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.
