Starot: Crafting a Cosmic TTRPG Adventure with Tarot and Physics

What happens when a love for sci-fi, tarot and immersive roleplay collide? Benedict Yugaraj, creator of Starot, reveals the creative journey behind this innovative TTRPG

Q: Please give the readers a short introduction about yourself and your company. What is your “origin” story, and how did you come about creating games?

Hi, I’m Benny, and I’ve been developing Starot solo since 2019 as a passion project. In 2025, I formed the current Starot team of eight people as the project got closer to realisation. Our company is called Chaotic Stupid LLC, representing our love for the chaos and whimsy found in playing Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPGs). Starot was born because I wanted to play a TTRPG that had a physics-based space combat system in a modern sci-fi setting and package, and one of my friends told me, “Why don’t you just make it yourself?” I also wanted a comprehensive science-fiction setting in which to run games that told stories of found family and had a focus on emergent storylines.

Q: Please give a brief introduction about the game, its premise and featured mechanics.

In the story of Starot, three previously isolated galaxies find themselves inexplicably transported adjacent to one another and intersecting with a fourth unknown galaxy, the Starot galaxy. In this galaxy dwell living sentient constellations, powerful cosmic entities that weave and pick apart the threads of fate to their own mysterious ends. The civilisations belonging to each galaxy must make first contact with the others and learn to cooperate to survive and explore in this new frontier.

Starot is a D20 and tarot-based science-fiction cosmic fantasy table-top roleplaying game that involves players coming together to solve mysteries, explore a frontier galaxy, navigate complex interspecies politics, and overcome a myriad of challenges. Players primarily use dice for resolving scenarios, while GMs, also known as Oracles, use both dice and tarot cards to represent the world. Starot’s Skills system is a fully modular system that encompasses every aspect of a player character, including weapons, armour, careers, and psionic abilities. Every time a player character gains a new ability in Starot, they gain it in the form of a Skill, which functions as a modular add-on to that character and follows an easy-to-understand ruleset and format. Every time a player character performs a significant action, the success or failure of that action draws from Skills possessed by that character. Starot also features a physics-based space combat system that rewards creative tactics and strategy in the frictionless expanse of the cosmos.

Q: Are you currently employed full-time? If so, how do you manage your time with this project?

I was employed full-time until very recently. For the past 6 years, I have been working on Starot whenever time would allow after work and on the weekends. This year, I have committed the majority of my time to working on Starot because we are finally nearing the finish line, and in order to cross it, it requires a full-time effort from me, as we are working with a very small team, the rest of whom are working on the project only part-time.

Q: Did your career inspire the creation of this game in any way? If so, how?

Yes. Over the years, I’ve worked in several different fields, and certain roles definitely influenced Starot’s development. Unfortunately, strict NDAs from some past positions prevent me from sharing specifics, but those experiences shaped how I approached worldbuilding, systems design, and the game’s overall direction.

Q: Why did your team decide to create this type of game?

We primarily wanted to create a game where Game Masters (GMs) could tell stories and generate interactions with players in a way that provided both randomness and narrative inspiration, which is how tarot cards came to be implemented in the game. Beyond that, we also wanted to craft a science-fiction world where players could tell interesting stories with species that were not just “human-plus”. Finally, we also wanted to provide an RPG experience where how each player played their character determined how their character levelled, and not the other way around. As someone who loves immersive roleplay, it felt quite jarring in some RPGs where a level-up suddenly meant that the player character gained new powers without ever having learnt or experienced any aspect of those powers. In designing Starot, I took care to ensure that gaining abilities feels like a natural progression of the player character’s efforts and experiences, and that gameplay mechanics are fundamentally interwoven with narrative progression.

Q: How was the idea of physics-based space combat implemented in the game design process? Did it cause any difficulties or require reworks to the game?

Space combat in Starot was originally a lot more and needlessly complicated than it is now, involving three-dimensional space and complex vectors requiring a strong grasp of cartesian and Pythagorean mathematics. It took many iterations of trial and error and valuable feedback from beta play testers to come up with a system that was both easy enough to understand and complex enough to feel realistic and grounded in science. The eventual choice to represent only two dimensions in space combat was a massive compromise in the direction of balancing simplicity with realism. Our players have described our combat system as “space ship ice-skating” and keep coming back for more - it is now one of the three distinct pillars of the game, alongside lore and our unique skill system.

Q: Did your experience with other TTRPGs help influence design choices when creating Starot? If yes, how?

