The Earth in doomed in Insomniacs, but how it's doomed is up to you and your group. The Kurzgesagt youtube channel continues to be an invaluable source of information on existential threats, mass extinctions, and productive nihilism. Here are a few choice options that either made it into Insomniacs more or less directly, or were inspirations for some of the doomsday scenarios or exoplanets.
Tag: insomniacsrpg
Get Insomniacs. Play Insomniacs. Taste Insomniacs. (Because It’s a Real Book Now)
Insomniacs is available in print and pdf from DTRPG!
Insomniacs, a Cryoship Road Trip
Insomniacs is out! The journey through its design has ironically mirrored an Insomniacs campaign - an incredibly long odyssey punctuated by false hope, mistakes, research projects, and self-discovery.
The Final Countdown
Insomniacs has been part of my game design thoughts since May 2017. It's come a long way and I've struggled with a lot of existential crises about what this roleplaying game should actually be. It's laid out and I'm in the final art push.
Teaching a Spaceman to Spacefish
I've got maybe a year or so of my Insomniacs playtest campaign under my belt, but I'm struggling with how to put that into actionable content in the book. I don't think I've ever used a setting or module verbatim, and I don't know how other GMs adapt canned material for their own campaigns. I have a couple paths forward I can take, however, trails blazed by other designers that have inspired me.
Can’t Sleep. Space’ll Eat Me.
I've made tremendous progress on Insomniacs' interior in the past few weeks but I also redid the cover. Inspired by Ian Hubert's Blender videos, I tried my hand at making an entire stasis pod with an unwilling occupant. It's not that different from my original cover idea, and the first one has a nice negative … Continue reading Can’t Sleep. Space’ll Eat Me.
Insomniacs: The Reverent Between
The Reverent Between is what the Somnambulist's AI called the gulf of stars between the crew's last stop at 186 Herculis and their fruitful colonization prospects in the constellation Lyra. I'm also deep in Insomniacs' editing and layout process, and that is its own sort of thoughtful journey. The Pillar of Contemplation The Pillar was … Continue reading Insomniacs: The Reverent Between
Insomniacs: 186 Herculis
I haven't written up an Insomniacs session in a while, but our online group has been playing through the last of my prepped exoplanet scenarios and is heading into the strange and wondrous void of random tables.
Where is Insomniacs?
When I was working on my last game, Glow in the Dark, I ran into this late-game slump where I'd foolishly formatted the text in my draft and now had to redo all the graphic design work. I'm proud to say that apparently that was a learning experience, because I've moved the Insomniacs text over from my google doc into Affinity Publisher way earlier than I did for Glow.
The Fear of Geometry
A phenomenon that I've seen crop up in different media is the use of geometric shapes as otherworldly counterpoint to the "normal" world. It's eerie without being traditionally creepy, but I wonder if there is some base fear these portrayals are delving into or if it's just become shorthand for unknowably alien.
Don't Roll a One 