An upcoming tabletop roleplaying game set in the Solar System in 2270s.
A hard sci-fi setting, an easy-to-learn ruleset, elements of 4X strategy games, and a flexible level of complexity across three layers of play.
Take on the role of ship crews and factions: run a business, explore, and fight over the vast spoils of the Solar System.
What makes Project Aphelion unique?
- Original modular rule set geared towards the ease and joy of play for all participants, including the (optional) game master: you can switch between crunchy or narrative rules without issues and allow the team to focus on their favorite part of the game.
- Three layers of play: Crew, Fleet, and Strategy – each with a consistent and easy to learn set of rules allowing for everything from running a scientific exploration mission in the Oort Cloud to negotiating the trade routes between Venusian trade federation and Pluto’s shipyards.
- No mode of play left forgotten: whether you like combat, social encounters, hacking, or exploring, Project Aphelion gives you the rules and tools you need to enjoy them. No more hundred-page chapters on combat and ‘roll Persuasion’ as the only social tool.
- Focus on teamwork and creative problem-solving: the rules actively promote the players working together and contributing to every task, as well as thinking outside the box and coming up with creative resolutions to problems at hand.
The World
Project Aphelion is set in 2270s. The humanity has spread all over the Solar System, colonizing not only the Inner planets, but also the Outer ones, and the full of resources vastness of the Oort Cloud.
From the flying cities of Venus, through the mines of Jupiter and wind-powered industries of Neptune, to stealth buoys and smugglers of the farthest reaches of the System, Project Aphelion is open for exploration, intrigue and business.
The game comes complete with a setting and lore, introducing all the new exciting opportunities waiting for enterprising crews on colonized planets, mining stations, solar highway bars, Ranger stations, and shipyards.
The Mechanics
Project Aphelion features an easy to grasp, consistent rule set, allowing the new players to jump in and enjoy themselves without worrying to much about messing anything up. They don’t even need a game master, as the system includes the rules for procedural generation of scenarios and campaigns!
Using just ten-sided dice, the rules balance the cleanliness and complexity, giving all types of player characters something to be excited about. The Solar System is a big place, and there’s enough to do for soldiers, communication officers, envoys, pilots, bandits, medics, hackers, scouts, smugglers, and spies.
The three layers of the game: Crew, Fleet, and Strategy, allow players to switch easily between a classic RPG experience of a small group of mercenaries or traders and a more unique joy of collectively running a spaceship – and even the whole fleet and a corporation. The game includes a faction-building, crafting, exploration, and research mechanics.
Fiction
The universe of Project Aphelion is a living world, full of adventures and intrigue.
The short story, Stars In Our Sails, is a space thriller following the crew of “Dauntless” – a band of free-traders and mercenaries thrown into a complicated scheme far above their pay grade. The book is already out there in the wild, available on Amazon!
The currently-being-written novel, Incitatus, introduces the inner workings of corporations and multiple agendas of people just wanting to make a living (and a fortune!) between here and the next planet. When a group of young employees of the Zhengdao corporations finds an artifact that may or may not be a dead alien, they find themselves right in the middle of conflicting interests of their bosses, the pirates, the Rangers, and some mercenary crews deeply interested in space archaeology…
(Incitatus cover art by Holly Humphries)
Stars in Our Sails
The crew of the “Dauntless”, a band of freelance traders and mercenaries, decides to make some quick cash and finds themselves in trouble above their pay grade. With some dodgy cargo on the spaceship and their destination in the farthest reaches of the Solar System, they have little to no doubt this is not going to be a straight-forward job…
Stars In Our Sails is a science-fiction thriller set in a colonized Solar System – a story about people dealing with their lives and issues while unwittingly tangled in a conspiracy threatening to destroy them. The crew must cope with the vastness of space, isolation and constant pressure, forced into a game the rules of which they don’t understand. Only their resolve and cooperation stand between the crew of the “Dauntless” and certain death – but can they really trust each other?
Incitatus
The new novel, “Incitatus”, is being written at the moment – and a sample is already available for your convenience!
How to support the project?
You can support the development of Project Aphelion through Patreon, unlocking access to the alpha rules, playtests, fiction, etc. – and helping us focus on writing and testing instead of working on other people’s projects. It’s a win-win situation: we get to work on the thing we love, you get to have it sooner in your hands.
