So you want to make a game with the O Captain System, but you don’t know where to start. Good news: you start here!

What’s Possible?

O Captain is a game system where you roll a ton of dice. Once they land, both the value on the dice and the position in which they land matter. After that, whatever you want to change is up to you! If you’re looking for some inspiration, here are some suggestions to get you started:

• A supplement expanding what’s possible in O Captain itself:
  • New Clusters and Constellations
  • New rules for an as-yet unexplored aspect of seafaring, such as undersea exploration or crunchier resource management
• A new game, with a new premise:
  • You’re a space explorer, and your dice are the celestial bodies you want to reach.
  • You’re a traveler in an enchanted wood, and your dice are the fireflies that light your way.
  • You’re a nesting bird, and your dice are the scraps and detritus available to you.

<aside> 🌊 The best way to get started hacking a system is by identifying a mechanic you feel strongly about (love it or hate it), and doing something with it. Recontextualize it, change it, throw it away entirely. For a list of mechanics, check out The O Captain System.

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Under the Hood

Here’s the how and the why behind the creation of O Captain. It might be helpful for you when building your own games with this system!

Tone and Setting

O Captain is built for stories of adventure and excitement at sea, punctuated with moments of introspection and dread. Being a captain can be rewarding, but it can be isolating. These themes aren’t limited to ocean adventures. Your game may or may not take place on the water, but you may want to keep these themes in the back of your mind!

In O Captain, we wanted to let players sail on a sea of their own choosing. Our prompts don’t assume too much about the overall state of the world. Over the course of writing it, we developed a somewhat fantastical late 19th and early 20th century vibe. But it exists more in snippets and flavor text than in the prompts and mechanics.

While none of this lore is specifically “canon” to an O Captain Setting, we kept it for a few reasons:

1. It helps develop a tone.
2. Offering players some concepts to chew on when responding to prompts helps spark the imagination.
3. It’s fun to write spooky boat lore and you can’t stop us.

Snippets

Part of each Constellation is a brief passage or aside that is, ostensibly, written in-world. It’s a piece of media written by a character who lives in the world, and who might be recognized by other characters—perhaps even a Captain!

You can pack a lot of information and worldbuilding into a very small package with a snippet. Not only can you communicate the plaintext content, but you’re also implying things about the world with the medium and the attribution.

For example, in the snippet for The Siren, we’re introduced to a poet named the Stalwart, who’s written a fair number of sonnets. In O Captain, there’s a radio play script, letters of marque with dates on them, shanties, and even a (poorly designed) coin game. Each one implies something different about the world without explaining anything, creating gaps that make players curious enough to wonder about them, and perhaps fill them in themselves.