Orbital
A downloadable game
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The last game we played was a big one. Orbital was five episodes long, high drama, deep characterisation, all sorts of surprises and world-building […] very fun.” —Austin Walker, Friends at the Table
SO, WHAT IS ORBITAL?
ORBITAL gives us airlocks and control panels, pensive faces looking out into the cosmos, improvised fixes for critical systems, military-sponsored subterfuge, warm embraces in the cold vacuum, frantic struggles in zero-gravity and unknowable ancient technology, asking WHAT DO YOU DO NEXT?
Imagine an all-consuming interstellar war, spread across a vast galaxy and involving trillions of willing and conscripted participants. Then imagine a lone space station, floating in the cosmos, that is somehow set apart from this conflict.
Through significant effort and fortuitous circumstance this place has remained unaffiliated and relatively peaceful, providing a sanctuary for the lovers and thinkers who refuse to side with the two warring powers.
But this hard-won neutrality is not secure, not even slightly. There’s always someone offering vital resources in exchange for a little influence, or plotting to displace our leaders, or smuggling military equipment into forgotten corners of the station.
Holding off these myriad threats is an informal network of dependable sorts, each with a stake in the continuing vitality of the station. These characters; politicos, artisans, brokers and so on, may not be officially recognised leaders—but their influence is felt strongly across the community.
They might not get along — they might not even like each other. But they are united by their belief that the station is a cherished place that must be protected. The question is: when the pressure is rising, can they put their differences & personal motivations aside for the good of the community?
NO BUT LIKE, WHATIS ORBITAL?
ORBITAL employs the No Dice, No Masters system, utilising the core structure & mechanics from the wonderful Dream Askew by Avery Alder. This means two main things:
- There are no dice —players use tokens when they want their characters to take action, making 'moves'. Strong moves, which show the character at their best, require a token to be spent. Weak moves, which show the character's flaws or worst impulses, earn you a token. These tokens help you to weave dramatic arcs for your characters with far more control and simplicity than capricious dice, and make it easy for just about anyone to jump in and start playing.
- There are no masters—each player controls both a character and a share of the role of game master, taking responsibility for all of the NPCs and narrative pressures within one aspect of the setting (for example, THE INTERSTELLAR WAR or THE SCUM & VILLAINY). It's more like you're all taking turns playing the antagonists & introducing complications, rather than playing a game entirely without a GM.
Also drawing from Dream Askew, ORBITAL is a game of Belonging Outside Belonging. This means it focuses on stories on marginalised, precarious communities working to live independently from a dominant culture.
Like many of our favourite role-playing games, ORBITAL begins with everyone sitting down to make their characters. You’ll each choose from six CHARACTER ROLES—archetypes that help you create a distinctive main character. You’ll each also choose & personalise one of six SETTING ELEMENTS—aspects of the game world that can introduce challenges and complicate your character’s lives. Filling the two sheets out is quick, fun, and will generate a messy web of story threads to start mulling over.
Finally, you'll work together to create your STATION. This place, unique to your table, will be a hopeful space that is struggling against pressures both within and without. You'll think about what it looks like, how it's structured, and choose a few things that are frequent sources of strife within the community. You'll also choose one pressing threat — a perilous event that threatens to light a spark to all the powder built up within your ragtag, turbulent space station.
As you start to explore these threats, you’ll ask questions which will lead to scenes between characters, using your various moves to shape the narrative in material, concrete directions. You’ll bargain and gossip, analyse and manage, love and celebrate, struggle and fight, and all the rest.
Ultimately, through play, you’ll decide the fate of your community and the station as equal storytellers in your own unique tale.
You can play a satisfying one-shot in 3-4 hours, or play through a series of sessions to explore your station further and further complicate your character's relationships. It can be played 3 to 6 players, and will also includes rules for playing with a GM and 1-4 players when fully released.
| Status | Released |
| Category | Physical game |
| Rating | Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (155 total ratings) |
| Author | Jack Harrison |
| Genre | Role Playing |
| Tags | Anime,Sci-fi,Space,Story Rich |
| Mentions | Announcing the itch.io Summer Sale and T... |
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $12 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copies
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Community Copy
Claim a free copy of ORBITAL if you are marginalised/in need. Copies will be limited but I'll be adding more here as people donate.
More than 3,000 copies have been claimed already!
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Development log
Comments
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Got recommended this game when I was looking for something to emulate space-station slice of life. Seems like there's a lot here to work with and I appreciate it!
Do you have any restrictions about how the soundtrack gets used? I'm looking down the pipeline of streaming about many different games, and would love to use some of the tracks for bg music if that's allowed. But totally cool if that's not okay!
Thanks,
Thank you so much for your kindness and generosity in providing community copies of your game. I’m a disabled pension who can’t afford much so these free gifts really help me out in playing games and keeping my mind active. I won’t be broke forever so plan on coming back when I’m able to help out.
