SPACE KRAKEN

COMMANDER BASIC TRAINING

SPACE KRAKEN
CRYPTED GAME MASTER SERIES - A SCIENCE FICTION DUNGEON CRAWLER
© ALL COPYRIGHTS BY MARKUS GEIGER
WWW.3D ART LAB.DE

THIS GAME IS NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER 14 YEARS OF AGE

2
 COMMANDER BASIC TRAINING
1. WELCOME COMMANDER APPLICANT You then note those 4 lines in the CGM LINE TRACKER on page 14:
Good morning commander applicant. We hope you have had a nice deep
sleep. After a long journey and thanks to the support of an amazing
crowdfunding campaign with thousands of backers, our company was
able to get this Spaceship ready for launch. Now it’s your time to take a
seat in the captain’s chair and take command.

But before you accidentally ruin a multi-billion dollar Spaceship you are
encouraged to complete the Commander Basic Training (it also provides
basic life-insurance cover on completion).

The goal of this training is to grant you a fast overview of all game
elements by you showing how to set up a new game and play a single
The rest of this page can remain empty, or needs to be erased if there
turn. It is intentionally non-interactive to keep it short, fast, and simple.
were entries from a previous game.
After reading this training you can immediately take the CORE BOOK,
set up your own campaign and start your own game, choosing and
commanding your Crew in a battle for survival. 7. OVERVIEW
On page 117 the core rules section begins with an overview about the core
Please note: All page numbers referred in this manual relate to pages of mechanics of SPACE KRAKEN. For now, you can complete this Tutorial
the CORE BOOK. before reading it.

2. THE STORY 8. SET UP YOUR CREW

The story of SPACE KRAKEN is written in two parts, an Introductory Story Page 119 explains how to set up your Crew. First select 3 Crew Member
which you can read right now if you wish. It is found inside the CORE BOOK templates starting on page 173. Let us choose QUINN, MILA and JESSICA
on page 4, and continued via the Crypted Game Master engine in story and fold out their pages to the side. You should also copy their predefined
fragments. stats and equipment with a pencil on their fold out sheets.

This is how QUINN’s template looks on page 173:

3. CHECK ACHIEVEMENTS
During multiple attempts to solve SPACE KRAKEN you will unlock
permanent ACHIEVEMENTS. These grant you a bonus for your subsequent
campaigns.

4. CHOOSE YOUR CREW BACKSTORY

On page 10 you see multiple Crew Backstories. Our demo player which
we also refer to as ’you’ chooses the ’EARLY SETTLERS’. This grants you Once you are familiar with the game, you can also alter the Hero's
one free LV2 Item or Weapon for every Crew Member during the following Attribute values, change equipment and so on by following the rules
Crew setup phase. stated on page 119, and of course you can alter their names too. Let’s say
you want to participate as a person in your Crew so you alter the name
of QUINN to Cp.MARS. Note that changing default names can impact some
5. SELECT THE CAMPAIGN DIFFICULTY story elements. Keeping this in mind, you decide to leave the other two
On page 118 you can decide to go for ’JUST A SIMULATION’ difficulty which Crew Member names as default. You also decide to remove one Attribute
allows you to save and reload the game at the beginning of each turn or point from each of Cp. MARS’ AGILITY and MELEE Attributes and add these
at any cloning station you encounter. Upon completing a campaign, your two points to his RANGED Attribute. His ‘Leader’ Trait we will keep. The
Campaign Score is halved. ’Decadence’ Trait we want to get rid of. Every positive Trait is worth 2
Attribute points so we need to lower an Attribute by 2 to compensate
6. SET UP YOUR STORY LINES that. We reduce his Charisma to 1. He is now a very uncharismatic leader.
On page 13, you will find all available Story Line Sets. We will choose Line
Set 2 which consists of the 4 Story Lines starting with coordinates: 1NA, For each Hero you now calculate the HP (Health Points) which are defined
1FU, 1NB and 1AW. The red marked line indicates a horror Story Line, the as Strength Attribute x 2. Cp.MARS will start with his maximum of 8 HP.
green lines contain comedy elements.

3
The Shield ’S’ status is zero unless you have an energy Shield listed in Mark 25 on the Oxygen track on the right side of the Spaceship’s page
your equipment. which is the standard value if your Crew carries no additional Oxygen
tanks:
The start Level (LV) of each Hero is ’1’.
The amount of equipment your Crew can carry is also defined by their
Strength. In addition to carrying with the left and right hand slots, each
Crew Member can carry an extra Item / Weapon in their Inventory
for every 2 points they have in their Strength Attribute. This means
that Cp.MARS with a Strength of 4 is able to carry two extra Items.
Furthermore, you decide to alter QUINN’s/Cp.MARS’ equipment. You
erase both Weapons from the sheet and choose to add an Assault rifle
instead, which can be found on the WEAPONS sheet, page 165.
This is how Cp.MARS' fold out sheet should look like now:

Your CREW BACKSTORY granted you a LV2 Item or Weapon per Crew
Member for free, so it’s time to add these Items. You decide to go for a
Compound jacket for each Crew Member, so all of them get one Armor
The ’R’ on the left side of his Weapon is used to define that slot as Right point. The Compound jacket’s effect is listed on the Item list on page 167.
hand. Later, if you carry multiple Items, you can switch Weapons from
hand to Inventory without the need to erase and rewrite the entire Then we take a look at the Crew Traits so we can keep them in mind for
equipment’s definition by changing those Labels of R, L, numbers and BP later usage. They are explained on page 171. Here is a copy from the Trait
for backpack slots. explanation page, you don´t need to understand in its entirety:

