Outer-Rim Cantina recently launched on Drive-Thru RPG, and to celebrate, I thought I would dig into the game’s mechanics and explain why I made the choices I did.
When someone mentions Cantinas and space in the same sentence, most people’s minds instantly jump to Star Wars. And Star Wars was a massive influence on this game.
Well, one specific bit of Star Wars media was.
The Star Wars Holiday Special.
What Inspired The Game?
Sure, the special is a delightful mess that is barely coherent, but it has one moment I unironically love.
In one segment, viewers are taken to a seedy cantina owned and operated by Bea Arthur. However, when the Empire announces that the system will be locked down due to Rebel activity, Bea’s Cantina is forced to close. As the people leave, Bea performs a musical number called “Good Night, But Not Goodbye,” where she wishes her patrons well and notes that someday, they’ll meet again.
I love this segment because of the sheer variety of weird monsters you see wandering around the cantina as Bea sings. It makes this cantina feel alive and reminds you that while Luke and his buddies are the focus, the world is full of other beings. And most of these beings are just trying to make ends meet however they can.
This is something that I don’t think modern Star Wars touches on enough.
The downtrodden lower classes. The ones attempting to survive in a world that doesn’t care about them. So, I specifically made Outer-Rim Cantina about those people, the tyrannized workers just trying to pay their bills. In the game, each player plays a freelance space captain.
Rather than having a fixed employer, these captains take short-term freelance jobs around the galaxy. Doing the dirty work no one else wants to do.
The Mechanics
The game’s core focus is collaborative universe-building. The players do this via the Galaxy Map, a collection of notecards showing the organizations and events currently shaping the universe. This map also shows what freelance jobs are presently up for the taking.
As the game plays out, players add, remove and link these cards in various ways to help flesh out the universe, giving greater context to their actions and roleplay.
The game itself is split into two phases, the Job phase and the Meeting Phase. The Meeting Phase is the main roleplay phase, where the characters meet up at the Cantina to discuss their last job and plan their next move.
The Meeting phase is heavily inspired by PbtA, as players are free to talk and roleplay however they like. But when players talk about specific topics or do certain things, they set off moves that help guide the roleplay. These moves include digging for information, getting aggressive, and attempting to slip someone a bribe. Each has its own rewards and downsides, depending on how the rolls plays out, meaning that even the shortest conversations can have massive, long-lasting effects.
At the start of each Meeting, each player adds a new Job to the Galaxy Map, and the Meeting ends when every player has picked a Job for their character to do.
Intel Gathering
The most important thing you earn via moves is Intel Points, which you can assign to any Job currently on the Galaxy Map. The more Intel points a Job has, the easier it will be to successfully complete it.
However, when someone takes a Job, it is removed from the Galaxy Map and can’t gain further Intel points. Due to this, players will need to decide if they want to take a Job early and reduce their chances of successfully pulling it off. Or wait and try to gather intel for it, risking another player grabbing it before they can.
This risk/reward element encourages players to engage with all the Jobs on the map. While it would be tempting to only gather intel for a single job, if another player takes it, you’ll end up stuck with a harder-to-complete Job that you’ll likely fail. Softly encouraging players to spread their attention and have a backup plan should their first choice get taken.
Another core mechanic is Favors. Favors are the internal currency of the freelance space captain world. Players gain favors when they use certain moves and they can cash in Favors at any time to get an advantage on specific rolls or to get another player to do something for them. Of course, the longer the game goes on, the more favors the players will accumulate from each other, representing how the lives of these rag-tag Cantina patrons become more intertwined with time.
Jobs And Debt
Once every player has picked Job, the Job Phase begins. In this phase, players roll dice to find how well the Job goes for them, with players getting different rewards depending on how well they do.
These rewards let players do everything from reducing their Debt to altering the Galaxy Map however they wish. If a player fails the Job, their Debt goes up. If a player’s Debt gets too high, their ship gets bought by the bank, leaving them shackled to a corporation.
When this happens, the player no longer gets to submit or take jobs. Instead, they start to work with the GM, helping them play NPCs and other characters, meaning that failing doesn’t remove you from the session.
This was a crucial inclusion for me. Because, in my opinion, there is nothing worse than putting time aside for a game night only to spend half of it doing nothing because a series of bad rolls got you eliminated early!
Also, using Debt as health was a very deliberate choice. Successful jobs don’t earn you money. Instead, they reduce your Debt. This is because I wanted to capture how precarious this line of work is. There is no good ending where these captains become rich and retire to a fancy Pleasure planet. The best possible outcome is that they make enough money to pay their bills and keep themselves going for one more day.
The specter of failure is always lurking. And all you can do is put distance between it and you and pray it doesn’t catch up.
The game is available to buy on DriveThruRPG
If you want to read more game design posts, check out my other behind-the-scenes articles!
Jonathon Greenall is a freelance writer, artist, and tabletop roleplaying game designer who has written for CBR, Polygon, Nintendo Life, Gayley Dreadful, Enbylife, and many other publications. They have also published several popular and highly-praised tabletop roleplaying games including “You Have One Ability….The Ability To Fuck This Up,” “Macarons, Milkshakes, And Magic,” and “Wander Wizards.”
Jonathon has always been fascinated by media, from the big hitters to the small, obscure, and often overlooked titles that linger on the sidelines, capturing both the on and off-camera stories that make these shows so fascinating.
Jonathon is also a major anime fan, having been exposed to the medium through shows like Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena. Since then, Jonathon has maintained a passion for anime, watching most new shows each season and hunting down overlooked gems from previous ones.