What's next for Sixty Years in Space?

Update 3 required a huge investment of time to put together - but it solved a number of problems with Sixty Years in Space. I really should take some time off to celebrate but I'm already thinking about starting writing further updates to the game.

I don't think I'll be making many changes to the Crewed Rules: and I anticipate those rules, along with All Errors are My Own, are unlikely to change significantly between now and some hypothetical version 1.0/ end of early access.

A Lot of Zeroes also didn't change much between updates 2 and 3 which suggests that it may be nearly feature complete. But A Lot of Zeroes is also different enough from the main game, that I might want to make it playable in a completely standalone fashion - with rules compatibility with a hypothetical Sixty Years In SRD, whatever that may be.

A Facility with Words would like to become two books, if it could: one about worlds with large populations -- and with more work done on civil functions and the exfiltration game -- and one about worlds with atmospheres and life. If I do make that split, the second book would be called All Terras are My Own, with a sub-game for terraforming worlds, much as I added a sub-game in (A)-Base (D)-Landing about base-building. A good part of expanding A Facility with Words will be making more encounter cards: for plants, animals and individuals and robots beyond the Advanced technology level that the current encounter cards stop at.

I shipped (A)-Base (D)-Landing with two empty chapters (which LaTeX conveniently compiled out) called Site Events and Colonists. This is part of the reason I'm comfortable only asking for a minimum of $1 for these rules -- not that they're incomplete: just that the base building game is missing some chaotic push back as you play. Both of those will tie together because the majority of site events will scale up with the number of colonists at site. The Colonists chapter will also add history encounter cards to give more context for the life that each colonist experienced back home on Earth.

There's also a number of supplements and spin-offs I've mentioned in the game or elsewhere. Absent Without is now going to end up covering the Directions era, starting in 2100 - now that Sixty Years in Space actually covers 60 years in space (2040-2099 inclusive). I'm still figuring out the shape of this, as many things that want to go in there may better be placed in other rules and as a result it's going to take a while. Colony: Subtitle is going to be a set of rules that cover getting from small colonies to big ones, with all that that entails: tax, legal systems, local politics - but also undersea exploration and an alternate scenario where humanity never leaves the surface of the Earth. RE: Crewed Rules is going to be an introductory scenario involving recruiting the crew and putting them through basic training. Of the Solar System is going to have a whole lot of faction missions -- one mission arc for each faction in All Eras are My Own -- and exists as material I initially cut from those rules. Six Meals in Space and Roche Limit are two card games that currently exist as a few scattered notes but could materialise at any point. I also at one point threatened to do a per-crew position rewrite of the rules called the 4Play system...

But first I think I'm going to address the chief culprit in the room - that there's too many rules and they're far too complex, still. Far too many for any playing group to be reasonably expected to learn. My argument has always been that space is complicated and getting it realistic takes a lot of work, and my expectation is that if you really care, you'll be willing to put in the work. But due to the segmentation of social media - and especially the evolution of TTRPGs to be more art, product and actual play focused - I'm finding that even connecting with the niche of a niche of people who I think will be interested is difficult - even as I struggle with discovering and clearly communicating the game. If you came to the rules in an earlier iteration, it appears you're not likely to come back.

And that's why I think I'm going to work on a different game for a while. It's going to be called Epic Hazard Operation. It's going to be about what happens from minute one of when the space station where you're working explodes, or the infection escapes, or the grey goo evolves. It's going to feature a crew from the bottom rung of society, the supervisors who try to keep them in line and the professionals who come to clean up afterwards. I'll try to make it as rules light as I can - which will still be rules heavy in the grand scheme of things. The secret sauce will be the players don't know the real rules. Because its designed for you, the Sixty Years in Space enthusiast, to act as the procedural generator for the map that they explore, the systems they don't know how to operate, the upgrades they don't know exist, the factions they don't know they can antagonise.

Update 3 for Sixty Years in Space is out

Update 3 is out for Sixty Years in Space is out. And I'm incredibly proud of it.

There's enough changes here that in many ways, this feels like an 1.5th edition. But the key improvement is I've found the shape of the game in a way that was unfortunately lacking in earlier versions. I've slimmed down the core (now called the Crewed) rules and put the focus firmly on space travel in the core game.  It includes significant revisions to the way actions work and a lot of new actions and activities such as phoning home, immigration and hull breaches, and moves the whole exploration of the surface of worlds to a new supplement (A)-Base (D)-Landing where it belongs: as a preamble to a whole new base building scenario for those players who like the idea of exploring and exploiting extraterrestrial worlds in much more detail.

The key change is tying encounters to the expansion of exoinfrastructure. As you move on the High Frontier map, you'll see other factions building factories and colonies and anchoring Bernals in a way that should make the solar system feel much more of a living and breathing thing without having to learn a whole lot more rules in This Space Intentionally or All Errors are My Own. And encounters have been expanded and simplified by adding encounter cards, so you can quickly create adversaries and allies without having to roll on a whole lot of tables every time you have an encounter.

In making this change, I've also tweaked and enhanced rules across all the supplements. But the Crewed Rules (the new name for the core rules) have received the most attention and polish to make Sixty Years in Space an easier version of the hardest sci fi TTRPG. The full release notes are available on the itch.io devlog post.