Popular Board Game Terraforming Mars Gets TTRPG

Terraforming Mars, the popular board game about transforming Mars into a corporate-controlled planet suitable for habitation, is becoming a TTRPG. Shadowlands Games has launched a BackerKit crowdfunding campaign for Terraforming Mars: The Board Game. The game tackles the colonization and transforming of Mars over the course of multiple individual projects, generations (marking the time that players as a particular set of player characters) and overall ages in Mars' history. The game uses the Estirpe system, which is a dice pool system where rolling multiple successes (a 5+ is one success, a 6 counts as two successes) results in the creation of advantage points, a resource that can be spent to use additional effects. The game was designed by Kenneth Hite and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan.

Terraforming Mars was originally designed by Jacob Fryxelius and is currently the 7th highest ranked board game on Board Game Geek. That game involves different corporations competing for control of Mars by completing various projects to terraform the planet.

 

[Paragon Lost]

Thread 'RPG CROWDFUNDING NEWS – Terraforming Mars, The Wild Frontier of Venture, African Monsters, and more'

Mar 5, 2025

This week’s TTRPG crowdfunding sampler covers projects that end between March 20 to 26. This list includes board games re-imagined as RPGs, the weird west, a game about becoming an exorcist, new 5e monsters, Mutants & Masterminds NPCs, and more.

Terraforming Mars - the official TTRPG from Shadowlands Games

• END DATE: Mar 20, 2025 at 7:00pm EDT.
• CROWDFUNDING ON: Backerkit
• SYSTEM(S): An original system
• PROJECT TYPE: Core rulebook
• MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: €69 +...

• Egg Embry
• Replies: 6
• Forum: *TTRPGs General

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[payn]

Read a little about it. I'm intrigued by creating multiple characters over multiple generations in a single story.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Game when live and is doing numbers

 

[kronovan]

I've played the Terraforming Mars videogame and enjoyed it, but I'm not sure I'd want to RP in that world. I'd worry this is competition for my own IP which I hope to publish by 2026, but it's a different premise. The gritty and often times lethal aspect of terraforming is background in my setting with much of it being subtext. Mine is a post worker revolt Mars and a post near-extinction Earth, with the result that terraformed Mars is now the most populated planet in the Solar System. Meanwhile...a crusade by a recovering Earth and its corporate elite, long ago evacuated to the lunar surface, is imminent.

Still it'd be nice to see someone else's take on Mars - especially one themed around the process of terraforming. The cost is a bit off putting though - the level of that backerkit I'd want, would cost me $250 CDN. Not sure I'll take the plunge, but definitely tempted.
[Edit] Read to the end of the backerkit page. I'll have an additional $55 shipping added on - nope, out on this one.

 

[Peter BOSCO'S]

Read a little about it. I'm intrigued by creating multiple characters over multiple generations in a single story.

I remember when this game was called Pendragon.

 

[Staffan]

I remember when this game was called Pendragon.

I think this works on a different scale. As I understand The Great Campaign for Pendragon, it covers a period of about 80 years, where you more or less continuously play knights who eventually (hopefully) marry and have kids who grow up to replace them. This seems more like the Foundation books: a story that covers hundreds of years, but with significant time skips. Also, the generations in the game aren't necessarily dynastic but should be seen more as eras. Think Star Trek Original series followed by The Next Generation (though there's probably room for a generation in between those). In the board game, a typical game would consist of about 7-12 generations (rounds), but I don't know how true that would be for the RPG.