Arathi Sector is Coming
The unexpected reason this is my next must-play TTRPG
The news is out that Arathi Sector is mere days away from launch. I couldn’t be more excited…but not for the reason you may think.
Yes, it’s by Castle Grief, the titan who gave us Kal-Arath and motivated me to dive into TTRPGs. That alone is enough to make it an obvious must-play. But when I look under the hood of Castle Grief’s dev diaries, I am reminded of a marvelous RPG experience I had a lifetime ago:
Let me set the stage: the year was 1996, I hadn’t yet discovered DnD or the world of TTRPGs, and my family had a Mac so I missed out on a lot of popular games of the time. I didn’t even know RPG was a genre.
One day my dad brought home a Mac Addict magazine that included a demo disc with a ton of games. Most of them were forgettable shovelware, but one stood out above the rest: a surprisingly deep and story-rich space epic called Escape Velocity.
You have to remember at the time, Star Wars was S-tier status. The prequel trilogy was still years away from tainting its legacy, and 10-year-old-me was fired up to get my hands on a game that 1) actually worked on my Mac and 2) promised to let me explore the galaxy as if I were Han Solo.
Sure enough, Escape Velocity delivered on that promise and became one of my all-time favorite gaming experiences.
I didn’t realize it until years later, but Escape Velocity is essentially a digitized version of a TTRPG. Although there is some real-time flying and combat, the experience is largely text-based. You start out as a rookie pilot on Sol and have to earn credits to upgrade your ship and eventually travel to the far corners of space. It’s a sandbox so you can earn credits any way you want: bounties, piracy, asteroid mining, gambling, trading (and the more fun version: smuggling), or joining one of the game’s many factions and completing their story quests.
There’s a vast pointcrawl map with dozens of star systems you discover as your strength and resources grow. Various factions control different regions, and over time you learn where the best planets are for trade, quests, equipment, or picking a fight.
You also have to manage your ship’s fuel to avoid getting marooned, much the same way as tracking rations in a traditional TTRPG.
As you decide if you want to be a trader, fighter pilot, or fleet commander, you can stop at various shipyards to pick out your dream vehicle. Or if you spot one in the wild, you can attack the ship and try to thread the needle of disabling without destroying it, then claim it as your own. Of course, this affects your wanted status in nearby systems, and you may be hunted down by an overwhelming force of peacekeepers.
One of my favorite parts of Escape Velocity is the depth in upgrading your ship. Each ship has multiple parameters including speed, shields, cargo space, fuel capacity, weapon slots, accessory slots, and more. It’s immensely satisfying that first time you buy a torpedo launcher and can fight back against pirates. There’s even black market gear you can buy, like a pirate jammer or fake ID — just don’t let the confederation catch you with them.
As you explore each planet, you’ll be greeted with mid 90s 3D graphic glory (I suspect made with Bryce3D). While primitive, the look is vague and minimal enough to let your imagination take over. You’ll also get a paragraph of lore, and occasionally spark a text-based random encounter, similar to rolling for table results in a TTRPG.
So back to Arathi Sector. I know it’s not exactly the same thing as Escape Velocity. But that’s not the point. I’m so excited to play this game because it feels like the perfect evolution of my first electronic RPG and my first TTRPG. The mechanics are a juiced-up take on the already proven Kal-Arath, adapted to the game systems of EV like ship outfitting and space combat. The setting is akin to 10-year-old-me’s most loved aspects of OG Star Wars (smuggling, bounty hunters, aliens, blaster shootouts) in a hard-R package. And I can use all my nostalgia for Escape Velocity to expand on the lore and create rich game worlds in my campaigns.
Did Escape Velocity influence Castle Grief in any way? Who knows. He may have never heard of it. But I see a connection and am thrilled for the potential of how fun this game can be. I’ll be purchasing Arathi Sector day one.
In the meantime, I’m firing up my old copy of Escape Velocity for one last hurrah in the stars.
If you want to give Escape Velocity a shot, it’s available as abandonware here. I recommend the sequel EV Nova, which seems to be a little easier to get working on modern computers, and is basically the same game but with more ships/upgrades etc.
Fun fact, Arathi Sector was announced by Castle Grief on his Discord on the same time I was playing Endless Sky, an open-source Escape Velocity tribute game. And I was thinking the same thing while playing it : this would be awesome as a TTRPG, and here come Arathi Sector! 🚀