Feel free to check it out and request access for further discussion if interested. I will probably get around to getting back to the requests in the coming weekend. Goodbye and thanks for all the fish! ... eh, feedback I meant!