Our Space: 1999 Roleplaying Game will be available to experience soon with the forthcoming release of the core rulebook. This co-production between Anderson Entertainment and Modiphius thrusts you into the world of Space: 1999 and allows you to create your very own cosmic adventures with fellow Alphans!
To get you up to speed with the ins and outs of RPGS, Modiphius’ Andrew Peregrine explains what you can expect from this uniquely immersive gaming experience!
So, you know Space: 1999, but what is a roleplaying game? Is it complicated? Do I need a computer? Is it like a board game? In this article, I’ll take you through the basics if you haven’t played a game like this before. But the short answer is that it’s a lot simpler than it might first appear, and a lot of fun.
A roleplaying game offers you the opportunity every Space: 1999 fan has always dreamed of; to join the crew of Moonbase Alpha and share their journey into the frontier of space. Like a computer game, it offers an immersive experience following a brand new story where your character is the hero. But unlike a computer game, you are free to do anything you can imagine. There is no computer, no board, and you are not limited to a series of set options. Instead, you and your friends tell a story of your own together as both author and audience.
There are a lot of ways to explain how these games work, and if you’ve played Dungeons and Dragons, then you’ll be familiar with the basic idea. If not, it’s a little similar to how you used to read plays when you were at school. Everyone was assigned a character to read, and one person read out the stage directions and played the smaller parts, like the butler or maid.
Now imagine there’s no script, and you get to decide on the character you play instead of picking from a cast list. The person who’d read out the stage directions is now called the “gamemaster”. They describe what your characters can see and set the scene, and they play any incidental characters you meet. All the players have to do is decide what their character will do based on the situation they are presented with. Generally, the best size of group is around five or six people – one gamemaster and four or five players. But anything up to eight players can work fine, and you can even play out adventures one on one.
What makes this especially interesting is that no one really knows where the story is going to go. The gamemaster knows the situation, and what any villains might be planning. But the actions of the players are what really determine how things work out. The players are also not in competition, either with each other or the gamemaster. No one “wins” in a role playing game. The objective is to tell a fun story together and just enjoy immersing yourselves in the setting and your character (and the interactions between them).
So why the big rulebook? Well, you’ll need some help to create a character of your own. So the book details how to put together someone with the right sort of skills to have a place on Alpha. It also helps you determine who this person is and what their background is so that you can play them effectively. Characters can just be an extension of yourself, and that’s fine, but they can also be as different as you’d like them to be. It’s all about creating an alter ego you want to inhabit for a while.
As you might expect, the rulebook also details the rules of the game. This may look quite intimidating, but the basic rules are actually reasonably simple. You just roll some dice to see if you beat a target number to succeed in the action your character is trying to do. The rest of the rules are to help the gamemaster navigate the huge array of possibilities that might come up, so there is a rule to cope with any situation. You might ask why you can’t just always succeed? Well, that would get boring after a while. Some of the most exciting moments (in gaming and in the series) are when a plan fails to work or an unexpected complication brings disaster. How the characters adjust and regroup under extreme pressure is where the best moments of drama can often be found.
There is help in the rulebook for the gamemaster to create new “non-player characters” or NPCs, the other minor characters that inhabit the game setting. These might be alien scientists, other Alphans, strange monsters or even cavemen. There is also detail on how to create adventures of your own and make them feel like a new episode of Space: 1999 that you are all experiencing together.
The rulebook also has a whole chapter on what it’s like to live on Alpha so you can better imagine what your characters do all day. Where are they assigned? Who are they assigned with? What do they do on their time off? All of this offers a view of Alpha from the inside, helping you imagine being one of the base operatives searching for a new home.
So that’s the basic idea, but the best way to really figure it all out is just to start playing. We’ve developed a “quickstart guide” you can use with a ready-made set of characters and an adventure so you can dive right in. This The Quickstart Guide itself will be available to download as a pdf as part of the pre-order for the Core Rulebook. Once you’ve pre-ordered, you can download the Quickstart Guide immediately and get to work familiarising yourself with the Space: 1999 Roleplaying Game while you wait for the Core Rulebook to arrive.
The core rulebook itself is a stunningly illustrated hardback, designed to be evocative of a genuinely authentic Moonbase Alpha publication, similar to the Space: 1999 Technical Operations Manual. It also contains a wealth of idea-spurring material such as original adventures and scenario concepts, offering plenty to get you started. So gather your fellow Alphans via the Official Gerry Anderson Facebook group and/or the Official Gerry Anderson Podcast group, and join the 311 men and women of Moonbase Alpha, searching for a new home on the deadly frontier of space, in the greatest human adventure of all time!
If you’re new to RPGs, you’ll find plenty of Space: 1999 fans on the various Official Gerry Anderson Facebook groups who’d surely love to join forces in creating new thrilling role-playing adventures with you! We’re also teaming up with gamemaster group Lurking Fears to bring you a series of livestreams on Breakaway Day (September 13th) of them playing the Space: 1999 RPG game for you to experience and join in with. Tickets for the day’s event go on sale tomorrow (September 7th), so be sure to mark your calendars to reserve a slot to witness the Space: 1999 Roleplaying Game in cosmic action!
The Space: 1999 Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook will be available to pre-order on Breakaway Day itself. Sign up to the RPG’s mailing list so you don’t miss out on immersing yourself in the greatest adventure in the universe! Don’t forget to also consult our handy FAQ guide if you’re still unsure what to expect from an RPG!
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