Through Monday, February 10 we present the FTL Nomad Bundle featuring Faster Than Light: Nomad, the high-adventure SFRPG from Stellagama Publishing. Starships riding fire across the sky – heroes and villains exchanging laser fire – desperate space truckers struggling against an alien monstrosity – vast alien vistas, flying cities, moonscapes, mad robots, close encounters: Throughout the future, near and far, brave heroes and dastardly villains face the universe in headlong high-action adventure. With old-school sf gaming flavor and approachable rules, the Faster Than Light rules present a streamlined yet comprehensive SFRPG suitable for interstellar travelling, nearer-future cyberpunk, and the galactic escapades of far-future star heroes.
Stellagama started in 2016 as a publisher of third-party supplements for White Star and Stars Without Number. After Jason “Flynn” Kemp at Samardan Press released his Cepheus Engine System Reference Document under the Open Game License, Stellagama supported Cepheus strongly through its These Stars Are Ours space opera setting (later renamed Terra Arisen) and many OGL rules expansions featured in our June 2022 Stellagama Cepheus Bundle. In 2022 Stellagama published its well-regarded Cepheus Deluxe Enhanced Edition alongside a lightweight version, Quantum Starfarer.
Faster Than Light: Nomad happened because of the Open Game License crisis. In January 2023 Wizards of the Coast tried to revoke the OGL. The Cepheus Engine is OGL-based – much of it derives from Mongoose Publishing’s Traveller First Edition SRD (2008) – so, like several other publishers, Stellagama took the opportunity to develop its own alternative system. The company intends FTL: Nomad to be its flagship rules set going forward, and has released the full rules text under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license.
FTL: Nomad presents varied character options while avoiding lengthy Traveller-style lifepath generation. Your character has seven skills: Combat, Knowledge, Physical, Social, Stealth, Technology, and Vehicles. Human player characters gain an Archetype (Adept, Elite, Engineer, Entertainer, Merchant, Pilot, Rogue, Scientist, Scout, Soldier) and one of 66 Talents such as Relentless, Ingenious, Drone Operator, Logistics Expert, or Untraceable. Each Archetype has its own standard kit of Equipment. Each Archetype and Talent grants Advantage or other benefits. (Some Talents have less obvious benefits; Big Mouth, for instance, gives you a bonus to antagonize someone.) Players also get Hero Points, which let them reroll or force the Referee to reroll.
Nomad‘s simple d6-based dice pool mechanic lets you adjudicate any sort of social, combat, or starship encounter. As with Traveller and Cepheus, you want to throw 8+ on 2D6 to succeed, though Nomad adds a 5E-style advantage-disadvantage system: Roll extra dice, then total the two highest (or lowest) results. Combat, too, has a Cepheus Deluxe feel, with much attention to deadly wounds and prolonged healing. Starship battles are short, brutal chases that emphasize relative positioning of attacker and target. But it’s not all Cepheus – Nomad‘s planetary tag system derives from Stars Without Number, and the ship design and tech-level rules are all new. (Nomad‘s true Traveller ancestry shows authentically in its 50-page equipment list and its breakdown of the immiserating costs to buy, fuel, and operate a ship.)
Designer Omer Golan Joel said in a May 2024 RPG Pub forum post, “As Nomad was free of the need to be directly compatible with Cepheus, let alone the Traveller SRD, we had a free hand in designing it, and we wrote the rules from scratch. Classic Traveller is wonderful as it is. We do not feel the need to challenge it, nor do we wish to infringe on Mongoose Publishing’s domain. We are going in a new direction, with our own ruleset, our own settings, and our own future.”
This all-new FTL Nomad offer buys you bargain-priced passage to Stellagama’s new, nomadic future. Pay just US$12.95 to get all five titles in our Nomad Collection (retail value $56) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Faster Than Light: Nomad corebook (plus the free Quickstart); the supplements Mecha, Spacecraft Go!, and Synthoids; and Adventure 1: The Customs Job.
This Nomad offer jumps away Monday, February 10.
