Welcome to the first (of many to come) in a series of Design Diaries for Rocket Club by the creator Em Hubbard:
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There was never any other kind of club. From the moment the idea of this game popped into my head, it was Rocket Club. I don’t know if the title came first or the image of a scrappy kid with a homemade jetpack, but it was middle-schoolers with rockets from the start.
Wherever the first spark of inspiration came from, I was instantly smitten with the thought of genius kids playing around in a cluttered garage workshop, building things that probably shouldn’t work and definitely might explode. There was a bit of Goonies in it, a little Moon Girl. There was a lovely balance between work and play. The kids were joking around, being kids, following their ridiculous whims, and indulging their imaginations. But they were also making incredible inventions, testing the boundaries of engineering and physics, and ultimately building the things they’d need to save their world.
I was not that ingenious tinkerer kid. When I was little I did like taking things apart, but I was never smart enough to put them back together. Instead I always ended up frustrated with stereo pieces scattered across my bedroom floor. But the excitement of solving problems and creating has been a constant part of my life, as an artist, a writer, and just a person. Nothing compares to the feeling of finding a creative solution to a problem. This is probably also why I love game design so much.
I should admit that I don’t know anything about rocketry. I’ve never launched a rocket, I’ve certainly never built one, and I’d probably have a panic attack if I somehow got off the ground using a jet pack. Maybe my ignorance is an asset, because the rockets in Rocket Club aren’t bound by the laws of science. They can do incredible and sometimes impossible things, so I’ve never had to think past the concept of rockets and into their technicalities. In the end, it isn’t really about rockets anyway. It’s about power and agency. The rockets let otherwise ordinary kids stand up against an existential threat much bigger than them.
Rockets are also social glue. The protagonists in this game can be very different people, but rockets bind them together. A star basketball player, a spoiled rich kid, a young criminal, a comic book geek, and a total nobody can all bond over launch vectors and new types of fuel. They can help each other construct wildly improbable machines and help hide the wreckage when a project goes wrong. Eventually, they can trust one another enough to share their deepest secrets.
I think one of the most exciting parts of creating a Rocket Club character is describing their Rocket Rig. Everyone has one creation that’s theirs alone, that they’ve poured hours of work into. There’s a simple concept to start with – like a jetpack, rocket gloves, chemistry set – but players decide what it looks like, what it does, and its shortcomings. The Rocket Rig becomes an extension of the character’s personality.
Some of my favorites: a sleek jetpack shaped like moth wings piloted by a self-described moth goth; a three-wheeled atv fitted with rocket boosters powered on clean-burning bio fuel; an extensive collection of chemical cleaning agents (and rubber gloves) used by a germaphobic chemistry geek; a pair of rocket powered gauntlets with metal framework running all the way to the shoulder and loud exploding pistons.
Playing Rocket Club, your character might go through a whole session without using your Rocket Rig, but it’s always part of who they are.