09/18/2026

Happy Friday, and welcome back to Tabletop

I like Star Wars, but I am not sure I want to run an actual Star Wars roleplaying game.

That probably sounds contradictory, but there is a difference between wanting to play in the official Star Wars universe and wanting to run a game that feels like Star Wars. I want blaster fights, strange aliens, battered freighters, dangerous bounty hunters, oppressive empires, desperate rebels, and questionable jobs offered in dimly lit spaceport cantinas.

What I do not necessarily want is decades of established continuity, arguments over which era we are playing in, specialized rules for every recognizable species, or players arriving with completely different ideas about which parts of Star Wars are canon. Depending on the RPG, I may also have to deal with proprietary dice, extensive character options, talent trees, and multiple sourcebooks.

DarkSpace offers another option. It provides the tools needed to create our own version of Star Wars without requiring us to actually play Star Wars.

Shadowdark Goes to Space

DarkSpace, created by Than Gibson and Derek White, is a science-fiction rules set built on Shadowdark. It is not a completely standalone game—you will need either the Shadowdark core rulebook or its free Quickstart Rules—but anyone familiar with Shadowdark should recognize the basic structure immediately.

Characters are called Spacers. They still use the familiar six ability scores, d20 checks, armor class, hit points, gear slots, and fast combat found in Shadowdark. DarkSpace then adds the pieces needed to move the game into science fiction:

• Alien species
• Androids and other machine-based characters
• Energy weapons and advanced equipment
• Spaceships and space combat
• Faster-than-light travel
• Astrogation and space hazards
• Hacking
• Bounty hunting
• Science-fiction creatures
• Tools for building planets, settlements, NPCs, and entire settings

DarkSpace is not exclusively a space-opera game. It includes guidance for everything from cyberpunk and military science fiction to post-apocalyptic games, space horror, hard science fiction, and space westerns. However, one of its suggested settings is specifically “Space Opera (Fantasy),” with Star Wars listed among its examples.

The book knows exactly what we are going to try to do with it.

Building Familiar Heroes Without Licensed Classes

Instead of traditional character classes, DarkSpace uses broad heroic Archetypes:

• Strong
• Quick
• Tough
• Clever
• Wise
• Charming
• Machine-Based

Your Archetype describes how your character approaches problems, not necessarily what they do for a living. Your actual occupation is represented by your Background.

That distinction makes DarkSpace especially good for creating Star Wars-style characters. A pilot does not have to belong to a dedicated Pilot class. You could make a Quick Pilot who relies on reflexes and daring maneuvers, a Clever Pilot who understands every system aboard the ship, or a Charming Pilot who talks their way out of trouble when their flying gets them into it.

The same principle applies to other familiar space-opera roles:

• A Quick Outlaw could be a fast-drawing smuggler.
• A Charming Noble could be a rebel leader or diplomat.
• A Clever Mechanic could keep an aging freighter flying through sheer ingenuity.
• A Tough Mercenary could be an armored bounty hunter.
• A Strong Soldier could serve as the crew’s heavy muscle.
• A Machine-Based Mechanic could be an eccentric repair droid.

This provides recognizable character types without forcing everyone into narrowly defined franchise roles. More importantly, the characters belong to our setting. That smuggler does not have to be Han Solo, and the armored bounty hunter does not have to belong to a culture whose history has already been documented across several television series.

We can take the archetypes we enjoy and make them our own.

Creating Your Own Galaxy of Aliens

The species rules may be my favorite part of DarkSpace.

Science-fiction games can devote enormous amounts of space to alien species. Every species receives its own history, culture, homeworld, ability adjustments, special powers, and list of restrictions. That can be useful in a heavily detailed setting, but it also means the players need to learn all that information before making a character.

DarkSpace reduces a playable species to one defining Species Trait.

You can roll for the trait or simply select the one that fits your idea. The options include Amphibious, Armored Skin, Covert Communication, Longsight, Hyperacute Senses, Powerful, Natural Weapon, Flight, Tracking Sense, Technical Knack, Extra Arms, and Extra Legs.

