Beyond the Stars: Why Intergalactic Bastionland Matters

Intergalactic Bastionland, the newest venture from Chris McDowall and Bastionland Press, marks a significant departure from the pastoral knights of its predecessor while retaining the razor-sharp mechanical core that defined a generation of OSR play. For those of us who have spent decades tracking encumbrance slots and calculating line-of-sight, the Bastionland series has always been a cold shower of efficiency. This new iteration takes the Into the Odd framework—a system where combat is decisive because you skip the hit roll entirely—and applies it to the sprawling, claustrophobic interior of a massive starship.

The crunch here is where the veteran GM finds their footing. If you are coming from a background of 5th Edition or even the crunchier end of the d20 spectrum, the lack of an attack roll might feel like heresy. In Intergalactic Bastionland, you simply roll for damage. It assumes that if you are a professional spacer with a pulse-carbine, you aren't going to miss a target ten feet away; the question is how much of their armor and luck you can strip away before they do the same to you. This version introduces ship-tier scaling that mirrors the character progression, treating the vessel not as a vehicle, but as an extension of the party's collective hit points and utility.

Lore-wise, McDowall is pivoting from the weird-fantasy city of Bastion to a setting that feels like a fever dream of Rogue Trader. The ship is the world. It is a dense, multilayered ecosystem of factions, forgotten decks, and bureaucratic nightmare-fuel. Instead of exploring a hex map of a kingdom, players navigate the Boroughs of a ship that might be light-years long. The fluff isn't just flavor text; it is an integrated part of the Mythic Bastionland legacy, where the environment is the primary antagonist. The setting demands that players engage with the weirdness of deep space—not as a vacuum, but as a crowded, decaying metropolis hurtling through the void.

From a table-feel perspective, this is a masterclass in momentum. Traditional sci-fi RPGs often get bogged down in the travel phase, where players sit through three hours of navigation checks and fuel management. Intergalactic Bastionland solves this by making the travel the adventure. Because the ship is so vast and populated, getting there involves political maneuvering between the engine-room cults and the bridge-born nobility. It captures the frantic, high-stakes energy of a Kill Team 2024 skirmish but stretches that tension across a full campaign narrative. It is lethal, it is fast, and it respects the GM’s time by removing the bloat that usually plagues the genre.

Ultimately, this game isn't trying to replace your high-crunch space operas. It is offering a streamlined, aesthetically potent alternative for groups that want the grit of a grimdark future without the homework. It rewards clever play over character sheet optimization. If you can't outgun the deck-mutants, you have to out-think them, utilizing the ship’s crumbling infrastructure to your advantage. It is a bold step for the OSR movement, proving that minimalist rules can support maximalist settings without losing their edge.