Space Quest!

Space. Aliens. Wormholes. These are the adventures... of the Galactic Starship Binturong. Starring...

It was supposed to be a show. You're a group of friends, actors, and LARPers, playing the crew of a starship, as you livestream your tabletop campaign to a million adoring fans. But things are starting to feel uncomfortably real.

(Space Quest! is a game loosely inspired by Galaxy Quest, but no knowledge of the movie is necessary to play)

Long Description

Space. Aliens. Wormholes. A bold crew sets out from Earth, with a simple mission: to visit strange new worlds and learn their secrets. These are the adventures... of the Galactic Starship Binturong. Starring...

A few years ago, you were an out-of-work actor. Now, you’ve got the job of a lifetime: streaming a weekly table-top campaign with six of your best friends. Thanks to the magic of the internet, a million subscribers tune in to your livestreams, as you command a starship on its five-year mission to explore strange new worlds.

Only, this week’s Space Quest! episode is special. It’s your 100th episode, and you’re recording your game live, at a convention, in front of a group of dedicated fans. But something else is different. Your sound effects budget is much higher than you remember. Your producer is taking a personal day, and there’s something about their replacement that just feels off. And did the audience just... vanish? Hello? Anybody there?

Roll to disbelieve. It’s a good thing this is all a game, right? You couldn’t even imagine what might happen if your band of troubled actors was actually in charge of a Galactic Starship...

Space Quest! is a game about pretending to crew a star ship. It’s also a game about pretending to crew a starship.

The first hour of the game will consist of a short tabletop one-shot, which will be run primarily by the players using an "adventure booklet" and an extremely simple dice-based system. Some characters will be "actors" with characters of their own, while others will play production roles such as GM, sound effects, and set decoration.

The other 2/3 of the game will proceed as a more typical theater LARP, in which the cast and crew of the "show" find themselves in a new setting with unexpected challenges. This will involve a number of "missions" featuring a combination of puzzles, structured activities, and freeform roleplaying / character interactions.

While the premise draws heavily from Galaxy Quest as well as a number of other classic science fiction settings, no knowledge of any source material is necessary or important to enjoy the game.

Space Quest! is a sci-fi game of low production value, and works best with players who enjoy imagining their own special effects

This game runs smoothest with 1-4 NPCs, who will switch between playing various background roles or hostile aliens, and who will not be needed for the first hour of the game (but can still show up then and be part of our loud, in-studio audience).

AI note: some elements of the show-within-a-show were created by ChatGPT (although all were rewritten by a human being), with the specific goal of creating something that felt intentionally generic