Orbital Blues – First Read

Space is big. It is really big! You have no idea how mind boggling big space really is. Which is probably why a lot of RPGs set in the seemingly infinite vastness of space, focus down on the intimate. Many of our favourite sci-fi books, TV shows, and films are about the found family of a crew, the wonder of exploration, and the fear of the unknown. Human emotions amongst the black. 

Orbital Blues focuses on a single crew trying to eek out an existence in the wild frontier of interstellar space: taking on jobs, keeping the ship in the air, and dealing with all the troubles along the way. Sam Sleeney & Zachary Cox wrote the game, Josh Clark was the artist, layout by Lone Archivist and maps provided by Josh and the Lone Archivist. Soul Muppet Publishing publish the game.

First Read articles represent me going through the book in question for the first time. It is my initial impressions of the mechanisms, themes, and setting presented within its pages. I have not played the game at the time of writing.

Orbital Blues lays out its stall clearly early on. From the back cover evoking shows like Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, to the front billing as ‘A Space Western RPG’. A retro futuristic feel throughout supports this idea. The front cover feels like an ode to Americana and truck stops along the long roads of the United States. The ‘Frontier Galaxy’ looks like one imagined by the 50s and 60s, with adverts for shotguns alongside bulky spaceships, dusty planets, and spinning orbitals. 

The book evokes past eras so much it goes as far as to address the attitudes of those time periods. There is an element of 90s corporate greed and the social views of that era, but the text emphasises that those are not to be celebrated. This is a game of the marginalised, not the glorification of those responsible for that marginalisation. 

The game wastes no time in getting straight to the character creation. Starting with a broad concept and name we get to the nitty gritty of mechanisms. 

Now I have complained in the past about games where they don’t show you the rules before making these character choices. Here it feels like less of a problem. That is down to the way that Orbital Blues describes its three stats of Muscle, Grit, and Saavy. We learn not only how they will be used in play, but also what a high or low number in that stat means for how your character might look and act. This gives a clear picture of how the stat will work in play, even if we don’t know the precise mechanisms yet.

The book then whips back to background. We are encouraged to give our character a moniker and assign some to the other characters as well. These could be something like ‘The Heart Breaker’ or ‘The Fixer’.

Then it is back to mechanisms. Heart and Blues tell you a lot about how the designers want you to approach this game. Heart is just HP, but naming it this way makes it feel more like the will to carry on against all odds. It’s not just your health, it’s your determination. Blues is an abstracted measure of how much trouble you are in and how it might affect your character.

The mechanisms that drive your Blues are pushed a bit further back in the book, which feels like a mistake for something so core to the game. Starting characters get Gambits, special abilities, and Troubles. The latter might be something like ‘Lovesick’ (you pine for a lost love) or ‘Papa was a rolling stone’ (you live in a parent’s shadow). You answer some questions about these as part of character creation and then they can come up in play. 

When the Troubles come up in play, or when things just go wrong for you, you can gain Blues. That sounds bad right? However it makes the story of your character move forward and once they gain enough Blues the player can say ‘Trouble is Brewing’ for their character. They get to address that trouble in a scene and get some bonuses to boot. Resetting their Blues counter to 0,  they then heal up, get a stat bonus, or gain a new Trouble. Why would you want to do the latter? Well every two troubles you receive a new Gambit as well. 

This is the core of the progression of the game, and puts the heart and soul of sessions squarely on the shoulders of the troubles of your characters. I really like it, but feel it doesn’t stand out in the text as much as it needs to. The character creation section feels out of sequence. You have to flip back and forth between the description of Gambits and the pages where they are listed, doing the same for Troubles. Sections are close together, but the flow just feels off. 

We finish off characters with some equipment and mementos, and then are asked to cap it all by choosing a song that best represents them. A leitmotif that would play when the character is on screen. Music reverberates through Orbital Blues. Gambits are named after songs. A line from Talking Heads’ ‘Once in a Lifetime’ is used as flavour text on an insurance company advert. The Beatles, Grease, and Edwin Starr feature in snippets of the world. It’s a mixtape that will affect you differently depending on your own particular taste in music. I found it charming and evocative.

Once we have a crew, we need a ship. You get some tables to generate names, weapons, and a bit of history. Crucially the actual mechanisms are shoved quite a bit later in the book. The ship stats are not described at this point. I think the designers have done this so they can lay out the actual rules of the game next. I would have preferred a brief overview at the start and then a proper look at the rules later on. Information bears repeating sometimes.

The core rules of the game are very straightforward and well explained. You roll 2d6 adding a stat and are looking to get 8 or more. If you have ‘The upper hand’ you get an extra dice and take the two highest. If you are ‘Against the Odds’ you get an extra dice but take the two lowest. The players can trade Heart, and sometimes Blues, for re-rolls giving them a lever to pull on. 

Although the focus of the game is on the characters and their troubles, the book doesn’t leave you hanging. The system is detailed, well explained, with a light touch that will be easy to hold in my head. The rules address everything from chases to interstellar travel. The latter feels deliberately fluffy, emphasising that how you get places is less important than the crew you are travelling with and why you are going.

Money is abstract into credit and debts, with narrative consequences for you being up or down either way. There is an expanded equipment list with lots of legal and illicit options wonderfully described. Each one feels like a little snippet from the setting, full of potential hooks and boldly drawn colour. 

Combat feels detailed but not fussy. There are some interesting touches like melee weapons getting an initiative advantage, and a once per combat ‘Upper Hand’ check. This feels like an attempt to make the game less focused on the ‘pew-pew’ of sci-fi. Will be interesting to see how it works out in play. 

There is a whole section on running the game, giving you all sorts of advice and inspiration for putting together your own game of Orbital Blues. 

Enemies are abstracted with a simple stats block and a little table to roll on to show you how they might act. They become a bit more complicated if they become ‘Marks’ the villains of the game. This ‘bestiary’ is clearly laid out with loads of flavour scattered through the descriptions. 

Rounding out the book for the last 50 pages or so is the Sutler System. This is a detailed area of space with loads of interesting places, NPCs, and potential jobs for the crew to go on. It is a good way for the designers to show off the potential of the game. 

I’ve really enjoyed reading Orbital Blues. The system feels easy to understand but with enough detail to give you structure when you need it. I have some niggles, like the lack of an index, but in general I think it is very well put together with clear explanation of its mechanisms. Every page drips with inspiring details, hooks, and motivations for both GM and players. I’ll be firing up the boosters and heading into the black to bring you reports from the frontier.

I bought Orbtial Blues with my own money. Some of the links in this article are for Drivethrurpg and we get a cut of any purchases made from that link.

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