Last Flight of the Pandora

Last Flight Of The Pandora is a surprising find*. It's a slim black book with gorgeous art, stylish layout, and a fantastic one session campy scifi horror ttrpg.

The book is about eighty pages, but most of that is scenarios, and the game is built to be extremely modular. You can run it a dozen times without it feeling stale.

The core premise is everyone picks a species and a role aboard the ship, and then in classic Space Station 13 fashion everyone tries to do their jobs while things go wrong.

It's a bit Lower Decks and a bit Alien, with some subtle nods to other horror classics like the scuttling prop head from The Thing, and the mechanics are surprisingly robust for how lightweight the whole thing is.

Essentially, you have different dice for different stats, and a 4+ is always a success. Species / crew role can give you advantage on rolls, or modify your stats, or let you do unique actions that range from "breathe vacuum" to "make a good latte". Every game also has the same ship map, with the same spelled out areas, and there's a feeling of boardgame-like familiarity if you play or run it more than once.

What changes between outings aboard the Pandora is what's wrong with the ship. It might be a xenomorph. It might be a rogue AI. It might be an evil floating insomnia baby. The GM decides on the fly moments before the game begins.

This sort of pantsing it is very much in the spirit of the game, and Last Flight is careful to give a lot of support to encourage the GM to wing it. Each adversary comes with its own detailed chart of objectives, ways it escalates, and what it will ultimately do if it isn't stopped. Adversaries aren't declared out loud, either, so the players have to figure out which threat they're dealing with by exploring the map and encountering its manifestations.

For groups that like pulpy scifi games, I think Last Flight is a gem. It doesn't fundamentally redefine the medium, but it's satisfying and very reliable, and a great one-shot to drop into a gap between longer games. I've anything I've said here sounds good, definitely consider picking it up.

*post hoc edit: this sentence makes no sense, but for context I got my copy in a big pile of other games and so I was surprised by it. There. Go now with this knowledge and be free.