Galactic Fantasy: Genre Sourcebook

A narrative-first roleplaying sourcebook for mythic space empires, sacred technologies, and emotional journeys among the stars.

Galactic fantasy blends science fiction’s reach with fantasy’s heart. It’s about ancient ruins on forgotten moons, sacred artifacts powered by lost technology, and empires that feel like myths even as they fall. It’s a genre built on legacy, memory, and belief. The settings are vast, but the stories stay close, tied to individuals, their principles, and the weight of their choices. The focus isn’t on how ships fly or how wars are won. It’s on who survives, what they remember, and what they’re willing to pass on.

This book is a guide to telling galactic fantasy stories. It gives you the tools to build characters, settings, and adventures that unfold across distant worlds but stay grounded in personal meaning. Whether you're running a roleplaying campaign, writing fiction, or creating a new setting, this sourcebook helps you work with mythic stakes, emotional depth, and the strange intimacy of stories told on a galactic scale. Every section is written to be system neutral, easy to adapt, and fully compatible with The Simple Approach, a narrative first framework built for clarity and momentum.

You don’t need to chart the stars before you start. Let the story unfold. The meaning will follow.

This Book Contains

This section outlines what you’ll find in each chapter of the book and how those parts support the creation of galactic fantasy stories across different formats.

Genre Foundations: These chapters introduce the core ideas behind galactic fantasy. You'll explore its themes, emotional tones, cultural roots, and continued relevance. This section also explains how to use the book’s rating system and how to adapt the material to any roleplaying framework, especially The Simple Approach.

Narrative Frameworks: These tools help you shape the structure and flow of your stories. You'll find guidance on tone and atmosphere, explore common tropes and storytelling conventions, and learn how to use tension and conflict to move the narrative forward. There are also methods for reworking expectations without losing the genre’s emotional impact.

Worldbuilding Tools: This material supports the creation of deep, responsive settings. You’ll use trait-based mechanics to describe how your world functions, including its stability, openness, resources, weirdness, and moral clarity. Additional tools help define time, place, symbolism, and the nature of factions within the setting.

Character Design: This section helps you build characters that reflect the genre’s spirit. You’ll find tools for creating archetypes, identity traits, strengths, weaknesses, and emotional drives. You’ll also explore how galactic fantasy shapes character development, personal growth, and the cost of change.

Adventure and Campaign Support: This guidance helps you plan and run galactic fantasy stories at any scale. It includes tools for structuring one-shots, designing session beats, and managing pacing across longer arcs. You'll also find examples of common events, genre-specific threats, and useful campaign formats.

Session Management and Safety: These chapters support a thoughtful and collaborative experience. They cover how to run a session zero, use safety and consent tools, maintain genre tone, and improvise within thematic limits. The goal is to protect players while deepening the story.

Reference Material: This section offers practical resources to keep your work moving. You’ll find twenty story hooks, a detailed glossary of galactic fantasy terms, and a recommended reading and viewing list. These references help you expand your ideas and stay grounded in the genre’s unique perspective.