Pioneer Space RPG: No Violence, Just Vacuum

Mongoose Publishing kickstart a radical proposition: What if your space exploration game didn't have a combat chapter?

Not because they forgot, and not because it's an upsell. In Pioneer, your primary adversary is the cold unforgiving vacuum of your lovelife space itself, and probably geo-politics. And the other air-breathing mammals trapped in your space vehicle, all of you greedily eyeing the oxygen tanks... I’m claustrophobic already.

It's The Old, Old Story

Designed by Dr. Sandy Antunes (actual NASA contractor!) Pioneer might be the most scientifically grounded space RPG ever published. When not co-founding RPGnet, Dr Antunes has worked on seven satellites and written NASA mission-scheduling software! So much more than a mercenary head-nodder deployed to bring a sense of legitimacy, this guy’s making sci-fi that’s harder than a pint of Neutronium in a Millwall shirt (other hypothetical by-products of collapsing stars are available).

Droid Meets Droid

Pioneer is best understood as what happens when you strip away the jump drives, the aliens, and the Third Imperium from Traveller and constrain the action to our Solar System in the near future (say 2045). Just some humans in rocket propelled boxes, hurtling around at 7.6 kilometres per second in a world where you click start to shut-down and your ‘smart’ fridge will try to sell you ... a fridge ... but also one in which we have the amazing ability to update software on machines 24 billion kilometers away. (Or to understate the achievement, a mere 0.0025 light years away)

Droid Becomes Chameleon

You’ll be working with manned manoeuvring units that run out of propellant, communications blackouts during orbital night, micrometeorite impacts requiring immediate tile replacements, and you’ll delight in discovering that Einstein's laws of motion are very serious things in zero gravity.

Droid Loses Chameleon

Here at Tabletop Towers, we're already planning the expansion campaigns Mongoose definitely aren’t publishing. We wondered about space toileting too... probably everything's on the cards?

Chameleon Turns Into Blob

Pioneer's 10-30 year timeline sits uncomfortably close to plausible disasters. Trapped in space due to civil disturbance? Due to global warming? Perhaps your Mars mission becomes permanent when Earth's entry corridors are filled with debris from disposable satellites and the billionaire funding your return trip has lost everything in a crypto scam with a cheesy authoritarian?

Obviously, we're hoping for far less gloomy scenarios and maybe some crossover potential. A Buck Rogers moment where your capsule encounters a Zhodani barge? Perhaps the Ancients left a cache on Titan and your routine survey mission discoveries make your physics degrees cry? Maybe 3i-atlas really is a Solomani Voyager class probe and the terrestrial UAP’s are somehow linked?

Droid Gets Blob Back Again

Most of all, we're hoping for a Red Dwarf-style expansion about the actual reality of long-haul spaceflight and asteroid mining. Give us vending machines that haven't been restocked in six months. Let us fill out Form 2716/B (Requisition for Replacement Toilet Paper, Emergency) in triplicate whilst the life support system develops an alarming rattle.

Blob Meets Blob

This is sounding more like a Paranoia crossover where The Computer has been placed in charge of orbital station operations. “It sounds like you’ve had too much to think, Citizen! Please report to the airlock for immediate de-briefing/de-breathing.”

Blob Goes Off With Blob And Droid Loses Blob, Chameleon And Droid

None of this is hard sci-fi, obviously. This game's probably not for us at all. We’re far too silly and maths isn’t our strongpoint. (neither’s writing - Ed)

How Many Times Have We Seen That Story?

But you should back it anyway. It’ll be fun to play a game where the most terrifying moment isn't encountering hostile aliens, it's realising you miscalculated your delta-V budget and now you're in an orbit that definitely wasn't in the mission briefing!

The Kickstarter Launches MJD: 60978.00000 (October 30th, 2025)

If you loved The Martian, Gravity, or For All Mankind, this is for you, and if you’re into Traveller this is your chance to experience the terror of early-TL space exploration in an environment where physics doesn’t really care about you or your story line.

For the rest of us planning Red Dwarf campaigns in a hard science game? Well, nobody's perfect.

Images and text courtesy of Mongoose Publishing.