Stellar Horizons is a dice-and-paper role playing game designed for two to seven players.  The game is set in the near future where Humanity maintains a tenuous hold on a vast unexplored frontier.

The game itself has an open-ended style of play common to role-playing games.  It has no time limit, no defined ending, and no final goal that marks the end of the game.  There is no winner or loser.  The object of the game is to have fun while using your imagination and playing a character of your creation.

Stellar Horizons is a universe of science fiction excitement, exploration, and adventure.  Set nearly a half century in the future, it is a world where an unready mankind has been thrust in the center of a vast galactic stage populated by exotic alien civilizations.

For the past fifty years two generations of Humanity have been forced to rapidly adapt to a hostile universe with little experience and few advantages.  These people endured two brutal inter-stellar wars, encountered no less than five intelligent alien species, and made greater technological progress than ever before in history.  It is on their shoulders that the explorers of today now stand as they face the infinite blackness before them.

A Prelude to the Future

The world as we know it began some two decades ago when a troubled Earth was forced to accept that the universe was larger than their small world.  It was true that Humanity had taken tentative steps into space.  Mars and the Moon even had colonies, but by and large the nations of Earth concerned themselves with Terrestrial affairs and typically warred, threatened, and intrigued against each other. 

This changed suddenly in 2038 as they became caught in a wider drama between long established alien powers.  In desperation the nations of the Earth threw themselves against the intruders in a valiant struggle against overwhelming odds.  The war appeared without hope of victory until an inadvertent emissary from a race known as the Sha'kavri arrived and provided Humanity with the means to bring the war to an end.

Soon after, an armistice was declared as the powerful Krylan Federation withdrew its forces to combat another distant unseen foe.  The war left a shocked mankind in its wake who was left to rebuild his cities, rearm his armies, and reexamine his place in the universe.  It was a formidable task, but to aid the people of Earth in this endeavor Humanity had one advantage . . . the hyperdrive.

It was a device whose secrets were revealed by the departing Krylan Federation as a form of reparations for the conflict that, in the end, neither side wanted to fight.  Still, it would not be easy.  Unraveling the enigmas of the hyperdrive would take two full years of investigation by Earth's greatest minds, but through hard work and determination the device yielded to the scientists and engineers.

Colonies orbiting distant stars were built, new worlds explored, and formal relations were established with both the Sha'kavri and Krylan Federation.  It was a hopeful time when new trade routes were established, universities founded, and settlements colonized.  The worlds of the Terran Inner Colonies looked forward to an era of peace and cooperation between both the nations of Earth and the alien powers it had encountered.  It was not to last...

In 2045 a new menace entered the Terran system intent on destroying all before it.  These were the Hydrax.  An ancient  species that travelled the stars in massive living starships escorted by swarms of parasite creatures.  The goal of the hive mind was simply to locate worlds suitable for their continued procreation.  Once located they would savagely exterminate the native life forms and terraform the planet to one suitable for their purpose.

In the years following the Contact War, as the war with the Krylan Federation came to be known, Terran explorers have made contact with a total of five alien species.  These are the highly advanced and psionically endowed Krylans, the feral winged Sha'kavri, the rapacious Hydrax and their curious Rogue cousins, and the enigmatic Shraziss.

These aliens occupy territories far beyond the periphery of the Terran frontier and most have been space travelers much longer than Mankind.  This fact unsettles many Terran frontier colonists as it has been shown that several are currently the technological superiors to the people of Earth.  One fact that has been learned is that all but one of these species are made up of distinct nations and cultures many of which share the same rivalries as the nations of Earth.  (click on each species below to learn more)

All your group needs to play is the Stellar Horizons Basic Set, a set of dice, pencils, and some paper. The two book Basic Set contains all of the information that you and your friends need to create exciting characters and develop adventures on the Terran Frontier.

The set of dice must include one 4-sided die (d4) and two ten-sided dice (d10).  These are used to generate random probabilities that are used to resolve tasks.  The pencils and paper are used to draw maps, record character information, and keep track of adventure notes.