So You Want to Play 60 Years in Space

 

cover art by Rob Turpin

Congratulations! You are an absolute sicko. But so am I. This is a game for sickos (positive), and as such it is pretty daunting to get into even if you're the right kind of person for it.

If you don't know what 60 Years is, it's an rpg by Andrew Doull, based on the High Frontier board game by Phil Eklund, and it's extremely crunchy maximal-simulationist space colonization. And also multiple games in a trenchcoat, if we're being honest. You can find it here.

[I have some older posts where I am fairly critical on the game: some of those critiques still stand (tables and headings should be numbered!), the updates the game has gotten since release have turned me around enough that I'd say it's so far and away my favorite RPG of 2026, warts and all.]

This guide is currently for running solo games using version 7b of the rules; if anything drastically changes in future updates, I’ll edit accordingly.

Picking the Books You Need

The first hurdle is figuring out what you need to play the game. It's intimidating (and pretty pricey if taken all together), but not as much as you'd think at first glance: the books have mostly settled into a series of mostly-modular rulesets by this point, so most of them are "include if you want to". The seven-games-in-a-trenchcoat design allows you to zoom in or out to a preferred level of simulationist granularity, and cobble together your own ruleset out of things you care about while eliding the rest.

I've split the book list into required (you need this to play the game), recommended (not technically required, but I consider them important enough that I wouldn't play without them), and optional (books that I either used very little or nothing from while playing). The abbreviations I use will be (in parentheses)

Required Books

• 60 Years in Space (SY)
• The core rules; this contains everything you need to play the game solo as a minimum-viable product (more on this below).

 

Recommended Books

• This Space Intentionally (TSI)
• The supplement that covers missions, trade, downtime, and colonies in more detail. Strictly speaking it's not mechanically necessary for the core game, but the colony builder tables are nice and crunchy and provide a lot of flavor for the places you visit.
• All Errors My Own (AE)
• This is where all the Trends (setting elements that progress and change as you play) are found, so it’s basically required if you want to really get into the sci-fi-sicko shit.
• The 7b version only covers Eras 1-3; Eras 4 & 5 got split off into a new book (All Terrors My Own, which is next on the release docket), so you’ll need v7a if you intend to play through those eras (which is still bundled in with 7b)

 

Optional Books

• Crewed Rules (CR)
• This supplement is focused on individual PCs at a pretty high level of granularity, so it’s not really relevant if you’re playing a zoomed-out game. The nationality tables and extra colonist factions are nice but definitely not necessary. I was able to run my entire first campaign without it.
• (A) Base (D) Landing (AD)
• A base-building supplement for the early stages of an offworld colony. I think it’s a bit too complex and needs a few good editing passes at the moment, but there’s nothing in it that isn’t covered at the (much more) zoomed out level of the base game.
• If you still wanted to do a base-building exercise, I think you could probably port something over from Traveller / Cephus / Hostile.
• A Facility With Words (FW)
• You play as one of the minor factions that are living in the background of a normal game of 60 Years. There's some faction management stuff in here, but overall it's the closest to a traditional RPG with the presumption being that there’s a party of downtrodden ne’er-do-wells doing ethically-questionable things and exploring abandoned structures for loot. 
• It does have the details on how freighters / freighter fleets / mobile factories actually work, which is annoying (freighters are mentioned repeatedly in the core rules but don’t get a dedicated section in that book; hopefully this gets changed in a future update.)
• Colony: Sub/title (CS)
• Play the stock market, scope out some novel aquatic biospheres, irrevocably change the course of transhuman history.
• I like being able to see how all the wild high-concept ventures interact with each other to form potential Futures (this is a specific mechanic, basically it’s what happens to the setting after you hit 2100) but it’s definitely not necessary for the game.
• A Lot of Zeroes (LZ)
• The extreme-far-future supplement where you’re travelling the galaxy in a massive interstellar spaceship looking for the answers to Big Questions.
• Can act as a standalone game, though I'd now say 60 Versions is needed to supplement it if you want to deal with individual planets.
• 60 Virs10ns (SV)
• The supplement for playing as a pre-spaceflight alien species on their homeworld; contains the planet generation tables that used to be in A Lot of Zeroes and ecosystem generator from Colony: Subtitle.
• Still mostly unfinished / in ashcan.

