In the story I’m currently running, our heroes Gribus, Ghiarren, and Taiuum have found themselves in the company of many other space travelers at a convocation called the Conjoiner, finding that their bizarre circumstances are not unique.
They greeted by two humans and their towering Moiu companion. When they’re not at the Conjoiner, their ship, Rushieb, is their home.
One of the things I’m trying to fully enable among players of Eyes Wide to the Stars is a deep-rooted aesthetic. It draws on some of the sources of Star Wars and Star Trek, but to some degree represents a road untaken. There are little glimmers of it in broader pop culture, like Blake’s 7 (which has the flaw of being uniformly terrible writing), but it never achieved full recognition outside the Terran Trade Authority books. That lack of a mass media touchstone makes it a little harder to communicate to players, but more importantly makes it hard to communicate between players. That communication is the core of roleplay, and game design is quite a bit like creating a language and expecting others to speak it. It’s no small order.
Our playtests continue at the xenophilia Discord, populated by the xenophiliacs!