Load the Simulation is a tabletop role-playing game set aboard a massive spaceship on a centuries-long mission to discover and prepare exoplanets for colonization. Players take on the roles of crew members selected not for their prestige but as the essential yet overlooked backbone of the mission—explorers, frontierspeople, and problem solvers who are also expected to clean up any messes (literal or figurative) they encounter along the way.

Waking from cryogenic sleep, these characters find themselves thrust into rigorous and unpredictable training simulations orchestrated by the ship’s AI, DAX. Each day, they are dropped into a different simulated environment—wildly alien, utterly unpredictable, and filled with potential threats—to prepare them for the unknown dangers that await when the ship finally reaches its destination. Think of the high-octane training sequences from The Matrix , the Danger Room in X-Men , or the holodecks in Star Trek.

Outside the simulations, players navigate the interpersonal challenges and emotional tensions of life aboard a confined spaceship. Bonds are formed and frayed as crewmates work together to overcome challenges, while personal goals and differences create moments of connection and conflict. Between these dynamics, players spend time recovering in the medical bay, repairing and upgrading their gear, and working on personal projects to keep their minds sharp. All the while, they grapple with the emotional strain of an extreme voyage into the unknown, unraveling hints of a deeper mystery about the mission’s true purpose.

Highlights

• Play solo or together (1-4 Players) – With clear procedures and robust random tables, the game provides everything you need to control your character, supporting cast, and the unpredictable alien horrors that await in training, without the need of a Game Master.
• Roll first think later – A peculiar approach to dice resolution. At the start of your turn, you roll three six-sided dice—one for yourself, one for the opposition, and one for the environment. The results dictate who’s in control of the scene. Then, with that information in hand, you decide how your character, the world, and its threats act and react. 
• Craft and break modules – Your modules are your lifeline—custom attachments that give you abilities to survive the brutal training sessions. But when things go south, you might break them to save yourself. During downtime, you can salvage, repair, or craft new ones, assuming you have the time and energy left.
• Downtime compels you to face the crew – No sweeping conflicts under the rug. If you want to clear conditions and prepare for the next training, you’ll have to address the tensions built up during the day. That means patching up wounds, fixing broken gear, and dealing with the emotional fallout of your choices—mending friendships, making amends, or getting into a heated argument.
• Insomnia maps the path to the truth – Rest doesn’t always come easy. When you fail to sleep, younavigate an Insomnia Map, a branching diagram that takes you deeper into the ship’s strange and unsettling mysteries. The more you see, the more you wonder:

Will you survive long enough to uncover one of the six possible truths?

Will your crewmates believe you?

Are these hallucinations, or is something truly wrong?

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Load the Simulation runs on the Chroma Cube System, a straightforward yet dynamic way to decide the flow of action. Here’s how the game plays out:

The Training Simulation

• Every day, the ship’s AI, DAX, loads a new training program. You’ll generate a bizarre alien world using tables that determine the environment, strange anomalies, and the local wildlife (which is usually trying to kill you).
  
• Each simulation has a main objective, but you’ve also got a personal goal—sometimes finishing the training unscathed, pushing yourself to the limit, and other highly unlikely and risky pursuits.

Rolling the Dice: Who’s in Control?

The Chroma Cube System uses three six-sided dice of different colors:

• YOU (your character) – Are you pushing through? Holding strong? Screwing it up spectacularly?
  
• FOE (the opposition) – That alien predator that is trying to ruin your day.
  
• ECO (the environment) – The rogue weather anomaly or the crumbling terrain you're running across.

You roll them together and arrange the results in a vertical line on the table, from highest to lowest— the Stack. The position on the Stack will dictate how the sequence plays out. Whichever die rolls highest determines the dominant force in the scene. Success moves you closer to your goal, but failure means consequences.

Bad rolls stack up conditions that affect:

• Your body (Harm) – Bruises, burns, or worse.
• Your mind (Stress) – The slow wear of fear and pressure.
• Your relationships (Friction) – Because putting crewmates in danger, failing to have their back, or blaming them for your mistakes doesn’t exactly build trust.

Downtime: Repair, Recover, and Regret

• Earn Stars by completing your main and personal missions to move up the hierarchy, gaining status and influence—but also adding more interpersonal tension. Not everyone loves a rising star.
  
• Treat injuries, cool your nerves, and try to fix whatever modules you inevitably broke during the simulation.
  
• Tensions don’t go away on their own. You’ll have chances to repair strained relationships and try to work out the grudges forming between crewmates.
  
• Fix your broken modules or craft a brand new one on the lab.

The Long Night

• Insomnia hits hard. After a day of pushing your limits, sleep doesn’t always come easy. If you can’t rest, the ship has a way of showing you things—strange, impossible things.
  
• The more you stay awake, the more you witness unsettling events and uncover cryptic clues about the true nature of your mission.
  
• Reality or Simulation? – Good question. Hope you figure it out before the next training session.

And then? You wake up and do it all over again.

 

This game was successfully crowdfunded in March 2025 and is now available for purchase. For a limited time, you can get it at a discounted price while we complete a final review pass to catch any lingering typos or goofs before preparing it for print.

Once the sale ends, I’ll update the project and add the print-on-demand link to your download files. You’ll also receive an email notification when it’s ready.

Your purchase includes:

• 80-page, full-color, totally hyperlinked and bookmarked PDF
• Printer-friendly version of all the tables
• At-cost print-on-demand coupon for the 6 x 9 in (US Trade) book, perfect bound, full-color interior (SOON), printed by Lulu. 
• At-cost print-on-demand coupon for the 6 x 9 in (US Trade) tables book, saddle stitched, B&W  interior (SOON), printed by Lulu.