The world is broken. In a collapsing universe, your crew is your only family. Officially released today by Free League Publishing and Stockholm Kartell, Death in Space is a tabletop role-playing game set in the grimy blue-collar future of a universe filled with risk and opportunity.

Death in Space is a game about adventure and uncertain journeys out into the darkness of space, where the void whispers to the unlucky and imbues travelers’ bodies with strange powers. It is about you and your crew making a home of your spacecraft or station, your only sanctuary in a dangerous universe. Most of all, it is about surviving in an abandoned frontier system where resources are scarce, and competition is fierce.

Engage in power struggles and build your crew’s reputation. Salvage and steal to endure a ruthless universe. And above all, do anything you can to get that next job. Your life will depend on it.

Death In Space is Available Now

In Death in Space, you and your rag-tag crew are a bunch of hard-working explorers and laborers hoping for a big score. Your only hope of surviving is to take any contract you can find, sometimes leaving your fate in your enemies’ hands.

The default setting is the war-torn Tenebris system, a system of planets and objects revolving around the star Tenebris. It is a stellar system ravaged by war and strife, where the greed-fueled mining of precious gems started a conflict that left the system wrecked into pieces.

Old School Gaming

The game has its roots in the Old School Renaissance (OSR) scene and follows similar design principles to classic RPG games like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder. The rules are intended to be easy to use and quick to learn with plenty of room for customisation, as well as supporting and introducing the game world. As for the setting and tone, Death in Space is heavily inspired by the gritty future of early 80’s science fiction movies as well as classic westerns.

The core game book contains everything you’ll need to start playing:

•   Light-weight rules, intended to be easy to use and quick to learn
•   A system for quickly generating player characters & their spacecraft or space-station
•   60+ different modules to make the spacecraft or space-station your own
•   An introduction to the Tenebris system, its main locations and history
•   A system for repairs, where you collect spare parts to repair your stuff
•   20 cosmic mutations, representing physical manifestations of the void
•   A system for spacecraft confrontations and boarding
•   An introductory scenario to jumpstart your campaign
•   40+ tables and generators packed with setting flavor

In addition, there is an official soundtrack for the game, available at all the major streaming services. The soundtrack is packed with 90 minutes of atmospheric music that sets the tone and gives life to the themes present in the game, allowing you to truly experience it for youself.

There is also an online character generator, the DEATH-BBS, that lets you generate characters for the game in no time, with all the flavor from the core book.

Award Winning RPG Titles

Death in Space is created by Christian Plogfors and Carl Niblaeus of Stockholm Kartell, a key player in the Swedish old-school RPG scene, after a successful Kickstarter campaign that was fully funded in just 10 minutes!

Their previous game Mörk Borg RPG is a pitch-black, apocalyptic, fantasy RPG inspired by Swedish doom metal music. Winning big at the 2020 ENnie Awards, it took home almost every prize they were nominated for, including Product of the Year, Best Writing, Best Layout and Design. They even won silver in Best Game, losing out only to one of Free Leagues’ other popular titles, Alien RPG.

Similar to their last game, Death in Space will be printed and distributed by Free League Publishing. The label specialises in speculative fiction, tabletop role-playing games set in strange and wondrous worlds, with many of their titles being based on pop-culture, sci-fi and fantasy stories like Blade Runner, Alien, Twilight and The Lord of The Rings. Death in Space will be released under their Free League Workshop sub-label for independently designed games.

Will you be picking up Death in Space? 

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