Simple Space Empire Quest - Review by archivebro

Alright, Simple Space Empire Quest. I can’t get Star Dynasties out of my head after reading it.

An empire-building quest, focused on the (after anons voted) an admiral-turned-traitor-turned-Emperor of a feudalistic space society, surrounded on all sides by aliens and other human enemies. The strategic layer is simple, with a ledger tracking 5 statistics, and each vote involves spending them to build others up. Along the way heirs and political decisions are made, sons and daughters are married off, enemies are infiltrated, and everything else you might expect from a space opera.

It’s an oversimplification, I’m happy to say. In spite of how straightforward the core stats are, the QM puts a good balance of description and brevity so that the choices play out with meaning narratively without bogging everything down. Given that votes can span several layers of subvotes to determine what happens narratively, that restraint is appreciated.

QM has also done a good job of giving each Emperor (and one Empress) of the line very distinct writing prompts to reflect their different personalities. The biggest “lore dumps” in the quest are courtesy of the Emperor-scientist studying aliens, for example. Anons have abided in those lines of thinking, which I always like seeing.

No real criticisms I can levy at the quest. A visual of the “world map” would be nice, but given the space-based nature of the quest it’s not really useful.

It’s only one thread now, so it’s a quick read. Also, since this is a genre I have experience with I can draw comparisons! The style is heavily reminiscent of Tyrant Queen Quest (now archived), and I heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoys this. I got to be a self-appointed spymaster indulging in write-ins so I’m biased, but it’s a relatively light read with some narrative hooks if you don’t mind reading about an unabashed villain. I also mentioned Star Dynasties earlier, which is a game version of this quest. Much simpler than Stellaris while keeping some meat in the mechanics. No real narrative beyond what you make, but that’s to be expected for the type of game it tries to be.

One more thing to add on to this, Simple Space Empire Quest does a very good job at stacking multiple voting prompts into a single posting session. I can heartily recommend the style used here for quests with a broad scope for any QM that doesn’t want to drag out their votes with minutiae yet also wants to prod anons for guidance on multiple topics to keep the narrative juices and audience participation flowing.