Fear is good, it lets you know you're alive.

Once you grow beyond it, that's when the

devil has you. Hold on to your fear, that is what hones the blade. Only through fear can
bravery be forged.

Design Goals
Capture the feeling of losing that part of you that cares above all about staying alive,
surrendering it to achieve some more complex or immediate goal. Pushing at you to that
behavior is the crushing capitalist machine.

-​ Get Work (all choices have downsides, it’s a degrading task)

-​ Do the job (get stressed, use Panic Responses, take Injuries, risk death, learn)
-​ Debrief (resolve Promises, balance Debts & Credits, remove stress, Downtime)

Needed for playtest ready:

-​ More corp identity and sample work sites
-​ Exploration turn? Or story kit premades with player facing hooks
-​ Downtime
-​ Professions & skills
-​ Traits & desires?

DEV KEY
Text [within brackets] are suggestions or subject to immediate change

Overarching plot to advance?

CORE

Stress
[6] slots marked through consequences from rolls, when filled you trigger Adrenaline Rush.
-​ Messy or Grim results from rolls may cause Stress [Messy - 1, Grim - 2], when in
adrenaline rush Grim results may cause Trauma or severe conditions. [trauma as risk
only when condition triggered?]
-​ Once per mission you can cling to a bond or memento to halve your current Stress
(rounding up), devote a vignette to this moment of resolve. Stress resets at the end of
missions.
-​ Stress damage (from Getting Work or as a severe consequence) locks one or more
stress boxes as marked for the mission and don’t get cleared by Adrenaline Rush
Adrenaline Rush
Adrenaline Rush empties your stress (apart from damage), grants one use of your Panic
Response, and opens you up to Trauma for the rest of the mission. This represents adrenaline,
greed, anger, or other impulse overriding your priority for careful and measured moves, treat this
as a roleplaying prompt.
-​ Panic Responses are special abilities themed around an extrapolation of the Fight/Flight
response.You choose your response at character creation, though it may change as you
receive trauma and priorities change

Trauma
Traumas are strange long term injuries that persist between missions. They are little pieces of
anomalies that come home with you, such as Wandering eye, Colorful visions, Recurring limp,
or Black veins. Unlike Conditions, Traumas don’t impair rolls but instead provide new problems
and opportunities to interact with the world.
-​ When you take a third Trauma your character will die, or retire at mission’s end - your
choice. Make their last moments on screen dramatic.
-​ You should generally only receive one trauma per Adrenaline Rush, but your character
may still die at any point if exposed to lethal danger (pushed out of an airlock without a
suit, crushed by heavy machinery, embracing a space-bending anomaly.) This possibility
should be explicitly pointed out to the player when present even if outside character
knowledge.

Economy
-​ Typically Economy is represented by a single value on a range from debt to credit, 0
being in the middle. Gaining Credit moves your value up and gaining Debt moves it
down.
-​ -10, -9, -8, -7, -6, -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
-​ [Fixer has a different system?]
-​ Credits and Debts form the economy in the Hub, most people never climbing out of debt.
Due to one of the few still enforced intergalactic laws these Credits and Debts are not
represented by any physical currency, but are kept in a single ledger overseen by the
sector’s Cooperative Bank branch.
-​ Credits do not represent your day-to-day expenses, but the moving units beyond those
usual means, the corporate structure ensures that you can realistically never work hard
enough to earn a full Credit above your debt. Credits are gained by satisfying corporate
demands or trading on the black market.
-​ If your Debts max out your character exits play as you are taken to debtor’s jail. None of
your promises or favors mean anything anymore as you cannot be trusted.
Professions
-​ Professions form the bulk of your character, giving you a Panic Response, [3] Skills, [and
a passive Adrenaline Rush bonus], as well as implying some of their personality and
interests.
-​ Choose skills from list?
-​ [WHAT ARE SKILLS FOR?]
-​ Giving vantage?
-​ Removing need to roll?
-​ Opportunity to succeed without rolling in exchange for stress (otherwise
chance for condition/more stress/bad situation)?

GETTING WORK
You're freelancers, and good work is scarce. Scientifically advancing work doesn't bring profit,
so unless you Beg or Promise the corps that the thing you're after will profit them will they open
their wallets. If you ever were truly in the room with them, many of them would love to make you
actually kiss their boots in exchange for luxuries such as fuel, food, and pens.

