The Contact Wars · 2350 AD
It is 2350. Humanity has been in space for two centuries, has met three intelligent species and uplifted half a dozen more, has fought one war with aliens it didn't intend to meet, and has just discovered a titanium block at a star 16 light years away, inscribed in English, placed there by something that left before the solar system existed. The galaxy has been watching us since we launched our first probes into the dark in 1977. It knows where we live. It has opinions. Most of them, we don't have clearance to hear yet.
Think Firefly. Think Traveler. Add a dash of Aliens, a measure of genuine cosmic wonder, and the slow-burning realization that humanity is not a footnote in galactic history — it may be the most anomalous thing to happen out here in a very long time. That's the setting you're stepping into.
What this looks like at the table
The crew
You are explorers, free traders, mercenaries, salvagers, or buccaneers — probably some combination, depending on the week. Your ship is your home, your mortgage, and occasionally your only way out of whatever you've gotten into. Your crew is a Gorilla ex-marine who served in the Contact War and doesn't talk about it, a Pacific Octopus engineer three years into a job they were supposed to leave when they got bored (they haven't gotten bored), a Chilrandi navigator who chose you over her herd and takes that seriously in ways you're still learning to understand, and whatever you bring to the table. The galaxy doesn't care about your backstory. Your crewmates do.
The solar system
Mars is terraformed and politically complicated — two billion people, young oceans, blue sunsets, and a government that controls the Navy and the ISA and officially represents everyone while practically representing whoever has service credits. Europa's underwater cities are home to Orca who bonded to capital ships and came home, Dolphins who run the most interesting flight training programs in the system, and a Cuttlefish professor in a place called The Sunken Spire who receives post-it notes from entities that predate the solar system and has published eight papers about it. Ceres is where the Belt's clan families run everything the ICC theoretically controls. An uplifted cat named Duchess has been operating an intelligence network in the outer Belt for 130 years. She declined to be studied. She won the legal challenge.
The galaxy
The galaxy is old, organized, and has a specific opinion about how civilizations should develop — patron species uplifting client species in an orderly hierarchy that has been running for millions of years. Humanity fits nowhere in this system. We uplifted ourselves using an AI, without a patron, from a region of space that isn't on any galactic chart, using a faster-than-light drive that works through null-space — which physiologically destroys every other known sapient species. We are, from the galaxy's administrative perspective, an unsolved problem. The Muridian Compact has opened a file on us. The Scour are running a calculation. The Krev find us interesting in the way a very large predator finds something novel interesting. The Progenitors, in their Dyson sphere doing n-space mathematics, are sending correspondence to a Cuttlefish scientist on Europa. Nobody else gets correspondence.
The diplomacy
Human space has no gravlane connections. The galaxy's species are physiologically dependent on gravlane travel for FTL — they literally cannot reach us without gravlanes they don't have. So all formal contact happens at three frontier stations on the edge of our sphere, where humanity travels to the edge of its territory and alien representatives travel to the edge of their gravlane networks, and everyone meets in the middle. The power differential is legible in the geometry: we travel to them. When the Muridian representative was asked about establishing an embassy on Mars, she paused in a way that indicated the question was too small to dignify with a response. We are currently not on their level. The question is whether that changes.
The feel of the thing
This is a setting where a Krev arms dealer at Breakwater Station offers you a price on military hardware you probably shouldn't have, doesn't distinguish between trade and raiding as a philosophical matter, and considers your discomfort with this charming.
Where the ISA is monitoring your crew member's neural activity because three weeks ago they bent a corridor bulkhead with their mind without meaning to, and the ISA's position is that this is a security matter, and the Evolvist community's position is that this is a person who needs training, not management, and both of them want you to make a choice.
Where the Orca ship-core bonded to your vessel is more experienced than any biological crew member you will ever serve with, can navigate skip-space with a precision that still makes human pilots feel inadequate, is deeply sarcastic about things she is not supposed to know, and occasionally says things in crew briefings that take you three days to fully understand.
Where the job that seemed straightforward — deliver the cargo, collect the fee, get out — turns out to have three parties who each believe they legitimately own the cargo, an ISA tracking device you found on day two, and a Chimp broker in the outer Belt who knows something she's not telling you but is willing to trade it for something you don't know you have yet.
Where the biggest question in the galaxy — what humanity actually is, why the region around Sol is mapped as an Absence zone in records older than the human species, what VEGR left at 40 Eridani and why it used English — can be the background radiation of a career spent hauling ore and running gray-market cargo, or the central thread of a campaign that eventually puts your crew in front of an entity that has been waiting for someone to assemble enough pieces to have the conversation.
Rules — pick your flavor
This setting runs well under any of the following. Choose based on what your table wants to feel — gritty sandbox, crew drama, narrative ease, hard SF, or survival horror.
Stars Without Number (Revised)
Best overall fit. Free edition available. Sandbox tools, faction system, and the most setting-ready psionic mechanics of any system on this list. Start here if you're unsure.
Scum and Villainy
Best for crew dynamics and the free-trader experience. Blades in the Dark engine, clock system, ship as shared protagonist. The Mystic playbook handles psionics naturally.
Cypher System: The Stars Are Fire
Best for narrative play and mixed-experience groups. Fast, flexible, the latent psionics option fits the setting's "congenital surprise" model perfectly.
Diaspora
Best for hard SF and exploration campaigns. FATE engine, exceptional ship combat, the grittiest tone of the five. Psionics require homebrew but the framework is natural.
Alien: The Roleplaying Game
Best for horror and military tone. The panic mechanics are perfect for null-space exposure and things that arrive without a transit signature. Not designed for long campaigns.
More detail
Full system breakdowns including psionic mapping and campaign framework recommendations are in the GM Info section.
Where to go from here
The site is organized as follows — start anywhere, but these are the recommended entry points:
Start here
Timeline
230 years of history in five eras. Read this first to understand how the world got here.
Then this
Known Alien Factions
The galactic political landscape. The Muridians, the Krev, the Scour, the Progenitors, and the things that don't fit any category.
For players
Terran Space
Mars, Europa, Ceres, the Belt, Saturn, and everywhere else humanity actually lives. Where your crew is from.
For players
Would You Like To Know More?
The Skip Drive Treatise, the Evolvist Manifesto, the Historical Briefing. Background reading for the curious.
For GMs
GM Info
The classified answers, the real story behind the mysteries, psionic rules, campaign frameworks, and plot hooks from one session to a full arc.
For GMs
Human Space Survey
What's out there in the 20-light-year neighborhood. Including 40 Eridani. Including the block. Including what the dating result means.
In 2350, a ship called the CSS Resolute is in transit toward Kapteyn's Star, carrying forty-seven people who know there might be something waiting for them and don't know what. A Cuttlefish professor in an underwater research station is reading her ninth post-it note from something she's named the Correspondent, and the note is a question she doesn't yet know how to answer. An uplifted cat is operating an information network in the outer Belt and has been for 130 years and is considerably more patient than any human in similar circumstances would be. And somewhere in the Absence zone that surrounds the solar system — a region the galaxy's oldest records have been mapping for longer than humanity has existed — something is present in the way that it is always present: noticed, when it is noticed at all, primarily in retrospect.
This is where the story is. Pull up a chair. Mind the Orca — she's been listening to this conversation longer than you've been having it, and she has opinions.