Thank you so much for your kindness and generosity in providing community copies of your game. I’m a disabled pension who can’t afford much so these free gifts really help me out in playing games and keeping my mind active. I won’t be broke forever so plan on coming back when I’m able to help out.
I really appreciate your hard work and kindness in providing community copies.
Nice. As we observed in an Italian review of the game, probably the biggest "weakness" of the game is the great need on a deeper explanation of the system, and lot of useful examples in the various chapters (or a big example at the end).
Making a sort of comparison, Dream Askew is more or less the same game (ie. It has the same structure), and it has 170 pages.
Low income on disability and struggling with health issues and abusive family members i was able to get this and bucket of bolts free with a community copy. Thank you i will try to play one tomorrow when i wake up. Now the only one on my wishlist is artifact.
Thanks. Today was a better day after 7 months of various health issues i had good health news today. Told i likely dont have parkinsons but need to monitor and follow up next year.
Loved the game! But the side content transformed my life a little bit. One adding is the startling missives and I wrote to a friend while their three month period when they went abroad. We wrote each other emails a form to stay in (fictional) contact. At my last birthday they gave me our letters printed into a little book. Thanks for making this
Hey! I was looking at a way to make this work on roll20 but saw you had a miro board. is it still up and i just have no idea how to use the website or was it a Kickstarter only thing? thank you!
My group played through this game over a couple of sessions (could easily have gone longer). It was an absolute blast! Our first foray into GMless games. Never had to wonder what to do. There's always something interesting happening for you to interact with.
It does take a VERY different mindset to play than D&D. So be aware of that if you come from D&D or similar games. But give it a chance and I'm sure your group will love it!
Also, I'm now using Starflung Missives from the bonus material for a letter writing game with my penpal. Lots of fun!
I’m so glad you had a good time with it! Well done on jumping into a GMless game, it can definitely feel shaky at first to adjust to a more freeform system but it sounds like you did great.
Saw that it says physical copies are sold out, just wanted to drop by and say a few are still available here at floating chair club -> https://floatingchair.club/products/orbital
There is Japanese text throughout the book. Is this just color or is there a parallel Japanese edition? I live in Kyoto and would love to play with my friends.
Hey Ben! I commissioned the Japanese text on the illustrations because there are plans to release a Japanese language version, but the person I was collaborating with has had to take a break from the work for the moment. Still plans to do so in future though!
About satellite descent (copied from my comment on the Kickstarter update): At the Unreasonable Demands game, in the Porblems section (page 5) you're outright missing the problems caused by drawing a 10! There's both problems from a draw of 9 and J, but not 10. It's not a huge problem, you can always choose from other problems, but I thought you ought to know :)
Played this with a group of 5, including one who had almost never played RPGs before and one who had only played D&D before, and we had a fantastic time! The setup, reading the rules, and reading and filling in all the pillars on the Miro board took a bit longer than we expected (close to 2 hours), and we didn't use the pillars much in the end.
We played very cinematically, and our group of a half-man half-machine Wrench, a shapeshifter Shadow that turned out to be the reluctant villain, a deserter military AI Heart, a multi-legged multi-armed multi-tentacled orb-creature Monitor, and our shapeshifter Source dealt with a cyber-bomb planted by the Shadow that shut off the life support in our station. The military AI Heart turned evil and revealed themself to the Shadow, who then had to decide whether to complete his mission and kidnap the Heart, or sacrifice his mission to save the station, all while the Wrench and the Monitor fought to keep the station afloat.
It was really some of the best improv I had done in a long time — I really like the head fake of how the collaborative station building prompts define the station, but also build groupthink. :P
We were able to start Belonging-outside-Belonging lucid-dreaming after the second round, which was also really cool to experience.
The graphic design is super nifty and really captures the Belonging-outside-Belonging feeling of the station.
Highly recommend this system for a sleek, virtual-friendly (seriously, the Miro board and instructions is really helpful for online play) RPG that's beginner friendly and fairly rules-light! Very cool picklists for characters as well.
"Belonging-outside-Belonging lucid-dreaming" is me rephrasing/repurposing/bastardizing a line from Riley Rethal's excellent Galactic 2e. In her words:
"as you're brainstorming ideas and discussing the shape of your story, you're entering a mode of play called idle dreaming. this mode is all about curiosity: asking questions, following tangents, brainstorming together. talk about the setting you're building and the things that you find interesting, confusing, or important."
At the start of Orbital, when answering the setting questions and fleshing out the Aspects, we engaged in exactlywhat Riley Rethal describes.
