Roleplay in a Galaxy Far, Far Away with Galactic & Going Rogue

A duology of GM-less TTRPGs based in a galaxy far far away offers a unique opportunity to explore what it means to rebel and fight for what matters.

Jumpgate Games announced in May that it was releasing physical copies of Galactic+Going Rogue, two Star Wars-themed games that bring a lore-agnostic adaptation to the world that allows players to explore the setting without dedicating themselves to the deep, deep lore of George Lucas’ film franchise.

In Galactic, players find themselves in a world like Star Wars where “The Liberation” (the Rebellion) and your player group have to decide what they’re going to do to push back against the malevolent forces of the Mandate (The Empire) in their way. It features heroes and villains, space ships and even its version of the Force (known as The Space Between.) It’s designed to capture the high-energy adventurous space opera spirit of the original trilogy of Star Wars movies with a hint of political intrigue and personal tale-telling.

Going Rogue, in contrast, is a Rogue One-esque setting where players have been given a mission to decide what they’re willing to do to stop the Mandate. The problem is that they’re a ragtag group of people who have no reason to like each other but have a job to do for the good of the galaxy. What events would draw together a gaggle of different souls with different motives to pull off a Rogue One-esque mission and sacrifice themselves for a greater cause? 

The two games’ origins began when Galactic author Riley Rethal was enamored with The Force Awakens in 2019. While raised in a house that loved Star Wars, Rethal initially found the original trilogy uninteresting (something many fans might call heresy). As she watched more of the newer films, she became familiar with the universe’s concepts from the Rebellion to the Force that spoke to her. But there were also aspects of it she wasn’t a fan of it (such as the Eastern influences that Lucas drew upon and appropriated when describing the Force.) So Rethal constructed Galactic, using Avery Alder’s Belonging Outside Belonging game system to create the structure required to tell a different set of stories within the “galactic” setting that Star Wars had inspired over the decades.

Going Rogue author Jess Levine soon followed, discovering the game in her own time and running it with some friends during COVID lockdowns. The designer adored the Galactic system, but found it couldn’t tell the stories she wanted. So she began to adapt the rules into an expansion that became Going Rogue. They later teamed up and started selling both games together through Itch.io. When Andor Season 2 was announced, the pair decided to bring both games to print.

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A GM-Less Ship Through the Stars

GM-less games like Galactic and Going Rogue are unique, as they require a different approach to storytelling and exploring oneself than most TTRPG players may be used to. If you play D&D, it’s not hard to turn off your emotions and to just play the game in a dungeon crawl/combat-focused manner that doesn’t challenge one’s assumptions or view of self. After all, it’s a game of yourself versus the forces presented as opposition by the DM.

In Galactic and Going Rogue, no GM drives the bad guy in this story. The players will face plenty of opposition, but it’s not because one of the players is the Mandate. Conflicts and story ideas will arise through character decisions, appropriate tables, and the decisions of fellow players. It’s also not a game where players are casting spells or figuring out the optimal way to blow up the most bad guys. It’s a story where players will rely more on character priorities and “moves” than anything else.

Players will adopt a playbook as their own. Each playbook represents an archetype (the criminal Scoundrel, the honorable Knight-Errant, etcetera.) Each playbook has moves they can use to inform the narrative toward their character’s interest. There are ‘strong moves’ that ask them to turn in a token to use what they’re best at to excel in a story moment. Then there are ‘weak moves’, where players have to show off their human flaws and maybe even do things that could hurt the other players to earn tokens.

 Players will work together to create a narrative through these moves and the moves of the “Pillars”, which are broad concepts describing aspects of the world. For example, a player might activate a move from the Mandate, which would “foreshadow a larger threat” and get them a token in exchange. This would likely mean that the bad guys in the story now have more power and are out to do something bad to stop you all soon.

It creates a dance of creativity between players at the table, allowing for a creative story to be quickly constructed through collaboration rather than the guiding hand of a GM; something that many players may find enticing if they want a break from forever-GMing.

Galactic and Going Rogue initially caught my eye when Levine announced on BlueSky that while Star Wars inspired the two games and that both herself and Rethal were both fans of Andor, they could not support Disney+ during the second season of Andor. The streaming service was named on a list of companies for boycott by the BDS movement, which is opposed to how Israel was treating Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The movement has gained some strength in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, and remains a point of political tension within the United States.

Levine and Rethal told TTRPG Insider that they are both Jewish and “fervently anti-Zionist.” It’s why they advocate for boycotting Disney+ and the recent release of Season 2 of Andor, despite each being a fan of the property.  They don’t believe their Star Wars-inspired game will drive people to spend more on Disney+, however. “We are not driving people to Andor; we are getting people who like Andor to try our game,” Levine emphasized. Levine has repeatedly stated their stance regarding Disney+ and BDS when discussing Star Wars or Andor in Galactic+Going Rogue online. She hopes it might set an example for the TTRPG community and encourage other creators to place their politics at the forefront of anything they create.

Levine’s game, in particular, draws heavy inspiration from the author’s political history. The game was written in 2021 while Levine was involved in antifascist political organizing, so her views of what it means to affect the world for a cause come through in Going Rogue and its doomed-from-the-start approach to storytelling and offered an opportunity to process what that means through the fiction. Levine’s relationship to that activism and the game has changed since its release (particularly during the second Trump administration).

However, Levine affirms that the game is “more relevant than ever.” And that becomes clear with Going Rogue’s basic premise.

Players start Going Rogue with the inherent assumption that “all your characters are going to die at the end,” Levine told TTRPG Insider. “The entire party knows that this game inevitably ends with every player character dying. And that's Rogue One. Right? Everyone is sacrificing themselves for a cause. But one of the things that I say is that it is like a hard rule is that you are giving your lives for something worth it, for something that materially moves the galaxy closer to freedom.” This design decision was made in the wake of years of activism on Levine’s part, who previously helped organize antifascist protests during the first Trump administration.

“I wanted to play a character who felt so sure that what they were doing would make a difference,” Levine added. “That they were willing to literally give their life for it and experience, like, the bleed of that feeling so that maybe I could take that with me into the organizing I was doing elsewhere.” This is particularly notable since all of the playbooks in Going Rogue are “loners and cynics.” It is theoretically possible to use Galactic playbooks in Rogue One, but it is not recommended to maintain the appropriate tone that Rogue One presents. (“You play how you want,” Levine added jokingly. “We’re not space cops.”)

As of June, the game has successfully funded and is pursuing various stretch goals. It has also gained some traction and been featured on popular Actual Play podcasts like Jeff Stormer’s Party of One and Dillin Apelyan’s One Shot Network.

Personally, I’m very excited for this game because of its potential for spreading GM-less games. The GM-less concept is often relegated to niche games and small properties in the indie space, which might make it seem less accessible. But Galactic and Going Rogue’s innate connection to Star Wars presents players with what appears to be an easy-to-understand experience that draws on the most popular science fiction franchise in modern times.

CORRECTION: We added some appropriate context to Levine’s discussion of the boycott of Disney+ and her support of BDS.

Thanks to Jess and Riley for chatting! You can check out their campaign on Kickstarter.

I highly recommend jess’s interviews with Rowan Zeoli of Rascal News. They discuss the political ideas behind the game in detail, a topic that I didn’t get to touch on as much with the two writers.