Casting Shadows

This is the 25th day of #RPGaDay2026. It’s a Tuesday, and today is the first day of the final seven days of the event. This version of the event was mainly keyed to memories of or thoughts about people, either characters or fellow players, and this final week digs into some rich veins for that perspective. Whether we have been using the prompts to talk about general RPG things, demonstrating one or more specific RPGs, sharing character creation, or inspiring some kind of art, all of the prompts are about the experiences which arise from playing these amazing games and interacting with the amazing people who play them. This week’s filter for considering the prompts is Emotion. Today’s child is full of Grace so that is our daily filter. Our prompt for the day is Familiarity.

Of course, around here I try to fill as much of my day with activities with Grace as I can – even if that is quiet time in the yard listening to the movement of the neighborhood and sampling the breeze.

In a situation as alien and seemingly impossible as being one of the surviving humans assigned to Moonbase Alpha as Luna hurtles to unfathomable locations in the depths of space, leaving behind the ruin of a world condemned by the loss of the Moon to environmental devastation, what could possible seem familiar? Who among the Alphans could make it feel more familiar? How?

As mentioned yesterday, in addition to a more typical approach to character creation, Modiphius’ Space: 1999 includes ‘creation in play’ where once a player identifies the department of the character the will play and a few traits relevant to that department are set, the rest of the values on the sheet are left at a default number. As play progresses, the player can accept this default value as each trait comes into use, or can instead opt to spend some of their character creation points on it. Depending on the group’s approach to play, this might be done as an expression of how the character is revealing itself to the player, as a response to a need in the moment, as the development of a niche, as part of a growing understanding of where the group wants their play to go, or other impulses. Whichever way, just like in TV, the character slowly establishes itself over a period of time and is as much shaped by the environment and their experiences in it as they in turn affect it.

This kind of approach can be something like a dance where individual members of a group step into focus as players and as characters to claim or be claimed by certain circumstances on their own and as a member of that group. It takes and may come to instill a certain amount of finesse. Of grace, if you will. This is true of making decisions about the characters and of making decisions for the setting and its ongoing situations. The initial serve of an idea can quickly become its collective juggling at a pace and attitude set by the consensus of the group. If you enjoy this approach to play, the growing familiarity with how to juggle it becomes very compelling and perhaps a source of joy all on its own. It is intensely satisfying to work in harmony.

If we were to play with such characters, seemingly complete but actually unfinished and unfocused at first, and were to build a campaign around them from a careful effort to understand what was resonating and what wasn’t with each player, and that intentionally moved to capitalize on the strongest resonances, what sort of character might end up trying to restore or develop a sense of home among this castaway cadre of survivors? If the loss of the survivors on Alpha became such a focal point of play, who would not want to contribute in some way to making things better?

So, this sort of play reveals one way to have the characters, the setting, and the events of play harmonize naturally into problems and attempted solutions, urges and efforts to satisfy them, shortfalls and scrambles to fulfill them, and so on. This is not the only way to achieve such ends, but it is a way that can fit very well into how 2D20 can be played.

Imagine at the start of the campaign you and I had decided to wear purple sleeves and be in the security department. We might be considering being guards, or some sort of weapons specialists, serving a policing role, or the like. Let’s say, in a passion to play, we had assigned the main details we needed to get going, and left the rest vague. At that moment, the campaign is still mainly suggestion, hope, random memories, recent discussions, and a whole lot of orange spot coloring – humming along over the regolith in an Eagle.

After a few sessions, though, perhaps the way the NPCs had begun to take shape in their interactions with the PCs had left us focused and invested in the mental and physical health of the survivors – many of whom had not signed up for the sort of peril now possible and who certainly had not signed up to never see their families again, nor Earth, nor in many cases even know the fate of those left behind in the cataclysm of losing the Moon.

Suddenly, the vague idea of security threats being alien attacks takes a backseat to being part of the crew of care workers trying to assess and alleviate the stress and dangers of the situation among the Alphans.

In this way, the campaign itself is revealed because of who we are and the way we found our place in the various threads each player contributes. That in turn can inspire us to give our characters color and texture suited to those threads. Clashing in satisfying places, standing out in others, working in subtler ways elsewhere, but mainly just being an active and integral part of what holds it all together.

Throughout, the needs for Action, Reaction, and Interaction are familiar and feel honest because they are drawn from us, we are drawn to them, and by being true to the characters we have found, we merge tighter and tighter to the world they live in.

Tomorrow’s prompt for #RPGaDAY2026 is ‘Regret.’ Our weekly filter is Emotion, and as tomorrow is Wednesday, we get to visit with some Woe in platform space boots.

See you tomorrow!