A Fistful of Stars is an adventure/setting book for Orbital Blues where your outlaws will explore the hottest new way to travel: an interstellar trainline connecting multiple star systems.
A Fistful of Stars is an adventure book for Orbital Blues* where your outlaws will explore the hottest new way to travel: an interstellar train line connecting multiple star systems. The Green Light Express offers a more luxurious travel experience for monied passengers, with carriages offering players opportunities to gamble credits away, rejuvenate themselves in the spa, or take on the charms of the lounge.
*While the book is written for Orbital Blues, it is easily adaptable to any system, including Mothership, Traveller, Stars Without Number, and more.
A Fistful of Stars expands the team behind best-selling sci-fi spaceship compendium An Infinity of Ships:
Kayla Dice, Diana Jones Emerging Designer 2023 winner and author of Orbital Blues' adventures Nameless, Aimless from Rogue Anthems and noir OB adventure The Man We Knew
Lone Archivist, the mysterious figure behind the dustbowl America layout of the Orbital Blues: Core Book.
Rob Turpin (aka thisnorthernboy), the pen that launched a billion spaceships, creator of Weird Field World, lover of birds.
Adam and Jamie STATION, purveyors of wonder
A Fistful of Stars includes:
A SPACE TRAIN
When the Green Light Express first blasted out of the station and cut intergalactic journeys from years to weeks, spokespeople from the Hart-Banker Conglomerate stressed the wait was worth it. They said society would be arriving on the fringes of space shortly.
The Green Light Express features detailed cars for:
Dining - in style if you can afford it, passable grub for those who can't
Entertainment - try your hand at various games, but keep your credits close
Lounging - unwind with a cocktail or some cheap swill, listen to some tunes, maybe look for love
Sleeping - you gotta rest your head sometime, right?
Wellness - work out or relax in the gravity pool
Maintenance - you think this glorious thing runs itself?
Display (and Purchase!) - if you like SkyMall, you'll love this carriage!
StorageandFreight - for cargo mundane, precious or semi-legal
Jail - we'd never have rowdy passengers or rogue troublemakers, but just in case
Each carriage will have a floor plan, notable NPCs, and tons of flavor.
The digital pack will include high resolution images of each of the carriages, in color and black and white.
A powerful Engine and train cars to explore: Passenger, Dining, Maintenance and more! (design not final)
ADVENTURES
Outlaws might earn their passage by working various jobs on the ship; the pay increases with the danger ... slightly.
You might take a gig:
Conducting critical maintenance, either exterior (risky) or interior (cramped)
Guarding valuable cargo
Waiting on the rich and up-and-coming in the dining car (here's your tip ... get a haircut)
Working in the kitchen (we want those dishes spotless)
Disposing of waste (discreetly)
and more
The book contains multiple adventures in the grand tradition of trains and westerns, including:
A heist!
A jailbreak!
A murder mystery!
An escort of a Very Special Somebody!
Adventures with detailed locations, NPCs and more (design not final)
A ROUTE to the FRONTIER
The book features a detailed train route, with hooks for off-train adventures.
The Green Light Express technically only has two stops: a station in Jupiter Orbit and a station in the faraway Warner IV system. Between those destinations it never stops moving. It does cut though six other star systems, and in its own way it serves them too. Collection ships are launched from various alighting stations throughout the journey. They make contact with the Express and while in motion grav-carriages are added and removed from the overall train.
Settlements served by the starway are booming, places that didn't make the cut are already starting to fade away. As the Green Light Express cuts through the stars it warps the balance of power around it. The Hart-Banker Conglomerate sees a galaxy where their code of conduct is law, where outlaws won't even be able to hide in a black hole. That galaxy isn't here yet, but some people say that rumble you hear on the horizon is its approach. Relentless, unstoppable, like a train.
Starway route with keyed adventures (design not final)
6x9" (US Trade) - same dimensions as An Infinity of Ships
Color
50+ pages
Smyth-sewn binding
Quite the looker
All physical copies come with the digital pack, including a PDF of the book and hi-resolution images of every train car in the book (in color and black and white).
MINIS
We are excited to bring you a set of full-color, high quality wooden minis of the cars that make up the Green Light Express, perfect for use at the gaming table, display in front of your computer, or pushing around going "choo choo choo".
