Pocket Core

Premise

The engine room of a faster-than-light freighter is no place for the faint-hearted—especially when its power source is a barely-stable pocket dimension. When the core stutters, reality buckles, alarms scream, and the only solution is the most dangerous one: step inside the pocket dimension and reset it from within.

Inside the core, physics behave like a temperamental storm. Gravity tilts, time loops, geometry folds back on itself, and your own body strains to remember what shape it’s meant to be. Every step forward risks tearing your form apart or flinging you into the void between dimensions—lost forever, unmade and unmoored.

But if you succeed?

You don’t just save the ship. You earn the right to steer its future. Choose its destination. Bend the next chapter of the crew’s journey toward the horizon that calls to you.

Pocket Core is a fast, high-pressure RPG for solo voyagers or small crews, designed to fit on a single page while still giving you all the tools you need to dive into the wild, surreal interior of a malfunctioning FTL engine. Bring a handful of dice, your imagination, and a willingness to face a reality that refuses to hold still.

Inside you’ll find:

• A pocket-dimension crawl where the environment mutates constantly

• Rules for resisting spatial collapse and temporal drift

• Consequences that echo outside the dimension

• Solo procedures for navigating the core on your own

• Cooperative prompts for chaotic, party-based exploration

• A clear end goal: reset the core before you unravel

Step into the breach. Stabilize the impossible. Rewrite the ship’s course.