The Derelict Speaks
A downloadable game
A Thankless Job
Unfortunately, you drew the short straw. You've been in stasis for quite some time and you've finally reached your target. A massive floating dreadnaught deep in unexplored space. Well, no one ever said rescue work was gonna be easy. But ya know... is there even anyone onboard? What was........
What is this?
The Derelict Speaks is a 2-page horror MicroRpg with semi-competitive elements. It's heavily inspired by the horror classics Event Horizon & Sphere. Yup... classics. Fight me.
The game is for 3 to 6 players. One person is the First Speaker, the Game Master. They speak for the titular Derelict and do their best to torture and "claim" the characters.
Everyone else plays as the characters exploring the Derelict. Their goal is to survive. But they probably won't. As characters die, their spirit is claimed by the Derelict. Those players flip over the sheet and play as another Speaker for the Derelict. Now, their goal is to reap more souls for Her. The game ends when everyone dies or only one survives.
What you'll need.
- About 3 to 6 players
- Two six-sided die (2d6)
- About 10 to 15 tokens (poker chips, beads, coins, etc.) per player.
- A desire to play some spookums with your friends and brutalize their characters when the Derelict demands it.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Played this thorugh on Friday night, and it was great. Loads of fun. The rules weren't quite clear about the equipment (it says one of each item, but my players felt that some things, like the communicator, should have been one per player, and I did fudge it to one EVA suit per player), but otherwise worked brilliantly, simple to set up, fun to play, thoroughly recommend and will play again.
The other suggestions from my players were to add a special piece of equipment or even ability per role (e.g. the captain can, once per game, "inspire" the team by giving 2 of their blood tokens to a team member), and they thought it would have been cool to find med kits or some similar boosts around the place to give them extra Blood tokens during the game. Not sure I agree on that one, but thought I'd pass it along anyway.
We had some fantastic roleplaying and storytelling, frequent references to 'the Titan job - never forget', and some super comedic moments as players in EVA suits bonked their helmets together to talk because they didn't all have communicators. Half my players had seen Event Horizon, and loved the similarity, the other half now _want_ to see Event Horizon.
Oh man, this is awesome! I'm glad you all had a fun time with it.
Whoops, I just took a look, and saw what you meant. That's my fault for keeping the character sheet in-fiction for one portion and then completely meta elsewhere.
To be clear: each player should get one of those items. In all honesty, they mean whatever you want them to mean. I think of them more as narrative prompts to help you play out a scene. That said, I love the ideas you came up with, especially the Expanse-style bumping helmets to communicate! That's some inspiring creativity with an unintended prompt.
Interesting idea with the special equipment/roles. I'll have to tinker and see what I can come up with.
Aw man, this totally made my day! Thanks homie!
<3 so glad :) :)
How has no-one commented on this yet? It rules. Codified antagonistic GMing, players switching sides when they die, excellent genre emulation…
Seriously where’s the love people need to got in on this
Aw shucks, that's very kind of you. If you ever manage to run/play it, please tell me how it goes. I'm very curious to see how it runs out of my hands.