Begging
doesn't cost anything aside from your pride. However you will not have access to the full range
of equipment that most spacers agree is essential.
-​ 1 Stress damage for each spacer
+​ Low Quality gear

Promising
means swearing up and down in an electrifying pitch that the motherlode is out there and you
can get it for them, you will have to somehow make good on what you've promised the
expedition will render, or failing that go into severe debt.
-​ The task must be completed or else take on significant debt (available credits at
mission’s end immediately put toward paying it off).
+​ High Quality gear
[EXAMPLE TASK & DEBT TABLE]

Grinding
is the devil you know. It takes a long time and wears you down, body and spirit. However, when
you are done all that you have is truly yours with no strings attached.
-​ At least half (round up) of the spacers must spend their downtime Working
+​ Low Quality gear, 1 piece of permanent High Quality gear each for those who Worked
EQUIPMENT
During a mission you can mark a piece of gear to reveal you brought that item, you can mark up
to 4 items per mission of your highest available tier, lower tiers have no limit and permanent
items do not count toward it.
You have access to gear as per how you got the job, either Low or High Quality gear. Once
you've reached your limit you can still mark items by also marking a Debt.

Low Quality
items increase vantage, but remove a die if marked with *
simple / low-tech / unreliable / impractical
-​ Melee weapon
-​ Knife, wrench, brass knuckles
-​ Mask with filter & air
-​ * if used in place of spacewalk suit
-​ Electronics kit
-​ Clippers, splitters, extra wires, multimeter
-​ Improvised ranged weapon*
-​ Repurposed tool / amateur gunsmithing / sketchy black market hardware
-​ First aid kit
-​ Prayer book
-​ Smelling salts
-​ Food ration
-​ “Open only in emergency”
-​ Demolition tools
-​ Crowbar, hammer, spikes, welding tool & tank
-​ Field science kit

High Quality
items increase vantage, and add a die if marked with ^
high-tech / generous supply / specialized / deadly
-​ Powered melee weapon ^
-​ Stun baton / Piston-punch / electrified spear / etc.
-​ Spacewalk suit
-​ Body armor ^
-​ 0G ranged weapon
-​ Magnetically powered slug thrower suitable for firing in a vacuum
-​ STRIKE-grade ranged weapon
-​ Your pick among the chosen tools of the galaxy’s finest corporate death squads
-​ Specialized weapon ^
-​ Flamethrower / nerve agent / tranquilizer rifle / gas grenade / etc.
 -​ Scientific instrument ^
-​ A specialized tool in portable format.
-​ Medical stimulants
-​ [pacify a condition?]
-​ Plastic explosives

DOWNTIME
After a mission it’s time to compile your findings, get some rest, and eventually join the grind
once more.
You enter downtime once the mission is done and the spacers return to the Hub, where you:
-​ Remove stress (including damage) & conditions
-​ Engage in a Downtime Activity

Downtime Activities

Work
-​ +1 Credit, enables Grinding (see Getting Work)

Research & Adapt

-​ Work with your GM and the rest of the table to transform a Trauma into a talent, it still
remains as a trauma counting towards your limit. This is your primary form of
advancement besides acquiring permanent gear
-​ [Examples], in story kits ideally there would be premade traumas with attached
talents to evolve into to be dealt out in that scenario. There should be plenty of
premade Traumas & Talents for the GM to pick from
-​ Wandering eye - Roll with Wits, on a success you can perceive anything within
throwing distance, even beyond walls.
-​ Colorful visions -
-​ Recurring limp -
-​ Black veins -

Acquire & Develop

-​ [custom items?]

Black market trading

-​
CHARACTERS

Professions
Knowledge
Skills: electronics, hydraulics, gravitation, metals, botany, zoology,
-​ Scientist
-​
-​ Panic Response: DROWN
-​ Skills:

-​ Mechanic
-​ Nested in material realities, prefers things you can touch and turn over in your
hands.
-​ Panic Response: DENY

Fight
-​ Soldier
-​
-​ Panic Response: FIGHT

-​ Rookie
-​
-​ Panic Response: FLEE

Politics
Skills:
-​ Fixer
-​
-​ Panic Response: BURN
-​ [Passive AR bonus: +1 result level on BLACK MARKET TRADING next
downtime]

-​ Agent
-​
-​ Panic Response: CONTROL

Panic Responses
-​ FIGHT: Unleash terrible violence, the action is an automatic Perfect. If in combat; also
pick a critical effect.
-​ FLEE: Retreat or maneuver with deft and haste, acting as an automatic Perfect. Can be
used in place of a physical defense roll.

-​ DENY: Shut out the world and renounce all things supernatural. Resist any mental attack
or supernatural effect as a Perfect.
-​ DROWN: Allow the cosmos to flood your mind and drown out your rationality for a
moment. Ask a question of the cosmos (the GM) and receive a truthful answer.

-​ CONTROL: Command a teammate, if they follow your order that action is an automatic
Perfect and they remove 1 stress
-​ BURN: Call in every favor and contact you have and cash out. Solve a technological or
bureaucratic problem [Bypass encryption / access restricted files / cancel up to 2 debt]