However, during play after the second round, we were all collaboratively storytelling in what felt like a mix between "idle dreaming" as described above and long-form (U.S. American) improv, where we were implicitly passing focus and taking turns to define scenes and pick who would be in each scene. We trusted each other and the story we were building together - building the setting together built groupthink to the point that players were playing up/off motifs that other players were setting up and building themes in the narrative. It really did feel like good long-form improv crossed with being in a TV writer's room, since we were describing film camera shot compositions during our scenes and building the visual aspect and bringing up running color motifs and so on. That's why I described it a bit differently as "lucid" dreaming, because we basically didn't use the rules at all at that point. We were just naturally passing focus without turn order and asking questions like "I have a really good scene idea, do you trust me?" or "I think X should go next, I want to see how their character reacts to what just happened."
some pals and i are doing a one-shot on tuesday july 6th at 7pm eastern US time on discord voice, if you're available/interested i'll give you my discord info :)
Had a really good time playing this game with a group recently. Between the players & the game itself, I think we had a really memorable adventure with some great cinematic moments. Highly recommend Orbital for people interested in a fun and collaborative storytelling game.
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Thank you so much for your kindness and generosity in providing community copies of your game. I’m a disabled pension who can’t afford much so these free gifts really help me out in playing games and keeping my mind active. I won’t be broke forever so plan on coming back when I’m able to help out.
I really appreciate your hard work and kindness in providing community copies.
Nice. As we observed in an Italian review of the game, probably the biggest "weakness" of the game is the great need on a deeper explanation of the system, and lot of useful examples in the various chapters (or a big example at the end).
Making a sort of comparison, Dream Askew is more or less the same game (ie. It has the same structure), and it has 170 pages.
Low income on disability and struggling with health issues and abusive family members i was able to get this and bucket of bolts free with a community copy. Thank you i will try to play one tomorrow when i wake up. Now the only one on my wishlist is artifact.
Hope they let a bit of light into your life mate 💜
Thanks. Today was a better day after 7 months of various health issues i had good health news today. Told i likely dont have parkinsons but need to monitor and follow up next year.
Finally got this to the table, a great first session spent on setup! Really looking forward to next week.
Thank you for sharing! I look forward to watching :)
I made a couple of Orbital zines and player kit. Now I can play in style!
This is an excellent series of posts and I hope you continue! :)
Coming back here a couple years later to stay that this game has stuck with me in a way that few do. I cherish my copy.
hi. is there an online place to meet up for playing?
Do you mean a way to play online with your friends? Or a place to find people to play with? :)
a place to find people to play with
aha, not officially no! If you have twitter I’d be happy to RT a message from you though if you want to try and organise something :)
its @giowwn_cutib
the account is a void so if someone reads it will be by your rt. but yeah, ill write a message
Loved the game! But the side content transformed my life a little bit. One adding is the startling missives and I wrote to a friend while their three month period when they went abroad. We wrote each other emails a form to stay in (fictional) contact. At my last birthday they gave me our letters printed into a little book. Thanks for making this
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that! I don’t often hear about people playing the Descent games, so that’s really special!
I’m so glad it was a fun way to stay in contact with one another :)
I want too know if you have any plans for physical editions again?
Yep! Just figuring out reprints at the moment actually :)
I noticed there was an update recently, What's in the changes?
Hey, I just updated some of the printable files to make them more printer-friendly :)
Is this game possible to be played gm-less with one player (i.e., as a solo game)? I wasn't clear from the description.
Hey Mark, it’s not playable solo really—apologies as you’re right it’s not clear! There is a set of bonus games which are mostly solo though
Hey where can I purchase a physical copy. I backed this game on kickstarter and would like to get one as a gift.
I just got my stock back so I’ll be opening up orders on mousehole.press again soon! Follow my newsletter if you want a reminder :)
Hey! I was looking at a way to make this work on roll20 but saw you had a miro board. is it still up and i just have no idea how to use the website or was it a Kickstarter only thing? thank you!
Yeah it should be, if you look at ‘05 - Playing Online.txt’ it should have all the details (let me know if it isn’t working!!)
My group played through this game over a couple of sessions (could easily have gone longer). It was an absolute blast! Our first foray into GMless games. Never had to wonder what to do. There's always something interesting happening for you to interact with.
It does take a VERY different mindset to play than D&D. So be aware of that if you come from D&D or similar games. But give it a chance and I'm sure your group will love it!
Also, I'm now using Starflung Missives from the bonus material for a letter writing game with my penpal. Lots of fun!
I’m so glad you had a good time with it! Well done on jumping into a GMless game, it can definitely feel shaky at first to adjust to a more freeform system but it sounds like you did great.
Saw that it says physical copies are sold out, just wanted to drop by and say a few are still available here at floating chair club -> https://floatingchair.club/products/orbital
There is Japanese text throughout the book. Is this just color or is there a parallel Japanese edition? I live in Kyoto and would love to play with my friends.
Hey Ben! I commissioned the Japanese text on the illustrations because there are plans to release a Japanese language version, but the person I was collaborating with has had to take a break from the work for the moment. Still plans to do so in future though!