You decide not to alter any Attributes or equipment of the other Heroes. Cp.MARS
You mark how much equipment they can carry by striking through LEADER: Once per Ground Combat, you may reroll ANY single die,
unusable Item slots, and note their HP after calculating it. including Enemy die rolls, unjam attempts, etc.
Then you need to pay for the Crew Members' Inventory whether you keep MILA
their template Weapons, or if you create your own Crew.
MANIAC: You gain two extra Attribute points to spend. However, one
Your Crew begins with a total of 100¢. Attribute must remain at 1 permanently. Mark this Attribute to indicate it.
In this example, we must pay 5¢ for Cp.MARS' Assault rifle, 12¢ for MILA's A Hero with no Attributes at a value of 1 cannot acquire this Trait.
Blaster, and JESSICA has a Rifle and a Stimpack, costing 2¢ each, so your BURST: Fire any Weapon twice as one Action. Roll each attack separately.
Crew's Equipment will cost you a total of 21¢. A jam caused by rolling a 1 on the first attack will prevent the second
You now have 79¢ left. attack from occuring. However, if the second attack roll is a 1, the
Weapon explodes (erase it) and deals damage to you equal to half its
But you also need to buy a Spaceship, so let’s go with the TERRA on page basic damage instead of dealing damage to the Enemy. Armor can reduce
187. Fold out its page and keep it folded out during your play. This ship this damage, Shields are ignored.
costs you 50¢ which is the base price of the first component, the
’TERRA 1 - HULL’. Buying a Teleporter for 10¢, Primary Shields for 10¢ SLOW-LEARNER: Every time you Level up you use the value of the next
and a single Laser for 5¢ will increase the price to 75¢. Mark off the level for calculating XP cost. Level up to LV3 will cost 16 XP.
purchased components with an X, and note the rest of your budget JESSICA
79-75= 4¢ on the right side under ‘Intergalactic Credits’. There’s no need
to spend your entire budget right at the start. MEDIC: Healing a single Crew Member or yourself heals 2 HP extra.
Healing all Crew Members heals each Crew Member by 1 HP extra. The HP
limit of each Hero cannot be exceeded.
SENSITIVE: If you lose 3 or more HP you will lose 1 more HP.

4
For a beginner’s game you can also decide to ignore all Crew and Enemy You find ‘!2M’. ‘!’ Stands for ‘Event’ so we will get something to read
Traits, and start using them as soon as you get comfortable with the right now. Check the EVENT pages to find index number ‘2M’. You will find
rules. In our case we decide to use them, so you can see how they affect it on the right side of page 29. It starts with:
the game.
"2M: You arrive at an entirely unfamiliar star system. Sensors detect
9. VICTORY CONDITIONS quite a large number of inhabited worlds among which giant fleets of an
The Victory and Defeat Conditions are always the same: Story Line oppressive design and black colored hulls patrol. It seems ..."
plot points will let you know if you have successfully completed your
Please continue reading this Event in the Core Book until you get offered
Campaign. All you must do is stay alive until that moment arrives!
two options then return to this tutorial.
10. GENERAL RULES The two options are:
We will skip this section of page 120 for now and introduce the GENERAL A: Investigate the Items that strangely disappeared during the journey.
RULES to you during play. Once you start your first campaign on your B: You can look into the missing Items later, first you need to find out how
own, you will need to read these rules in their entirety. to survive in this strange star system.

11. GAME PHASES You decide you’d be better careful and investigate the strange
Before we jump right into the Action, you should become familiar with the occurrence so lets go for option A.
the turn order, or 'Phases,' which repeat each turn of SPACE KRAKEN. The options determine which CGM coordinate you use to continue.
Phase 1. ACTIVATE STORY LINE

Phase 2. SHIP CONSTRUCTION

Phase 3. FREE ACTION

One of the following:
- Initiate Space Flight. Option A will instruct you to coordinate ‘3SJ’ as stated in the cell
- Start a Dungeon Exploration at an already discovered Location. immediately to the right of the Event which asked for a decision. Marked
- Select a Story Line to activate it again. in green as above.
- Visit a grade 5 Shop.
If you chose option B you would check the next but one cell to the right
- Skip this phase.
side of the Event, which is ‘2CZ’. Marked in blue as above.
Phase 4. SHORT VISIT We selected option A so we go with ‘3SJ’, we can also mark this
Short visit an already discovered Shop, Ammo Dealer, Quest Master, coordinate on our LINE TRACKER to remember it.
Gambler or Modder.

Phase 5. QUEST TIMER

Phase R. RECOVERY PHASE

This phase gets triggered in some cases after phase 1, 3 and 5.

12. PHASE 1: ACTIVATE STORY LINE

Each turn begins with activating all Story Lines listed in your CGM LINE
TRACKER sheet on page 14 one after another. But before we activate a
CGM Story Line we must choose one of your brave Crew Members to be
your 'Team Leader' for that Story Line. We define Cp.MARS as our leader, We continue the line by checking the content of the cell ’3SJ’:
but we may decide to select another Hero immediately before activating
the next Story Line if we wish.
The first Line has the current coordinate ’1NA’. So we need to check the
corresponding cell in the CGM SHEETS, sheet number ’1’ at Column ’N’
and Row ’A’:

This time we get directed to another Event to read, this time it is ‘3I’
which you can find on page 32. This Event is just a short text:
"After a full Inventory check you discover that more Items have been lost,
including 250 grams of cornflakes, two bottles of water, super glue, and a
20lb bag of absorbent sand. No one has any explanation."

