Defend the Sun Sci-Fi Tabletop RPG Setting

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What's a Tabletop Role-Playing Game?

The type of game we're playing is a Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TTRPG). It's like a group campfire story, where we sit around a table and tell a story together, with a little twist.

To turn group storytelling into a game with goals, stakes, unpredictability, and a little bit of structure that controls the chaos of raw imagination, we follow a few principles.

• Our story we're telling is about a group of daring, skilled characters going on an adventure together, in a world where their actions have dramatic impact.
  
  
• The 3 groups playing the game are: the players, the Game Master (GM), and the dice. We'll get to the last group in a second.
  
  
• The player's role is to play their Player Character (PC), a main character in the story. Before the game they decide the PC's background, personality, and strengths and weaknesses. During the game they decide what the PC does.
  
  
• The GM's role is to play the background characters (Non-Player Characters or NPCS), describe the world, introduce scenes, and keep the story on track with other, specific rules of the game.
  
  
• During the game, players describe what their PC does and says. When the PC is about to do something with important and uncertain consequences, that's when the GM decides if the third group - the dice - joins the game for a moment.
  
  
• The role of the dice - not the GM, not the players - is to decide what happens at this crucial moment. Usually, the roll of the dice answers the question: How did my attempt fail or succeed?
  
  

The game has other rules that simulate the game world with dice rolling and enhance the narrative, but you can let the GM worry about those. The most dramatic rule is that when the story reaches a moment where the stakes matter, you roll the dice to decide what happens.

What are the game rules?

Our game rules use a system called Outgunned, a TTRPG with fast and simple rules that tell a cinematic story inspired by media with lots of action, thrilling stakes and elaborate set pieces.

The game uses a handful of 6-sided dice. Your goal is to roll matching dice - more matches means bigger successes. Push your luck to reroll dice for even bigger successes! But watch out - with every reroll you risk losing it all. And when the stakes are really high, you might end up taking a spin on the deadly Death Roulette.

Before you start playing, we'll cover how the rules work in detail. Optionally, if you'd like to know more you can check out this great How to Play Outgunned Video Tutorial (starts at 7:20).

What's the world where this game takes place?

Defend the Sun is a science fiction setting where humanity has explored local space and discovered we have advanced, friendly alien civilizations living on our neighboring planets, all hidden under an ancient, mysterious cosmic veil on our Solar System.

Not long ago we all started harvesting exotic energy from our outer planets that enables reality-bending, superhuman technology. But this activity has disrupted that veil, revealing us to terrifyingly advanced hostile alien Invaders from beyond the stars. If we Solarians work together to stop the Invaders, we might have a chance.

What's the genre?

In Defend the Sun, our Solar System is a thriving cosmopolitan cluster of human and alien cultures, against a backdrop of tension between technology we'd understand today versus technology that's so advanced it looks like magic. It's set in a baseline of hard sci-fi like Project Hail Mary or The Expanse, with elements of softer, more fantastic sci-fi like The Fifth Element or Guardians of the Galaxy. Expect the reality-altering elements of the story to have some kind of scientific explanation at their foundations, even if it's far beyond our current understanding.

What's the tone?

Expect each story in Defend the Sun to have action, humor and drama driven by wily protagonists flying by the seat of their pants to overcome great odds. Technology is a part of everyone's daily lives and oftentimes their biology, and we can travel between our planets but not yet to the stars. The familiar constantly collides with the strange - each of our planets has thriving civilizations bordered by dangerous territory. A thrilling unknown is around every corner, whether in ancient ruins on Mercury bombarded by solar radiation, an undiscovered species deep in Titan's jungles or a shadow conspiracy to take over the intra-planetary logistics hubs in the Asteroid Belt.

And in every story, an Invader threatens it all. This adversary could take many forms, but is always cunning, resourceful, and terrifying. Invaders may bring themes of cosmic horror and the dread of oblivion, but there's always a chance, however slim, of beating them. For now.

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What kind of character could I play?

Your character is part of a small group of Solarians with a common goal, and you've got skills, talents and experiences that make you a tough survivor of the dangers in the Solar System.

The Outgunned system lets you customize your character's Role and Trope to describe them and their capabilities.

• Role: This describes your character's life experiences and what they're capable of doing.
  Examples: The Commando, the Fighter, The Ace
  
  
• Trope: This is the archetype of your PC, and describes their personal traits and mannerisms.
  Examples: Free Spirit, Genius Bruiser, Diehard
  
  

In addition, your character has extra unique qualities and resources in the Defend the Sun setting: Species, Orbital Art, and Hyperdevice.

• Species: Your character can be human or any of the 8 local Solarian aliens. Your choice also grants you a unique ability or advantage. Every planet except Mercury has one civilization-level species who calls it home (except Mars, which has two).
  Examples: Neptunian, Green Martian, Plutonian
  
  
• Orbital Art: Your philosophy that guides how you resolve conflicts and overcome obstacles, whether in battle or society. Choose from Arts inspired by regions of the Solar System.
  Examples: Jovian Gravity Flight, Saturnine Dragon Quad-Lance, Red Martian BOOM SPIRAL
  
  
• Hyperdevice: Your Hyperdevice is a powerful personal gadget you own that manipulates exotic and powerful energies to help you briefly alter reality.
  Examples: Dark Energy Phase Shifter, Plasma Sun Channeler, Void Portal Slicer
  
  

Before you get into the action, we'll cover all of these options!



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I got even more questions, what now?

For a history of the setting, a catalog of the inner and outer planet regions, in-depth guides on the local aliens, and prose stories set in the Defend the Sun universe check out the Main Page.