Star Bound Frontiers: FIRETEAM

Book 1 — Core Rules & Solo Play

The frontier is burning.

Outside the reliable Beacon Chain, colonies fall silent, relay stations turn off, salvage teams disappear amid alien ruins, and fireteams are sent to places no larger group could reach.

Star Bound Frontiers: FIRETEAM is a deadly 15mm sci-fi skirmish game with cinematic small unit battles fought within colonies, dead stations, frontier outposts, salvage areas, alien ruins, and dangerous worlds.

Take command of a small squad of scouts, troopers, specialists, medics, heavies, leaders, and drones as they move towards mission objectives while being shot at, encountering hazards, and dealing with the repercussions of each firefight.

This is Book 1: Core Rules & Solo Play and it gives you everything needed to start playing solo, co-op, or head-to-head skirmishes using a small battlefield, 15mm miniatures, and D10 dice.

How Is It Different?

Star Bound Frontiers: FIRETEAM is designed for gamers who want fast, deadly sci-fi fights that are easy to play solo and where each miniature is crucial.

This is not a large-scale battle game. It is about close-range frontier missions where a small band of fighters may determine whether a colony survives, a relay is restored, a data core is recovered, or something buried in the landing field remains closed.

In This Book

You get:

Complete D10 core rules
Alternating activations
3–12 models per side
Battlefield play using 15mm scale
Movement, terrain, line of sight and cover rules
Deadly shooting and melee combat
Suppression, stress, wounds, morale and overwatch
Solo enemy activation rules
Aggression, behavior, tiebreakers, instincts and events
Scenario generator
Built-in ready-to-play mission scenario: The Dead Relay
Campaign rules for casualties, experience gains, advancement, loot, reputation and skills
Starter profiles
Basic equipment and gear
Glossary and quick reference material
Solo, Co-op or Head-to-Head Play

Star Bound Frontiers: FIRETEAM is designed first and foremost for solo play. However, the rules can also be used in cooperative or head-to-head games. The solo activation rules are designed to have enemies pursue their objectives, use cover, attack in a coherent manner and create pressure without a referee.

Designed for Small Battlefields

Play on small battlefields:

Patrol: 18" x 18", 3–5 models per side
Fireteam: 24" x 24", 5–8 models per side
Strike Mission: 24" x 36", 8–12 models per side

A full force can fit in a small box. A full battlefield will fit on a kitchen table.

For Fans of

Solo miniatures gaming
15mm sci-fi skirmishes
Campaign play
Salvage missions
Frontier colonies
Alien ruins
Drones, scouts, rangers, spacers and fireteams hardened by the frontier
Fast rules with real tactical consequences

What Do I Need To Play?
15mm miniatures
D10 dice
Measuring tool
Terrain and objective markers
Tokens for activation, stress, wounds, overwatch, jammed, prone and loot
Roster sheet or notebook

Miniatures and terrain are not included.

Into The Frontier

Fix the relay. Recover the data core. Escort the survey tech. Clear the beacon station. Extract the survivors. Stop the signal spoofer. Secure the path for the supply ship.

The Beacon Chain is failing.

Your fireteam is heading in.

Think tactically. Find cover. Extract before the frontier consumes you.

Note: cover was made using AI, everything else is original

Coming Soon!

 

The Situation Seed Framework

Good adventure design begins before maps, stat blocks, boxed text, or encounter balance. It begins with a situation worth playing.

The Situation Seed Framework is a practical, system-neutral guide for creating strong adventure and encounter concepts before turning them into finished tabletop RPG content. 

Many adventure ideas begin as stories: the villain does something, the characters follow the trail, several scenes happen in order, and the adventure ends with the expected confrontation. That structure can work in fiction, but it often becomes fragile at the table. Players ignore clues, negotiate with enemies, solve problems early, burn down important locations, or create entirely new problems the designer never expected.

This guide takes a different approach:

Do not prepare what the characters will do. Prepare what is happening, why it matters, and how it can change.

The central tool is the situation seed: a compact statement that defines what is already in motion, why the characters may care, who or what is driving the situation, what changes over time, what worsens if nothing changes, and what the characters can meaningfully alter.

This guide presents two forms of situation seed:

Encounter Seeds
For compact encounters, scenes, confrontations, hazards, discoveries, or small sites that can resolve in a single moment of play.

Adventure Module Seeds
For larger adventure locations that can support exploration, multiple areas, broader consequences, and later development through a full adventure-design framework.

Inside, you will find:

• A clear explanation of what a situation seed is and what it is not.
• A breakdown of the core elements: Situation, Relevance, Actors or Forces, Dynamic, Pressure, Complication, and Resolution Levers.
• Scale-specific elements for encounter seeds and adventure module seeds.
• A step-by-step seed building procedure.
• Condensed seed templates.
• Worked examples showing how the framework functions in practice.
• Practical annexes, including worksheets and element-boundary references.

The Situation Seed Framework is designed as a companion to The Dungeon Design Framework and The Hexcrawl Encounter Design Framework, but it can also support investigations, social scenarios, wilderness sites, compact encounters, lairs, ruins, settlements, and other forms of tabletop RPG design.

This is not a book of prewritten adventures. It is a tool for creating stronger adventure foundations: situations with motion, pressure, consequence, and meaningful player choice.

First create the dynamic situation. Then choose the structure best suited to make it playable.

The Alien Abduction Game is playable on a tabletop without the need for a physical game board. Each player portrays the alien captain of a flying saucer (UFO). His mission is to demonstrate superior prowess by garnering more points than the other players. There are five different types of aliens, each receiving bonuses for completing certain types of missions.

