APOCALYPSE FRAME - Five Minutes, Not 5e Transcript

A thumbnail image for APOCALYPSE FRAME from Binary Star (Binary Star Games), with art by Galen Pejeau.

Transcript

DANIEL COPPER: Welcome back to Five Minutes, Not 5e, my name is Daniel, otherwise known as The Copper Compendium, and I’ll be your host. Here, I chat with the designers of lesser-known tabletop role-playing games about games they created, drilling down into the core of what makes their game tick. I’m joined today by Binary Star. Would you like to introduce yourself, and the game we’ll be chatting about today?

BINARY STAR: Hi there, I’m Binary Star, owner of Binary Star Games; the game we’ll be chatting about today is APOCALYPSE FRAME.

DANIEL: What genre is the game, and what are some relevant cultural touchstones?

BINARY: Thematically it’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi of sorts, but more to the point it’s a mecha game. It’s about big robots and the people who pilot them. Mechanically, it’s an action game through-and-through, very much about combat but not quite as heavy as most tactics games you can think of. My most relevant touchpoints during design were Armored Core - more specifically 4, For Answer and 6 - and Xenoblade Chronicles X.

DANIEL: How many players is it for, and how long does it last?

BINARY: It’s for about 4 to 7 players, of whom all but one will be playing Aces, the highly talented mecha pilots championing a colony breaking away from a tyrannical empire. The final player is the Game Master, a facilitator of the game who creates scenarios, puts problems in the paths of players, and manages their opponents.

You can certainly run it as a oneshot, and it’s very much designed to pick up and go – that said, it has a lot of scaffolding built in for play over multiple sessions in an extended campaign, to the extent that I ran it for my home group for a little over a year.

DANIEL: What do you need to play, and how quickly can you learn?

BINARY: Aside from the players themselves, you’ll need character sheets and something to mark them. You’ll also need a map with hex-shaped tiles and tokens for it, or a virtual tabletop equivalent like Roll20. You’ll want 4 6-sided dice as well.

It doesn’t take long to learn – I think I taught it to my home group in all of 15 minutes. The facilitator will need a bit longer with it, but all in all the way things are set up is flexible enough that if you’ve got the general idea down you can get most of the way there.

DANIEL: What might a typical session involve?

BINARY: Play is typically structured as a mission – your strike team of Aces are given a briefing, they’re allowed to prepare, they get into the mission proper, and then they confirm the outcome and determine any rewards. The mission proper usually involves demolishing 30-or-so fascist mechs during combat.

DANIEL: How have you made it accessible for beginners, and people with specific needs?

BINARY: For beginners, there’s very little you need to know before diving in. Everything during character creation is explicitly changeable later, so there’s no pressure and very few decisions to make initially. The PDF is fairly well hyperlinked, the facilitator has a lot of scaffolding for both the flow of a session and also multi-session games, and there are several examples provided.

More complex rules are siloed to the back of the book and are designed to drop into longer campaigns once you’ve mastered the core rules and are looking for something more. I’ve also included a cheat sheet on the standard character sheet, so you’ve always got the basics at hand. For people who want a more screen-readable version, I’ve also included an EPUB version of the book.

DANIEL: Thanks, Binary, for chatting with me about APOCALYPSE FRAME. I hope this interview helped those of you listening get to grips with the game’s themings and play, and I look forward to hearing from those of you who check the game out.

Where can people find you and your games, Binary?

BINARY: My website is at binarystar.games, you can find my digital shop at binary-star-games.itch.io, and my shop for physical copies at shop.binarystar.games. I’m also either binarystargames (one word) or binarystar.games on various social media.

DANIEL: You can find those links, as well as links to the transcript of this entry and links to the game, in the video description [below, here]. If you want to find games with similar themes or gameplay to this one, there will also be links to relevant playlists.

And that rounds out this entry of Five Minutes, Not 5e! If you want to hear me chat further with Binary about APOCALYPSE FRAME, check out the Beyond Five Minutes episode, where we’ll delve into game balance, last stands and collaborative worldbuilding.

Until then, thanks for listening, until next time!

[End of transcript.]

Links

The Game and its Designer

Get the game (digital copy): https://binary-star-games.itch.io/apocalypse-frame

Get the game (physical copy): https://shop.binarystar.games/products/apocalypse-frame

Check out Binary's games on itch.io: https://binary-star-games.itch.io/

Check out Binary's webstore: https://shop.binarystar.games/

Check out Binary's website: https://binarystar.games/

Follow Binary on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/binarystar.games

Follow Binary on Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/binarystargames

Relevant (YouTube) Links

APOCALYPSE FRAME - Beyond Five Minutes: https://youtu.be/To01MiEn5p4

APOCALYPSE FRAME - Beyond Five Minutes Transcript: https://thecoppercompendium.co.uk/apocalypse-frame-beyond-five-minutes-transcript

Mech: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsLJ-CI8A8CDmSF6_cbtLwIse7gjdq-KG

Sci-Fi: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsLJ-CI8A8CDvKvmt8I4Bc-Mj7qYGE18v