I’ve been writing ‘Homebrew Flavor Packs’ for DANGER CLOSE, which are separate documents that aim to give clear guidelines on how to reflavor my Tactical Military Skirmish TTRPG into whatever setting you want it to be. This had me thinking about interstellar travel in TTRPGs, and how to give that the juice.
There’s probably way more approaches than just the two discussed here, but I settled on Safe Transit and Dangerous Transit. The first method means that the tension lays in departure and arrival, and the second method keeps its tension in what happens along the way.
Beyond that, or complimentary to that, I think starships practically exist in two (interesting) sizes; the Freighter (think Millennium Falcon), where it’s just the crew in a flying clubhouse, and the Capital Ship (think Pillar of Autumn) which is less about immediate existential danger to the ship, and more about resource management.
The design idea I’m getting at here is as follows:
We need to get our tension from somewhere, otherwise space travel feels like a brief bit of narration without weight. We can do that by focusing on the actual journey, or the moments of departure and arrival.
The following is taken from my DANGER CLOSE IN SPACESHIPS document that is free to download, along with all the other flavor packs, on itch.io and RPG Trader. Just like everything in DANGER CLOSE, I aim to write in such a way that you can take whatever elements from the text that work for you; as such, what follows is essentially setting- and system agnostic.
Safe Transit (Hyperspace)
Safe Transit treats the space between destinations as safe, and perhaps even a little boring. The dangerous parts are departure and arrival. This creates beats like “We need thirty seconds to calculate the jump,” “The Drive won’t engage,” “Where the hell did we come out?” and “They were waiting for us.” This style is generally used for Freighters, but can definitely also apply to Capital Ships.
For Departure, a Jump is calculated, with a certain Risk. The journey itself is then generally not the focus (or perhaps a good spot for some downtime), with the Arrival being the sudden reveal of “where did we end up”.
For a Jump’s Risk, determine:
Calculation Time + Ship Condition + Distance + Route
Risk cannot be lower than 0. If Risk is 0, the jump simply succeeds.
Otherwise, roll 1d12. If the result is higher than Risk, the jump succeeds safely. A natural 12 always succeeds.
The source of the Risk should guide the failure. Bad navigation data creates bad routes. A damaged Drive creates mechanical failures. A jump calculated under fire might use incomplete coordinates. The severity matters more than the exact wording of the result.
Calculation Time
| Circumstance | Risk |
|---|---|
| Plenty of time | +0 |
| Rushed | +1 |
| Under immediate pressure | +2 |
| Calculating during an emergency or under fire | +3 |
Ship Condition
| Circumstance | Risk |
|---|---|
| Ship and Drive in good condition | +0 |
| Poorly maintained or Strained | +1 |
| Damaged | +2 |
| Barely operational | +3 |
Distance
| Circumstance | Risk |
|---|---|
| Short jump | +0 |
| Ordinary journey | +1 |
| Long journey | +2 |
| Extreme distance | +3 |
Route
| Circumstance | Risk |
|---|---|
| Major hyperspace lane with current charts | -1 |
| Established and well mapped | +0 |
| Minor or infrequently travelled route | +1 |
| Obscure or outdated route | +2 |
| Poorly mapped route | +3 |
| Essentially unmapped | +4 |
If the result is equal to or below Risk, subtract the roll from Risk to determine the Failure Margin.
| Failure Margin | Outcome |
|---|---|
| 0 | Imperfect Jump. Arrive safely, but not quite as intended. Lose time, emerge farther away or arrive on a poor vector. |
| 1-3 | Off Course. Safely leave hyperspace somewhere inconvenient. Another jump is required. |
| 4-6 | Jump, then Breakdown. Reach somewhere useful, possibly the intended destination, but the Drive fails and must be repaired. |
| 7+ | No Jump, Breakdown. The ship fails to escape. The Drive breaks down before the jump completes. |
Arrival
The jump determines whether you get there. Alertness determines whether anyone notices when you do.