Mission tiles represent the various missions that can be completed, including abducting, brainwashing, or impregnating humans; mutilating cattle; being sighted in famous locations in poor conditions by unreliable witnesses; and making crop circles. Vril Chits can be deployed to utilize tactics, special abilities, and equipment in aid of accomplishing missions and hindering opponents. The game plays quickly with an unserious tone.

The PDF contains:

• Rules
• Sheet of Mission Tiles
• Sheet of Vril Chits

Requires:

• One or more six-sided dice
• Two or more players
• Scissors or hobby knife (for preparing components)

Enter this cursed jungle, home to half human, half animal creatures. Being guarded by an immortal Shaman that defend the remains of his clan, an ancient orc group from the legends.

Jungle Lake is a mini-setting inside a 6 mile hex of jungle forest, made for OSR and emergent storytelling. In this material you'll find:

• Details on Jungle Lake region.
• Rules for crawling the jungle.
• Remains of two villages and the now cursed half animal villagers.
• Bullywug, Lizardman and Wolfkin factions living inside the jungle.
• An ancient tomb, rest space of the Redbone Orcs.
• The immortal Shaman, guardian of the jungle.
• Magical treasure, unique from the region.

Central problem: An ancient orc shaman cursed the people that lives around the jungle. He is protecting the remains of his tribe.
The cursed people transformed into half animals and became more tribal.

Icons in the Dark

A Solo Gamemaster Emulator for Coriolis – The Third Horizon

The Third Horizon is vast, mysterious, and filled with dangers hiding between the stars. Now you can explore it without a Gamemaster.

Icons in the Dark is a compact, one-page solo toolkit designed specifically for Coriolis – The Third Horizon. It preserves the game’s existing skill rules, prayer rerolls, and Darkness Point economy while providing everything needed to generate missions, answer uncertain questions, interpret outcomes, and introduce unexpected complications.

Inside you will find:

• A streamlined solo-play procedure
• A yes/no oracle with twists and random events
• Plot Hook and Mid-Action generators
• Critical Success and Failure prompts
• Automated Darkness Point events
• Separate Darkness effects for ships
• Guidance for interpreting skills, Dark Mind, and GM-decided outcomes
• Examples showing how to turn abstract results into playable fiction

Whether you are hauling cargo through dangerous systems, investigating abandoned stations, navigating faction intrigue, or confronting the Dark between the Stars, Icons in the Dark helps the Third Horizon react, surprise, and challenge you.

Requires the Coriolis – The Third Horizon core rulebook. This is a third-party supplement and is not affiliated with, sponsored, or endorsed by Fria Ligan AB.

The War series of terrain was created by Colin Christenson. War Trenches is based on our 2nd published set, Peaceful Gardens, and the Grass (Dirt) tileset. For 2026, Colin chose War as one of his two focused sets. This set reflects that choice, and our ongoing commitment to update our sets to the latest dual-publishing OpenLOCK and Dragonbite standard.

We hate that we love making war, but we do. Atleast until such a time comes that wargames and history are the sole province.

The desert goes on forever. Then it doesn't.

Sandfall Cave is a free 70×30 battle map by Mimicsmaps — a vast sweep of sun-baked desert dunes and dry scrubland that ends abruptly at the yawning mouth of a cave complex. Whatever lives inside hasn't bothered the desert in a long time. That could be about to change.

One map, two worlds. The heat outside. The dark within.

• 70×30 grid squares • Desert and cave encounter
• System agnostic — works with any VTT or printed at the table

Enjoying the free maps? Follow Mimicsmaps on DriveThruRPG and check out the full catalogue for complete battle map packs with Foundry VTT support, multiple variants, and 4K resolution.

This stock art image by Douglas "Draco" Manzini depicts a muscular, Vampire Cat Familiar hoisting his mighty axe across his shoulder. How many fights has this battle-scarred warrior faced and defeated? How many monsters has he slain?

This color purchase includes one JPG and a TIFF version, both at 300 dpi. Transparent background TIFF version also provided. Dimensions are 8.5 x 8.5 inches.

All art files are bundled in a ZIP file.

All stock art is licensed for use in professional publications. Douglas "Draco" Manzini retains ownership of the work, meaning you cannot resell the art in your own art packs or the like, and may be required to post an artist credit. There are limits regarding how this art may be edited for use.

You must include the artist's copyright statement in all publications using the art under certain terms and conditions. You obtain a license to use the art, but do not own any rights to it beyond that.

Wuxia Classes for 5e: Shadow Assassin

Most paths of power begin with presence.

To be stronger.

To be faster.

To be impossible to ignore.

The Shadow Assassin chooses the opposite.

They begin by learning how to disappear.

The first lesson is not movement.

It is subtraction.

Before one can vanish, they must understand what makes them seen. The body is not silent. It breathes. It shifts. It carries weight and intention. Even standing still, it declares itself to the world in countless subtle ways.

A Shadow Assassin learns to remove these.

Breath slows until it no longer disturbs the air. Muscles loosen until they no longer carry tension. Even intent—the quiet readiness to act—is buried so deeply that it cannot be sensed.

At first, the result is imperfect.

They are still visible.

But they are overlooked.

This contains a full class up to level 20 with abilities and background, based on Chinese Culture, this is not written by a native of that area so may contain certain cultural biases from a european point of view.

Our team voted for 2026 to make our woodland series Peaceful a primary focus. This set is the result of that choice and our continuing effort to expand our peaceful woodland terrain with OpenLOCK base options. Colin Christenson, our co-founder and Tilesmith, started Aether Studios this series and has led the way for almost a decade. We love simple, natural woodland terrain and Colin is our ranger and guide into the woods each and every month. Peaceful has grown so much over the years, but new inspiration falls regularly like rain for our artists.

Thank you for your support of Aether Studios. We can’t tell you how much we appreciate the place you’ve saved for us at your table.