That is enough to create a tremendous variety of aliens.

Want a towering, fur-covered alien known for its strength? Choose Powerful.

Want an aquatic species from an ocean world? Choose Amphibious.

A winged merchant species? Choose Flight.

A four-armed alien doctor or mechanic? Extra Arms provides an additional non-attack action and two more gear slots.

A reptilian hunter? Natural Weapon or Tracking Sense would both work, depending on which part of the concept you want to emphasize.

The trait provides the important mechanical distinction. Everything else—appearance, language, culture, homeworld, clothing, traditions, and personality—is left to the player and GM.

That freedom is the important part. I do not need an official species entry to tell me whether my new alien has blue skin, compound eyes, a long snout, feathers, scales, or translucent flesh. I choose the trait that matters during play and describe everything else.

This also prevents the species section from becoming an encyclopedia. If a player invents a new alien during character creation, the GM does not need to stop the game and design a fully balanced package of abilities. Pick a trait, describe the alien, give the species a name, and start playing.

The tradeoff is that species are mechanically simple. If you want every alien to possess four or five distinctive abilities, this system may feel too light. I think that simplicity is a strength for this kind of campaign, though. One meaningful ability makes an alien memorable without turning species selection into a character-optimization exercise.

DarkSpace also handles androids separately through the Mechanical trait, while the Machine-Based Archetype can represent combat robots, repair droids, cyborgs, or people operating advanced power armor. Machine-Based characters receive three Species Traits as built-in functions, allowing them to feel more modular than biological characters.

Leaving the Jedi Behind

DarkSpace does include supernatural or psionic abilities through something called the Triad. Its Body, Mind, and Soul powers can represent telekinesis, enhanced physical abilities, telepathy, precognition, emotional influence, life sensing, and similar effects.

In other words, you could use the Triad to create something very close to the Force.

For the campaign I am imagining, however, I would leave it out.

Jedi create a recurring problem in Star Wars RPGs because they are not merely another profession. They can deflect blaster fire, sense danger, influence minds, move objects, leap impossible distances, wield one of the setting’s most dangerous weapons, and potentially determine the fate of the galaxy.

The movies usually avoid this imbalance by separating the heroes. Luke goes off to confront the Force-wielding villain while Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and the droids pursue a different—but equally important—objective. Other stories simply make the Jedi the central characters, with soldiers, pilots, and politicians serving primarily as supporting cast.

That works on screen because the story controls how much attention each character receives. It is harder to manage in a roleplaying game, where everyone expects to contribute as an equal member of the group. Place a fully capable Jedi beside a soldier, mechanic, pilot, or smuggler, and the difference becomes difficult to ignore. Either the Jedi is substantially more powerful than everyone else, or the rules restrict the Jedi so severely that the character no longer feels like a Jedi.

Removing Jedi lets the campaign focus on the part of Star Wars that I often find more interesting: ordinary people trying to survive in a very large and dangerous galaxy.

The crew might include a former soldier, a runaway noble, an alien scout, a wanted smuggler, a battered security droid, and the mechanic desperately holding their ship together. Their victories come from courage, luck, questionable plans, and working together—not because one member of the party was born with access to the setting’s most important supernatural power.

Leaving out the Triad does not break the game. It is an optional part of the Wise Archetype, and the book’s setting guidance already treats metaphysical powers as something that can be common, rare, psychic, or completely absent.

We can keep the rebellion, the empire, the alien worlds, and the space battles without bringing in the Jedi at all.

Your Ship Is Part of the Crew

A Star Wars-style game needs a ship, and DarkSpace treats the crew’s vessel almost like another character.

Ships have the same six ability scores used by characters. The pilot combines their abilities with the ship’s Dexterity, while other ship statistics contribute to gunnery, astrogation, sensor sweeps, repairs, ramming, and intimidation.