5
You don´t find out why those Items are lost but tracking them it will The Location Difficulty of the Dungeon will be 1 as we defined above,
probably help you to solve this issue, who knows? but the Flight Difficulty which is used to check if a Space Combat gets
triggered is based on the Location Difficulty number but is increased by
The Event doesn´t give you any options so next you just need to follow the +1 because of the ‘Risky shortcut’ flight option. So the Flight Difficulty is
coordinate on the right side, which is ‘3QM’. This guides you to the Event ‘2’.
’!52’ where you are able to land at a Shop and do your first trading! You
can read this Event on page 36. Especially important is the purple text CHECK IF A SPACE COMBAT GETS TRIGGERED
printed at the end of that Event, which states the following: We need to roll a d6 against the Flight Difficulty, 2 in our case. A result of
"You may trade with the Shop for Items and Weapons up to grade 2. As a 2 or above will be a success. But we are unlucky and roll a ‘1’ which fails
welcome gift you receive 8¢. Choose one of your Crew Members to make and triggers a Space Combat.
a single Charisma check against 8+. If they succeed, you may increase The only option for us to still avoid Combat is to escape from it but this
the grade of available Items and Weapons by 1." will cost us the ability to land at the new Location this turn, and we will
You add the 8¢ to your savings, together with what was left (4¢) from lose all Flight Option bonuses. But we are no cowards, so we take the
Setup. You now have 12¢. Then you roll a d6 and add Jessica’s Charisma challenge, do not escape, and initiate the Space Combat.
Attribute of 5 which results in d6=3 + 5 = 8. That’s exactly the minimum
value required to succeed at this dice check. The Shop now offers you 15. INITIATE SPACE COMBAT
Items and Weapons up to grade 3. There are various Space Combat encounters, all of them are listed in the
‘Flight Table’ below the flight options. Our Flight Number is calculated by
You can find all available Weapons and Items on the Lists on pages 165 rolling a d3 (d6/2) and adding twice the Flight Difficulty.
and 167. A grade 3 ‘Nanokit’ which can heal a wounded Crew Member
7HP is a good thing so you decide to buy that and pay the price of 12¢. We roll a 2 on the d6 which becomes a d3 value of 1. Our Flight Difficulty
Cp.MARS will take it in his Inventory. is 2, so we double this to 4 and add the d3 result to it (4+1). So the final
result is 5. We check that encounter number on the table.
Then the Event is done. There are no options to choose from, you must go
to ’4OM’. There you find a red and underlined ’1KN’ which is a Stop and
ends this Line for this turn. Note ’1KN’ as your last coordinate of your
first Line on the CGM TRACKER.
Now we progress with the second Line the same way:
Here you have noted ’1FU’ as the start coordinate. You check what’s
written in the cell with that coordinate, and see a ’6KA’ which is already
a Stop. Not every Line always triggers an Event each turn, so in this
case you only need to note the new last position ’6KA’ on your CGM LINE Now we enter all Space Combat details on the left side of the SPACE
TRACKER as the last coordinate for your second Story Line. COMBAT PAGE (page 163):
’1NB’ is a Stop as well, so we only write down the new position of the
third Story Line for the next turn which is ’3KS’.
Same for the fourth Story Line where we check ’1AW’ and find a red Stop
as well. We note the given coordinate ’5PP’.

13. PHASE 2: SHIP CONSTRUCTION

Because you have no leftover budget and want to have the entire Crew
available for the following Dungeon Exploration you decide to skip this
phase.

14. FREE ACTION

Let´s set a course and discover a planet to set the first human feet upon.
It seems wise to gather some experience and probably acquire some
Items that way.

INITIATE SPACE FLIGHT

Please look at page 163.
At the top-right of the page we select our flight options.
For our first flight with our ship and Crew we go for:
Location Difficulty 1.
And for the option we choose the ’Risky shortcut’ with the effect: ’Flight
Difficulty +1. Grants you 2 dice modifications during Location Generation.’

6
We also copy in the Space Combat values, beginning with the Timeline and Based on your SPACESHIP SHEET you enter the values of your ship:
the Objectives (Objectives are left empty in our case): We have the TERRA 1 with a basic hull which grants you 20 SP. Our
Teleporter System doesn´t bring us any advantage in Space Combat, but
the Primary Shields grant us a Shield Capacity of 5 with a regeneration
of 2 each turn. And the single Laser will be used to attack shortly with 3
damage.
We also copy the details for the Enemies listed on the Space Combat
encounter number 5 onto the SPACE COMBAT PAGE. Each Enemy has the
following values:
SP - CREW, WEAPON DAMAGE, SHIELD- SHIELD RECHARGE listed in this
order:

Copied to the SPACE COMBAT PAGE the Enemy section should look like this:
We also note the 3 names of our 3 Crew Members below. Soon a fourth
Crew Member may be added, we will see what happens during our
adventure.
The white check boxes below the Heroes are used to mark which Hero
gets used for which Action per Space Combat turn. These Actions are
listed on the left-hand side of the boxes.
SPACE COMBAT FIRST TURN
We are now ready to jump into the Space Combat.
Each turn is a loop of the following sub-phases until combat has been
resolved:
1) Manage the Timeline
2) Solve Objectives and repair
3) Define targets and fire
4) Enemy fire
It is interesting that the Scout has a Shield but it does not regenerate 5) Boarding Enemy Ships
during combat. The Mine has no Crew so you cannot board it, and it also 6) Attempt to escape
can’t board your ship without any Crew. Furthermore, the Mine has an 7) Recharge
Attack value of 5 and will attack you each turn until you have destroyed it
by lowering its Structure Points (SP) to zero. MANAGE THE TIMELINE
So we check the Timeline first. It shows an ’E’ which stands for ’Evading’
as explained right above the Timeline:

Because of ‘E‘=Evading your hit check difficulty against the Enemies will
be increased by 1 on the first turn.
The next three game turns nothing ‘-‘ will happen but then a ‘T’ - Time out
will end the Space Combat on turn 5. We should solve the Space Combat
before that happens otherwise we will lose the opportunity to land at the
new Location this game turn and also lose any Flight Options Advantages.

