In the far future, with humanity finally putting his dark history of poverty, ignorance and conflict behind itself, a small crew of pioneers sets off towards the infinity of space abroad a spaceship called the Ambrosial with the purpose of discovering new civilizations and find a new place to live and thrive in - the Promised Planet.
To player this game you need a group of friends (3-6 total players is best) and some six-sided dice. Beware that playing this game may involve touching on some sensitive subjects like politics, sexuality and morality; please consider using the X-Card system by John Stavropoulos to ensure the players are comfortable at all times during play.
Every planet you visit will have a name; in case you don't want to invent the names yourselves, you can use this simple method to generate them. Write down the names of the players (or random people you like) split in syllabes until you have 16 of them, and number them from 3 to 18. When a new name must be generated, roll 3d6 for three times and concatenate the resulting syllabes.
Example: if the player names are Nikola Tesla, Enrico Fermi, Alan Turing and Stephen Hawkings, the syllabes are 3=NI 4=KO 5=LA 6=TES 7=LA 8=EN 9=RI 10=CO 11=FER 12=MI 13=A 14=LAN 15=TU 16=RING 17=STE 18=PHEN. By rolling 9, 4 and 11 you get the random name RIKOFER.
At the start of the game, every player represents a human on the spaceship. The journey consists in visiting several planets, one for each player at the table, in clockwise or arbitrary order.
When visiting a planet for a certain player, he/she impersonates the Alien, an individual of a sentient species that is found on that planet. The player acts as a Game Master for that planet - he's the authoritative source of information about it and determines the outcome of the other players' actions.
As a first step, the Alien decides the name of the planet by using the optional random name generator, or coming up with a name on his/her own.
Secondly, the Alien picks three traits from the Civilization Traits table below: two by rolling 3d6 twice (repeating the roll if equal) and one by his/her own choice. The Alien then must come up and describe how his civilization works regarding that trait, considering that it does the extreme of what humanity does in that context (or the extreme opposite).
Example: Nikola plays the Alien for the new planet, named Rikofer. On the Civilization Traits table he rolls 2 (Wealth and Economy) and 13 (Food) plus he picks 8 (Fauna). He thus describes these three aspects, saying for instance that the planets is inhabited by colossal species that dwarf any kind of megafauna seen on Earth, with some animals being over 2 kilometers tall.
Finally, the Alien comes up with and conducts a quest that the other players must accomplish; the quest is any adventure or event happening on the planet and must be consistent with the information provided about the Civilization Traits. If the players complete the quest successfully, the Alien decides to join the crew of the Ambrosial for the rest of the journey and the player will continue to impersonate him (the human previously impersonated by the player decides to leave the ship and starts living on this planet).
| Result | Trait |
|---|---|
| 2 | Wealth and Economy |
| 3 | Sexuality and Reproduction |
| 4 | Family |
| 5 | Geology |
| 6 | Arts |
| 7 | Sports and Games |
| 8 | Fauna |
| 9 | Vegetation |
| 10 | Weather and Climate |
| 11 | Crime |
| 12 | Spirituality |
| 13 | Food |
| 14 | Physiology |
| 15 | Ethics |
| 16 | Technology |
| 17 | Life cycle |
| 18 | Language |
During the journey, the Alien may ask a player to roll dice in order to establish the outcome of an action. These rolls are called Skill Checks and may involve any action or character feature: strength, endurance, fighting, navigating, diplomacy, knowledge, charisma, and so on.
The Alien decides the difficulty of the check, that is 4 for easy actions, 5 for medium difficulty actions, and 6 for hard actions. The player rolls a dice and if the result is equal or greater than the difficulty, then the check was successful, otherwise it failed.
Other players who have played as the Alien in previous planets and are now part of the crew can provide help to the player performing the check. To do so, they have to describe how the Civilization Traits of their native planet provided them the experience and skill necessary to help in the situation. If the Alien determines that this contribution is useful, the player taking the action adds another dice to his roll.
Example: Stephen is fighting a robotic sentry activated by mistake and must perform a Skill Check with difficulty 5. Nikola helps with the fight by saying that he has experience with the massive and impossibly strong animals of his home planet of Rikofer, so Stephen can throw 2 dice.
After the crew has visited a planet for every player in the group, they have to decide how the Promised Planet should be. Every player takes the Civilization Trait he/she choose when playing the Alien and describes how the Promised Planet would be, in his/her desires, regarding that trait.
If players describe features of the Promised Planet that are in contradiction, they should try to compromise and find a common ground. If the players are able to settle on a shared set of features for their Promised Planet, they are able to find it and the mission is considered a resounding success. Otherwise, they'll never be able to fint it and the mission is a failure.
The game was created by Cinghy Creations. Cover photo by ZCH. Inspiration credits go to Star Trek for its positive view of the future of humanity, and Hero Kids by Justin Halliday for the very simple but effective method to roll dice for actions.