Galactic & Going Rogue 2e: Games of Hope and Sacrifice

You know I love a Star Wars RPG, and I absolutely love games that are Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off. Jumpgate Games recently sent me Galactic & Going Rogue 2e, as their Kickstarter for both games are surging past every stretch goal they have for the 3rd edition. So let’s take a look at the previous edition of the games and see if it’s worth backing the Kickstarter (spoilers: it is).

Galactic 2E feels like you are leaping right from the opening crawl to a brand-new space opera and discovering the camera is already pointed at the characters you care about. Riley Rethal uses the Belonging Outside Belonging engine as a tight, GM-less toolkit that replaces dice with tokens and invites every player to share authorship of the galaxy’s hope and heartache. These tokens represent narrative focus—earn them when you lean into trouble, give them away to spotlight another hero, spend them to seize the moment—and the table’s energy rises and falls with their flow.

Scenes revolve around three kinds of moves. Vulnerable moves earn a token by exposing weakness or doubt, lateral moves hand a token to someone else in exchange for tension or connection, and strong moves burn a token for cinematic payoff. Because everyone can invoke a move whenever it feels true, pacing becomes organic: a desperate confession seeds the pool with tokens, a lightspeed jailbreak empties it again, and the spotlight naturally shifts without a referee to pass the baton. The result is a story rhythm that feels more like montage than initiative count.

Character options come in six playbooks—the hot-shot Ace, galaxy-attuned Nova, repentant Defector, silver-tongued Diplomat, reckless Scoundrel, and grease-stained Mechanic. Each sheet brims with loaded questions and relationship prompts, so a crew’s tangled history surfaces before the first scene. Meanwhile, four “pillars” give the galaxy its opposing forces: mystical Space Between, tyrannical empire called The Mandate, rag-tag Liberation, and opportunistic Scum & Villainy. Pillars are character sheets representing forces greater than any individual player. Any player can pick up a pillar when it enters the frame, guiding NPCs and big-picture threats with their own vulnerable and lateral moves. Passing pillars around ensures no one is trapped in GM duty, yet the setting’s agendas stay vivid and consistent.

What impresses me most is how the rules constantly aim the camera at feelings. The Ace’s rash maneuver literally costs narrative capital, the Defector’s haunted past earns it back, and the table negotiates every beat in conversation. The PDF reinforces that spirit with clear guidance on safety, consent, and tone, encouraging groups to ask questions, give feedback, and always end a session on a hopeful note. That humanist through-line makes risk feel meaningful without ever tipping into despair, echoing the best “rebels against empire” fiction.

There are caveats. Newcomers from crunchier systems may miss tactile dice tension, and the airy layout can send you flipping between playbook, pillar, and place tables until you internalize the structure. Quiet players, if the group isn’t careful, could stall the token economy by holding back.

For groups who prize relationships over pew-pew stats, Galactic delivers a compact, emotionally intelligent framework that lets you explore rebellion, romance, and redemption among the stars without ever consulting a target number. Grab a handful of coins, pick your archetype, and write the space opera you wish you’d seen on opening night.

Going Rogue 2E asks a harder question than its parent game: what if the heroes don’t live to see the victory scroll? Jess Levine’s expansion for Galactic keeps the GM-less, token-powered Belonging Outside Belonging chassis but pivots the tone from rebel high-adventure to tragic resistance. If Galactic is A New Hope, Going Rogue is Rogue One—a tale about spies, cynics, and true believers who know the cost of freedom may be their own lives.

The original six archetypes vanish, replaced by five sharper blades: the ruthless Spy, desperate Leveraged, weary Knight Errant, starry-eyed Convert, and stalwart Loyal. Each sheet is engineered for friction. The Spy’s moves trade collateral damage for progress; the Convert’s optimism can be weaponised by enemies; the Loyal anchors the group with a shared “Bond” mechanic that lets two characters spend pillar tokens on each other’s behalf. Playbooks still run on strong, lateral, and vulnerable moves, but many now require you to manufacture trouble to trigger them, nudging players to write their own worst days on purpose.

Galactic’s four setting pillars return, yet two newcomers—The Parliament and The Intelligence—steal centre stage. Parliament embodies democratic process; Intelligence embodies clandestine necessity. Their moves actively push the crew toward ideological clashes: summon a council, apply leverage, demand secrecy. Juggling their competing desires forces the table to debate means versus ends. The Bond, unlocked by the Loyal, adds a third pillar that exists only between chosen characters, turning personal loyalty into literal narrative currency.

A single “Group Fate” called Sacrifice formalises the inevitable. When the crew accepts an impossible mission, a four-step clock begins: introduce the threat, choose whether to retreat, face the final obstacle, and—if still alive—use the last move to lay down your life so the objective succeeds. Fate moves cost no tokens, relying instead on players’ sense of tragic timing. It’s elegant: a safety rail that guarantees climax in a one-shot, yet optional for longer campaigns.

At the table, Going Rogue heightens everything Galactic already did well. Token flow still paces scenes beautifully, but now every vulnerable move feels like ratcheting a winch: each confession, each compromise drags the narrative closer to that ticking Sacrifice endgame. The new playbooks interlock superbly—watch the Spy’s grim determination bounce off the Convert’s radiant hope and you’ll feel sparks. Yet the learning curve is steeper. Seven potential pillars, conditional moves, and the Bond’s sub-rules can overwhelm newcomers. The book offers sensible “starter hacks”—dropping unused pillars, giving characters a free opening token, recommending beginner­-friendly playbook trios—which ease the load but don’t quite replace a one-page reference sheet.

If Galactic lets your table revel in found-family heroics, Going Rogue challenges you to test that family in the fire. It’s tighter, darker, and thematically richer, trading swashbuckling freedom for the bittersweet taste of necessary loss. Groups comfortable with GM-less storytelling will find a toolkit that turns moral debate into gripping drama; players craving tactical crunch or happy endings may bounce off the bleakness. Choose your mission wisely—but if you’re ready to bleed for the rebellion, Going Rogue delivers a heartbreakingly good ride.

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The new Galactic & Going Rogue Kickstarter bundles Riley Rethal’s hopeful space-opera and Jess Levine’s tragic resistance drama into a single, full-color book, upgraded with vivid new art and a unified layout that treats both games as different moods of the same galaxy. Your Aces, Scoundrels, Spies, and Converts now share one rules reference, letting a campaign glide from light-hearted hijinks to desperate last stands without relearning the system.

Backing also unlocks “I Have the High Ground,” Levine’s two-player duel game.

Higher tiers upgrade the experience with a sleek box set: the combined core, the duel book, and Look Up to the Stars—a fiction zine packed with short stories. Twenty-five metal tokens, a 44-card deck, custom starburst dice, and double-sided playmats keep moves and pillars at everyone’s fingertips. It’s a complete tabletop toolkit, equally welcoming to first-time rebels and returning PDF owners who crave tactile bling.

Digital pledges start low, print editions sit comfortably in the middle, and the deluxe box lands at collector-showpiece territory.