Colony: Moon from Postmortem Studios

Apr 23, 2012

Postmortem Studios has released Colony: Moon, which is kind of like an RPG, but not really. They describe it as:

“A cooperative (or competetive) story game about founding a Moon colony, making it succeed and opening up the way to the rest of the solar system.

Players take on the parts of ‘The Board’ and make decisions about the future of the colony, expending political capital and gaining prestige when their plans work.”

The author has this to say about why this game was developed:

I was born in 1975. I’m starting to finally feel like a grown-up, which must mean I’m old. We stopped going to the moon in 1972 but when I was growing up I was surrounded by books and pictures talking about all our accomplishments in space and it wasn’t really conceivable that we wouldn’t go back there. That was a slow dream to die and the books I read were optimistic, talking about a Moon base by the late 1980s or mid 1990s.

Now the US doesn’t even have the Space Shuttle any more and the only sign of any vision is coming from private companies and film makers, and that’s strange and a rather modest vision at that.

Projects like getting out into space are like ITER, or CERN, they really need to be international efforts due to the cost and expertise required. While there is money to be made – potentially – in space, it feels like we’re mortgaging our future to the profit motive, rather than the wonder, and necessity, of taking to the solar system and the stars.

I wanted to make a game about competing ideas, negotiation, the risks in being unfocussed and the strengths in working together. The game really relies on people taking on a ‘role’ and playing it through, making a mix of political and pragmatic decisions.

I think it could, easily, also form the background and basis for someone’s hard SF RPG and I hope it sells well so I can do some rules and add ons for colonising the rest of the solar system, and beyond.

Colony: Moon is available at RPGNow as a PDF for $2.99