# Letters to the Stars: An Epistolary RPG *Created:* 2024-07-31, *Modified:* 2026-11-10 ![[Letters to the Stars (cover).jpg]] **Letters to the Stars** is a game about the distance that opens between two people, wearing a starship as a disguise. Each captain flies out to a dangerous mission and back; the only thing crossing the gap between them is the message sent at the end of every turn — and it arrives later every time. ## Setting You are a starship captain carrying your ship into the unknown, and the game's own promise is that you will "encounter threats, manage your crew, and relate your adventures to someone who grows more distant with every breath." The someone is the person on the other end: another captain, a lover, a supervisor, a review board, a journalist, a rival — anyone who can plausibly be waiting. The messages themselves are whatever the table wants them to be: a captain's log, a public dispatch, a personal letter, a historian's study of a doomed voyage; present or past tense, first person or third, in character or in your own voice. The galaxy gets built together, once, in the conversation that runs 30 to 60 minutes before anything launches. Five oracles lay the board — where home is, what kind of galactic government runs it, how travel works, how bad the piracy is, and what the technology is like — and the answers can run as detailed as the table cares to make them. The book's own examples go from a socialist commonwealth where war is rare and the core systems are safe, to an oligarchy of corporate families where the trade lanes are secure and the backwaters are chaos, to tech that is "trying to kill us." It is a broad frame and deliberately thin: enough to give a correspondence something to be about, not enough to answer the questions the fiction will raise. What actually gets tested is the relationship. **Bond** runs from −2, "icy indifference," to +3, "burning passion," and the book is insistent that +3 is as likely to mean loathing as adoration and that it need not be symmetrical — two people rarely feel precisely the same about each other. Bonds are assembled out of shared history, shared danger, shared blood, and love or hate. [[Dead Letter Society]] and [[Epistolary]] both make the letter itself the unit of play; here the letter is the prize at the end of a turn spent trying not to die. ## Mechanics Everything is 2d6 plus a stat or an officer's rating against three bands: 10 or more is a success, 7 to 9 a partial success, 6 or less a failure. Oracles roll d66 — one die for tens, one for ones — with a handful of d666 tables for names and ship christenings. ### The Shape of a Turn A game runs nine to eleven turns: four outbound (O1–O4), up to three on mission (M1–M3), four for the return (R4–R1). Each turn has three phases. **Threats**, when you respond to crises trying to wreck the ship. **The mission**, when you get on with the job. And **messaging**, when you tell your correspondent what happened. ### Threats Threats drive the drama, and come in three classes: **T1 social** (mutiny, stowaways, plague, a minor deity making mischief), **T2 security** (saboteurs, a shapeshifter, pirates, an assassin), **T3 structural** (hull breach, coolant leak, a minefield, a crushing net). The book ships 36 of them as a d66 table, each with a description, first signs, and the shape of its escalation. - **Detect threat** opens a turn when threats are already active: roll adding the number of active threats. On 10 or more no new threat emerges, but the most advanced one marks a point of progress; on 7 to 9 the most advanced attacks; on 6 or less a new threat appears. - **The threat's target** comes off a table split by class. Most rows name the officer whose section answers the threat; rows 8 to 11 hand it to the captain personally, strain and all; and one row per class is the ship itself. - **Power** is 2d6 plus the number of active threats: 6 or less gives +3, 7 to 9 gives +2, 10 or more gives +1, and a threat you have already met this game returns at +1. Power is the dial for scale as much as for math — a +1 mutiny is two officers whispering, a +3 is open revolt. - **Progress** is a five-bubble track. A fresh threat starts with three filled if it is alone, two if one other is active, one if there are more than that. **Containing** is one attempt per turn: pick the threat that worries you most, describe the crew's response, roll with the affected section. On 10 or more erase 2 progress and drop the threat's rating by 1; on 7 to 9 erase 1 and the section takes strain; on 6 or less it attacks. A threat attack is rolled *with* the threat's power and written from its point of