7
SOLVE OBJECTIVES AND REPAIR SECOND TURN
The Objectives are empty so the only way to solve this Space Combat is The Timeline does not state any effect for this turn.
to defeat all Enemies. The Objectives are blank for this fight and ‘Repair’ we skip again because
It is possible to use Crew Members to repair our spaceship in this phase we are undamaged.
but currently it is undamaged, so we skip this phase this turn.
Now we define the Scout as our target and roll the hit die, this time
DEFINE TARGETS AND FIRE against 4+ because the ‘Evasion’ Timeline effect has expired. You roll a 5.
Unluckily, we only have a single Laser, which is not such a great Weapon, So, we deal 3 damage to the Enemy. As usual Shields get reduced first.
but it's better than nothing. The Scout’s Shields are reduced to 1 (4-3).
We decide to target the Mine first, roll for the hit check, which is against
5 instead of 4 because of the ’Evasion’ effect. The d6 shows a 2 which is a Next, the Enemy fires and rolls a 6! That's bad for us. Its Weapons
miss. You spend one Crew Member Action to reroll the check. The result Damage of 4 gets increased by 3 points because of the ’6’ roll for a total
is now 5, so you hit the Mine, which has no Shields, so damage directly of 7 points!
lowers its SP. 3 damage against its 3 SP successfully destroys the Mine. Our Shield will negate 2 points, the other 5 (7-2) damage lowers our SP.
ENEMY FIRE Our new state is:
The remaining Scout now attacks us, it rolls against a 4+ hit check as
usual. The dice shows a 4 so they hit. Their WEAPON DAMAGE value of 5
hits our Shields which also have a value of 5 so we subtract the damage
from our Shields. Note: our Shields are now at zero capacity! At least our
Structure took no damage.
BOARDING ENEMY SHIPS
The Enemy Scout ship only has a Crew of 2 so maybe it’s a good decision
Because our Structure has taken damage, we need to roll a d6 to see if
to board them. Otherwise, they will attack us again in the next few turns,
one of our Ship’s Systems gets damaged.
before we are able to destroy them with our Laser. We would need at
least 3 turns to destroy them this way. By boarding, we may be able to You roll a 3, and the ‘Taking damage’ section at the bottom of the Space
end the Combat sooner. Combat page indicates a Standard System (Grey Colored) gets hit. A
d20 roll will define which one. The result is a 4 and we count through all
The bad thing is they have more than 3 Shield capacity which prevents us
Systems of that type which we have. There is only one Standard System
from boarding their ship right now. We will try to board them during the
installed in our ship- the Teleporter. So we mark it as damaged. If the
next Combat turn if we can weaken their Shields.
Enemy hits it again on a subsequent turn it will get destroyed.
ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE
BOARDING COMBAT
No, at this point we still think we can win this Space Combat, so we keep
Now the time has come to board the Enemy Scout Ship. It now has less
engaged to the Enemy.
than 3 Shield capacity so it is weakened enough for us to do so. We send
RECHARGE all three Crew Members and combine their highest Melee or Ranged
Now our spaceship’s Shield gets recharged by 2 as stated on the attack value to define their Boarding Combat strength.
Spaceship page. We note the new value of 2. We can keep writing each
Cp.MARS uses his Ranged Attribute: 4
number one after another until we run out of room and need to erase the
MILA uses her Ranged Attribute as well: 6
line, starting back at the beginning:
JESSICA has only a Ranged or Melee of 1 so it does not matter if she takes
Ranged or Melee: 1.
The total value is 11 (4+6+1).
At the beginning of each Boarding Combat the player and the Enemy each
get their own dice pool made from a number of d6 dice.

The player gets one d6 for every 6 points of Attack value rounded down,
which means our total of 11 is quite unlucky - we only get 1 die. If we had a
value of 12 we would have a pool of 2 dice instead.
The Enemy will receive a die for every two Crew. The scout ship has a
Crew of 2 so fortunately they will get only 1 die as well.
LOOP
Now, both parties roll their dice pools. Each 4 or 5 counts as one hit, each
That was the end of an entire Space Combat turn. Now we loop back to
6 count as two hits.
the beginning to repeat the phases for the second turn.
Both parties roll a ‘5’, one hit each.
If we want to, we can decide to negate an Enemy hit by canceling it out

8
with one of our own hits. If we do this then neither side will take damage result by plus or minus 1, or to reroll a die. This can be applied multiple
in this Boarding Combat turn, so we decide not to negate the Enemy's hit. times to a single Location Attribute die roll or used on multiple different
Attributes. Only the Map Numbers and the Location Difficulty can’t be
The next step is to apply Enemy damage. For each hit rolled by the altered.
Enemy, one of our Crew Members will lose 4HP (health points). We decide We decide to reroll the AI die once. The new result is ‘1’ which we accept
Cp.MARS will take that damage, so we reduce his current HP Track on his because AI is now defined as ‘Yes’ which means it is a breathable
fold out Sheet by 4 points. Atmosphere.
Now it’s time to deal our damage: We reduce the Enemy dice pool by Depth:
one die for every 2 hits we made. But there is a special rule, enabling We roll a ‘5’ so the Dungeon depth is 3+d6=8. That’s fine, it has lots of
us to increase the single hit we have, to count as a double hit so we can Maps for us to explore.
remove an Enemy die from the pool. To do this, one of our Heroes needs
to make a reckless attack, which causes them to lose 3 HP. We decide Teleport:
that MILA performs this brave move, and we lower her HP Track by 3. This shows how deep inside the Location (Map numbers) we can still use
Then we remove the die from the Enemy's dice pool. our Teleporter to leave the Map, or return to a deep Map number on a
revisit to this Location. We roll a ‘6’ and ‘1’ so the total is 6+1-2=5. But
The next phase is to return all dice back into the dice pool for the next
we would like more so we reroll the ‘1’ with our second and last Bonus
turn, except the dice which are lost because of unconscious Heroes or
defeated Enemies. We don´t have any unconscious Heroes but the Enemy Modifier and get a ‘3’. We note the Teleport value as 6+3-2=7.
lost their only die from the pool. The Enemy has no dice remaining so the Special:
Boarding Combat is over. If the Enemy had dice remaining in their dice
We roll a ‘2’ so it is ‘None’.
pool, we would repeat the Boarding combat loop a maximum of two more
times.
Species:
Because we defeated the entire Crew of the Enemy, their ship is now We roll a ’1’ so the main Species there will be ’Kraken’.
destroyed and we return to our ship victorious.
Map-IDs:
The entire Space Combat is now finished too because there are no other At the bottom of each Location’s definition, you will find the numbers 1-9
Enemy vessels active. We gain the Experience Points as stated under XP which store the Map-IDs. Roll a d20 for each Map present in the Location.
in the Space Combat Flight Table and the same amount in Credits, which We would roll for Map numbers 1 to 8 because our Location has a Depth
is 10¢. of 8 Maps.

We note 10 XP and 10¢ on our Spaceship page. We could spend that XP We roll: 5, 6, 4, 19, 2, 7, 8, 2
right now to Level up a Crew Member, but we decide to wait for a later
Note all those values in Location 1´s slot and we are ready to
moment. All damaged systems are also repaired automatically after
Space Combat. The mark indicating that the Teleporter is damaged can be explore the new world.
erased. Note: If we escaped from the SPACE COMBAT we would have lost the dice
modifiers for the Location Generation and even more importantly we
16. CREATING A NEW LOCATION would have also lost the ability to land at the Location this game turn.
On the right side of page 14 on the CGM LINE TRACKER you will find the
LOCATION GENERATOR which shows all you need to setup a new Location.
You only need to roll the dice as stated and enter the result in the
STARMAP LOCATIONS LOG on the left.