Forthcoming Books

• All Terrors My Own
• Trends and Impacts for Eras 4&5
• RE:0Mi55ions
• Collection of extra material that couldn’t fit neatly into other games, if I understand it properly. Sounds like it'll mostly contain things that got shoved into and then cut from This Space Intentionally.

Other Supplies

• A fistful of d6s (I don’t think you’ll ever need more than 6)
• A campaign notebook or binder
• The High Frontier 4 All map
• Since I presume most of you don’t have a physical version of the game on-hand, you can go and bookmark hf4map.com and save yourself infinite hassle (and also save the image as a scalable webp on your phone)
• I have been slowly working on a simplified printer-friendly version, but as you might guess that’s fiendishly hard.

Setting up your notebook

There are printable sheets to keep track of all the moving parts in the game, but for my campaign I elected to rewrite the relevant parts so I could fit everything (or most of everything) onto a single page, shown below.

At the end of every era (15 turns) I did a roundup page of all the factories, colonies, infrastructure, etc.

There’s some components missing here (character stuff, primarily), so I might expand it to a 2-page spread per year for the second campaign.

It’s extremely helpful to have a reference for how developed a site is and by who: I copied the destination tables from 60Y and just notated faction color and development level every time it changed (ex: “Titan (G) 🞅 🞎 ⯊” indicates that Titan has gotten 3 space comms encounters and been developed into a permanent colony of < 100 people for Green faction)

You can also use the site folio on TIS 71, though that has a lot more sites than what you’ll normally need. 

Making Your Own Rules Reference

I’m working on putting one together for at-home printing, but until then you’ll have to make do on your own. Here’s the non-exhaustive but mostly-complete list of what I have in mine, plus page numbers:

• Order of Play (SY 74)
• Spacecraft Movement (SY 76-78) 
• Space Politics (SY 17)
• Space Program (SY 28)
• Space Agency Nationality (CR 49)
• Colonist Nationality (CR 50)
• Spacecraft Components (SY 56-60)
• Skill Checks & Control Points (SY 30-31)
• Yearly Events (Faction/Cycle) (SY 91-94)
• Technology Levels (SY 25)
• Space Comm Encounters (SY 82)
• Encounters (SY 82-87) 
• Mission Builder & Destinations (SY 53-57)
• Payloads (TIS 48) 
• Accidents and Hazards (SY 78-80)
• Exoinfrastructure (SY 206)
• Colonist Module Builder (SY 228)
• Personal Upgrades (CR 113) 
• Interception Builder (TIS 126)
• Factory and Colony Construction (TIS 65)
• Colony Builder (TIS 78)
• Trends & Impacts (AE 11, 14)
• Tables of Trends (AE 12-13, 15)
• I separated these by era rather than type in my notes, which I found useful enough to recommend.
• Encounter Table (AE 16-17) 

You'll also probably want to bookmark the Operations chapter on SY 110, and either print out these pages or make equivalents for yourself:

• Spacecraft folio (No blank version, but premade rockets are on SY 65)
• Fuel / mass tracker (Not in book, but included on premade rockets)
• Staff folio (SY 33)
• Crew folio (SY 34) 

This is of course how I do it, cut and adapt and ignore as works best for you. Order of Play, Spacecraft Movement, Skill Checks & Control Points, Yearly Events, Space Comms, & the Mission Builder are the most important to have on-hand.  

Hopefully I can get the printer-friendly guide formatted and done relatively soon.

Starting A Trial Run

The core book comes with a couple starter scenarios and the procedure for making your own; if you’re unsure about whether you’ll like the game but want to give it a try, running a single mission from Low Earth Orbit to your destination (like I did last year) will give you a good idea of the core gameplay loop. The AIDA and HOPE missions will give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to accomplish the mission, while Free Agency is fully player-driven.

If that works out and you’re the right kind of sicko for the game, then comes the rest. Let me know if I missed something or if things are unclear.