Mothership: Item Cards

I finished writing and illustrating item cards for everything mentioned in the Players Survival Guide inventory.

I've put it all in a shared folder on Google Drive for Players and Wardens to use in their games as they see fit.

I was going to make O2 credsticks, sycorax, keycards... but I have too much to do already so I'll leave that to anyone ambitious enough or a creative Warden who is running a campaign set on Caliban's Dream from the excellent A Pound of Flesh.

Now I really need to get on with writing my next Mothership session!

Mothership: Lessons from Session One

I recently ran my first Mothership session and, in doing so, learned some lessons. Overall the game went well and we all enjoyed playing, but I can definitely see places where I could improve the game.

Digital Handouts

I had three players and we were all playing remotely over Discord. I shamelessly stole the idea of including a terminal from traaash and the players went nuts for it, quickly becoming giddy with excitement when they realised they had an input/output to play with. For me this was the equivalent of player handouts during a face-to-face tabletop game; playing online makes player handouts difficult but with a little effort you can still make something that the players can interact with that doesn't require dice or character sheets.

I had to scroll through a text file of pre-formatted computer responses when they entered commands into the terminal, so I couldn't respond immediately to what they typed; but the pauses between input and output actually turned out to be more immersive as the players told me that it felt like they were waiting for an old hard drive to spin up and react.

I also made inventory item cards, so that the players (without their own copies of the rules) could see what their characters' equipment could do. That streamlined things a lot as no one had to ask me "how much damage does my X do?" or "how much oxygen do I have?" I plan on releasing item cards for all the stuff in the Players Survival Guide and I'll put a link to it here when I do.

House Rules

I also used a lot of quandra's houserules from the aforementioned blog as well as the Survive / Solve / Save for XP concept. I ran initiative-less combat, something I learned about from watching the excellent Dungeon Craft on YouTube, it's something I'll be trying in other games as well but more on combat later.

Amongst the house rules I was not a fan of handling health for PCs in the same way that Mothership handles health for NPCs and monsters. In the spotlight was the marine PC who rolled 40-something for their Strength attribute and ended up with over one-hundred total health; sure, he was still in danger of rolling badly on the critical hit table but the PC was extremely spongey and I would have preferred that they rely on armour, cover, clever tricks, or running away as methods of self-preservation. In future I'll use the RAW for PC health (although rumours suggest that the hits/health mechanic is being considered for the game's next revision).

No one panicked or failed a fear or instanity save during the session. That was mostly down to lucky rolls rather than anything else as one PC ended the session with quite a lot of stress.

A house rule I was very eager to include was Survive, Solve, Save for XP, also from quadra's blog. My players did some surviving (two outta three ain't bad), some solving, and absolutely no saving. The marine character died, but the player's next character will get the XP the marine earned during the adventure; I find that this incentivises a better atmosphere where the atmosphere and story are elevated over "taking a character to maximum level" which some players seem to idolise.

Killing Monsters

The adventure's monster, an abberation I called the Ghost of the Sanchong was pieced together from a few sources of inspiration: the monster's appearance was inspired by old diving hardsuits and the Big Daddies and Rosies of Bioshock, while its chanting was something I had seen in an old trailer for Darkwood. I wanted it to be a slow, lumbering, nigh-invulnerable menace that would stalk the PCs and force them to play a game of cat-and-mouse. .. it didn't quite turn out that way.

As soon as were introduced to the monster the PCs started blastin'. Two of them had laser cutters, extremely swingy but potentially powerful weapons that do d100 damage when they hit but take a turn to recharge. The PCs just used the downtime between shots to aim and gain advantage on their next shot, almost guaranteeing that they would land a hit. Now, I could have given the monster a squillion health or just have said that it was completely impervious to damage, but as much as I wanted to create an atmosphere of dread I also wanted to be fair. The monster was very tough, but some lucky rolls combined with powerful equipment and a complete disregard for the monster's next victim (I had hoped that the PCs would try to save an imperilled NPC but instead they used her as a human shield), the monster's health disintegrated before it could do much damage to the PCs.

The players didn't really communicate with each other regarding the unfortunate NPCs who died in this scene either - they approached everything very clinically and dispassionately. In other words, there was a lack of role playing. This could be attributed to playing over Discord (voice only, we didn't all have webcams), it could be because the game had already been running for a couple of hours and people were getting tired, or it could be because my players are heartless murder hobos; the jury is still out.