The book provides six ship classifications:

• Explorer
• Fighter
• Freighter
• Gunship
• Research
• Yacht

For the sort of campaign I have in mind, the obvious choice is a freighter. Give it a few questionable modifications, an unreliable faster-than-light drive, hidden cargo compartments, and a debt owed to someone dangerous, and the campaign practically writes itself.

Every member of the crew can also have a shipboard role, including captain, pilot, co-pilot, gunner, astrogator, engineer, medic, quartermaster, or salvage engineer. During ship combat, crew members take actions through the vessel. The pilot maneuvers, the gunner fires, and the engineer tries to keep damaged systems online.

The ship-combat rules remain close to normal Shadowdark combat. Individual systems can be targeted, personal weapons deal reduced damage against ships, and ship weapons are particularly dangerous to people. When a ship reaches zero hit points, it does not necessarily explode immediately. It becomes disabled and begins a Destruct Timer, giving the crew a few frantic rounds to repair it or abandon ship.

That sounds exactly like the sort of chaotic space battle I want.

A Galaxy Without a Wookieepedia Assignment

The greatest strength of using DarkSpace for a Star Wars-style campaign is that the players already understand the basic language of the setting.

Tell them there is a tyrannical galactic government, a scattered resistance movement, laser weapons, alien-filled spaceports, dangerous bounty hunters, and faster-than-light travel. They know what that universe looks and sounds like.

But because it is not actually Star Wars, nobody needs to study it.

The GM does not need to determine whether a particular ship existed during the correct year. Players do not need to know which government controlled a planet during a specific period. Nobody can correct the GM about how a species, technology, or historical event is supposed to work.

We can borrow the texture without inheriting the continuity.

Our oppressive regime can be different from the Empire. Our rebels may not be entirely heroic. Our bounty hunters do not need to follow Mandalorian history. Our criminal organizations do not need to answer to the Hutts. Even the nature of faster-than-light travel can be adjusted to suit the campaign.

DarkSpace provides the machinery. We decide what the galaxy looks like.

Final Thoughts

DarkSpace appears to be an excellent toolkit for someone who likes the idea of a Star Wars campaign more than the prospect of running an official Star Wars RPG.

Its Shadowdark foundation keeps the rules familiar and relatively light. The combination of broad Archetypes and specific Backgrounds makes it easy to produce recognizable space-opera heroes without copying established characters. The ship rules give the entire group something to do, while the species traits allow players to create new aliens in minutes.

Its simplicity will not appeal to everyone. Players who want extensive character builds, detailed alien packages, tactical subsystems, or pages of established setting lore may find DarkSpace too broad. It also requires access to the Shadowdark rules, so it cannot be treated as a completely self-contained science-fiction RPG.

For me, though, the openness is the attraction.

I do not need rules for every alien ever seen standing in the background of a cantina. I need a short list of useful traits and permission to invent something new. I do not need an official timeline. I need an evil government, a struggling resistance, several dangerous planets, and a reason for the characters to care. I do not need Jedi overshadowing the rest of the party. I need smugglers, soldiers, mechanics, aliens, droids, and one unreliable ship.

DarkSpace lets me build the Star Wars campaign I want—without having to run Star Wars.

In case you missed it, I released a new YouTube video this week featuring several simple ways to speed up combat and keep the game moving. Check it out here:

Keep on gaming!

2026 Goals Progress

• Minis Painted: 277/150 – COMPLETED
• Large Models / Terrain: 38/ 6 – COMPLETE
• YouTube Videos: 20/ 24
• Game Reviews: 7 / 4 – COMPLETED
• Games Played (TTRPG + Board Games): 1 / 4
• Thursday Drop-Ins Created: 8/ 12
• New TTRPG Systems Tried: 1 / 3
• Shadowdark Mini-Campaign Sessions: 0 / 3
• Shadowdark Release on DriveThruRPG: 2/1 – COMPLETE