I’ve started trying to hack a playtest draft together from all of Steve Kenson’s OGL hacks (Mutants & Masterminds, Blue Rose, True20) and some insights from Mouse Guard, Continuum, and 4E.

One revelation I had while GMing my current 4E game is that being lost in space is effectively a Stealth roll that your allies have to overcome in order to find you. So, when you get lost, you make some sort of exponentially-increasing roll that establishes the difficulty of finding you. Then both the lost character and their allies cooperate to gradually diminish the difficulty and enable you to be recovered.

The die mechanic I’m thinking of goes like this: roll 1d20 and add a special “lost” modifier that is determined in this fashion… add 1d4… if you get a result bigger than 50% (3-4), set the die at 50% value (2) and add a die one size larger (d6)… rinse and repeat up to d12. If you roll bigger than 50% (7-12) on a d12, you’re “lost indefinitely” or something, which is a special condition with special rules. Seems like the highest possible modifier is going to be 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = +20, so you’ll get a bonus between 1-20 with anything higher = really really lost.

Here’s the helpful Lostulator I made:

Eric’s helping me figure out what this curve looks like. Here’s his chart:

I’m not sure how the extended recovery conflict should work, but it’s possible that it could be scripted in the manner of Mouse Guard conflicts or time combat in Continuum, with the allies and lost character picking tactics secretly that are then revealed and may or may not be synchronous and mutually beneficial. For example, if one character expends all their stardust making a giant burst of light that acts as a beacon, they might have to spend the next turn recharging instead of searching, potentially missing a beacon or some other signal sent by another character.

Here’s Eric’s chart on your cumulative likelihood of being indefinitely lost:

This emphasizes the fact that any given character doesn’t want to be lost more than a handful of times. Though, as Eric pointed out, you can get lost 22 times and still have a 50% chance of being recoverable, much better than making 22 saves vs. death in D&D. I think once characters are irrevocably lost, they either leave the game or split the party indefinitely, so you start rolling to see if they encounter other people who aren’t the original party members, and they basically start their own party. And maybe, once you establish a second basecamp, there are things you can do to try to regain contact. Characters could also be “effectively lost” if their Stealth is so high, like 30, that their low-level allies can’t find them until they gain a couple levels or chip away at the difficulty by doing some things that make contact more likely.