Industrial science fiction is heavily rooted in the industrial technologies of the 70s and 80s—analog switches, boards of colored flashing push-button lights, manual levers, knobs, spinach-green viewscreens, etc. It is the less glamorous side of science fiction technology—grim and dirty. It is dimly lit corridors filled with steam escaping from pipes large and small twisted amongst each other in a chaotic dance of industrial design. Add claustrophobia, loneliness, helplessness, isolation, and strange unknown things hiding in the shadows, and you have Those Dark Places. Character Creation Players can opt to play synthetic automatons. These are indistinguishable from humans, yet Pressure does not apply to them. As in, at all. On the other hand, and as much as they can be played with a pleasant demeanour, they cannot make emotional decisions or act humanely. The interests of the company always go first.

There's also a sanity/panic mechanic called pressure. You have a pressure bonus, which is the sum of your Strength and Education. A character can be asked to make a pressure roll when confronted with something incredibly stressful. You roll D6 and add you pressure bonus, looking for 10 or more. If you fail your pressure level goes up by 1. Once you hit pressure level 2 then you roll a D6; if it's less than your pressure level, you suffer an episode, which results in a roll on a table which can reduce attributes or trip you into freezing or fleeing. The severity of the roll is capped by the pressure level you're at. So, what does that mean? It means that space is not the domain of noble-bright explorers. It is the domain of corporations and their peons. Ships are utilitarian. Their designs are boxy, almost ugly. Corridors are cramped. Technology looks like it came out of a 70s Sci-fi movie because it's easy and cheap to repair. People are left in the cold dark reaches of space for years at a time with little company, living on stale recycled air and food. It takes a toll.In this book you will find some guidelines on how to introduce the ‘unknown’ to the game; alien horrors, cosmic terrors and eldritch wonders. There will be a few new rules to help you incorporate these things into a session as well as adventure ideas to get you moving so you can let… things loose on the players. A lot of success in this game will come from the Gamemaster. It will be up to them to compile a captivating and horror-filled story for their players to explore. The seeds of creating a good adventure and its tone are clearly represented in the text. The introductory adventure is a good guide to base more adventures on. If you enjoy running or playing rules-light story-based games set in industrial science fiction environments, look at Those Dark Places. You’ll find it seeping with flavor for your player’s palette. It's perfectly suited to one-shots or a string of several adventures but it can be used for an ongoing campaign, especially if the players are looking to finish their 25-year contract and reach retirement! JH: I want to write a series of short adventures, or 'reports' as I call them in the game, with the intention of creating a longer campaign for players wanting to take the risk at investing their time in a long story arc. Created by Modiphius, a seasoned publisher of licensed roleplaying games, Star Trek Adventures seeks to bring everything that fans of the original television series, as well as its many sequels, spin-offs, films and such, expect to see in an RPG adaptation. Players become members of Starfleet, the organisation dedicated to protecting the many species that occupy the galaxy, who form their very own crew and travel across the United Federation of Planets and beyond. The core book for Star Trek Adventures focuses on the emergence of a new threat in the Gamma Quadrant, providing players with a breadcrumb trail towards the Dominion and the danger they pose.

and Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPGfrom Tuesday Knight Games, both having been released relatively recently Publisher Osprey Games is responsible for tabletop titles including two-player board games Undaunted: Normandy and Undaunted: North Africa, as well as RPGs such as Paleomythic and Romance in the Perilous Land. Players create characters based on several potential archetypes - such as the alien or hot-shot - and select a role for them to play on the ship itself. They then select a number between two and five as their set target number. Whenever players want to perform an action, the GM determines whether they think it concerns lasers or feelings - with the player needing to roll over their target number for feelings and under for lasers. This means that players who are more empathetic will be looking to use persuasion or compassion to their advantage, whereas more scientifically-minded characters are better suited to smarts or knowledge. Having such a simple system makes Lasers & Feelings the perfect sci-fi themed RPG for fresh-faced roleplayers. The game focuses on characters and stories, and the system is designed to support that. I'm hoping the game will encourage games of intense fun, as I'm trying to emulate thrillers in an industrial science fiction future. My only minor complaint is that some of the information in the GM system could have been clustered together instead of separated. None of it is separated by much distance, but I would put the Appendix N stuff right next to the setting material, interpreting the die roll along with the "how to handle conflict" stuff, and the notes on Pressure right next to the Episode information.Cyberpunk Red This newest edition of the classic dark futuristic RPG brings it into the modern age Night City is an equally bright and sinister place promising opportunity. Those Dark Places is a rules-light, story-focused roleplaying game about the darker side of space exploration and the people who travel the stars in claustrophobic, dangerous conditions. Starships, stations, and outposts aren't havens of safety with clean, brightly lit corridors – they're potential deathtraps, funded by budget-conscious corporate interests and running on stale, recycled air and water. The stars may be the future of humanity, but they are also home to horrors and terror the human mind cannot comprehend.