view, so success is bad news: 10 or more fills 2 progress, deals 2 strain and raises its rating, 7 to 9 fills one and deals one, and 6 or less erases progress or heals an officer. Emptying a track earns a **destroy threat** roll — 10 or more ends it happily and raises the officer's rating, 7 to 9 ends it at great cost with ship strain, 6 or less provokes a final assault. Filling a track brings that assault immediately: 10 or more and the threat is victorious with the ship taking 3 strain, 7 to 9 and it is defeated but the ship takes 2, 6 or less and it is defeated with someone gaining a rating. Every other active threat then attacks at the end of the phase, and any that fill or empty resolve the same way. ### Strain and Breaks Strain is the only currency of harm, and it is tracked three ways at once. - **The ship** breaks at 3, 6 and 9 strain, each break checking off a fate: a random officer takes a negative trait, a random officer is lost, the ship is lost. Take the third and the game is over — roll 2d6, and on 7 or more you get one final message out. Ship strain can only be erased by completing missions. - **The captain** breaks at 3, 6 and 9 as well: raise a stat, lower a stat, or the captain is lost. Once a break is reached the captain can never fall below that strain again. A lost captain hands the ship to the X.O., whose rating decides whether it gets home. - **Officers** break at 3 strain: erase the strain and take a fate — a positive trait, then two negative ones. Run out of fates and the officer is lost, the ship takes strain, and a favourite costs the captain 2 more. Replacements are robots rated −2 whose strain lands on the ship. Traits run from ±1 to ±3, so a bad roll can quietly gut an officer for the rest of the voyage. An optional **extreme peril** rule rolls on a loss table whenever a threat attack or final assault comes up double sixes. ### Character Creation The captain takes a name, an **origin** that sets Brave, Smart and Calm (navy, tech, diplomacy, piracy, academia or hospitality, each a different spread of +2, +0 and −1), a one-word **vibe** off a d66 table — Reckless, Icy, Sadistic, Upbeat — and a bond worked out from the shared history. Starting inspiration equals bond, so a captain who does not care about their correspondent starts with nothing. The **ship** is its six officers — X.O., counselor, surgeon, security chief, navigator, engineer — and its purpose sets all six ratings at once: colonisation, medicine, war, discovery, pilgrimage, construction. Officers get names and vibes off the d666 oracles. One may be a **favourite**, worth +1 bond and 2 captain strain when they die. The **mission** comes off a d6 table keyed to the ship's purpose, or a larger d66 table, and each carries a **key officer** whose section has to carry it out. This is where the book is at its best and its bleakest: *Test a super weapon. Transport test subjects. Unleash a concealed bio weapon. Strip mine a verdant world.* ### Captain Moves Once per turn the captain may make one special move. **Investigate** (smart) studies an active threat for a bonus to the next containment attempt, or a disaster on a 6 or less. **Inspire** (calm) eases an officer's strain at a cost to the captain. **Revive** (brave) saves an officer who would otherwise be lost, and can be used once a game. ### The Mission The mission is a five-bubble track and you have M1 to M3 to fill it. - **Mission prep** runs during the outbound turns, once per turn, as long as the key officer's section is not currently under threat: 10 or more fills 2, 7 to 9 fills 1 and costs the officer strain, 6 or less costs 2 strain. Prep caps at 4 of the 5. - **Attempt mission** is the M1–M3 roll: 10 or more fills 3, 7 to 9 fills 1, 6 or less costs the officer strain. The captain can take over at the price of 1 strain, and then takes whatever the attempt costs as well. - **The ship bleeds** a point of strain at the end of M1 and M2 while the mission is unfinished, and 3 more if it fails at M3 — at which point you go home in shame and roll on a table explaining why. - **Completing** it earns one reward: a positive trait for the key officer, a negative trait erased, three officers healed, captain or ship strain erased back to the last break, +1 to a captain stat, or 2 inspiration. There is also a **change mission** move for the outbound leg, rolled with the number of threats already completed — the book's permission slip for the storyline that turns out to matter more than the assignment. ### Messaging The turn ends with a **connect** roll against bond: 10 or more gains 1 inspiration and heals 1 captain strain, 7 to 9 gives one or the other, 6 