Is there a game that is great for the SciFi trope of “show up in a new place, try to understand the differences between there and home, engage in diplomacy or warfare, and return”? You would want the tools to map out the galaxy (/dimensions) through your “travel” moves and roles that let you do moves related to diplomacy/research/firefighting/etc. There are probably other forces doing this travel and some of them present existential risks. (Think Stargate SG:1 or Sliders, for example)
Uncharted Worlds?
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Uncharted Worlds can do this, and will probably do a better job of this when the Far Beyond Humanity expansion drops.
I want this.
Yeah, Uncharted Worlds is a base scifi space opera game. You could easily do this, but you’d might want to add specific custom moves for some of these things.
Inverse World is fantasy, not sci-fi, but I think you’ll find the focus on exploration and movement very useful. It’s also a lovely game on its own merits.
Uncharted Worlds and Inverse World, as mentioned, and Sign In Stranger by +Emily Care Boss if you want something utterly different than PbtA. I’d suggest Human Contact over Shock, as it does pretty much exactly this. Other possibilities: Dilemma, How We Came to Be Here (with some adjustments), and Worlds Without Master.
Suppose I should also update the trope to be travel to a different: place/reality/dimension/time. Lots of great suggestions, folks!
Shock: Human Contact is nice indeed.
Didn’t Matt Wilson of Primetime Adventures fame work on a game where the map of galaxy was created session by session? Did that ever come out?
Todd Grotenhuis , maybe look at Time&Temp?
Emily Care Boss and Joshua A.C. Newman , can you speak to that last post?
There is a link to a version of Sign in Stranger here: http://www.blackgreengames.com/game-design/
Hm! Yeah, Human Contact is my game about that. You can get it (and Shock:) by backing my Patreon at http://Patreon.com/joshua !
It assumes that contact is predominantly a matter of learning what the fuck is going on in this intercultural contact. It’s heavy on the Ursula K. Le Guin model, though I’ve been through my share of space battles. It’s pretty hard SF, so it’s less like Star Trek naval battles and more like a surreal set of escalating threats until someone pulls a trigger with tragic consequences.
It assumes that Contacts that go right are about 20 years from top to bottom. The Academics who are usually the ones initiating contact live for some number of centuries, but any given contact is a big deal in one’s career, whether as a military strategist or a memetic meteorologist.
My favorite part, though, is when a Contactor tries to be all sneaky and send in black ops anthropologists as a forward team. Hard to say how much it’s comedy and how much it’s tragedy. Which, I guess, sums up the human experience. http://patreon.com/joshua