Lets roll the die:

Type:
We roll a ’4’ so it is a Mining Station.
The ‘Difficulty’ doesn’t need a die roll, we defined it as ‘1’ when we started
the Space Flight.
AO (Atmosphere Outside):
We roll a ’4’ so it is ’None’ Atmosphere.
AI (Atmosphere Inside):
We roll a ‘6’ which is quite bad, a ‘Hell’ like Atmosphere. Now it’s a good
time to use our bonus granted by the ‘Risky Shortcut’ Flight Option which
grants us two modifications. A modification can be either to alter a die

9
17. DUNGEON EXPLORATION Luckily, Mines can be disarmed using Tech before they explode. Jessica
It’s up to us who we want to send to visit the new Location. In various gets a single chance to make a Tech Check with 2d6 + Tech against
situations it may be a good idea to leave some Crew Members on our 10+ plus Mine level, so a Tech Check against 11+. She rolls a 2 and a 4
ship. But for now we take all 3 Crew Members we have. If we lose them all (2+4+4=10), so not enough and the Mine explodes. She receives the Mine
then we will lose the entire game because nobody is left on the spaceship damage which is defined as the Location Difficulty plus the Mine Value
to continue. But using all our Crew will hopefully help us to survive the (1+1=2), plus an additional 2 damage because she was so close to the Mine
first exploration. while trying to disarm it. So she takes 4 damage. This is reduced by her
body Armor which is a Compound jacket with Armor 1. So we reduce her
The first Map which we defined earlier was ‘5’ of the type ‘Mining Station’. health on the HP track on her fold out sheet by 3 points. Her ‘Sensitive’
So we take a look at page 157 and open the MAP LEGEND on page 152: Trait makes it even worse! Losing 3 or more HP will make her lose one
additional Health Point. So we lower her HP by a total of 4. The other
Crew Members try to avoid the Mine’s explosion with a Check of one d6 +
Agility Attribute against 8+.
Cp.MARS rolls a 4 and adds 3 Agility = 7, so he failed and receives Mine
level plus Location Difficulty = 2 damage. Reduced by his Compound
jacket’s Armor of 1 he reduces his HP by 1 point.
Mila rolls a 5 and adds 3 Agility = 8 and avoids taking any damage. The
Mine will now remain inactive until the end of this Dungeon Exploration.
Your next Action is to move onto the Oxygen Station ’O2’ which refills
your Oxygen Level completely. Mark that you have 25 Oxygen on your
Spaceship sheet.
Then we have two Treasures to collect, in this case we do not need to
spend Oxygen because of the Breathable Inside Atmosphere.
The ’T’ grants us a Treasure with the same grade as the Location
Difficulty, so the grade is 1. The ’T1’ adds +1 to that grade, so it’s a more
valuable grade 2 Treasure. Lets take the ’T’ Treasure first:
Our team is always located on one square Tile or Area and Enemies don´t
move so we do not need to mark or place any miniatures on these small
Take a look at page 167, where you can find the TREASURE TABLE at the
Maps. We just recognize that we enter the Map at the blue ‘>’ Icon at
bottom. When you receive a Treasure Drop during Dungeon Exploration or
the very top-left corner. We can select which if there are multiple ‘>’
as reward for winning a Ground Combat, check the explanation below the
Entrance Tiles to enter but in this case it doesn´t make a difference.
table to define the Treasure.
Our first Action is to move from the Entrance Tile to the connected purple
First: We decide for the Stimpack instead of receiving Credits. We do
Area, this Action is free if we enter a new Map so we do not need to spend
not even note that Stimpack in our Inventory, but use it right away to
Oxygen in this case. The Area is purple because it counts as outside, so
heal Jessica 3 HP. Because Jessica uses that Item herself, she can apply
the outside conditions of the Location get applied, in our case ‘None’.
her 'Medic' Trait, so she heals 3+2=5 HP. We note she recovers from 2
The Enemy ‘E1’ won’t attack us right now because the ‘X’ Obstacles HP to her full 6 HP. The additional 1 HP healed is lost, as the maximum
separate the Area we are in from its Area. HP cannot be exceeded. The use of Items can be done anytime during
Dungeon Exploration without spending Actions (and Oxygen). Using Items
Our next Action is to step onto one of the two ‘B2’ Bulkheads. First, we in Ground Combat behaves differently and requires a Hero Action to
spend one Oxygen by lowering the Oxygen Level on our Spaceship Page perform.
from 25 to 24, then we try to open the Bulkhead with a Tech Check: 2d6
+ Tech Attribute against 10+, plus the Bulkhead’s stated number, in this Second: We roll the d20 to see what kind of Treasure we will find. The
case +2, so a Check against 12+. Jessica has a Tech Attribute of 4. She result is a 13, so we take a look at ‘Mining Station’, Cell number 13, which
rolls a 3 and a 4, which is 3+4+4(TECH)=11. One point under the required is colored RED which means we have just found a WEAPON. Its grade is
12+ Check. the Treasure Number plus the Location Difficulty, so 0 + 1 = 1. We then roll
a 6 on the d6, and select from two options on the Weapons list:
It does not open, so we spend another Action to try again. Reducing the
Oxygen level, this time from 24 to 23. Jessica rolls 2+6+4=12 so she
managed to open it.
With the next Activation we move into the grey Area, this doesn´t cost us
any Oxygen because the Inside Atmosphere in our Location was defined
as Breathable. Time to open our helmets and take a first deep breath of A Grenade on the left or an EMP grenade on the right of the ‘6’. We take
the strange Atmosphere here. But this movement also triggered the ’M1’ the EMP Grenade and note it in Mila’s Inventory.
Mine because it is placed in the grey Area as well. Then we collect the second Treasure ’T1’ by moving onto its Tile.

