Departments

Departments are categories that represent a specific type of gameplay. Each department has a clear area of relevance, for example: Engineering’s gameplay focuses primarily on maintenance, repair and construction while security focuses on maintaining station order and responding to threats to the station/crew.

Gameplay Fantasy/Role

Departments have a clear “fantasy” when it comes to gameplay, for engineering this might be working as an engineer and solving practical problems related to the powergrid while for service it might be running a texas style bar on the frontiers of space, serving drinks and racking your shotgun at troublemakers.

Department Mechanics

A department’s core mechanics should reinforce/enable this fantasy while also allowing for fun interactions with other departments and players. Each department has it’s own design doc complete with gameplay pillars to outline what sort of gameplay is the focus of that department.

There can be some level of overlap between game mechanics between departments (such as with medical treatments), but a department-specific mechanic should primarily be interacted with by players of that department during regular gameplay.