Episode 21 closes our sci-fi season with a debrief: what we learned when theory met the table. We revisit the systems we ran—Coriolis, Freemarket, CBR+PNK, Mothership, Twilight Imperium among others—and pull out the through-lines that surfaced across very different design priorities, moving between genre, system, and setting.

Across the season, certain levers kept showing up, including Dark Points and panic clocks. Downtime becomes a design layer, not just a breather. Tech and transportation aren’t just stylistic; they’re constraints you can plan around, exploit, or get trapped inside. Memory and transhumanism come into focus too: what happens to stakes when identity is modular.

One question kept circling throughout the season: what makes something science fiction at the table? Vibes matter, but so do the costs the rules make visible—risk, logistics, scarcity, and human limits. The boundary gets tested against fantasy: when is “sci-fi vs. fantasy” a productive restriction, and when is it an empty category you paint over with aesthetic? No single answer lands, but a few useful ways to frame the problem emerge.

If you’ve been with us all season, this is the after-action report. If you’re new, it’s a fast way to see how we read mechanics as part of story structure.

Topics Discussed:

00:00:45 Talk of Genre

00:29:00 What we played

00:45:00 Heroes and the Everyman

00:01:00 Media Touchpoints

01:05:00 Downtime and Resource Management

01:19:15 Games we didn't play

01:52:30 Season Favorites

For more on the discussion of System and Style check out our written articles and Scott’s additional thoughts on specific systems on our YouTube channel.

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