Review of Orpheus Station, the first scenario in Dark Space, a system-neutral collection of Lovecraftian SF horror published by Kabuki Kaiser.

In-Short: An appropriately spooky romp through an abandoned space station with enough changes of pace, twists, and decisions to make for a well-paced 3–4 hour session.

Spoiler-lite for Players and GMs:

Dark Space is a system-agnostic scenario collection, though it works best with systems involving some sort of sanity mechanic, and more specifically Cthulhu Mythos-themed systems. I ran Orpheus Station using Darkship, a hack of Cthulhu Dark and Mothership, as that is the system Kabuki Kaiser used for playtesting. While I wasn’t sold on that system, and for the following scenarios so far I’ve used regular Cthulhu Dark to better effect, Orpheus Station itself was a very nice start to collection.

Dark Space is loose on details and heavy on mood. The setting is only hinted at throughout the various scenario texts, mostly in character backgrounds and read-out-loud introduction pieces, and we don’t even find out what year the setting supposedly is in until the fourth scenario. The game text is similarly vague, mostly due to being system-agnostic, but also as a definite stylistic choice that will work very well for some GMs and not so well for others.

Anytime a roll would be asked for, the text is written in italics, and anytime a sanity-type event occurs, the text is in bold red. Besides that, there are no mechanics baked into the text. This makes using Cthulhu Dark extremely easy and well-suited, while more mechanically crunchy systems like Call of Cthulhu or Mothership would need some extra preparation work.

Orpheus Station is a relatively straight forward scenario, working with a bunch of tropes to set the stage for the rest of the collection. The player characters, crewmembers of the trading ship Wulian-9 and employed by the not-at-all sinister megacorp VANGUARD, are tasked with exploring a space station orbiting Pluto that suddenly cut off all contact with the wider system. Crew of misfits? Check. Shadowy megacorp? Check. Spooky ghost station? Check. All boxes checked for classic space horror.

The scenario starts off how you would expect, but enough wrenches are thrown into the mix to make for a unique session. There are some awkward bits that a GM might need to think through beforehand, but nothing that gets in the way of a smooth run (some suggestions on that in the spoiler section).

Dark Space is available digitally and through print-on-demand on DriveThruRPG.

Before you go, maybe you would be interested in some of the below reviews or replays?
MJRRPG scenarios, Chaosium-released scenarios, Miskatonic Repository scenarios, Japanese scenarios

Orpheus Station as-written is fairly straightforward, though it can open up quite a bit depending on how much freedom you give to the players to act outside the bounds of the scenario text. This is something of a reoccurring theme in the Dark Space scenarios. As the setting is quite far future science fiction, players could have access to all manner of tools they might want, allowing for plenty of ideas, from the very practical to the stereotypical hair-brained RPG plans, that are not accounted for in the compact scenario text. This isn’t necessarily a point against the scenario, just a GM preference. If the GM is aiming for a short and linear session, they can follow the text and restrict actions. If they want a much more freeform, improvisational, and potentially longer session, they can let players go off on tangents and make up details on the fly.

The investigator’s ship, the Wulian-9, is instructed by their spooky megacorp employer, VANGUARD, to investigate Orpheus Station orbiting Pluto, which has gone silent. The reason it’s silent is because it is empty, its occupants all horribly reduced to dust by the Colour Out of Space, discovered by VANGUARD scientists on Nix and taken to the station. The investigators of course don’t know this, VANGUARD doesn’t clue them in, and so they wander around the station trying to find out what happened. Along the way they get chased by a giant monitor lizard infected by the Colour Out of Space, as is wont to happen.

They eventually find out what happened to the station, and escape the Colourful Lizard back to their ship. From there, the scenario opens up into either  a simple branching path, or much wider, depending on how much freedom the GM gives the players. As written, VANGUARD takes complete control of the Wulian-9 and sends it towards Nix, demanding the investigators go get another sample of the Colour. Alternatively, the investigators could try capturing the lizard in place of going to Nix. Either way, any surviving investigators that have some form of Colour sample will then find the Wulian-9 locked onto course for Earth, leaving the last moral dilemma of allowing the ship to complete its trip, dumping the cargo into space, or abandoning the Wulian-9.

Or, if the GM is more open to improvisation, they could let the investigators disable the autopilot. From there they could do just about anything.

The scenario writing in general is vague, which well suits Cthulhu Dark or similar rules-light systems. There is no map of the station, and no suggestion for combatting any Mythos threats. The writing is generally to the point, along with some nicely atmospheric read-aloud text. Dark Space scenarios overall have fun read-aloud sections, mostly staying under a paragraph so as not to space out the players too much, but with lots of appropriately vague but colourful Lovecraftian language to set the mood.

The one main issue with Orpheus Station is that, as the first scenario in the collection, it immediately sets the players at odds with VANGUARD, which still sends them on missions afterwards. After taking control of their ship and almost (or successfully) getting some of them killed, players could understandably roleplay their characters as not wanting to have anything to do with VANGUARD afterwards. A simple solution would be if playing Dark Space as a campaign, to move Orpheus Station to a later point in the series. A slightly more detailed option would be to make VANGUARD, or at least a subsection of VANGUARD, more like a Delta Green type of organisation rather than a pretty clearly evil Weyland-Yutani type of company.

Overall, Orpheus Station is still a strong start to Dark Space or perfectly serviceable as a standalone scenario.

Dark Space is available digitally and through print-on-demand on DriveThruRPG.

Before you go, maybe you would be interested in some of the below reviews or replays?
MJRRPG scenarios, Chaosium-released scenarios, Miskatonic Repository scenarios, Japanese scenarios