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1. The Basics

What is Frontier Worlds?

In a Nutshell

A group of broken people fly a ship through the under-developed Backwaters of human-occupied space. Their relationships are fraying and their ship is falling apart, but they push on doing odd jobs for the locals in order to keep flying and chase their forlorn dreams into the stars.

Frontier Worlds sits somewhere between space western and space opera, with a hard sci-fi twist. Narrative is front and centre, teasing out the unresolved issues and petty conflicts of the crew as they wander a universe too vast for change.

The Story

The Game

Frontier Worlds uses the Forged in the Dark system, originally designed for playing groups of criminal scoundrels in the wonderful Blades in the Dark. The system emphasises narrative and improvisation, with concepts like the Devil's Bargain, Load, and Flashbacks to make gameplay more dynamic and less tactical.

Every roll in the game involves between 1 and 4 six-sided dice, and whether you're rolling smoothtalk a contact or repair damage to the ship every roll has an effect on the world. There are no rolls for rolling's sake or failure that mean nothing but waiting to try again.

The Vibe

The Themes

To fit the vibe, there are certain themes that Frontier Worlds embraces and others it intentionally avoids.

Most importantly, Frontier Worlds distances itself from the themes and tropes of settler colonialism present in its space western inspirations. The space humanity expanded into is empty, and so vast that it cannot hope to ever fill it all. This is in no way an attempt to minimise or erase the massacres, forced displacements, and innumerable other atrocities of real-life settler colonialism, but rather a desire to focus on the existential horror of endless empty space rather than the moral horror of stolen land.

The game also does not focus on themes of sexism, racism, ableism, queerphobia, or religious persecution. The War era of the 20th and 21st centuries were catastrophic for all Earth cultures, and in the aftermath the new Trinity government forged a united humanity through the colonisation of space and the restoration of Earth during the Solar Golden Age. The remnants of humanity pulling together to survive, recover, and restore their home served as a baptism of sorts from the sins of their ancestors. In the 26th century, discrimination of this kind is very rare and looked upon dimly by most people as dredging up the worst of old humanity.

Some inequalities die hard, however, and issues of socioeconomic class, labour rights, wealth, and power still burn strong in Trinity space. The democratic Trinity government is sluggish and hands-off, and many corporations own outright the worlds they centre their activities on. Their ultra-rich owners and shareholders gravitating to the centres of political power where they hold enormous formal and informal influence.

Trinity law requires employers to negotiate labour rules with worker unions, but representation is easily co-opted to stifle complaints and hide abuses, and the central government lacks the resources to properly monitor and intercede across humanity's innumerable worlds.
AIs are afforded certain rights and protections after decades of campaigning, but are denied full legal personhood, leaving them even more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

Inspirations & Touchstones

Tabletop Games

Video Games

Written Media

Visual Media