Video games don’t make for easy translations to RPGs, especially if the video game isn’t really an RPG itself. For this continuing System Hack I’m aiming to put together a tabletop RPG that plays like a Colony Sim, and hopefully using Cortex Prime to do it. Before we get into any rules design, though, it’s time to look at my core inspiration for taking this project on in the first place.

RimWorld is a colony sim video game designed by Tynan Sylvester, and now supported and expanded through an entire team at Sylvester’s studio Ludeon Studios. The game was released in 2018 but had been in Early Access for five years at that point, and it continues to see frequent updates and support, including several large DLCs.

So how do we take that concept and translate it into a TTRPG? It’s not about the exact setting of RimWorld, though certain hard sci-fi conceits are going to port over. It’s more about understanding what experience the game produces, and then figuring out which elements of that experience could be employed to good effect in a tabletop game. With that in mind, let’s take a look at RimWorld’s premise and its mechanics, and get in the mood for some reverse engineering.