Star Marauders! RPG. An interview with the Creator, Part Two.
Star Marauders! RPG. Releasing on May 10th, 2026.
"Marauders crave riches, infamy and violent death. They travel the far reaches of space, striking fear into the hearts of all who meet, their gaze."
This is second part of an interview with the Creator, Aggie https://gourd-dwarf.bearblog.dev/ .
Question: Before you began writing the first iteration of Star Marauders, did you choose any Existing RPG rule systems to base it on?
Aggie: “Not particularly. I began by setting a series of design goals and then I considered my design vocabulary, so to speak, and that helped inform the mechanics. Yea, I guess from a systems [P.O.V.] I had a few things in mind to inspire me. They came after my goals, tho[ugh], right? But my own design goals and my interests in other's games and therefore my inspirations are kind of linked so it’s a bit of an ouroboros. I wasn’t thinking at all like[,] "let me mix these things just because I like them"[,] it was more that I knew of these mechanisms and I felt I could apply them to my own ends. So! The soup stock here is made from [:]
Troika![;] Violence [;] OD&D [; &] Traveller. Fighting Fantasy and Troika's Test Your Luck is the basis for the stamina rules, although it doesn’t operate exactly the same. Rolling under a shifting integer within 2-12 is the name of the game in both cases. Violence has a wounds mechanic that makes a man more likely to die and less likely to succeed. I applied it differently than Violence does because it’s a different game. The other element from Violence is a check after hitting for death or injury. The Violence present in Star Marauders is pretty dilute but essential, imo, especially in terms of scenario design possibilities. OD&D - a lot of the procedures are OD&D coded. So much here is tied to an X-in-6, also. Traveller's setting, lethality, and target of 8 or higher are all present. I actually thought to make the game after playing Trav[eller] with Oldhawkeyes. https://unturnedhovel.bearblog.dev/blog/ I guess the other influences are Mothership [RPG] for some of the combat procedures and the concept is in some ways reactive to my experience playing MoSh. I like a lot of MoSh stuff and think it’s a cool game, but actually a lot of my decisions were informed by things I don’t like about playing Mothership? Kinda? For instance, I find MoSh kind of overwhelming in practice cos it has attributes and skills and saves and advantage and criticals and backgrounds. It’s not like I can’t wrap my head around it, I found Mothership super intuitive. But after developing my tastes for some time, I think I prefer more binary resolutions. Stamina is essentially a Save here and the only other stats are Skills. Everything else is equipment and every PC is a marauder. But a lot of how I run this is thanks to the Wardens Manual for Mothership. The last inspiration are TooFatLardies wargames for the concept of shock as a sort of "soft damage". It doesn’t work like it does in those games, tho. Anyway, to finally answer your question: I used many games as a base but I tried to be very careful. This is sort of exactly the game I’ve been trying to make for a while but I didn't have a design language before and I had fewer influences to pull from. I did one [game] called Fantastic Frontiers [referenced above] that was similarly focused on an occupation, highly lethal etc. but it was kind of a mess, and the setting wasn’t really something I could cook with.”
Question: How are you going to release the Rules manual you mentioned? Free, Itch, Drivethrurpg, etc.? Or is this your personal game?
Aggie: “It’s both. I’m making it for me but I’m also excited to share it. Initially it was on my blog but I couldn’t keep up with revising the pdf and the blogpost so I unpublished the post. The goal is to put out a 0e before the 10th of May when I start my summer job and lose my will to live. I’m actually really interested in how other people approach rules inspiration, because I see it sometimes as folly where someone likes a bunch of things in their own context, but the mechanics don’t exist in a vacuum. So, when they’re applied together regardless or in spite of or without any goals, it is kind of a miscarriage of design.”
Question: Let's hit the games you've run [Dungeon Mastered/Game Mastered/Refereed] that you feel were formative for you. What were the big three takeaways that guided you in this [creation of Star Marauders! RPG]? [Aggie goes off for a few minutes to make coffee while I continue to piece together this interview.]
Aggie: “[I'll go one at a time, as I think of them, just to keep the conversation engaged so you’re not waiting ages]
First would have to be running The Haunting of Ypsilon-14, which is a module for Mothership, about an asteroid mine that is troubled in some way. I don’t want to give anything away, and the particulars of the scenario are unimportant. What was influential about it was I was running this for a partner and their family and none of the players but for one had any experience with role-playing games. The sole exception to this was an avid fan of 5th Edition D&D. This meant I had to explain everything and facilitate for complete newcomers. I remember saying "Tell me what you wanna do and I will tell you what to roll if need be or otherwise just how it goes over". And this was mostly painless cos my players were engaged and bright people, and Sean McCoy is a good designer. I’m a firm believer that sometimes there's squeeze for a juice or whatever, and whether it’s worth the effort or not, y’know? And, people who enjoy games like GURPS [RPG] for instance, there’s a lot of friction to that game, but it often adds detail to the simulation. For those people, what GURPS provides them, is worth the squeeze. I am trying to reduce as much friction as I can while I maintain interesting results. So that I can very easily and quickly on-board anyone to the game.
Second most informative session ran: It's gotta be a recent Troika! scenario I wrote and ran about investigating a crashed spaceship. Basically, I think that put me in the spaceship mood, for one, but it also helped me understand how I wanna run enemies in a closed environment and I was unintentionally almost prototyping a derelict dive in Star Marauders.
Third and final most influential session I ran for the development of Star Marauders is the last one I ran. It’s always going to be that way, because the last thing will inform the next thing, you feel? And games are living things, this is how they grow.”
Question: How many sessions of Star Marauders have you run?
Aggie: “I ran two yesterday but before that, lemme count... Twice more. The first time there were two kinds of injuries and it was kind of a mess and I was figuring things out. The second time, I streamlined it but the Lethality of weapons was tuned way too low. Third and Fourth times were in a good place, the changes weren't to the rules but to the scenario. So I currently have two scenarios prepared for my own use, which might be candidates for published adventure material.
There's a straight up boarding action and a derelict dive with some complications complete. I’m working on a third adventure which is more substantial and is meant to stress test attrition and broader scenario design. It’s a 40 room dungeon. By the time this interview is published, I will likely have ran it already. (Also yeah you can just say "Four games," as my answer haha).”
Question: Do you have any closing thoughts?
Aggie: “This [interview] has been very fun and, honestly, I hadn’t really thought about a lot of this stuff that deeply.
That's the thing that is most likely to change over time, whether by small updates or in a whole new edition, is the campaign stuff because (a) I don’t have it entirely in place yet and (b) it just can’t be tested in short order, it’s chronologically impossible to do so.”