Thank you so much Jack!
A great discovery and a very rewarding read. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I hope it will come soon.
About satellite descent (copied from my comment on the Kickstarter update): At the Unreasonable Demands game, in the Porblems section (page 5) you're outright missing the problems caused by drawing a 10! There's both problems from a draw of 9 and J, but not 10. It's not a huge problem, you can always choose from other problems, but I thought you ought to know :)
Aha, thanks good spot. I’ll sort it!
Played this with a group of 5, including one who had almost never played RPGs before and one who had only played D&D before, and we had a fantastic time! The setup, reading the rules, and reading and filling in all the pillars on the Miro board took a bit longer than we expected (close to 2 hours), and we didn't use the pillars much in the end.
We played very cinematically, and our group of a half-man half-machine Wrench, a shapeshifter Shadow that turned out to be the reluctant villain, a deserter military AI Heart, a multi-legged multi-armed multi-tentacled orb-creature Monitor, and our shapeshifter Source dealt with a cyber-bomb planted by the Shadow that shut off the life support in our station. The military AI Heart turned evil and revealed themself to the Shadow, who then had to decide whether to complete his mission and kidnap the Heart, or sacrifice his mission to save the station, all while the Wrench and the Monitor fought to keep the station afloat.
It was really some of the best improv I had done in a long time — I really like the head fake of how the collaborative station building prompts define the station, but also build groupthink. :P
We were able to start Belonging-outside-Belonging lucid-dreaming after the second round, which was also really cool to experience.
The graphic design is super nifty and really captures the Belonging-outside-Belonging feeling of the station.
Highly recommend this system for a sleek, virtual-friendly (seriously, the Miro board and instructions is really helpful for online play) RPG that's beginner friendly and fairly rules-light! Very cool picklists for characters as well.
Thanks so much for your lovely feedback 😊
Very curious about what you said here, are you able to elaborate at all?
"We were able to start Belonging-outside-Belonging lucid-dreaming after the second round, which was also really cool to experience."
thanks for sharing!
"Belonging-outside-Belonging lucid-dreaming" is me rephrasing/repurposing/bastardizing a line from Riley Rethal's excellent Galactic 2e. In her words:
"as you're brainstorming ideas and discussing the shape of your story, you're entering a mode of play called idle dreaming. this mode is all about curiosity: asking questions, following tangents, brainstorming together. talk about the setting you're building and the things that you find interesting, confusing, or important."
At the start of Orbital, when answering the setting questions and fleshing out the Aspects, we engaged in exactlywhat Riley Rethal describes.
However, during play after the second round, we were all collaboratively storytelling in what felt like a mix between "idle dreaming" as described above and long-form (U.S. American) improv, where we were implicitly passing focus and taking turns to define scenes and pick who would be in each scene. We trusted each other and the story we were building together - building the setting together built groupthink to the point that players were playing up/off motifs that other players were setting up and building themes in the narrative. It really did feel like good long-form improv crossed with being in a TV writer's room, since we were describing film camera shot compositions during our scenes and building the visual aspect and bringing up running color motifs and so on. That's why I described it a bit differently as "lucid" dreaming, because we basically didn't use the rules at all at that point. We were just naturally passing focus without turn order and asking questions like "I have a really good scene idea, do you trust me?" or "I think X should go next, I want to see how their character reacts to what just happened."
Appreciate the interest, hope this helps!
Excited to play this does anyone know of a group looking for players?
some pals and i are doing a one-shot on tuesday july 6th at 7pm eastern US time on discord voice, if you're available/interested i'll give you my discord info :)
Sweet thank you, id totally be down.
my discord is [removed now that contact was made] :)
sent
Had a really good time playing this game with a group recently. Between the players & the game itself, I think we had a really memorable adventure with some great cinematic moments. Highly recommend Orbital for people interested in a fun and collaborative storytelling game.
Congratulations on the Kickstarter! Can this game be played solo? I was a little confused with the way it was described.
Nope! You need 3 players, I should make that clear as I currently say ‘up to 6!’
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I was confused whether there was a missing comma. GM, and/or 1-6 players. Congratulations again. This looks amazing!
Hello
Your game is really excellent and promising, just already with the playtest kit.
I really liked the No Dice No Masters system and the way you integrated the Dream Askew principles into your game.
Really, a very good game. I'm looking forward to the full version.
And a very nice alternative for playing in a SF context.
Thanks so much! Can’t wait till you see the finished product :)
I did a review (in French) about ORBITAL on my blog.
http://www.jeepeeonline.be/2021/01/orbital-retour-de-lecture.html
There is a real interest about Belonging Outside Belonging games for French players (France, Belgium and maybe Quebec)
Wow; just wow!
This looks so promising. I will definitely take a look when I have time. The aesthetic alone is captivating.