Teens in Space combines science fiction adventure with adolescent angst. It runs on the same engine as its somewhat better-known predecessor Kids on Bikes, which was designed primarily to tell stories in the mode of Stranger Things. Here the emphasis is on not-quite-mature characters trying to handle adult responsibilities…IN SPAACE!
The game has one of those character creation processes designed for a group, in which a lot of the campaign’s premises are established by answering questions. I’m going to hypothesize that there are two other players whose characters will be part of the same ship’s crew as mine. Together we’ll design a spaceship as well as establish some facts about our characters and their relationships.
Our first task is to decide what kind of ship, and therefore what kind of crew, we will be operating. I opt for a Science Vessel: basically peaceful in intent, but liable to run into various kinds of trouble. Each player gets to add one minor Improvement to a basic configuration that includes basic self-defense weapons and shields, sublight and light-speed propulsion systems, a mid-range set of scanners, and a Heat Meter (sort-of the ship’s hit points) of 5. Choosing for the whole group, I select Enhanced Scanners, an EVA craft for work outside the ship, and a Greenhouse for growing food.
Now we turn attention to the crew members. The first step is to pick a species; the game provides 28 options and encourages players to devise their own, ‘cause it’s a big universe out there. For my main character I choose the Quillarians, adorable 9-inch-tall hedgehog people with pacifist convictions and a gift for organic engineering. For the other crew members I choose a Human and an Abyssean, an aquatic biped who gets around in a water-filled exoskeleton.
With my choice comes a question to answer about my character: what would drive you to harm another living being? That’s a tough one, and I’ll say the desperate defense of a person or thing that matters deeply to me.
Next, we give our crew members Tropes, many of which are jobs but more generally describe our characters’ narrative roles. The Human will be our pilot—the Trope is called Flyboy—and the Abyssean our leader and main scientist (under the Scholar trope). My little Quillarian could be the dewy-eared Newbie, but instead I’ll make them the Engineer. The book isn’t super helpful about names (except to note that Quillarians don’t have family names because they consider everybody family), so I’ll string some syllables together in the grand tradition of not-so-serious science fiction: Veebolitt, known to their friends as Big Vee or just Vee. (our human pilot’s name is Jennifer Jett; the Abyssean scientist’s is Daras Cleetu)
Your Trope determines your basic abilities, which are expressed as dice of differing sizes from d4 to d20; your strongest ability is rated d20, whereas your weakest only a d4. The profile for Engineer leads with Brains (d20) and ends with Charm (d4). In between are Grit (d12), Brawn (d10), Flight (d8), and Fight (d6).
In addition, at this point you have three questions to answer about your character, each requiring a creative answer:
1) What’s the craziest fix you ever pulled off? Well, when I was finishing a bioengineering class project at the Academy—this was like my second year—I was trying to develop a superconductor out of bioluminescent plankton, and the ionically charged algal substitute I was feeding them turned out to refract their high-energy emissions, which shouldn’t have been a problem except that the containment field somehow converted it to gamma radiation and suddenly my little plankton tank is basically a nuclear reactor with inadequate shielding. Anyhow, after briefly panicking I realize that all I need to do is polarize the emissions crossways and so I grab some highlighter ink and paint a double-sized magnifier sheet green, then I climb into a rad suit and slip that in around the perimeter as a filter. Looked stupid as fuck, but it worked.
2) How would you describe your connection to the ship? I’m a little uncomfortable having it in my care, since it’s not organic tech. But I’ll give it my best shot!
3) What piece of advice did a parent or mentor give you before you left? “Always…” no, wait, “Never… Never reject a side effect out of hand; life’s greatest gifts are usually the unexpected ones.”
The next step is to define your character’s Fatal Flaw, ideally a virtue pushed too far, or a trait that has served the character well in circumstances that differ greatly from their life now. Quillarians are known for optimism as well as pacifism, which suggests a trusting nature.
Returning to the group, we have five more questions, this time about the ship and the crew as a group:
1) How did the crew meet? We were assigned our positions on this ship through the Academy as a senior internship for our courses of study.
2) Describe two moments of tension within the crew. When we left the docks for the first time our pilot darted through the ship traffic with high-speed high-gee maneuvers—scared the poop out of the rest of the crew. But I have to admit she pulled it off.
The second one that comes to mind is in Hollix spaceport before our departure, when I got our replacement flux conduits stolen by those two guys who said they needed to borrow them for a quick test on a repair job they were doing. Boy, everybody was mad at me for days.
3) What was a moment that you felt truly bonded with the crew? When we broke warp and came into orbit around that moon and realized we weren’t in class anymore, we were working on a real survey as actual Fleet crew. Well, OK, interns. But we still felt like we’d made it.
4) What rumor did you hear the last time you were in a spaceport? This really nice Mystarian I met in Hollix told me that she’d foreseen a great cluster of ships fleeing a catastrophe. It was kinda scary, actually.
5) What job is the crew in the middle of right now? Right now we’re assisting a major survey of the fourth moon of Tirmotal IV, charting masses of plantlife from orbit in support of the planetside crews who are cataloguing samples. Pretty routine so far, seems like typical internship work as far as I can tell.
Next, I get 10 more improvement points to spend on my character’s abilities or save for additional ship features. I want to save at least a couple for the ship so I spend eight points on self-improvement:
Escape Artist (1 point): +3 on checks to find escape routes or hiding places
Goody Two-Shoes (1 point): at the cost of an Adversity Token I can find and receive help from a law enforcement agency on whatever inhabited planet I happen to be on. (I get Adversity Tokens when I fail skill checks.)
Heightened Charm (1 point): I get +1 on Charm rolls, which should help some since it’s my weakest ability.
Intuitive (1 point): Spending an Adversity Token allows me to ask the GM one question (and get an honest, straight answer) about my surroundings or an NPC or anything else I might notice something inobvious about.
Lucky (2 points): I can spend an Adversity Token to reroll a check.
Skilled at Engine Repair (1 point): I can assume success in relevant checks of difficulty 9 or less, and I’ll get +3 to rolls on relevant checks of higher difficulty.
Spirited Motivator: I can give a crewmate a bonus of +2 on a check per Adversity Token spent, so long as I describe the pep talk I gave them beforehand.
Now all three of us can spend any unused Improvement Points on ship upgrades. I’ll assume the others each have 2 left as well, so we can spend 6. We’ll spend 1 on two EVA suits to complement the craft we bought earlier. Two more points will buy us a Medical Bay. Two Escape Pods will hold four crew members and cost 2 points, and we’ll spend the final point to upgrade the Greenhouse so it can feed all of us.
OK, so we have two statblocks to show: one for Big Vee, and another for the ship, which we’ll name Bioscope 1.
Veebolitt (Big Vee), Quillarian Engineer
Fatal Flaw: Too Trusting
Species Drawback: Pacifist; -2 on Fight checks
Stat Dice:
Brains d20
Grit d12
Brawn d10
Flight d8
Fight d6
Charm d4 +1
Improvements: Escape Artist, Goody Two-Shoes, Heightened Charm, Intuitive, Lucky, Skilled at Engine Repair, Spirited Motivator
Bioscope-1, Science Vessel
Core Systems:
Thrusters d4, Shields d4, Turrets d4
Heat Rating: 5
Support Systems:
Enhanced Scanners
EVA Craft x1
Escape Pod x2
EVA suit x2
Facilities:
Medical Bay, Standard
Greenhouse x2
Crew:
Daras Cleetu, Science Officer and Captain
Jennifer Jett, Pilot
Veebolitt, Engineer
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