There's something innately cool about cowboys. Perhaps it's the swagger or the lawless lifestyle. Perhaps it's the cool hats and low-slung six-shooters. Possibly it's the jangling guitars and tolling bells accompanying the tumbleweed. Or it could be the high octane jail breaks and train robberies.
Needless to say, when Osprey published their Dracula's America ruleset last year, it got lots of folks I know pretty excited. After all, what could be cooler than cowboys plus vampires.
Cowboys plus vampires IN SPACE of course!
It is not a huge leap to transpose the whole game of Dracula's America into a science fiction setting. After all there's precedence for space cowboys - just look at Firefly, 2000AD's Lawless series and, er, Bravestarr. Not to mention that Rogue Trader has a bit of a frontier tinge and Necromunda was pretty much the Wild West too.
So you have a nice, intuitive, fast and simple set of rules, with a variety of factions available. You have a bunch of people who would like to make some space cowboys and would like to yell 'Varmint!' across a table at each other.
Dracula's America in Space (DAiS) was born.