Overview

last updated 2026-09-24

The game runs the length of November. Everyone starts in Ogroitum Step City. A handful of players (3-4) are surface-bound Team Leaders or Captains in control of ships with limited job postings. Each team or ship has room for 1-6 additional players, for a total of roughly 6-28 players.

The idea is to have enough people to keep things lively and cover scheduling gaps, while maintaining reasonable span of control. This does kind of assume reasonable span of control for the Warden is running 3-4 simultaneous games of play-by-post Mothership.

Team Leaders and Captains can make requests and decisions about travel, crew operations, big purchases, time changes, and other major actions. They'll also be the default point of contact for in-world negotiations, potentially including payment for the rest of the crew.

"Uh, before we dock, I think we oughta discuss the bonus situation..." (Alien, 1979)

The Warden maintains a complete roster of players, to keep track of available slots organizational changes.

High-intensity operations will take place as synchronous play-by-post over an hour or two. Violent Encounters will run on "two rounds and out," whenever possible.

Time

Time is tracked on the level of individual days, on a per-location basis. Within each day, time relatively flexible. This tightens up as soon as things roll into an operation. The start of the game provides the initial index point. In-world, this is some kind of Standard Day.

Time advances as needed per-system. Separate systems will by asynchronous until 1d10 month time skips for downtime. Team leaders will make requests and decisions around time changes.

Messages and travel are given arrival times relative to the central calendar to keep everything in order.

Downtime

There will be a couple 1d10 month downtime periods to allow for travel, training, medicine, and longer activities, as described in the Players Survival Guide. This is also a way to sync everyone back up for a moment, and provide breathing room for logistics, communications, and long-term consequences.

Space Travel

Jumps take roughly 1 month, including travel time to the Jump Point (weeks), the Jump itself (2d10 days), and travel to the destination (weeks). For most crews, expending a warp core requires approval from their funding organization.

"The effects of relativity on Faster-Than-Light travel are uncertain and seemingly random." (Shipbreakers Toolkit, TKG, pg. 31)

Time is skipped as needed for travel. This will desynchronize the crew from the previous system, and that's fine because they can't communicate. Everything is synchronized again during downtime.

Channels

Ships and locations each have channels which contain threads for comms channels, OOC, order feeds, sub-locations, and more.

When possible, the Warden will shuffle around permissions so players only have access to locations and channels their character has access to.

Remote communication is possible via local talknet feeds (requires personal terminal), long- and short-range comms, and ship intranet, all of which use nested threads within the location channel.

Communications

Information is carried across jump routes by freighters. Messages and packages can be sent on scheduled orbital launches (frequency depends on location) and are delivered in bulk during the downtime period. Responses posted during the downtime period arrive upon the return to real time.

Messages cost 100cr. Physical packages cost 500cr and up.

The idea is for this is to create mail days for deployed ships, emphasize the scale of the Rim, encourage more substantial messages and care packages, and reduce Warden overhead.

Money

It’s assumed characters are able to hustle and work for subsistence (as Borderline). Additional lifestyle is paid monthly, according to the rates in A Pound of Flesh.

Squalor: 300/mo. Awful conditions.

Borderline: 1,500/mo. Food, shelter, clothing.

Citizen: 3,000/mo. Relative comfort and safety.

Decadent: 9,000/mo. Luxury and glamour.

Credits are handled player-side for equipment and other minor transactions. Larger transactions (1kcr and up) involve the Warden, and may be difficult, delayed, or expensive, depending on the location.

Ships operate based on "Who Pays the Bills" in the Shipbreaker's Toolkit. To start with, one is Company-operated, one is a military vessel, and one is run by owner-operators. In the latter case, a significant cut of profits (20-50%) is set aside for the backing firm. With two 1d10 month downtime periods, there's enough time to make, and fail, a Bankruptcy Save and end up 1d10mcr in debt. Stay hungry.

Play Expectations

Communication should stay on the server as much as possible. Players are encouraged to play and discuss in-character, and keep out-of-character discussion separate wherever possible. The Warden will nudge out-of-character conversation over into appropriate channels. This also includes not sharing in-character information in out-of-character channels. Since this isn't a wargame, this is less about fairness than maintaining the fun of uncertainty and hidden information.