Generation Ark

You are a passenger aboard the generation ark, Centauri 6. It is your entire world: this stark, metallic vehicle floating through an endless void.

But inside the ship, wondrous neighborhoods and a bustling downtown await. You would be forgiven if you believed yourself to be right back on your home planet. Until you step back out into the hallway. And reality rushes right back.

Your ancestors boarded this ship to escape the annihilation of their planet. Now, generations on, their descendants continue to live out their lives. It is a life both of purpose, and of meaninglessness. For the children, the people say. But living for someone else is difficult. And learning to live for yourself: that's what the people aboard the ship must figure out how to do.

That's what this game is about: learning how to live.

But living is hard when the dread of your existence underlies everything. When you know that, no matter what you do, your choices are circumscribed by your situation. You cannot leave. There is nowhere to go but here. 

What kind of life will you live? What meaning will you make out here, stranded amongst the stars? Will you honor your ancestors' legacy? Or will you buckle under the pressure?

And again: what does it mean to live a good life out here? How do we live?

In order to allow for these questions to be a central component of the game, I have hacked Riley Rethal's The Riot Starts for use as the central game engine. The game runs using dice pools to represent characters' giving to their community, and characters' overwhelming sense of dread.

There is no incentive to act in one way or another. It is up to you and your playgroup. Let the story unfold organically. Feel your way through.

There will be many conflicts that emerge as you play through the game. However, one thing remains true in conflict resolution: there are no cops on Centauri 6. And there are no prisons.

This game asks you to imagine other ways of handling conflict. Even in the most egregious situations: you must find a way to resolve harm in a non-carceral way. This is an abolitionist game. This rule must not be broken.

Finally, if you would like to reproduce, hack, or create your own derivative work of this game, I grant you permission under the CC 4.0 BY-SA license.

Thank you for checking out the game! Also, if you're wondering about the word "revised" in the URL, it's because this is my second attempt at making this game. Cheers!

8345 words, 28 pages.