Previewing Orbital Debris
My hexes, the collaborative work process, and more!
12 other Mothership third-party creators and I recently announced our upcoming collaborative project: Orbital Debris! It’s a ~50-page hexcrawl and setting guide focused on a galaxy-traveling moon made entirely of space garbage. It’s got factions, NPCs, strange locations, and some great tables to add a little more terrific trash to any Warden’s table.
Follow it HERE at the Kickstarter pre-launch page and get notified the moment the the project goes live on February 1st (right alongside The Bloodfields)!
First, I want to preview the two hexes I wrote for the junky moon and why I chose to create them. Second, I’ll dig into a bit of what it’s been like working on my first large group TTRPG project.
THE HOME OF “HE”
*** LIGHT SPOILERS FOR ORBITAL DEBRIS ***
Early on — before we even knew the exact shape of the adventure we were creating, we all jumped into a few Discord channels and hashed out the type of setting, adventures, themes, etc. we would like to work on. We tossed each other emoji votes and made threads and eventually settled on the book’s core concept: a false moon - a planetoid of centuries of space garbage and crashed ships and astral leftovers mysteriously jumping from place to place around the galaxy.
Soon after, we started building the larger structures of life on this moon: factions, the rough history, possible futures, etc. With that came some big and really important, more involved locations/hexes. From here, I found the type of hexes I wanted to create.
In open-world games like Fallout, most of my favorite memories came from those weird, totally off-the-beaten-path NPCs that stick out as a bit of an oddity, even among the already strange world they inhabit. The little shack you find along the far edge of a map with a funny weirdo maybe you’ve heard mention of long ago on the other side of the planet. An unexpected encounter with something you never even really thought you’d see in the game. A reward for digger a bit deeper and happening to get lucky in your travels.
“The Home of ‘He’” is a hex built around these type of gaming memories. All across the adventure, there are rumors of someone in control of the hyperdrive hidden away at the center of the moon - someone with a great, grand plan (and possibly strange abilities to match).
In this hex, the crew stumbles upon a quiet little compound, handbuilt and humble, at the top of a hill of garbage. In the compound in an even smaller cabin, is “He'“ — someone claiming to be the man in control of the drive, in control of the moon. There are secrets to be discovered, both from “He” himself but also scattered about his compound, but the best part (for me) is that even I don’t know if “He” is who he says he is. There’s room for a number of possibilities but only the Warden and the world created by the players at the table can decide which might be true.
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MITES
*** LIGHT SPOILERS FOR ORBITAL DEBRIS ***
My second hex, much like the first, grew out of my desire to create supplementary experiences to some of the bigger, more keystone hexes and areas already being created by some of the project’s other great writers.
Another major character (with a faction of his own) is the Trash President (or the Junk King or a myriad of other names), a sort of Baron Harkonnen meets Warhammer 40k Emperor meets CEO-type villain overseeing much of the moon’s fouler operations. In an early detail in one of our design docs, it was mentioned he is covered in swarms of cleaner mites - tiny mesh-networked nanobots that cleaned and healed him in order to keep him alive LONG after he should be dead. That little detail stuck with me.
“All the President’s Mites" is as much an encounter as it is a hex - a strange episode of infestation and temporary alliances between the crew and lost swarms of cleaner mites, desperate to reach a point where they can reconnect with the President’s network and finally get back to the only task they are meant to do. The environment itself is a false desert - synthetic sand made from centuries of crumbling, rusted metal and the remaining hulls of several wrecked ships. Like most of the junk moon, there are treasures here but so too is the potential for great infestation. But you never know, maybe the President would offer a reward for the safe return of so many of his cleaner mites… It really is too bad they seem to only like hiding under your skin.
PLAYING NICE WITH OTHERS
Orbital Debris is my first collaborative project in the TTRPG space and definitely the first writing project I’ve worked on in this remote of a capacity (I am not even sure if any of us have ever met each other offline)! I have learned and continue to learn a lot by working with such a varied group of creators.
We all knew we wanted to work on something, and we knew we wanted to shoot for Zine Month (still naively Zinequest to us at the time). We set up a fresh Discord, threw down a few channels, and started throwing out ideas. What kind of influences spoke to us? What kind of structure should it have? What were the themes we’d like to explore? Naturally from there, a few key concepts started to rise to the top, and we kept building off of those.
From a practicality standpoint, a hexcrawl is a perfect fit for a project like this. Inherently, it is about building a varied and open world that is driven by the player characters instead of needing a single focused, overarching story at its core - like a traditional RPG campaign book may. We could each individually create the components of this junk moon and then weave them together.
As an editor on the project as well, this has been a big aspect of our work. Since the editors have read almost everything written for the book, we are typically the ones to suggest further connections, complications, potential crossovers from one hex to another.
From there, much of the world built itself - we have a core concept, a number of memorable factions, and a handful of legends/rumors about the moon. We all went off to create independently and are now returning to build out a useful, strong core opening section to the book, some helpful overarching tables, and more.
Overall, it’s been a great process, facilitated by structured (but not strict) project management, reasonably broad deadlines, and a positive desire from everyone involved to make the best book possible within our individual capacities to do so.
Great too was a focus on fair and transparent revenue sharing across everyone, meaning there’s little room for bad blood or unexpected twists in the working relationship as the project develops further.
I am so excited for you all to get a chance to see more about Orbital Debris on the Kickstarter page soon and then to get the book in your hands later this year. I think it’s really going to be a fun one!
Once again, you can follow the Kickstarter HERE and it goes live February 1st!
MORE COOL THINGS
Fellow Orbital Debris contributor James Hanna is making a Wretched & Alone game based on The Great Gatsby and let’s you create a character and pursue the American Dream, even when it seems like everything wants to stop you. I’ve read an early draft of this, and it really stuck with me. I’m excited to give it a playthrough soon, but I think this is going to be a great project worthy of your attention.
You can follow the What Foul Dust pre-launch page HERE.
A collection of the folks involved with Hull Breach recently did an interview and actual play of one of that big book’s adventures over at Plus One Exp. It was great to put a face with a name for people who have been a huge help on my own entry into the scene in recent months. Plus, it’s a great adventure!
Chris Bisette recently did a read-through thread of DnD’s 4e Player’s Handbook, and it was a really interesting look back on an edition that seemed (at least in my circles) to be much maligned even though I feel like time has only proven out a lot of its design decisions. I never have had a chance to actually play it myself (due to when I was playing and when it originally released) but between this thread and some recent actual plays I’ve seen, I think I want to!
I’m already cooking (in my head) on my next bigger project and right now, a hopeful adventure for MORK BORG is the thing I can’t get out of my head. Between everything we’ve all experienced these last 2-4 years mixed with the ever-increasingly cataclysmic realities of climate change, I feel like I need to create something that says “fuck your end of the world - we can fix it (or make a new and better world instead)!” Nothing else to report other than… I’m thinking.
Just 9 days until launch of THE BLOODFIELDS ON BLACKSTAR STATION! Edits are coming in from Vi, more interior art is in progress by Roque, a rough draft of the first stretch goal (what could it be?), and I’m putting the finishing touches on the campaign page so everything is ready for launch day.
If you haven’t, please give it a follow over at the Kickstarter pre-launch page. I’m hoping to hit 300 follows if I can before it goes live to help build a solid base of support from the start! Thanks for reading this Missive and thanks for any support you may throw my way with THE BLOODFIELDS!