I added negative consequences whenever the PCs missed in combat - laser beams cut into pressurised pipes and blasted steam everywhere, obscuring the scene; people hit the wrong target; the hull was punctured and began to depressurise; someone accidentally ejected the battery pack from their laser cutter and had to go scrambling under a desk to find it... it worked well but I missed a key factor that would have put a lot more pressure on the players: time.

There was no real countdown timer to escalate or severely-worsen the situation. I thought that giving the marine some NPCs to save would have incentivised the players but it didn't - clearly I need to make a personal connection with those NPCs so they aren't just nameless statblocks waiting to be killed as set dressing. A ticking time bomb of some sort (alien eggs about to hatch, a reactor core about to go critical, parts of the ship being ripped away as it disintegrates in the atmosphere during re-entry) would have done a lot to make the combat more exciting. As it was, tension was building and building, and the players' were becoming more anxious with every step, but as soon as combat started the tension disappeared and they fell into D&D mode, trying to kill the monsters and get some XP.

The next session will definitely be lacking laser cutters. They have their place, but they have the potential to do huge amounts of damage and essentially become swingy sniper rifles during combat. Threatening PCs with possible hull breaches is great, but not if they're already wearing vaccsuits.

Old Man Time

Finally, the session dragged on for about 30 minutes longer than I had planned for and, as a result, there was no time for a debrief, wrap-up, epilogue, or anything afterwards.

I had planned to play for around three hours but two hours had gone by before the PCs actually stepped foot on the haunted ship that the deadly encounters were on. This is partly down to character creation for a last-minute player (although character creation in Mothership is very quick and easy thanks to the genius character sheet design), setting the scene, and introducing the players to an unfamiliar system, but I think it's also down to the genre.

Three films I think would make good Mothership adventures: Alien, The Thing, and Pitch Black. In Alien we see nothing outright deadly until Cain's last meal about 45 minutes into the film; in The Thing the characters are presented with an initial mystery but the sinister nature of the titular monster isn't clear until it's too late to trust anyone; Pitch Black is the least 'horror' of the three but while the film telegraphs threat early on, it doesn't deliver real peril until much later on.

To me that seems to be the way to run horror - the GM's time is well-invested building tension and establishing the right atmosphere; when things go to hell they should go to hell quickly and there should be an "oh no" moment from the players when they realise that they sprung the trap hours ago - escape is nigh-impossible, all they can hope to achieve is limited damage control.

I enjoyed it and I'm taking these lessons forward to my next session.

Mothership: The Ghost of the Sanchong

I recently ran my first Mothership adventure, a home-brew called The Ghost of the Sanchong. Here is a play report.

The player characters started aboard the Claymore, a courier ship run by a careless pilot named Lewinksi, heading for new horizons where they hope to find work on an asteroid mining outpost. The party consists of:

• Skylr: oblivious moon child, constantly doodling, makes meditation mixtapes, took some machine shop and zero-g training but only to fill out her time studying chakras, astrology, and crystal healing
  
• Nix Jaxer: straight-laced, zero-g mechanic, Just Wants To Get The Job Done(TM)
  
• Bruce Andersen: ex-marine, seriously overweight, possibly discharged for incompetence, chain smoker, speaks with a thick neo-Melbourne accent
  

The PCs are leaving the overcrowded artificial habitat Vitalian's Shield and heading for the outer reaches of the solar system. In particular they are headed for Remote Site 12-T, an asteroid mining station also known by its common callsign Paradox Terminal.

Paradox Terminal was an amalgamation of a ruined moon base and a decommissioned frigate called the Sanchong; the moon base accounted for the habitable upper parts of the station, while the Sanchong sat underneath and provided power, computation, and other logistical systems.

After arriving and going through de-lousing, ID checks, and a short series of questions from Maddison Spencer, the station's dockmaster, the characters find themselves in the crowded social hub. They hear that the dockmaster might have work for them but they want to look around and get acquainted with the station first. As soon as he has paid his 24hr O2 tax, Andersen lights up a cigarette. Jaxer and Andersen quickly agree that Skylr will probably get eaten alive if she's left unsupervised and make sure to keep her in view.

