The shape of space is new. Sprawling empires used to rise, spread to different worlds, before crumbling into ruin or slouching toward oblivion, but even those regular rhythms of change themselves… change. There have been no galactic empires in countless lives, not since the devastation wrought by the misuse of the most volatile of all technologies: the Faster-than-Light drive. The device that allowed worlds to fall to conquest with unaccountable speed, far in excess of light, bending fabric between worlds into jungle of deadly paradox, making each world an isolated island on the black seas with no aspirations beyond their solar system.
But the shape of space isn’t impermeable, not with the newest means to navigate it: the probability drive. Chance is the one means by which one might leap through the deadly void, pushing the probable to the surface of the ocean of the improbable. A vessel might leap across an entire sector, or it might blink from existence entirely. Even if you end up where you hope to go, the drive ensures you can never go back and cause a new tsunami of paradox.
Using the probability drive holds terrible risk, but it is a risk taken by those desperate, ravenous, or mad with some grand design. Even now, the spiders spread, autonomous vessels that spin their webs through the paradox-riddled void. They are the vanguard of the Void Vestige, those willing to walk between worlds, to brave the VAST COSMOS.
Vast Cosmos is a campaign of different solitaire games all about charting and learning about quirky worlds across a galactic map. As these games progress, you will venture across sectors of the galaxy, lay threads that can ease future travels, discover disconnected worlds, and slowly uncover their true nature. Vast Cosmos inherits elements of roll-and-write board games and world-building tools for role-playing games but is its own unique experience. Indeed, the game is all about the ability to customize and expand a galaxy from your imagination as many times as you like! The secrets you discover are conveniently indexed in a notebook, meaning Vast Cosmos produces a galactic atlas replete with places you might choose to explore and define more deeply in more traditional space-faring role-playing games.
Moreover, Vast Cosmos is a “Make-as-You-Play” game. This means that the game starts with a few materials (a map, printouts, notebook, and wooden cubes). These rules include tables and guidelines for modifying the components to build out a deep and unexpected galaxy, and this makes every copy of Vast Cosmos distinct from any other and uniquely your own. It also means that each time you play a game of Vast Cosmos, you build on the galaxy as you discovered it in the previous game, with an endless potential for new discoveries.
—description from the designer
Dice, Exploration, Print & Play, Science Fiction, Space Exploration · Dice Rolling, Hexagon Grid, Legacy Game, Paper-and-Pencil, Re-rolling and Locking, Solo / Solitaire Game
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Star Charter
2022
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