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Sci-fi RPG with an AI game master

Starships, cryosleep, jungle moons and neon cities. Pitch the future you want to be stuck in, and the game master runs it.

How sci-fi plays in Orpheus

Science fiction gives a game master big empty spaces to fill: a ship's corridors, a station's back rooms, a planet nobody has charted. You set the dial. Hard and grounded, where air and fuel run short, or bright and pulpy, where the jump drive just works and the aliens have opinions.

The people make it work. Crew members want things, keep secrets, and remember how you treated them, so the engineer you lied to and the officer you saved both have long memories. Money still talks: creds in a neon city buy passage, information and silence, and a seller who dislikes you charges more.

When it turns violent, fights use initiative, real rolls and death saves. Follow the firefight in the story, or flip to a tactical board and move your pieces down the corridor yourself.

Sci-fi bends easily into other genres, and the game master keeps up. A mystery aboard a sleeper ship, a survival story on a moon that watches back, a war story told from the losing side.

Your ship, station or planet keeps its own logic. Say what's possible and what isn't, and the game master holds the line: if the airlock needs a code, someone has it, and they want something for it.

How a scene opens

An example first beat from “Three centuries late”, written the way the game master writes. In the game, nothing is scripted: this is just how a scene like it might start.

A row of frosted cryosleep pods in a blue-lit hall

Frost cracks off the lid as the pod opens, and the first thing you see is a crowd: twenty people in hand-stitched robes, kneeling. Someone has painted your face on the wall behind them. Badly.

A woman with a lieutenant's bars sewn onto her robe steps forward. “Sleeper,” she says, and her voice shakes. “The Book said you would wake when the ship was lost.”

Behind her, a status panel blinks a date. It's three hundred years later than it should be.

Your choices

  • Ask her what happened to the crew
  • Play along and bless the congregation
  • Read the status panel for where the ship is

Or type what you do in your own words.

Pitches to start from

  • A row of frosted cryosleep pods in a blue-lit hall

    Three centuries late

    “You wake from cryosleep three centuries late, and the crew has started a religion about you.”

    Sci-fi mysteryYou play: The last sleeper

  • A glowing alien jungle of giant mushrooms under two moons

    Something filming back

    “A nature documentary crew on a jungle moon, and something out there is filming them back.”

    Sci-fi survivalYou play: The camera operator

  • A starship bridge, the captain's chair facing a galaxy beyond the viewport

    The other side of the war

    “The space saga you grew up on, told from the other side of the war.”

    Fan fictionYou play: An enemy officer

  • A frozen corridor inside a derelict starship, cables strewn across the floor

    The war isn't over

    “Salvagers board a dead warship that still thinks the war is on.”

    Space horrorYou play: The salvage captain

Make it yours

Decide how much science goes in your fiction. Tell the game master whether you want survival with real scarcity or a space opera with a swiveling captain's chair, what stays out of the story, and how hard it should play. Start from a pitch below, from a preset, or from a sentence of your own.

More worlds: Fantasy · Horror · Mystery · Comedy · Cozy · Adventure · Fan fiction. New to this? Read what an AI game master does.

Start a sci-fi campaign

Pitch a ship, a station or a planet, and the game master sets the first scene. Free to start, no card needed.

Play free

Plays in your browser, on a computer or a phone