I really appreciate your hard work and kindness in providing community copies.
Nice. As we observed in an Italian review of the game, probably the biggest "weakness" of the game is the great need on a deeper explanation of the system, and lot of useful examples in the various chapters (or a big example at the end).
Making a sort of comparison, Dream Askew is more or less the same game (ie. It has the same structure), and it has 170 pages.
Loved the game! But the side content transformed my life a little bit. One adding is the startling missives and I wrote to a friend while their three month period when they went abroad. We wrote each other emails a form to stay in (fictional) contact. At my last birthday they gave me our letters printed into a little book. Thanks for making this
I just got my stock back so I’ll be opening up orders on mousehole.press again soon!Follow my newsletter if you want a reminder :)
My group played through this game over a couple of sessions (could easily have gone longer). It was an absolute blast! Our first foray into GMless games. Never had to wonder what to do. There's always something interesting happening for you to interact with.
It does take a VERY different mindset to play than D&D. So be aware of that if you come from D&D or similar games. But give it a chance and I'm sure your group will love it!
Also, I'm now using Starflung Missives from the bonus material for a letter writing game with my penpal. Lots of fun!
Saw that it says physical copies are sold out, just wanted to drop by and say a few are still available here at floating chair club ->https://floatingchair.club/products/orbital
About satellite descent (copied from my comment on the Kickstarter update): At the Unreasonable Demands game, in the Porblems section (page 5) you're outright missing the problems caused by drawing a 10! There's both problems from a draw of 9 and J, but not 10. It's not a huge problem, you can always choose from other problems, but I thought you ought to know :)
Played this with a group of 5, including one who had almost never played RPGs before and one who had only played D&D before, and we had a fantastic time! The setup, reading the rules, and reading and filling in all the pillars on the Miro board took a bit longer than we expected (close to 2 hours), and we didn't use the pillars much in the end.
We played very cinematically, and our group of a half-man half-machine Wrench, a shapeshifter Shadow that turned out to be the reluctant villain, a deserter military AI Heart, a multi-legged multi-armed multi-tentacled orb-creature Monitor, and our shapeshifter Source dealt with a cyber-bomb planted by the Shadow that shut off the life support in our station. The military AI Heart turned evil and revealed themself to the Shadow, who then had to decide whether to complete his mission and kidnap the Heart, or sacrifice his mission to save the station, all while the Wrench and the Monitor fought to keep the station afloat.
It was really some of the best improv I had done in a long time — I really like the head fake of how the collaborative station building prompts define the station, but also build groupthink. :P
We were able to start Belonging-outside-Belonging lucid-dreaming after the second round, which was also really cool to experience.
The graphic design is super nifty and really captures the Belonging-outside-Belonging feeling of the station.
Highly recommend this system for a sleek, virtual-friendly (seriously, the Miro board and instructions is really helpful for online play) RPG that's beginner friendly and fairly rules-light! Very cool picklists for characters as well.
"Belonging-outside-Belonging lucid-dreaming" is me rephrasing/repurposing/bastardizing a line from Riley Rethal's excellent Galactic 2e. In her words:
"as you're brainstorming ideas and discussing the shape of your story, you're entering a mode of play called idle dreaming. this mode is all about curiosity: asking questions, following tangents, brainstorming together. talk about the setting you're building and the things that you find interesting, confusing, or important."
At the start of Orbital, when answering the setting questions and fleshing out the Aspects, we engaged in exactlywhat Riley Rethal describes.
However, during play after the second round, we were all collaboratively storytelling in what felt like a mix between "idle dreaming" as described above and long-form (U.S. American) improv, where we were implicitly passing focus and taking turns to define scenes and pick who would be in each scene. We trusted each other and the story we were building together - building the setting together built groupthink to the point that players were playing up/off motifs that other players were setting up and building themes in the narrative. It really did feel like good long-form improv crossed with being in a TV writer's room, since we were describing film camera shot compositions during our scenes and building the visual aspect and bringing up running color motifs and so on. That's why I described it a bit differently as "lucid" dreaming, because we basically didn't use the rules at all at that point. We were just naturally passing focus without turn order and asking questions like "I have a really good scene idea, do you trust me?" or "I think X should go next, I want to see how their character reacts to what just happened."
Appreciate the interest, hope this helps!
Hello
Your game is really excellent and promising, just already with the playtest kit.
I really liked the No Dice No Masters system and the way you integrated the Dream Askew principles into your game.
Really, a very good game. I'm looking forward to the full version.
And a very nice alternative for playing in a SF context.
I did a review (in French) about ORBITAL on my blog.
http://www.jeepeeonline.be/2021/01/orbital-retour-de-lecture.html
There is a real interest about Belonging Outside Belonging games for French players (France, Belgium and maybe Quebec)