Whether you are new to the Infinity of Ships (IoS) universe, or want to go deeper into the wormhole, we have cool stuff for your sci-fi adventures.
Infinity of Ships and Instant Star Ships
You can pick up a copy of our best-selling toolkit for creating wild and wonderful spaceships, An Infinity of Ship, with its companion card deck Instant Star Ships.
In his rave review, Questing Beast called these "essential tools" for sci-fi games.
Essential tools for running sci-fi games
And Zach Cox (co-creator of Orbital Blues) says:
When I run Orbital Blues at my home table, I never do it without my copy of Infinity of Ships by my side. Its a constant source of inspiration and random tables, and comes with tons of fantastic art to both inspire and threaten my players. For my money, its the single most useful non-Orbital Blues book for any Storyteller.
Wooden Ship Minis
We're also creating a set of wooden ship minis from the spaceships in the book!
We've selected the first two minis for the set: our Hyperpop ship and the Sophie-Class Light Liberator trans ally ship.
The rest of the minis will be decided by YOU!
5% of proceeds for the IoS minis will benefit Trans Lifeline.
Ship minis mockup, design not final
100 Strangers
If you're looking for off-the-beaten path characters for your sci-fi games, you should pick up 100 Strangers, our collection of normies and misfits, each of which is illustrated by Roque Romero.
Kayla Dice is a writer and artist whose RPG work explores the themes of alienation and connection.
Acclaimed for her character-focused and emotionally charged games, in 2023 Kayla was named a winner of the Diana Jones Emerging Designer program. Kayla lives in London and has done so for over a decade. She performs stand-up comedy, from a seated position, under her shoot name of Kayla MacQuarrie.
ILLUSTRATION
Rob Turpinis an illustrator, designer and writer from the north of England. Drawing mainly science fiction, fantasy, and imaginary places, he is also the creator of the Weird Field World book, published in 2020. The sequel, Weird Field War is in the works.
DESIGN and LAYOUT
Lone Archivistis a game and graphic designer based out of Southern California. His work includes writing and design for space and science fiction games such as Mothership and Orbital Blues along with several self-published system-agnostic game supplements. When not working on games he can be found crate-digging for a new Jazz record or adding yet another book to the TBR list.
CREATIVE DIRECTION and PUBLISHING
Adam Good and Jamie Perez are the primary person-units of the collective intelligence known as STATIONS. Their work includes An Infinity of Ships, I Don't Belong Here, and 100 Strangers, all available on their website. Adam lives in North Carolina and makes periodic pilgrimages to Baltimore, where Jamie resides. When not gaming or sci-fi-ing, they are busy helping progressive organizations save the world from itself.
Writing, illustration and design for the book is already underway. We will keep you posted with regular updates. General timeline is below.
April - campaign runs
May - June - writing, illustrations
July - August - copy editing, layout
September - October - Digital edition delivered, files submitted to printer, printing and freight delivery to warehouse*
November - December - physical fulfillment
*With the constant flux of global trade and politics, delivery time from the manufacturer presents the biggest wild card in the schedule, but we'll stay in touch regularly to let you know what's going on!
Digital fulfillment will be handled via BackerKit, DriveThruRPG, and Itch.io.
Physical fulfillment will be handled by Flying Cloud. Shipping will be charged post campaign via BackerKit, and we are trying to keep shipping costs down.
We will be shipping all orders from the US.
We are trying to keep EU/UK/ROW shipping as low as possible, but can't guarantee there will be no import fees. Import fees are the responsibility of the backer. We will also strive to provide shipping options that include tracking in BackerKit.
Estimated shipping costs are as follows. We are using weight-based shipping, and you will be charged shipping via BackerKit for the total weight of your pledge and any add-ons.
United States - $9-15 Canada - $19-26 United Kingdom - $19-26 EU - $14-17 US Territories and ROW - $27-38
Note that these are shipping estimates, based on projected book weights. These estimates are subject to change. We will offer tracked shipping options in BackerKit.
Unfortunately we cannot ship to the following countries at the current time: Afghanistan, Belarus, Brunei Darussalam, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Niue, Russian Federation, Syrian Arab Republic, Yemen.