After getting some rumours (plus two flat beers and a heavily-caffinated corporate-brand cola) from the local bar and investigating the failing hydroponics garden (run by neo-shinto priests who have a side-business repatriating expired teamsters for a small donation), the PCs rendezvous with the dockmaster and ask her if she still has a job for them.

Spencer promised the party one kilocredit (ie: a thousand credits) each if they could EVA to the lower portion of the station, enter the Sanchong, recover the old frigate's flight recorder, find out what was drawing power from the fusion reactor, and rectify the situation. Two more teams had already attempted the task but had failed to return - Spencer warned the PCs that, aside from the danger of terawatt power lines within the shell of the Sanchong, there was also the danger of micrometeorites that ocassionally broke through the station's automated laser defence grid and peppered the hull. The micrometeorites were not enough to penetrate the station's armour, but the characters' vaccsuits would likely not withstand them for long.

The characters agree and don their vaccsuits. Andersen doesn't have one and so has to borrow a poorly-maintained company rental suit with outdated interfaces and missing features. Skylr's suit had doodles and brightly-coloured patches all over it, much to Jaxer's disgust.

Despite the dockmaster's warnings, the PCs run afoul of a micrometeorite storm and Andersen is almost knocked tetherless into the dark void. Jaxer and Skylr repair Andersen's suit but he has lost a lot of oxygen and is a little shaken up by the ordeal. By the time they reach the Sanchong's nearest airlock the characters are ready to get indoors and out of the inclement space-weather.

The interior of the Sanchong is illuminated only by dim red lights fed by emergency power. Everything is covered with dust and seems uninhabited but there is evidence of another investigation team that passed through this way. The characters find a dead body - a woman in a vaccsuit who appears to have been killed by a rigging gun harpoon through the chest. They also find a terminal which they bring to life and begin to explore.

After pulling down a map from the terminal and exploring their options (limited without a security keycard), the PCs pushed on into the ship. Shortly they heard what sounded like a human scream followed by a deep, monotonous chanting: "a black box... a white room... a red dress..." The players were naturally quite cautious going forward.

The next room was a cargo bay that had been converted into an aquaponics lab. A large bundle of cables ran into the room from further within the ship and it was clear that the jury-rigging that had gone into this science project was drawing way more power than it ought to. There was also a dead android in the aquaponics room but more screaming and chanting drew the characters on towards the medbay.

In the medbay the PCs were greeted with a gruesome scene. Two teamsters were strung up from pipes in the ceiling by their wrists, both were screaming, and one was covered in blood. Before them stood a towering individual in an antiquated, armoured vaccsuit. The figure was chanting ominously " a black box... a white room... a red dress..." and cutting the bloodied teamster with a scalpel. As the characters recover from the initial shock, the figure grabbed a fistful of the bloody teamster's scalp and pulled - skinning the man alive and splattering the deck with ribbons of gory human hide. Andersen opened fire with his SMG while Jaxer and Skylr let rip with their laser cutters.

The combat was absolute chaos. Someone hit a pressurised duct and obscured the whole room with steam. Someone else hit the lights. Someone else punctured the hull with their laser cutter. Someone lost their battery pack. Someone ducked behind the surviving strung-up teamster and used them as a human shield (they did not survive). Skylr was extremely lucky and managed to shear off the rigging gun attached to the hostile figure's right arm; Andersen leapt forward, grabbed the rigging gun, and fired it into the menacing figure's face-plate. This, combined with more blasts from Jaxer's and Skylr's laser cutters, stopped the chanting and toppled the armoured giant.

Investigating the armoured form revealed that instead of a man or woman, the armoured vaccsuit was inhabited by a writhing mass of long, black worms. The party was uncomfortable with this revelation but, content that the danger seemed be over (and there was no one left to save), they moved to investigate the server room where they found a security keycard that allowed them to access more systems on the terminals.

As they were exploring the terminals, however, they heard stomping and chanting. "A black box..." The armoured figure was back on its feet and stalking down the corridor towards them, slime-covered worms slipping out of its cracked visor with every step. Jaxer and Skylr hustled over to the command module while Andersen drew the revenant in the opposite direction towards life support.

