Punk Galactic is a deckbuilding tabletop roleplaying game about making a living in a megacorp ruled galaxy. You and your crew will create great plans like in movies like Ocean's Eleven and Now You See Me, and then execute those plans like the characters in shows like Cowboy Bebop or Firefly.

I love games that inspire my creativity, focus on character growth, and have meaningful choice. I keep that mentality throughout the design of the game from the high level mission structure to the core playing card based mechanic.

Gameplay

You and your crew will go on missions to meet new contacts, earn new equipment, and upgrade your ships and bases. Each mission is divided into key stages that highlight the important moments in that mission. Each stage has a planning phase where you create your plan, and an execution phase where you play out said plan. The planning phase inspires creativity by taking what you discuss and using it to set up the perfect scene for the execution phase. The choices you make during planning directly effect what you play in the execution phase. The checks you make will create opportunities later on.

Once the mission is over, there is always downtime, where you and the entire table will create your next mission by performing a Recon. You Recon your next mission by asking the questions to best set up your next heist. The details of the next mission is then built from these questions. Your creativity actually shapes the next mission.

What is being a Freelancer without tools, weapons, and space ships. The core game progression is earning money to buy better equipment, expand your contact list, and establish hideouts all throughout the galaxy. As of right now there are over 300 items in the game from infiltration tools, to cybernettik gear, to spaceship pieces.

Mechanics

A Skill Check is required whenever an outcome is in question. This is done outside of an encounter by drawing one number card. The value of the check is equal to the value of the card number, plus the suit modifier, plus the Skill modifier.

Card Number + Suit Modifier + Skill Modifier = Check Value

You can use face cards to change the suit of the card you drew for the Skill Check. Each General Skill has an associated suit where it will gain additional benefits when that suit is present.

The Red Joker is a critical success, a value of 14 with whatever suit you want, while the Black Joker is a critical failure, a value of 0 with no suit. Both reset your deck of cards by causing you to shuffle, but the Black Joker allows you to perform a card upgrade before you shuffle. These are the basics of how the cards add more to the game but there are systems throughout the book that utilize cards in ways that only cards can be used.

An encounter is a scene with stakes. This can be a chase, combat, exploration but at the start of the encounter everyone draws a card to determine initiative. the suit of the card drawn determines which character goes first with Spades > Clubs > Diamonds > Hearts > Black Joker. Each round, you draw two cards at the start, and then determine how you want to use your two main actions and two movement actions. Each card can be committed to one Skill Check, be used to perform maneuvers with your weapons, or even cast Altered and Tech Powers.

Altered and Tech Powers are the "magic" in the system. You use the two cards drawn to spend the value of the card, the energy, to add effects and make your power unique. The powers end up being more about the creativity of deciding what you want your powers to do and how it looks, than picking the correct spell from a list.

An encounter is more than just damage to hinder players, the Effects and Resistance system is easy to apply and use for any length of encounter. Each effect lasts 1 round by default and a character's resistance to the effect reduces the tier of that effect. So a character might be pushed Prone instead of Downed or if they are more resistant, just Pushed back slightly instead. Maybe instead of being Feared, they are instead only Intimidated to use another example.

Companies

There are thousands of companies in the galaxy, but these are a few of the biggest companies. These are the ones that have their own currency and own sectors of space. The ones you will be working with or against, as a Freelancer.

Tramlaw

"Saving money for easy living" is the garbage Tramlaw shovels down society's throat. The truth is that are saving money for themselves. They sell the cheapest things: cheap for you to buy and cheap enough to break after a few uses. They have their fingers in a lot of pies in the galaxy, and they're always trying to reach more.

Big River

Everything flows through the Big River as they say, and honestly there's some truth to that. Big River is the largest distribution company in the galaxy, accounting for over 65% of all packages shipped. They have expanded their reach and have been gobbling up small stores on the frontiers so they can sell a wide variety of goods in many locations.

Milcom

The galaxy's largest military is a corporation. Let that sink in. Milcom fuels the "war" between the Yents and the Humans, the Klebian Civil War, and the Nixxian's expansion into the frontier. Some say they're the only reason that the wars continue, because war is good for business.

A Glimpse of Playable Species

Nixxians - The largest of the species, standing on average just under two meters tall (6.5ft). They have hard segmented plates along their back, and skin is usually tough except around their lower arms and their hands, which is soft and allows them to do more delicate works well. Nixxian culture is deeply spiritual, traditional, and utilitarian. I find that human author Lukas Park describes this wonderfully from this excerpt from his book:

“The time I spent on Nix was the hardest of my life. The land itself constantly tested me, shaping me to it's will. The storms were the worst, I never knew what would strike me next. I felt I lost a lot of myself those years, but what I have left, I know is the true me. All that is essential still remains, and in that essentially, I found my true beauty.”

Yents - These feathered folks were the first to develop faster than light travel. Their centuries of experience with altered powers gave them quite the boost to developing altered drives. Generally, the smallest of the species, being on average slightly smaller than humans, they can appear much larger than their size by flaring out and displaying their feathers.

Yentoo culture is heavily focused on dazzling displays of lights and colors. With all Yents being Altered and able to create bright colorful lights, even the most mundane things on Yentoo can be dazzling or even blinding to other species.

Items

Freelancers live and die by their equipment and one of the fastest ways to be forced back to corporate slavery is to get overcharged on a piece of equipment. Here is a small glimpse of some items you will use on your missions.

• UIM (Universal Interface Module) - A device that can be held in your hand or attached to your wrist. It interfaces with all types of electronics typical of any citizen. Contains a Camera, microphone, speaker, holographic caller display and can store thousands of media. Can monitor up to three devices at once. (Imagine a Mass Effect Omni tool)

• Purge - "This tablet draws toxins from all throughout your body into your stomach and then forces you to purge the contents of your stomach. Cure one Poison or radiation based status. Target starts their next turn prone."

• The Bug- this highly illegal device will hack one electronic, removing any defenses temporarily to send one command. This item is consumed on use.

• Gaze Back/Gaze Black - "This shot is injected right in the neck. It is a dangerous process so you lose 1 Health. They say this connects you to Altered dimension, at the cost of your connection to our dimension. For 1 hour you gain +2 Energy and +1 Influence for Altered Powers. Your passive Awareness becomes 0 during this time."

• Klebian Special - This grenade reverses the gravity in two zones for one round. Everything effected takes fall damage if it collides with something. Everything effected cannot move for the round they are suspended in the air.

• Grease Trap - This grenade first covers the floor in grease before lighting it on fire. Deals damage on impact and then Wound6 +4 to all targets in two adjacent zones (10 diameter circle). Lasts up to 10 minutes.

Entities

There will always be something we do not understand, or else what use would we have for science? The Altered dimension remains the biggest mystery of our time. We cannot explain much but we can give you an idea of what we have learned and what that means for your life as a Freelancer. One of the entities that fuel our Altered powers is the Nebula Entity.

The Nebula Entity is a constantly expanding and contracting rainbow of colors, feelings, and energies. It moves at about the speed of light in a constant direction through the galaxy, unlike the other Altered Entities. The Nebula Entity itself is unpredictable and constantly reshaping everything it passes through, so the gamblers that risk being Altered by it are more likely to die. Those who survive have come back with strange physical changes that are sometimes wholly unnatural.