You probably noticed that I missed Friday’s update. This is why—another RPJ release, owing to some changes required by further RPJ Sci-Fi testing.

Speaking of which, RPJ Sci-Fi has been released into beta! It’s up to 1.0.0-beta3 now, after two quick revisions to fix some typos and other rules issues. RPJ Sci-Fi is near to my heart. It was the first RPJ game where the rules were more or less written prior to the start of play, and the first RPJ game where the rules were well enough written to support relatively pain-free play. They’re even smoother now, thanks to tuning, input from friends and family, and a good bit of that most important of tasks, solo playtesting and working through various scenarios governed by the rules.

I also decided to put together some helpful resources for play. The character sheet, for instance, is easily printable, but it’s also a spreadsheet which does a good deal of the required math automatically. There are also three cheat sheets available: one for combat, one for psi, and one for general topics. (The latter is a bit light right now.)

There’s more to do in the RPJ Sci-Fi rulebook, but most of it is theme, and none of it is required. It’s a complete product as-is, although I do want to add some appendices providing examples of combat. What’s still missing is the Gamemaster’s Guide, in which I plan to put some further detail on themes, some example battlefields and other maps, and some tables for random generation. The Gamemaster’s Guide being primarily an aid for other gamemasters, and the only gamemaster of which I am aware being me, it’s lower on the list than writing a one-shot for some actual playtesting, and also lower than work on some other projects.

Still, it’s playable, the theme is fun, and the combat seems to flow nicely. If you’re looking to give it a try, now is a great time.