Welcome
Welcome to Sapphic Space Pirates. This is a game about the warm bonds that form
between women* who love other women* (*Neither you nor your character needs to identify as a woman in order to enjoy this game) while stuck in fragile spaceships moving through the
cold void. It’s about the moments between the action, where you find comfort in each other. It’s
also a game about the monstrous women of greek mythology--or maybe that’s a metaphor.
Maybe the void and the ship are metaphors, too. The queerness is not a metaphor.
How to Play
Sapphic Space Pirates is a game that uses the Belonging Outside Belonging system, and
doesn’t use dice like some games you may have played. Each character has weak moves that
grant you a token at the cost of making you vulnerable, regular moves, and strong moves that
cost a token but always succeed. Each character also has a lure that will allow you to give away a
token when people treat you a certain way.
Sapphic Space Pirates also has no game masters like other tabletop top roleplaying
games you might have encountered. All players get the opportunity to decide how the ship, the
void, and the various other elements and forces making up the setting react to your fellow
players. Each has rules for when you should pick them up, when you should trade them away,
and what sort of things they can do. Your goal is to work together to tell a story.
The game should play like a conversation. It’s ok to discuss together what scenes you’d
like to come next or how to make things dramatic. You can’t win or lose; the goal is to work
cooperatively to tell a memorable story together.
Setup
As a crew, you will need to build your ship, choose a voyage, and create characters. You
can do this in any order. When creating a character, you will answer all the questions except the
final ones, and then go around the table and introduce your characters. When everyone has
introduced their characters, ask each other the last two questions, one from each category.
They will shape your relationships with each other.
Choose Your Character:
The Veteran The Witch The Muscle The Hotshot The Fresh Face The Dandy
Build the Ship
You may choose to do this before or after creating characters.
Each player chooses one positive feature:
● A ship cat (Ariadne)
● A friendly robot butler (Geoffrey)
● Windows looking on the void
● Well-stocked med station
● Bar full of exotic liquors (and non-alcoholic beverages)
As a crew, choose two drawbacks:
● Notorious and hunted
● Slow and lumbering
● Shared showers and not enough bunks
Lastly, give your ship a name.
HMS Her Royal Cuddlebug
Choose a Voyage
You may choose to do this before or after creating characters.
As a crew, decide what you’re leaving:
● A job that didn’t go well
● The shipyard
● A big payday
● Much-needed R&R
● A safe haven
● No one wants to talk about it
● The law
As a crew, decide where you’re going:
● Towards a dangerous job
● To turn in a valuable bounty
● The closest thing you have to home
● A shipyard for much needed repairs
● Much-needed R&R
● Somewhere uncharted
● To take on another group of pirates who have it coming