10
Because it has a number stated we add that to the Location Difficulty to the Enemy appears before it has a chance to act. We roll a d6, against 4+.
get the Treasure grade, which is in this case 1+1=2. We roll a ‘5‘ so we can now activate a single Crew Member once to react
to that Enemy. We activate Mila with her Blaster.
We decide to take 2 Credits instead of another Stimpack this time and
note that we now have 12¢.
We roll the d20 with a result of 5. That’s Extra Cash. We roll a d6 to
determine how much, that result is a 3, so we get 50% of the grade’s Her Weapon states she needs to roll a 4+ to hit. And she has a Ranged
value in Credits. Attribute of 6. These Attribute points can be used per attack to increase
Note: This is the ‘grade Price’ 5 stated on the Weapon and Item List the damage by 1 or increase the hit chance by 1 for every two points of
sheets, not the ‘grade Number’ which is 2: Attribute used. We decide to improve the hit chance by 1 and the damage
by 2. She rolls the d6 against 3+ to hit, but fails because she rolls a ‘2’.
We note by her Weapon that she’s lost one Ammo.
So we receive 5/2=3 Credits. A Second Primary? Now we check if a second Primary Enemy will spawn
by rolling a d6. We need to roll at least as high as the Number of the Map
With 15 Credits we now continue the Dungeon Exploration.
we are on. In our case we are just at the first Map so 1+ will be enough to
Those two Treasures can´t be collected again of course. We have three
avoid that from happening. We can’t roll less than 1 so there won’t be a
options now, teleport back onto the spaceship, walk back to the Entrance
second Primary in this Combat.
Tile ’>’ to leave the Map with the same effect, or continue the Dungeon
Exploration. Of course we continue, we need more Experience, Items and Minion Spawning: Now we determine if a Minion will spawn. Those little
Credits. creatures are 1 Level lower than the Primary Enemy.
New Action: We step onto the B2 Bulkhead we already opened once, so Roll a d6 and add the Map number to the result, then check the number of
no test is required, and because we are still Inside there is no need to Minions to be spawned: 2-5: No Minions, 6-10: One Minion, 11+: Two Minions.
spend any Oxygen. We roll a ‘5’ so 5+1=6, one Minion will be spawned.
Moving into the purple Area, moving onto one of the ‘X’ Obstacles and Its Species is determined with a second d6 roll: 1: Kraken, 2: Grey, 3:
then moving into the Area where the ‘E1’ Enemy is placed costs one Insectoids, 4: Lost, 5: Beasts, 6: Renegades.
Action each, so 3 Actions in total. We reduce our Oxygen Level by 3, from
25 to 22. The Obstacles have no other effects than to separate Areas We roll a ‘1’ so it will be a LV1 KRAKEN, a TENTACLE, we fold out it’s sheet.
and require Actions to move onto them. But the Enemy we encounter
in the Area will now directly trigger our first Ground Combat. This is a
Loop of Combat phases which repeat until we escape or win. Then we will
hopefully be still alive to continue our Dungeon Exploration. So multiple
Ground Combats can happen during a Dungeon Exploration.
On page 139 there are options stated explaining how you can try to avoid
a triggered Ground Combat, but in our case we want to fight to defeat our
first Enemies.
Determine the Primary Enemy: It´s a LV2 Enemy calculated by adding
together the Location Difficulty 1 and its Number ‘E1’ = 2.
The Enemy Species is a KRAKEN – as defined during Location Generation.
We fold out our first LV2 Primary Enemy, NAUTILUS – KRAKEN (page 80).

Check for a reaction: We can check if we are able to react the instant

11
And here they are, the Primary and the Minion we will encounter now: the final damage before applying it to the Enemy. It only has 7 HP so this
10 HP loss kills it instantly. The second shot which was announced needs
to be done even if the Enemy is defeated. As stated, a roll of a ‘1’ with the
hit check will result in a Weapon explosion. She rolls a ‘1’ so this is bad!
The only way for her to avoid getting hurt and losing her Weapon is to use
Cp.MARS ‘Leader’ Trait and reroll that single die check. This Trait can only
be used once during each Ground Combat. She rolls a ‘5’ so all is fine –
phew! Then we reduce her Ammo by two because she shot twice. She now
has only 1 of 4 Ammo (A) left in her Blaster.

Jessica goes next and fires her Rifle with a hit check of 4+, 3 damage and
5 Ammo.

