The universe is getting hotter. Galaxies approach each other at an ever-faster rate. The space between stars is shrinking. Stations are burning up; refugees flood the few still running cool. States are in collapse. This is the last generation.
This is also the last golden age of piracy, and you’re a space pirate.
Space Between Stars is the debut tabletop RPG from indie publisher Skyglow Press. It’s about a crew and their handful of ships hiding in a no man’s space between three gravitationally-bound stars, where what’s left of the old states barely reach.
It gives us comrades, lovers, rivals on long voyages under stealth, with only each other for company. It gives us brief, decisive moments of terror: radiators melting under pulsed laser fire, armoured hulls vaporised by nuclear torpedoes. It gives us release: finally, on the other side of the airlock, shore leave awaits, with the opportunities and dangers the cities and stations of the system provide. Resupply, let your hair down, keep a look out for any of the many factions you’ve crossed or double-crossed.
It gives us torch drives, it gives us delta-V running low, it gives us scarcity. It gives us water shortages that take dozens of hydroponics stations off-line for months, cascading into famine. It gives us coordinated attacks on cryogenics systems that kill thousands near-instantly. It gives us 200, 300-year human lifespans shortened to 80 if you’re lucky, with advanced biohacking a routine part of life but you might have to sell an arm and a leg for medicines from rotted-out supply chains which can’t be synthesized at home.
It’s about a universe that’s too hot, contracting inexorably towards a big crunch; it’s about the hope that somehow, it could be reversed, or… escaped? Transcended? That there might still be a way to survive beyond?
It gives us vast, ancient works of engineering, utterly abandoned, purpose entirely unknown, floating coldly in their orbits like bones. A whale fall.
It gives us messages in the Light. The Light that’s returning. The afterglow of Creation, the harbinger of the End.
The Light that is cooking us alive.
Starbright System
Space Between Stars is the prototype TTRPG built on the Starbright system. Starbright is directly inspired by Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World, Dream Askew, and Trophy. Starbright games are:
- Fiction-first.
- Concise.
- Everything needed to play a character fits in a 12-page A5 booklet, with the traditional components of a character sheet placed immediately alongside the rules which explain how they are used.
- The text is precise and means exactly what it says. Examples and clarifications aren’t required (but they are there in the GM book just in case!)
- The layout highlights what’s relevant right now, and hides what isn’t.
- Modular.
- Mechanics are split into discrete Moves with clear triggers, which interface seamlessly and stay out of the way of the fiction until triggered.
- Auxiliary sheets (crew, ship, etc) are fully self-explanatory and face the players, not the GM.
- GM aids are in booklet form, and contain only information relevant to the phase of the game happening right now.
- Pre-written scenario booklets can be woven into sessions without even slightly putting the story on rails.
- Flexible.
- Space Between Stars‘ mechanics are laser-focused on telling stories within its setting and genre, but simple changes can adapt the system to make games that produce radically different kinds of fiction, all Lit by Starbright.
Watch This Space!
Space Between Stars is in development and expected to open for public playtest in early 2027. A mailing list is in the works and will be available soon!