The ex-marine made a courageous attempt to trap the monster between airlocks but was caught in a crushing bear-hug; he took a frag grenade and tried to jam it into the monster's worm-filled helmet but fumbled it and had his lower leg blown off in the resulting explosion. He tried to crawl away but even the grenade hadn't stopped the armoured figure and it stomped towards him menacingly. His SMG overheated and out of ammunition, his right foot gone, and his acidic ex-wife standing to inherit any possessions that survived him, Andersen gloated and untwisted the arming caps on two grenades as the monster leaned in to finish him off.

Jaxer and Skylr were hurrying (as much as anyone in a vaccsuit can hurry that is) back down the Sanchong's corridors towards the cargo pod where they entered when they heard Andersen's grenades go off. They broke through the exterior airlock and stopped only to seal it with their hand-welders. Skylr peered through the window one last time before leaving, only to see the silhouette of an armoured form stalking the darkened corridors within...

Yoon-Suin: Ghagara on the God River

My players were bound for a journey from the Hundred Kingdoms to the Yellow City; I thought that, rather than a travelogue or single descriptive paragraph, they should have an adventure in Lamarakh. This was that adventure. It was intended to be a one or two session event, but ended up being three or four in length, largely (I think) because the players refused to ally themselves with anyone, doing their best to keep everything at arm's length rather than dive into the conflict.

Ghagara and the Pik Sat

Ghagara is a calm region of the God River, in a place where Lamarakh borders the Hundred Kingdoms (particularly close to the polities of Khad-Kulug, Kalin-Manal, and Lujanna). One of the river-people tribes that frequents Ghagara is the Pik Sat, a peaceful tribe who enjoy the freedom of life on the river and are largely content to let fate do as it will.

Those of the Pik Sat

The tribe is led by their chief, Rastin, a tall and kind-faced man renown for his abilities at stick-fighting and chochoj herb-growing. Ten years ago Rastin's brothers attempted to murder him for reasons still unknown; Rastin emerged the victor but is haunted to this day by the memory of that fateful night.

Rastin's wife, Dorri, is a loyal, excitable woman. She is the spiritual core of the tribe and, although she is not skillful in regaling them, knows many of her ancestors' stories.

The tribe's greatest storyteller is Shayan, known throughtout the waterways for tales so profound that they can shake the bravest warrior or embolden even the most timid child. His favourite story is of an enchanted paddle that once belonged to the Pik Sat but was stolen by a rival tribe generations ago. Shayan's brother is a bitter craftsman named Suhrab who makes totems from teeth and bone; their wife is Afshan, a skilled gardener.

Those not of the Pik Sat

A number of travellers journey with the Pik Sat, en route to the Yellow City. Amongst them are merchants, explorers, mercenaries, priests, and slaves.

Firstborn daughter of Navin Nandi, the Raja of Dharkinotra (in the Hundred Kingdoms), Draupati was kidnapped by rogue sellswords and traded to the Pik Sat almost two years ago. Currently Draupati serves the tribe's chief as his personal attendant. She has resigned herself to her fate.

Perhaps the most arrogant (and well-guarded) of the Pik Sat's guests, Thawda of Lukung is the firstborn son of a mighty oligarch in the north. He has been charged with overseeing the transport of over seven-hundred pounds of raw, uncut emeralds from his father's mines to the Yellow City. While he was initially excited for the journey, he has since become bored with life on the river. He is guarded by ten mighty eunuch slaves who have been mentally conditioned to give their lives for his.

The Gods of Ghagara

Ghagara is troubled. Instead of flowing down towards the sea, towards the Yellow City, with the rest of the God River, its flow has changed into a wide, circular current. Try as they might, the Pik Sat cannot direct their rafts and riverboats further up- or downstream. The river flows in strange directions, forcing those upon it to float around and around, seemingly forever. It should not be, and yet it is.

The Pik Sat claim that only the gods of Ghagara could be capable of redirecting its flow. The river has three gods; historically they have always opposed each other, but the Pik Sat leave offerings to all of them whenever they pass through Ghagara.

Kadru, the Nãga

Kadru appears to be a giant serpent with a horned brow, a glowing lure upon its head, and a voluminous hood. When communicating with worshippers, Kadru opens its fanged maw to reveal a disturbingly human face within its throat; when it speaks, Kadru's voice is an unnaturally-even whisper that can penetrate any language.

