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Thirteen Parsecs: Beyond the Solar Frontier Tabletop Role Playing Game

by Elf Lair Games

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Mockup: not final product


Thirteen Parsecs: Advetures Beyond the Solar Frontier is a tabletop roleplaying game of adventure and excitement in the wild realms of science fiction. Whether it's a pair of FBI agents battling a clandestine alien invasion in the modern day, a far future war between heroic rebels and evil interstellar empires, a gritty cyberpunk dystopia, or a hard science exploration of the nature of humanity, this came can cover it all! The rules are elegant, simple, and fast-playing, drawn from the earliest days of role playing but infused with modern design.

Artwork by Dean Spencer

What Does It Bring to the Table?

Within you will find all the rules you need to run any sort of science fiction campaign from gritty cyberpunk to outer space war dramas to science fantasy in the grand planetary romance tradition, to hard sci-fi, isolationist starfaring horror, and beyond! Whether your jam is Asimov, Lucas, Roddenberry, Larson, Bradbury, Clarke, Dick, Gibson, Heinlein, or any other, 13P will do the job - fast, fun, intuitive, and easy, without sacrificing customizability or character individuality!

  • Simple, intuitive, and fast rules that you can completely customize to your table's style. 
  • Eight character archetypes, ready to take on the Solar frontier. These include the Augmented, Blaster, Hunter-Soldier, Diplomat, Mystic Warrior, Psychic, and Slicer. 
  • Starship creation rules that let you build everything from a snub fighter to a space station, and complete rules for starship combat from dogfights to multi-crewed vessels where everyone gets to shine!
  • Playable alien and nonhuman species and guidelines for creating your own original species. 
  • Human Cultural backgrounds to give your characters a history and differentiate them from others.
  • Fate Points to give your players some extra agency - escape hits, make saves, and even engage in minor scene edits!
  • Complete skills system to customize character abilities
  • Secondary training to supplement your die rolls
  • Rules for creating custom equipment, psionics, and powers
  • Heroic Touchstones, an option for those who want to build campagins around heroes with true destinies
  • Several mini-settings detailing what lies within and beyond the 13-parsec Solar Frontier. 
  • A bestiary of alien threats
  • and more!

dreamstimefree_5899740 Patrimonio Designs Limited - Dreamstime.com

What's the Format?

Thirteen Parsecs (or 13P) is envisioned as a softcover book, roughly 288 pages, 7.25" x 9.25", and black and white, but with stretch goals to achieve hardcover binding and even leather binding. Pledge levels will include print and PDF versions of the game, plus the option to buy our other games at discounted rates! With your help we will unlock an upgrade to hardcover binding, a new pledge level for leather binding, GM screens, and much more!

What are the Rules?

It uses the O.G.R.E.S. rules, the same as our other flagship titles, so it will seamlessly integrate with either of our games. Care to run a game of Lovecraftian horror in the dead of space? Combine it with Night Shift: VSW. Looking to have an elvish imperium battling the orcish empire deep within the stars, with heroes at the helm of spell-slinging starfighters? Combine it with Wasted Lands: TDA and go!

For those familiar with Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age or Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars, you will be familiar already. If not, head over to https://www.elflair.com/ and download the FREE quick starts for those games to learn what it means to be Powered by O.G.R.E.S.! it's an ideal entry point for new players, while being customizable enough to thrill experienced players and rules tinkers!

At its base, the O.G.R.E.S. ttrpg rules system functions on three core mechanics. Why three instead of a single, unified mechanics? The reason is that the three mechanics are each tailored to handle a different aspect of the game in a fast, intuitive way that is uniquely suited to that particular aspect.

While unified mechanics have their place in a gaming culture, we have found that the three mechanic system has a special, unique kind of elegance which can be tailored to many different styles of play. The three mechanics for games that are Powered by O.G.R.E.S. are as follows:

  • The Class Ability Mechanic: Roll percentile dice (two, ten-sided dice, or 2d10, read as a percentage) and try to get under your ability's chance of success. This covers all abilities tied to skills or class/archetype abilities from stealth to tracking to spellcasting and even in some cases, dealing direct damage in combat.
  • The Attribute and Combat Mechanic: Roll a twenty-sided die (d20), adding appropriate bonuses (usually your attribute bonus, check bonus, and difficulty modifier) and try to get a 20 or better. This is for everything from Agility checks to keep from slipping and falling or Charisma checks to fast-talk, to hitting someone in combat.
  • The Rule of 2: The Rule of 2 is a unique GM-only TTRPG mechanic that allows a Game Master to instantly resolve some issue that the rules don't otherwise cover. SImply choose a die type (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, even d20) based on the general odds of some event occurring, roll it, and look for a 1 or 2 result.

I still prefer unified mechanics: No problem! We include guidelines to instantly convert O.G.R.E.S. to run on a unified roll-over system, a unified roll-under percentile system, and even a unified dice pool system, all without changing the characters one iota! That's what we mean when we say "your game, your way when it's Powered by O.G.R.E.S.!"

The New Class of Old School Tackles the Solar Frontier...are YOU game??
Artwork by Peter Fischer

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