or less means **comms trouble** — bond drops, or no message goes out, or the message ends in the middle, or starts in the middle, or cuts off at the most exciting moment, or (on a 6) somehow gains you inspiration. You may always take a strain to buy the inspiration you missed. **Inspiration** is the game's luck, spent one for one on any 2d6 roll and capped at five at a time. Spending your last point marks a strain, which is the neatest piece of design in the book: hope costs something, and the cost is exactly the sort of thing you would write to someone about. The delays are the whole point. Three **time controls** — fast, standard, slow — set how long you wait between finishing a turn and sending the message, and they tighten on the way out and loosen on the way home: ten minutes at O1, an hour at M1, forty-five minutes at R4 under standard. Between messages the only permitted communication is the **text code**, a numbered shorthand running from 001 ("Yes") to 096 ("Ship reached home; captain killed during reentry"), with 051-X-TEXT to coin your own. ### Going Home The return leg is the outbound leg without mission prep, on gentler time controls. Then R1 takes one last bite. If the ship has taken 7 or more strain, or the remaining threats add up to +2 or more power, you must make a **final approach**: roll for its type — perilous (brave), complicated (smart), terrifying (calm) — and then roll it. On 10 or more the ship lands; on 7 to 9 the captain takes 3 strain; on 6 or less the ship is lost. Then everyone reconvenes and scores: +5 for the mission, +3 for bringing the ship home, +2 per surviving officer, +1 per threat defeated, +1 per point of ship strain. Captains who survive take an advancement from a list that stacks permanently across games with the same ship and crew — so a vessel can be flown until it finally kills you. ### Scenarios and Hacking Scenarios are chains of threats with a trigger, an affected section, a reward and a penalty, plus a mission that can carry complications, restrictions and special moves of its own. They nest into campaigns, and the book includes one worked example: **The Star Corridor**, a solo scenario in which a society of wealthy amateurs sends you into a crack in space aboard a ramshackle ship, crewed by two of their own incompetents. The hacking chapter is unusually generous — new threats, new moves off the Apocalypse World formula, captain abilities, a shorter or longer voyage, and the observation that the whole thing strips down into an engine for "travelers on dangerous journeys trying to stay in touch," whether they are Vikings, spies or a troupe of actors. ## Editions **Letters to the Stars** was published in 2024, and there is only the one edition: an 81-page rulebook funded on Kickstarter in February 2024 by 382 backers, with a print run alongside the PDF. *In the library.* It ships under the **Akers Games License**, which lets you make, share and sell material based on the game. ## Supplements - **Mission Log** — the play sheet the game assumes you are filling in: the captain, six officers and their ratings, the favourite and the key officer, the threat and mission tracks. *In the library.* - **Quick Reference** — the moves, tables and bands on a few pages, for the parts you would rather not look up mid-turn. - **Core Deck** — the tables as cards, including the 36 core threats, for a table that would rather draw than flip. - **Crew Deck** — 72 further officers, each with a suggested rating, so a crew can be dealt instead of named. - **Threat Deck** — 72 more threats, written by the campaign's backers. ## References - [Letters to the Stars: An Epistolary RPG - Akers Games](https://akersgames.com/shop/p/letters-to-the-stars-an-epistolary-rpg) — the designer's own store page, with his account of what went into the book and the print option. - [Letters to the Stars: An Epistolary RPG - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/468723/Letters-to-the-Stars-An-Epistolary-RPG) — the PDF, and the reader reviews, which are warm. - [Letters to the Stars: An Epistolary RPG - Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wmakers/letters-to-the-stars-an-epistolary-rpg) — the February 2024 ZineQuest campaign: the pitch, the updates, and the card decks it funded. - [Letters to the Stars - Gaming with the Gnomies](https://gamingwiththegnomies.blogspot.com/2024/02/kickstarter-zinequest2024-letters-to.html) — a ZineQuest preview that prices the PDF against the print copy and vouches for the designer's delivery record. - [Akers Games License](https://akersgames.com/license) — the terms for building and selling your own material for the game.