The nãga's servants are a pair of freshwater ocotopodes called Kag'dao and Ronog. By its mysterious power, Kadru has raised the octopodes' intelligence to that almost equal to the average human's mind. The octopodes are small and weak, no larger than mountain goats, but they can speak Sughdian and Lamarakhi, see in the dark, and remember complicated riddles or stories.

Kadru's home is a partially-submerged stepped pyramid in a clearing of giant lillypads and overgrown dragonflies. Only the very summit of the pyramid rises above the water; this is where the Pik Sat leave offerings to the nãga. Entering the pyramid would require either breaking through the top of the pyramid or diving beneath the waters to navigate the dark underwater tunnels.

Kalanemi, the Crocodile

Kalanemi is an enourmous psionic gharial crocodile, black and orange of scale, absurdly long of snout, with blue eyes, and a voice like an earth-tremor. The crocodile-god's arrogance is limitless, as is its hunger.

Kalanemi's servants are a pod of six hideous river dolphins. The dolphins are entirely under Kalanemi's spell, and can only be freed by blocking or nullifying the crocodile's psionic abilities. They have no names, and cannot speak. They are carnivorous and will gladly devour human flesh.

The crocodile's lair is a collosal white stone that rises from a particularly murky area of the river. Tangled reeds and hidden rocks conspire to ruin any raft-poler's journey into Kalanemi's territory, not to mention that the muddy waters make it easy, even for a creature as large as Kalanemi, to lurk unseen beneath the surface. Kalanemi clambers up the rock every morning to bask, referring to this as his morning's prayers and meditation.

Hoãng Thu Nga, the Sone

One of the much-feared hags of Lamarakh, Hoãng takes the form of a hideous old woman with stringy black hair, sharp black nails, and a mouthful of needle-like teeth. She drools black bile constantly between laboured breaths. Hoãng is part of a coven with two other hags named Cao Diêm Uyên and Úc Hiêu Khanh, but the changed nature of Ghagara means she has been separated from her sisters.

Hoãng's one and only loyal servant is the undead serpent Yudron. Yudron was a giant amphisbaena, a serpent with a head at either end of its body. Hoãng used secret necromancy to kill the serpent and raise it as her undead servitor. Yudron cannot speak, but it is capable of obeying the sone's verbal commands. Hoãng uses Yudron to kidnap Lamarakhi tribespeople, test the strength of her enemies, and punish those who have displeased her.

Hoãng's home is a gigantic gourd that floats upon the river. Hoãng uses a length of bamboo to pole up and down the river, usually accompanied by a thick bank of fog that conceals her movements; when she comes to one of the rare islands in the river, the hag rolls her house across the ground.

The Water Golem

One of the gods of Ghagara has enslaved a water golem, and is using it to redirect the flow of the river. When I ran this location in my Yoon-Suin campaign, it was Kadru - the nãga had discovered a disastrous plot by Kalanemi to contact the Outsiders; knowing that Kalanemi would need slave labour (or at least human sacrifices) for his profane ritual, and concerned about the repercussions, Kadru employed the water golem to stop anyone entering or leaving Ghagara.

In my Ghagara, Kadru was also the most approachable of the three self-proclaimed deities, and so the PCs trusted it more than the other two; they acted against the other two gods and ultimately removed Kadru's opposition in the region. Should they ever return to Ghagara (they won't - they can't bear to face the consequences of their actions), Kadru's power will have grown so great any river tribe passing through the area must pay a crippling toll to the nãga, and anything the PCs are taking with them up-river (especially spellbooks, scrolls, or enchanted items - all excedingly rare in my Yoon-Suin) will be forfeit to the new ruler of Ghagara.

In your own adventures, the culprit could be any of the three gods. Perhaps the Pik Sat had somehow angered Hoãng and she intended to pick them off one-by-one by trapping them in Ghagara and feeding off their nightmares; perhaps Kalanemi built the water golem by following a recipe found in a submerged ruin, and the only way to dismantle it is to perform the same steps in reverse; or perhaps your villain will also be Kadru, but the nãga is acting on knowledge it refuses to share - a portent of doom, the waxing of an ancient prophecy, a sickness amongst the Pik Sat that cannot be allowed to spread to the rest of the Purple Land.