Absolutely. The biggest TTRPG influence has definitely been 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in terms of its ease of pick-up-and-play. Additionally, our equipment system was heavily inspired by Lancer, and our career system similarly stands on the shoulders of Warhammer: Dark Heresy and similar games.

Q: Was there a point in development when you thought Starot might not work as intended? How did you overcome that moment?

Early in development, Starot was intended to be a science-fiction total conversion for D&D 5th Edition. Eventually, we realised that the scope of this game was much larger than that, and it evolved into an independent entity of its own. That step felt like a leap across an insurmountable chasm and much farther than we could really take our creative ideas, and overcoming it was only possible through tenacity and the invaluable support provided by our talented and endlessly kind peers in the TTRPG community.

Q: Can you share a mechanic or concept you had to completely scrap during development? What made you decide to let it go?

As I mentioned above, three-dimensional space combat was once a core mechanic of Starot but had to be scrapped because it did not meaningfully add to the fun that players were having, but instead had a significant detriment on the ease of players understanding and carrying out space combat. We also recently purged a mechanic that regulated how long armour and suits could function using power cells because it felt just like busywork for players, based on feedback given to us during beta playtests. Sometimes certain ideas have been in development for so long that we lose sight of whether their presence actually provides value to the game or takes away from it, and we are grateful to our beta players for grounding us and helping us to see the bigger picture.

Q: Where is your game planned to be manufactured? What are the challenges involved in manufacturing?

We’re currently in discussions with several manufacturers across Southeast Asia and China, including contacts provided through Gamefound, though our production pipeline isn’t finalised yet. Our beta materials were produced in Singapore. The main challenge lies in navigating global tariffs, especially since we expect most sales to come from the North American market.

Q: As many TTRPGS have digitalised versions nowadays, are there plans to create a digital experience for Starot?

Yes! We’re developing a digital toolkit that streamlines character creation, tracking, and inventory management. Starot will also launch as a downloadable PDF from day one. Visitors can preview the digital toolkit at TableCon Quest this month. Drop by our booth to try it out!

Q: How did the idea of Tarot cards influencing combat come about?

Tarot cards do not influence combat in Starot directly. Instead, the Oracle (GM) is guided by the influence of a tarot card drawn at the start of each session to provide overarching thematic elements and steer gameplay events in a certain narrative direction. The idea of using tarot cards was born of a desire to allow GMs to utilise a randomising tool that also provided narrative inspiration for improvisation which is incredibly important for GMing on the fly. Tarot cards are perfect for this function as they can be easily randomised, and each card has an inherent narrative meaning already attached to it.

Q: What are some of the major challenges in designing a TTRPG? What advice would you give TTRPG designers?

The biggest challenge in designing a TTRPG, in my opinion, is certainly feature bloat. Most people who design TTRPGs are likely going to be people who have varied experiences with many TTRPGs already, and they would have an extensive feature set in their minds that they find particularly appealing or that address pain points particularly important to them. The temptation to include as many of those features in your game is a strong one, but deciding what to include and what not to include is incredibly important to ensure that your project actually gets out of the concept stage. I would highly recommend that TTRPG designers involve trusted members in the testing process as early as possible, even at the base concept stage, in order to ground ideas and rein in creativity that might otherwise run rampant and stall the project indefinitely. I am indebted to my friends, family and peers in the TTRPG space who have assisted me greatly in this regard.

Q: Starot is currently on Gamefound. What are your plans if you do not reach your funding goal?

We are incredibly fortunate to be a winner of Gamefound’s RPG Party initiative. For context, Gamefound is a crowdfunding platform specifically focused on board games, tabletop RPGs, and related projects, providing creators with tools, mentorship, marketing support, and insights from industry professionals. This support has been invaluable in guiding Starot’s crowdfunding journey.

That said, we are not taking success for granted. If our campaign falls short of the funding goal, we will carefully adjust our strategy and explore alternative paths to bring Starot to players, ensuring the project can still achieve success in a sustainable way.

Q: Where can we find out more about your game?

You can find our Linktree at starotrpg.com. Follow us on Gamefound and join our Discord to access the full open beta for free. We also share updates and behind-the-scenes content on Instagram @starotrpg. Early backers on Gamefound will receive a limited-edition, individually serialized tarot card: ∞ – The Oracle.

Benny will be showcasing Starot at Tablecon Quest 2025 at the RPG zone. Drop by his booth and try out his games if you are interested.