Longtime readers of Continuing Mission will know about our 1E Menagerie Shuffler and 1E Cosmozoan Shuffler. We are adding a new feature to our Threat Generators: the 2E Starship Shuffler!

Ever need an alien starship on the spur of the moment, but don’t have time to plan out the ship stats? Fear no more. The 2E Starship Cards will allow you to mix-and-match and create a starship quickly. The 2E Core Rulebook and the 2E Game Toolkit are required as entries reference special rules and talents.

There are three kinds of Starship Cards:

• Mission Profile
  • Mission Profiles from 2E Core Rulebook and the 2E Game Toolkit, along with a few other ones adapted from 1E or CM.
  • A suggested Crew Quality is listed in bold, but you can change it. Other options are listed.
• Type
  • Ship type named after and inspired by constellations. This is where a lot of combat-related stats are, along with Science and Medicine. Torpedo stats, as well as damage ratings, are given here but the type of energy is on the third card.
• Variant
  • A trait and special rule is provided.
  • Also, an optional variant energy type is included; these are unofficial energy weapon types (designed by Continuing Mission) that can be substituted for their standard energy types. You can substitute one of the two listed weapon energies, both, or none.

Pick one of each kind, and you have your starship! Some combinations may take creative license from the GM, but that’s a feature, not a bug – and might even inspire you to come up with interesting starships. Also ignore prerequisites for the purposes of the Starship Shuffler – assume that the Polity’s technology allows them to override the prerequisites. Use the sliders to select the cards you want, with the lists above to help you locate them.

Roll 3d20 if you would like to select them randomly.

With 20 cards of each type, that’s 20 x 20 x 20 = 8,000 possible starships. And depending on how you use the variant energy type option (or not), that gives four permutations as well, increasing the number to 32,000!

We will also sometimes refer to specific combinations from the 2E Starship Shuffler in Continuing Mission articles and mission briefs. For example, a new alien species might have small starships geared for war, with older technology. That might suggest a [Warship, Musca, Eta] or [20, 15, 7]

A printable PDF version is forthcoming.