Space: 1999 RPG Datafile #4: Finding a Group

Attention all sections Alpha! The Space: 1999 Tabletop Roleplaying Game, co-produced between Modiphius and Anderson Entertainment, nears its release! 

The Space: 1999 RPG allows you to take your enjoyment of Space: 1999 to new dimensions of danger by fashioning your very own immersive roleplaying experiences. You can create your very own members of Moonbase Alpha and craft your own fantastic adventures using The Space: 1999 RPG Core Rulebook, currently available to pre-order for a mid-2025 release.

If you've already pre-ordered the RPG rulebook, you should already have the Quickstart Guide to whet your roleplaying appetite and prepare you for crafting your very own Space: 1999 roleplaying experience. To prepare you further for this fantastic release in the coming months, we're offering the Quickstart Guide to download from the Official Gerry Anderson website entirely for free! The guide will be available this coming Thursday (April 3rd).

If you're new to the world of RPGs, Modiphius' Andrew Peregrine has been enlightening us with a series of online guides that explain how RPGs work, how to create your own characters, how to guide yourself and your players through a game of your own creation, and much more.

In this latest blog, Andrew explains how to assemble your Eagle crew by finding fellow RPG enthusiasts to blast off into the fantastic future of Space: 1999 in roleplaying game form!

Crewing your Eagle

The Space: 1999 role-playing game is designed with a lot of features to help you get started if you’ve never played before. But it can still be daunting to find a starting point and get a group together to play. If you are new to the community you might not know where to look for more help and advice. Luckily, there is a large RPG community out there, and most are friendly and welcoming to new players and gamemasters. Once you join in you’ll find all manner of trails and links to more people across the community, so the following is just a quick list of some good starting points that will help you get playing.

Watch an Actual Play

While I used to say “you can’t just watch a game, you should just dive in and play it”, I was apparently very wrong! Since a group of voice actors started recording their gaming sessions as Critical Roll, an ocean of videos and podcasts of people playing all manner of games has exploded across the Internet. Watching one of these is a great way to see how it all fits together and see how playing the game works. Most are quite long but you only need to watch as much as you need to get the idea. Having said that, you may quickly find you get involved in the story and want to see how it all turns out. 

Once the Space: 1999 RPG Core Rulebook is released you may well find plenty of these actual plays with a quick online search, but we already have a couple for you to enjoy. For some specific Space: 1999 games, Matthew McCloud and the Lurking Fears team ran the Breakaway Quickstart on Breakaway day last year, and I ran a game for the Gerry Anderson Podcast team recently.

Chat on the Discord

The Discord forum app is a haven for all manner of gamers. Modiphius has their own channel for groups to get together and chat about all their games. You’ll find a Space: 1999 channel there, as well as groups for their other games like Star Trek Adventures, Dreams and Machines, Discworld and Fallout. You can just jump into the channel and ask any question you like, the community there will usually be happy to help you out, and chat about anything Space: 1999 related.

Join an Online Game

While the ideal way to play an RPG is together in the same room, gaming over the internet offers the opportunity for people to get together from all over the world. The internet also offers several ways to advertise a game looking for players or for players to find a group. Each offers the opportunity to scroll down a list of different games to find one that looks fun. If you can’t find one for Space: 1999, playing any RPG will still help you get started. While the rules may differ, the way you play is very much the same and there is a wide variety of options. You will find many games of Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu. But if there are no Space: 1999 games, you might still find one using the same rules system (2D20) such as Star Trek Adventures. There are three particular websites I’d recommend (and there are plenty more besides these):

Roll20: This site is designed specifically for playing games on the internet. While you can play any game over any video chat system (such as Zoom, Google Chat, etc.), this site offers tools for dice rolling and creating maps and handouts. While I’m less familiar with them, there are several other role-play specific sites such as Fantasy Grounds and Role.  

Warhorn: This is one of the older sites designed to get people together. It’s a little simpler but in that sense easier to connect to and simpler to add a message of your own.

Start Playing Games: This more recent site is mainly for professional gamemasters to find players for their games. This means there is a cost, but they are rarely very expensive, and carry the advantage of a tried and tested gamemaster. You can also click on the profile of each gamemaster to see if their style suits what you are looking for in a game. Many offer introductory games specifically for those who are new to the hobby.

Your Friendly Local Games Store

Plenty of towns now have a games retail store stocking all manner of role-playing games (often as well as board games, collectable card games, classic games and wargames). Before the internet, games stores were the best place to connect to the community and many still run after-hours gaming sessions. So chat to the staff there and they will often be knowledgeable and helpful when it comes to getting started. It’s not a bad idea to ask them about stocking more Anderson and Modiphius products, too!

Attend a Convention

To see the whole community in one place, you can attend one of the many conventions going on across the country (whichever country you live in). Worldwide, the largest are Gen Con (Indianapolis USA) Origins (Columbus USA) and UK Games Expo (Birmingham UK), which gather thousands of attendees. But there are all manner of smaller one-day conventions in all manner of places. Each offers an opportunity to buy games, play games and chat to other gamers.

So, while it might seem a little daunting to take a step into role-playing, once you do you will find a lot of support out there. As many will be Space: 1999 fans too, there is always common ground. So you should find it reasonably simple to make connections and find new friends.

Pre-order the Space: 1999 Tabletop Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and embark on your very own gripping adventures and compelling characters set in the world of Space: 1999!

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