08/10/2026 James’ Blog post

I’m Building RED-SHIFT — And I Need Some Help

RED-SHIFT has been around for more than a decade.

It didn’t start as a game I intended to publish. It started as a campaign.

Like a lot of long-running campaigns, it grew.

We changed things that didn’t work for us. We added house rules. We rewrote systems. We created new worlds, institutions, technologies, characters, ships, and problems. One campaign became a setting, and the setting kept getting bigger.

For a long time, we called it Traveller because that was where it started.

But somewhere along the way, that stopped being particularly accurate.

We had accumulated so many house rules, replaced so many assumptions, and built so much original material that the game we were actually playing hadn’t really been Traveller for a very long time.

I just hadn’t admitted what that meant yet.

RED-SHIFT had become its own game.

So now I’m doing something I probably should have done years ago.

I’m building it properly.

Why I’m Doing This

RED-SHIFT has followed me through a lot of my life, and inevitably a lot of my life has found its way back into RED-SHIFT.

I spent years working as a systems engineer for a defense contractor. Later, I spent many more years working in corrections and county government.

I’ve spent a large part of my adult life inside complicated systems.

Systems with procedures.

Systems with budgets.

Systems with chains of command.

Systems with rules written for good reasons that sometimes produce terrible results.

Systems where a seemingly insignificant decision made at one desk can completely change what happens to somebody miles away.

I’ve seen good people trying to make imperfect systems work.

I’ve seen bureaucracy protect people, and I’ve seen bureaucracy hurt people.

I’ve watched people improvise when the procedure didn’t fit reality.

And I’ve learned that almost nothing involving human beings works as neatly as it looks on an organizational chart.

That perspective found its way into my science fiction.

Because I don’t think humanity reaches the stars and suddenly becomes enlightened.

I think we bring ourselves with us.

We bring our governments.

Our corporations.

Our laws.

Our paperwork.

Our debts.

Our prejudices.

Our friendships.

Our greed.

Our compassion.

Our ambition.

Our incompetence.

Our courage.

Everything.

Humanity reached the stars. We brought everything else with us.

That is RED-SHIFT.

The Game I Want to Make

RED-SHIFT is a grounded science-fiction tabletop roleplaying game about capable people dealing with difficult situations in a very large and frequently indifferent universe.

You are not the chosen one.

You aren’t invulnerable.

Nobody handed you a prophecy.

You’re somebody with skills, experience, relationships, responsibilities, and probably bills.

Maybe you own a ship.

Which means you also own fuel bills, maintenance schedules, insurance problems, docking fees, repairs, debt, and several pieces of machinery that have apparently decided to fail simultaneously.

Maybe you’re a medic.

An engineer.

A trader.

A pilot.

An investigator.

A bureaucrat.

A criminal.

A soldier.

A licensed psion.

Or something I haven’t thought of yet.

You take jobs.

You travel.

You explore.

You negotiate.

You investigate.

You try to make enough money to keep going.

Sometimes you save somebody.

Sometimes you make things worse.

Sometimes you follow the law.

Sometimes the law is the problem.

And sometimes the most important decision of the night has nothing to do with combat.

I want distance to matter.

I want travel to matter.

I want fuel and maintenance to matter.

I want injuries to matter.

I want contracts, money, authority, reputation, and relationships to matter.

Most importantly, I want decisions to matter.

Not just until the end of the encounter.

Afterward.

The world remembers what you did.

Now I’m Taking RED-SHIFT Apart

Turning a game that evolved organically over more than a decade into an independent rules system is not as simple as changing a few names.

So I’m going back through everything.

Old campaign material.

House rules.

Character systems.

Combat.

Ships.

Trade.

Travel.

Psionics.

Worldbuilding.

Equipment.

Things written years apart that occasionally disagree with each other because apparently Past James and Present James do not always share the same opinions.

I’m separating what came from Traveller from what RED-SHIFT became.

I’m identifying rules that still depend on another game and replacing those dependencies.

I’m figuring out which mechanics actually belong in the core system, which should be optional, and which sounded clever at 2:00 in the morning but probably should never have escaped my notebook.

The goal is straightforward:

RED-SHIFT needs to stand completely on its own.

No Traveller rulebook required.

No assumption that you already know another game.

Just RED-SHIFT.

That work is underway now.

And this is where I need other people.

I Need Help

For more than a decade, RED-SHIFT has largely existed among the people playing it and inside my own head.

That creates a problem.

I know what I mean.

That doesn’t mean anybody else does.

I can read a rule and unconsciously fill in three missing steps because I already know how it is supposed to work.

A new player can’t.

I can look at part of the setting and know twenty years of imaginary history that I never actually wrote down.

Nobody else can see that.

Eventually you reach a point where working alone stops improving something.

I think RED-SHIFT has reached that point.

So I’m looking for volunteers.

I’m Looking for People Who Want to Break My Game

And I mean that.

I need people who will read a rule and find the loophole.

People who will build the character I never anticipated.

People who will attack a problem from a direction I didn’t consider.

People who will look at something I spent three days designing and say:

“James, nobody is going to use this.”

That is useful.

Probably painful.

But useful.

I’m looking for players and Referees.

Writers and editors.

Artists and graphic designers.

Worldbuilders.

Science-fiction fans.

Engineers.

Military people.

Government people.

Economics and logistics nerds.

People who know ships.

People who know medicine.

People who understand politics, law, technology, sociology, transportation, or anything else that could make this universe feel more believable.

And I also want people who know absolutely nothing about those things.

Because eventually the game has to make sense to them too.

You Don’t Have to Sign Up for a Second Job

This part matters.

I’m asking for volunteers.

I’m not asking you to adopt RED-SHIFT as a lifestyle.

Help once.

Read five pages.

Make a character.

Test one rule.

Run one session.

Look at a ship design.

Read a story.

Try to destroy the economy.

Tell me you don’t understand something.

Tell me something is boring.

Tell me something worked better than I expected.

Draw something.

Design something.

Ask the question nobody else asked.

Maybe you’ll do one thing and disappear.

That’s fine.

Maybe you’ll discover you really enjoy working on RED-SHIFT and stick around.

That’s fine too.

Why Now?

Because RED-SHIFT is changing.

For years, it was our campaign.

Then it became my setting.

Now I want to find out whether it can become our game.

That means opening the doors a little wider.

It means allowing other people to challenge things I’ve considered settled for years.

It means accepting that somebody may find a better solution than mine.

And it means finding out whether this strange universe I’ve been carrying around for more than a decade is interesting to anyone who wasn’t already sitting at my table.

I think it is.

But there’s only one way to find out.

So This Is Me Asking

If you’ve been watching RED-SHIFT develop and thinking it looks interesting, come get involved.

You don’t need credentials.

You don’t need to call yourself a game designer.

You don’t need to know exactly what you can contribute.

Tell me what interests you.

Tell me what you know.

Or tell me what you want to play with.

We’ll start there.

RED-SHIFT has already survived more than a decade of campaigns, house rules, rewrites, arguments, bad decisions, good decisions, and players doing things I absolutely did not anticipate.

Now I want to see what happens when I let more people into it.

Come help me build RED-SHIFT.