I would be very interested in this. I have seen "The Silent Star" / "First Spaceship on Venus" which I assume is what you are going for. I have tried to track down a copy of "Ikarie XB-1" but have never been able to. Are there other movies you know of that would be good source material? Some of the american ones are fun but very schlocky.

I know I should really read more of that old sci-fi - I only have a couple of Lem novels.

Anyway, I think there are other things you could add to it. You could use a theme of political tension to go alongside scientific cooperation. Obviously that is from the cold war but could still be used - having one or more people be a spy who has to decide whether to carry out orders or help the mission would be great. Assembling the crew and getting the ship built for the mission could be a large part of the game.

Possible characters:
Media / communications - tasked with informing the world about the mission, and probably having to deal with censorship and technical issues
Doctor - has to deal with unknown effects of space and alien stuff on the crew
Soldier or Political - sent to "protect" the crew, actually tasked with keeping an eye on them

I would be tempted to make "special mission" cards and give them randomly to the players, covering political stuff, personal issues, etc.

Hi Everyone,

After a little experience with Apocalypse World and Dungeon World I realised I would have to produce a hack. I love sci-fi, but many hard(ish) sci-fi games have detailed rules and are difficult to get into. So, this is an attempt to remedy that starting with a base of Dungeon World and adapting it to space sci-fi. I decided to release it early and see how that turns out.

I’m going for realism in areas where it makes a difference (eg. zero gravity, isolation of space travel, weird alien life). While having allowing for a lot of diversity and “kewl powers” for the characters. Obviously, I have also toned the abstractness of the system down a bit as well and it has much more focus on character expertise and technology.

The main theme is exploration, particularly finding alien ruins and artefacts, new forms of life, valuable resources, founding colonies, building industries, etc.

Obviously the classes need more work, but they are hopefully play-testable. I’m working on writing up a complete rulebook for the game. I’d love any feedback, particularly on what you think could be added or any problems with the game. I’m tossing up whether to alter the system further - for example removing statistic scores, changing the dice to 2d10 to make way for more modifiers, adding in more detailed tactics for combat, etc.

Oh yeah the blurb:

“Suppose there was a place where there were things unexplored, things that man had never seen before. Not just small things, but ruins, cities, living species, continents, entire planets completely unknown to us.  And not just a few, but an immense number, so many that if we gave each of the billions of people on this world a starship and gave them their own planet to explore it would still uncover only a fraction of what we know exists.  As explorers you would ask, ‘Where is this place?’ Well, you’re living in it.”
      - Dr Hans Trageus, Address to incoming students, Cygnus IV Space Academy

I’m also not sure about the name - “The Andromeda Paradox” is from a setting piece which may not even make it into the game. I’d prefer something more general but it seems like all the good names are taken.

And the file:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2068464/Andromeda%20Moves%200.1.pdf