She has a Ranged Attribute of 1 so we can’t increase the hit chance or

damage of the Attack. She aims at the NAUTILUS and rolls a ‘6’. That deals
3 damage, but rolling a ‘6’ increases the Attack Damage of Enemies and
Heroes by +1, so she does 4 damage. These 4 damage points get reduced
by the Enemy’s Armor, 4-2=2. We lower the NAUTILUS HP track by 2
points on its fold out sheet. As usual we reduce the Rifle’s Ammo by 1. 4 of
5 shots are now left.
Finally we activate Cp.MARS and fire his Assault rifle, with a hit check of
5+ and Damage 2x3 which means it is a Multiple Attack Weapon. It will
deal two attacks with 3 damage each. His Ranged Attribute of 4 allows
two (4/2) modifications, but these can only be applied to the first shot.
We increase the first shot’s hit chance by 1 and increase damage by 1. For
the first shot he rolls a ‘4’ which is a hit. This deals 3+1 damage, lowered
by the target’s Armor of 2, resulting in a 2 HP loss for the NAUTILUS.
Then Cp. MARS rolls the second unmodified attack and rolls a ‘1’ which is
Define the Initiative: We roll a d6 and add the lowest Crew Member’s a failure and has even jammed the Weapon. We mark it as jammed. This
Agility Attribute, which is Jessica with 2. The result is 3+2=5. The Enemy attack uses only one Ammo of the Assault rifle as it was a single use of
also rolls a d6 and adds their lowest creature’s Agility which is 2. Their the Weapon. Mila’s Trait used two Ammo as it allowed her to activate her
result is 3+2=5. In case of a draw, the player gets the Initiative. This Weapon twice.
means luckily, we can activate all our Heroes at the beginning of each
Ground Combat Loop before the Enemies get activated. The Initiative will Revenge of the Kraken: Now it’s the Enemies' turn, they get activated
stay in this order for the duration of the entire Combat without the need from top to bottom as viewed when folded out, in our case only the
to roll for it again. NAUTILUS is left. It has the ‘2 Actions’ Trait which allows it to get
activated twice instead of a single time per turn. You roll a d6 to
Start of the Ground Combat Loop: First we need to pay one Oxygen if determine what it does. 1-4 will result in a Strangle Attack, 5-6 in an idle.
the Atmosphere is non-breathable or even 2 if we are in HELL conditions. You roll a 2 for the first Action and a 3 for the second Action, so it will
In our case we lower our Oxygen Supply by 1, down to 21. Then we can perform two Strangle Attacks.
activate each Hero a single time, in the order of our choice. So we start
with Mila again. Enemy Attack Priority: Heroes who attacked with a Melee Weapon on
their turn are attacked first, then those who made a Ranged attack, and
She fires the Blaster again using the same Attribute boost of +1 to hit finally all others. If there is more than one Hero in each group, you can
chance and +2 to damage. Furthermore, she uses her ‘Burst’ Trait which choose who is targeted. In our case all Heroes attacked with Ranged
allows her to shoot twice with one Action, but with a catastrophic effect Weapons so it is up to us to determine who gets attacked.
if she rolls a ‘1’ with the second attack (the Weapon will explode!). For the
We select Cp.MARS as the first target. The NAUTILUS rolls a d6 against
second attack she cannot use her Ranged Attribute boost, as this can
4+. It rolls a ‘6’, a success, and deals 3+1 bonus for the rolled ‘6’. The 4
only be applied to the first strike of any attack. She aims at the TENTACLE
damage gets reduced by 1 by our Hero's Armor. We lower Cp.MARS HP by
Enemy and rolls the first d6:
the remaining 3 points.
Her first roll is a ‘3’, the hit check was against 3+ so it’s a hit. The
The second attack of the NAUTILUS fails as it rolls a ‘1’.
damage of ‘4 Fire’ is increased to ‘6 Fire’. The TENTACLE has no Shields
Note: Enemies do not have a ‘Jammed’ Weapon status.
that can reduce the damage, so only its Armor of 1 point gets applied.
6-1=5 damage applies. In addition, we have hit it with a Weapon with the
‘Fire’ effect and the creature has a Weakness against ‘Fire’. This doubles

12
New Ground Combat Turn: We note on both Hero sheets that they now are LV2.
Neither we or the Enemy are defeated or try to escape so we begin a
second round of Ground Combat by spending one Oxygen, lowering our We give Jessica +1 STRENGTH Attribute as her Level up bonus, so she is
Oxygen Supply to 20. now able to carry two extra equipment pieces in her Inventory, and she
also gains 2 maximum HP as well. So she has now 8 of 8 HP.
Unjamming a Weapon: This turn we activate Cp. MARS first. His Assault
rifle is jammed. To unjam it he needs to pass a Tech check. However, Cp.MARS increases his TECH Attribute by +1, now he has 2. He should
as his Tech Attribute is only 1, he is more likely to damage it further hopefully be able to unjam his own Weapons one day ...
rather than unjamming it. So, for his Action he chooses to ‘Rearrange Then it’s time to continue the Dungeon Exploration from the same Area
and Exchange’ with Jessica, giving her his Assault rifle to unjam. The two we paused at for the Ground Combat.
Heroes could swap any number of Items between them via this single
Action. Treasures, Obstacles and Oxygen use:
We are still in the purple Area where the ’E1’ was placed:
Then we activate Jessica. She uses her turn’s Action to unjam the Assault
rifle. She rolls a d6 and adds her Tech Attribute against 8+. She rolls a
‘4’, which results in a 4+4=8, so she unjammed the Weapon successfully.
She will need to wait until the next turn to return the Assault rifle to Cp.
MARS.
Then we use Mila to shoot at the NAUTILUS again, this time without her
’Burst’ Trait because we do not want to risk anything bad happening. We
need to lower the Enemy’s HP by 3 to defeat it, so including its Armor of
2 we need to hit with 5 damage. Mila’s Blaster does 4 Fire damage, but
the damage gets doubled after Armor reduction because of the Kraken’s We have 20 Oxygen left. We begin in the purple Area where the ‘E1’ was.
Weakness against ‘Fire’. Because of this we spend all her 6 Attribute If we wanted to collect both ‘T’ Treasure Tiles then our next Actions
Points in Ranged for 3 modifications to increase the hit chance. She will would move us back and forth over the Obstacles ‘X’ to pick up both the
now hit with a 1+. But we should not forget that rolling a ‘1’ is always a ‘T’ Treasure Tiles and then head to the Exit Tiles ‘EX’. All this would take
miss, and a jam, no matter the Hit Check value. She rolls a ‘2’ and the 9 Actions and also use 9 Oxygen. It is up to us if we take those Treasures
Enemy is defeated. or leave them behind to save our Oxygen. We decide to take only the
We won the Ground Combat, and its loop ends now. easily accessible Treasure at the bottom-left, and then head to the Exit.
That will cost us 5 Actions and Oxygen.
Gain Treasures: We now gain 1 Treasure drop for each Primary Enemy
that was defeated in the combat. The Treasure grade corresponds to the 18. FAST FORWARD DUNGEON EXPLORATION
Enemy's Treasure value which is 2. Minions and escaped Enemies don't We now speed up this demo a bit and fly over what happens next:
provide Treasure. The ’T’ granted us 1 Credit plus 1 extra Credit drop, so we add 2¢ to our
We apply the same procedure as we did when picking up the ‘T’ wallet of 15¢. We now have 17¢. We arrive at the next Map with 20-5=15
Treasures during Dungeon Exploration: Oxygen left.
We decide to acquire a Stimpack instead of Credits, and directly apply Cleared Maps: We leave the first Map behind and mark it 'Cleared '. That
it to recover Cp.MARS HP back to full (8 HP). We roll a d20, the result if we will return there will be no more Enemies or Treasures. However,
is 16 so we found an Ammo Magazine up to grade 2. It can´t be used for any Treasure we didn't collect is lost and cannot be collected again. It is
Mila’s Blaster as that is a grade 3 Weapon. So we choose an Assault rifle possible to leave a Map 'Uncleared' by not collecting ANY Treasure, but
Magazine and note it in Cp.MARS Inventory as this Weapon has a grade we didn't do that in this demo.
of 2.
Gain XP: Under XP on the Enemy sheets, you will see how many
Experience points we earn for defeating these Enemies, whether they
were a Primary or a Minion. We also gain this experience if they escape
from combat. For this combat we receive 2+1=3 XP. We add it to the XP
we already collected: 10+3=13.
Level up: We decide it’s time to Level up now. All our Crew Members are
currently LV1. To get any of them to LV2 we need to spend the target LV
multiplied by itself. So, reaching LV2 will cost 2x2=4 XP. To Level up from
LV2 to LV3 will cost 3x3=9 XP. Also, Mila has the ‘Slow-Learner’ Trait
which means levelling her up costs the value of the next LV multiplied by
itself (9 XP from LV1 to LV2).
Let’s Level up Jessica and Cp. MARS to LV2. This costs us 8 XP in total, we
have 13 XP so 5 XP will be available for leveling up in the future.

