About ONE MILLION years ago, I started working on this space adventure game. Holy crap, it's taking me forever, it seems like.

Mostly it's in the waiting for someone PLEASE to playtest it stage, but lemme fill you in on some of the concepts in case you don't know.

The deadly and mysterious Scourge all but wiped out humankind millenia ago. Now it looks as though they have returned to finish the job.You have to stop them somehow.

This is a semi-traditional setup in terms of GM and players, but the players themselves take turns playing major roles and supporting characters. Different than Screen Presence in PTA, this game has you actually playing different characters. One moment you're the captain of a ship, with a capable crew, and the next moment you're part of the crew for another player's character.

It also includes a build-it-yourself map that acts as sort of a Cataan-like gameboard. It tracks resources and affiliations and things. When the Scourge show up, they start fighting for control of map sectors.

Your job as a ship captain is to gain control of sectors, which give you more resources to hold off the Scourge. You also must undertake special quests that give you an advantage when fighting the Scourge, like allies and strange artifacts.

The game involves strategy of a sort, but it's geared toward thematic play, with "Premisey" questions centering on hope and sacrifice and risk and so on.

Think Star Wars, and Star Blazers, and Star Frontiers, and you're on the right track. Plus that narrativism stuff.

So far the game features fantastic art by Ed Heil and Bill Mudron. Whatever happens, the game is going to look amazing, I tell you! Amazing!

I'd like for it to be done and ready to go before GenCon, but that mostly depends on playtesting. So cross your fingers.

Well, the only reason I haven't playtested it yet is that my most regular/reliable playing group are friends form Denmark and we play IRC. We decided not to give Galactic a go, simply because it did not suit IRC mode well.

But I WILL try to playtest it otherwise. And I will buy and play the finished product. It's great already :)

So, keep up the good work, Matt.

Per

Washington, D.C.-area Forge-folk get together every month or two to try new games, sometimes just new to us but often playtest-stage stuff. If you'd be willing to hook me up with a copy of the current rules, I can try to sell folks on playing a session. (I've been drooling over this game ever since I started reading your blog posts about it, myself).

I have a group that gets together monthly to try out odd forgie games, and I love space opera/sci-fi. My last space opera game was heading in the same direction (multiple characters, epic scope), so this game lights my fire. Is it possible to get a playtest copy to try to recruit my group with?

Paging John Harper... why aren't we planning to playtest this in January? Sure Wilhelm wants to run Jyhad, but there's playtesting to be had!

I'd LOVE to give this a run, Mr. Wilson.  If you wish playtesters, I can get my group together to run this :)

Of course, I hope to also be getting them used to you by PTA :)

I used to have SECRET PLANS about playtesting this. But the craptacular meeting schedule of our group (partly my fault) made me ditch those plans. I need 5 Sundays in a row for this baby. WHO IS WITH ME?!

Re: a copy of the rules... yes. I'm in the middle of editing an example of conflict that doesn't quite have that, um, panache. Those of you who've asked will get a PM in a day or two. And thanks!