Apollo 47 Technical Handbook

Apollo 47!  It's here, I've finally done it!  DTRPG is the only place you can buy the print book.  You can also order optional cards, but they are not at all necessary for game play.  Weirdly enough, you can't buy the cards and the book in one order–you have to check out separately on two identical looking but differently named sites.

                                                                   -Jason Morningstar

"Apollo 47 does not play like the majority of other space RPGs, which tend to default to serious and high-stakes conflicts in a sci-fi setting. The Technical Handbook’s single paragraph of lore sums up the game’s tone and situation well: in an alternate-history 1986, moon missions are so regular and routine that they’ve become downright mundane for everyone involved."

-Līber Lūdōrum

"Apollo 47 makes the mundane enveloping. You start playing, and soon you'll have a crowd listening in to the latest issues with the RCU cable. It's a chill vibe of tech-speak improv that just makes my brain buzz pleasantly."

-James Stuart

In a somewhat alternate Earth in a rather different 1987 you will explore the Moon on the 47th Apollo Mission!  The Moon!  Where forty-six other moon missions have gone before.  Forty-six.  That's an awful lot of successful Moon missions.  

And that's the point:  Apollo 47 imagines a future where walking the surface of the Moon is a little bit boring.  You engage in workaday astronaut activities using a simple improvisatory rules set to play in a quiet world of technobabble and the slow progression of science.  If something exciting happens please stop play immediately and go do something else–you are in the wrong game.

This zero-prep game of improvisatory radio chatter can be played through just about any communications medium for any length of time.  Five minutes to spare?  Spend it recalibrating a JLDO unit that's gone out of alignment.  Tighten the tamping line using the three baseline screws.  The blue screen torques the focus to the left, the green screw adjusts the dust pan height.  You should have a yellow-handled size 20 tamping gun and a slot puller in your work bag.  Got them?  Okay, so next...

One astronaut is supported by a team of voices on the radio.  Work, banter, and cause gentle problems for each other.  

I... I just can't explain this game any better than that.

What you get:

You are buying a twelve-hundred page book.  It's 8.5x11 and over seven pounds.  It's just stupid big.  The books pages are distributed roughly this way:

• 1 page contains the game
• 9 pages contain advice on how to play the game
• 13 pages contain useful prompts for operating the game

1177 pages are reproductions of NASA manuals and papers related to the Apollo missions which can, if you need it, provide prompts to spur you on.  Spoiler:  I never use the prompt pages and don't really expect you to do so.  They just aren't necessary for play.

This book is a tremendous folly.  It's ludicrous and bloated and couldn't make me happier.  If you aren't joining me in hearty guffaws at something this THIS then stick with the PDF.  You'll be fine.

NOTE:  The PDF is just the core game, no NASA manuals.  You aren't missing anything, I promise.  

BUYER BEWARE:  So this book is so big it pushes the limits of what the printing company can handle.  This mostly manifests in small ripples along the edge of the page block.  These ripples are imperfections which we just have to live with.  Over time rough usage will hurt a book this big and dumb.  If that bothers you don't buy it.  Otherwise, there's three conditions I'm imposing on your purchase:  1.  Any complaints you have you will take up with DTRPG as it's not my job to worry about the printing issues.  2.  You will quietly accept cosmetic blemishes and issues with your book, should there be any.  3.  Be gentle with the book!  If pages come loose or whatever just stick 'em back in and consider the book a richer object.  I don't think this'll be an issue but some pages did come loose in a test print after VERY rough handling at a con.