Spaceship Zero

Spaceship Zero

Spaceship Zero artwork by Chris Woods. The artwork appears on both The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets album of the same name and the cover of the roleplaying game.
Designer(s)	Toren Atkinson, Warren Banks
Publisher(s)	Green Ronin Publishing
Publication date	2002
Genre(s)	Science Fiction, Parody
System(s)	Custom (though derived from the Basic Role-Playing system)

Spaceship Zero is the title of a media franchise that includes a role-playing game and an indie rock CD.

The role-playing game was written by Warren Banks and Toren Atkinson including contributions from John Scott Tynes and Monte Cook and Andrew J Lucas and published by Green Ronin Publishing in 2002. The game is a spoof and homage to 1950s and 1960s science fiction adventure television, such as Lost in Space.

The game mechanics are heavily rooted in the Basic Role-Playing system. The dice mechanic when performing skills is to roll as high as possible without going over your skill value. The system also brings in the concept of zero dice, which act similar to hero/fate/drama points from other Role-playing game systems.

The following quote is an accurate summation of the setting.

Thirteen billion years later the crew is reconstituted, they hope that Universe 2 has evolved in exactly the same way that the Universe 1 they destroyed had. It mostly did, except for a few small differences, most notably a race of alien conquerors ravaging the solar system.

There are also a large number of Lovecraft and Cthulhu references throughout the setting and game manual.

There are currently three published adventures for the Spaceship Zero roleplaying game. All are written by at least Toren Atkinson with others credited as noted. All follow an ongoing linear story arc. The titles of the three adventures are:

An album by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets was released a year before the role-playing game hit retail shelves. The original intention was to have both RPG and CD release within a similar timeframe, but the logistics of writing both an album and a role-playing game, trying to coincide their releases, proved to be problematic. The band was touring Canada, promoting the Spaceship Zero album while they were finishing up the final drafts of the role-playing game manuscript. The CD liner notes include a short story about Spaceship Zero and the crew.