13
The next Map is Number 6: Med-Stations:
Next we enter a Med-Station ‘+’ to heal our Crew. If one is not enough, we
have a second Med-Station on this Map, too.
B5-Bulkhead:
A strong Bulkhead ‘B’ is often the bane of a Crew with no experienced
Tech expert with them. It can block a Dungeon Exploration, forcing an
early return to the Spaceship with little or no Treasure!
But we manage to pass the check and exit the Map via the Exit Tile ‘EX’ at
the top-right.
The next Map is Number 4:

This Map has no areas with an Outside Atmosphere so at least Oxygen

use won´t be a topic here. But we need to decide where we enter this
Map. We enter by an ‘>’ Entrance Tile but there are 4 to choose from. And
because you always need to make a first step from the entrance without
spending an Action, onto the Map we MUST do that, we can´t just return
or teleport out before that first step.
We decide to take the upper Entrance, which directly triggers the ‘E?’.
The ‘?’ means that the Enemy difficulty depends on a dice roll of a d3
(d6/2). We roll a 1 so it’s an ‘E1’ Enemy, plus the Location difficulty of
1. So we trigger Ground Combat against a LV2 Enemy, possibly including
Minions etc. We will enter this Map at the purple Area where we will need to spend
This time we try to avoid the Ground Combat before it starts by using our Oxygen if we take any Actions there. Then there is a Grey Inside Area
Charisma to be very friendly to that alien in the hope it won’t attack us. which has a Breathable Atmosphere. The ‘<-‘ arrows can only be passed
in the stated direction, so we really need to think carefully whether we
Avoid with Charisma: want to risk going into the Left section of the Map where an ’E1’ and an
To avoid an Enemy using Charisma, we need to roll a d6 and add all ’E2’ Enemy are located. Together with the Location Difficulty that will
Charisma Attributes of our entire Crew. If the result is equal to or be Level 2 and 3 Enemies. But there is a valuable ‘T2’ Treasure located
higher than 5+ (Enemy level x 3), this is a success. So we need to roll there as well. Furthermore, we won´t be able to teleport out of this Map
(2x3)+5=11+. Before making this roll, we can spend an number of Credits because the Disruptor ‘S’ prevents all attempts to use our Spaceship’s
(¢) to increase our result by 1 point per Credit spent. Lets spend 1¢ to teleporter until we enter its Tile to deactivate it.
give that alien a friendly gift. We roll a 5 on the die and add our Heroes
Charisma which is 1, 1 and 5, add 1 for the Credits and successfully avoid We make the attempt to go for the ‘T2’ Treasure, get into a lot of
that Ground Combat with a result of 13. trouble with the Enemies, barely survive, take the Treasure, deactivate
the Disruptor, visit the Modder ‘M’ to improve Mila’s Blaster (see page
Get some Treasure: 138), and then before our Crew take any more risks, we leave via our
Then we enter one of the ‘T1’ Treasure Tiles adjacent to that Area we Teleporter. We have now finished the Dungeon Exploration phase and are
are in and determine what we receive as usual. back on our Spaceship.

Ground Combat number 2: 19. RECOVER

If we return back to the corridor the Enemy we avoided will try to attack Back on board our Ship we recover 3HP for each Crew Member,
us again. Avoiding always grant a single pass not more. This time we and refill our Oxygen. Of course, we can also reorganize all Items
initiate the Ground Combat and defeat the Enemy.
between Crew Members and our Ship freely. Also, any jammed or
damaged Weapons are automatically restored to a fully working
condition.
14
20. PHASE 4. SHORT VISIT
Because our Ship has a Teleporter, we could use it now to visit a Shop,
Ammo Dealer, Quest Master, Modder or Gambler which we have already
discovered during Dungeon Exploration. Because we don’t have much to
sell nor Credits to spend, we just skip that for this turn.

21. PHASE 5. QUEST TIMER

We have not accepted any Quests from a Quest Master ‘Q’ Tile during
Dungeon Exploration. Any Urgent Missions would advance the Quest Timer
in this phase. For now we simply skip this phase.

22. END OF TURN 1

This was one game turn of Space Kraken with all Game Phases. We also
have seen how the Combat Loops work for Space Combat, Boarding
Combat, and Ground Combat. The next turn will start as usual with Phase
1. ACTIVATE STORY LINE.

23. YOUR COMANNDER LICENCE

It is a great honor for us to present you with the X7 COMMANDER LICENSE.
The Commander’s chair is now yours. Choose your Crew wisely. We wish
you good luck on your adventure through the wormhole!

And please do not forget to send your flight reports!

15
 A
S P A C E K R A K E N

Space Kraken is a solo and up to 4 player co-op/versus adventure game book for
players aged 14 and up.

In a near-future, explore alien worlds in a vibrant space epic, battling enemies and
hunting down bosses whilst managing and improving your Crew.

Space Kraken is a unique blend of storytelling, adventure game book and strategic
board game. It introduces a revolutionary CGM system that handles multiple
simultaneous storylines which can influence each other as you choose your path
along the branching adventure.

It offers endless replayability. No two play sessions will ever be the same!

WWW.3D ART LAB.DE