Give the destination an Alertness rating from 0 to 6. When the ship emerges from hyperspace, roll 1d6. If the result is equal to or below Alertness, somebody relevant notices the arrival.
| Alertness | Situation |
|---|---|
| 0: Open | Nobody is meaningfully watching arrivals. |
| 1: Quiet | Occasional sensors or passing traffic may notice. |
| 2: Watched | Local patrols or traffic control monitor arrivals. |
| 3: Controlled | Arrivals are routinely tracked and identification may be requested. |
| 4: Alert | Security forces are actively monitoring incoming traffic. |
| 5: Lockdown | Patrols and sensors are actively looking for suspicious ships. |
| 6: Expected | Someone is specifically watching the likely arrival points. Detection is automatic. |
Being noticed does not mean combat. A sensor operator might simply record the arrival, traffic control might hail the ship, or fighters might move to intercept during a lockdown.
Adjust Alertness when circumstances clearly warrant it:
- wanted vessel or flagged transponder: +1
- authorities warned to expect the ship: +1
- restricted or conspicuous arrival point: +1
- convincing false identity: -1
- emergence far from normal traffic: -1
- secret or unusual coordinates: -1
Alertness remains between 0 and 6.
Dangerous Transit (The Warp)
Departure and arrival may happen safely in empty space, but what happens between them can threaten the ship and everyone aboard it. Travel is no longer downtime: it can generate complications, damage and entire missions. This means it’s generally a better fit for Capital Ships, as those are big enough to have proper exploration, tension and combat aboard the ship itself.
Warp travel uses a single roll:
2d6 + 2 – Warp Strain
Warp Strain is the sum of:
- Route Strain, representing the voyage;
- Navigator Strain, representing accumulated exhaustion and exposure.
Route Strain
| Route | Strain |
|---|---|
| Short hop, well-charted, calm Warp | +0 |
| Standard inter-system journey | +1 |
| Long jump or unfamiliar route | +2 |
| Deep void crossing, poorly charted region or turbulence | +3 |
| Astronomican-thin, contested space or blind jump | +4 |
Passage
| Result | Outcome | Navigator Strain Gained |
|---|---|---|
| 8+ | Stable Passage. Arrive as planned. | +1 |
| 7 | Minor Disturbance. Something unsettling happens, but the voyage continues. | +2 |
| 5-6 | Serious Complication. The ship, crew or Mission is genuinely threatened. | +3 |
| 4 or less | Warp Event. Something has gone deeply wrong. | +5 |
Navigator Strain falls by 1 for each uninterrupted week spent in realspace. After a full uninterrupted month of proper rest, treatment and rites, clear all Navigator Strain.
At Navigator Strain 6+, the Navigator is Exhausted. They can still guide another voyage if circumstances demand it, but the accumulating risk should be clear in the fiction.
Minor Disturbances
A Minor Disturbance should make the voyage feel wrong without seriously threatening the ship. Time might slip by a few hours or days, crew morale may fray, sensors may report impossible contacts, machinery may behave strangely, or people aboard may suffer disturbing dreams and momentary physical effects. These results are usually color rather than a new problem to solve.
Serious Complications
A Serious Complication creates an actual problem aboard the ship. The Navigator may collapse or suffer a vision, something may begin following the vessel through the Warp, vital systems may fail, or temporal distortion may throw the voyage days or months off course. Psychic manifestations, possession or localized breaches can turn sections of the ship into dangerous ground.
At this level, consequences should matter mechanically or generate something the crew must respond to. Ship Condition might worsen, Navigator Strain might increase, a Module or system might become unavailable, or the complication might immediately become a DANGER CLOSE Mission aboard the vessel.
Warp Events
The ship might emerge years after it departed, suffer a major daemonic incursion, lose whole sections during a Gellar Field collapse, become becalmed until Supplies and morale begin to fail, or return subtly altered in ways that persist for the rest of the campaign. At the extreme, the vessel may disappear into the Warp entirely and only return much later, somewhere else, in a condition you determine when it becomes relevant.
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