[Mothership] Help me flesh out a simple adventure idea

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I appreciate the feedback, everyone.

I ran this adventure on Dec. 29, largely so I could figure out the Mothership VTT (it works, but I didn't initially understand how the visible and invisible layers worked and needed to spend a lot of time with it ahead of time, instead of building a map-centric adventure on the fly) and so we could figure out the Mothership rules in play (game ground to a halt at one point when I made the classic mistake of asking for a D&D-style roll when it shouldn't have been needed in Mothership).

Since this was an adventure for a simple test run, it never got as elaborate as people here -- presumably more experienced Mothership wardens than me -- sometimes suggested.

The two players who made it (games during the holidays are rough, which is why we didn't play through Ypsilon) both woke up in their tubes, took a point of stress when they saw their former conspirators dead, along with one missing. One of the players immediately assumed the missing conspirator was responsible and they ran around looking for them, not suspect the cryosleep engineering android, Amy, at all.

They did finally activate her, after seeing that she had been in and out of her charging station several times during the flight by the scuff marks on its floor, but didn't connect the dots. But they were suspicious enough of her when she talked about putting them back in cryosleep for their own safety (not inaccurate, under normal circumstances) that they panicked and shot her in the back of the head, after having previously raided the ship's armory. (One of the randomly generated PCs was on the security team.)

After Amy was destroyed, they finally started looking through the computer system, and found that every time Amy had woken up, it had been preceded by a message from home and corresponded to when one of the other pods had been sabotaged in some fashion.

They ultimately decided to wake up a minimal number of other colonists to get an internal farm going and to get water and air production to last long enough to survive the remaining months of the mission. Once they arrived on Scargill-84, their presence was an awkward situation for everyone involved and we said that the pair hooked up with some roaming ne'er-do-wells with their own spaceship and left the system.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Why is a hugely powerful and wealthy corp worried about a few no-mark miners trying to unionise in the middle of nowhere? They face this nonsense all the time - the HR and legal department will sort that out.

MNR is run by terrible people. They routinely kill would be union-organizers. This, at some point in their history, just became how they do business.

Why not have the union be the ones trying to pull something shady? They put something on the ship - something dark and dangerous - to get their members paid danger rates. The dangerous thing was supposed be under control... but the dangerous thing proved more capable / inventive than it was meant to be and now is loose on the ship.

I am hoping to run Mothership periodically throughout the year in rotation with other games. I don't want every game to be players drumming their fingers, waiting for the alien to pop out of someone's chest, so I'm going to do about 1/3 alien horror stories, 1/3 salvaging spaceships (which may or may not have horrors aboard) and 1/3 the most dangerous thing in space of all: MAAAAAAAN! (and also capitalism). So this was one of the latter ones.

 

[overgeeked]

MNR is run by terrible people. They routinely kill would be union-organizers. This, at some point in their history, just became how they do business.

I am hoping to run Mothership periodically throughout the year in rotation with other games. I don't want every game to be players drumming their fingers, waiting for the alien to pop out of someone's chest, so I'm going to do about 1/3 alien horror stories, 1/3 salvaging spaceships (which may or may not have horrors aboard) and 1/3 the most dangerous thing in space of all: MAAAAAAAN! (and also capitalism). So this was one of the latter ones.

Yeah. That’s how I want to run Mothership as well. Capitalism is pure evil and needs to die in fire. When ramping up to run a few things (mostly tests games like you), I found it too depressing and too realistic to continue. I think I’ll be doing more pure escapism for awhile.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah. That’s how I want to run Mothership as well. Capitalism is pure evil and needs to die in fire. When ramping up to run a few things (mostly tests games like you), I found it too depressing and too realistic to continue. I think I’ll be doing more pure escapism for awhile.

I actually think Mothership is probably a better fit for me and my group than, say, Moonpunk, where it's almost always going to be about some oligarch cutting off working class folks' air supply.

The pamphlet adventure I'll probably run next time, The Haunting of Ypsilon 14, is a classic spooky monster story for the most part.

Good thought about escapism, though. Maybe I should mix in a fourth flavor of pure fun sci-fi occasionally, the way horror movies often have lighter moments to relieve tension.

And obviously, this is going to be one of several game systems I expect to play in 2025. Sometimes the PCs will be super-powerful vampires rampaging through Nazi-occupied Paris.

 

[overgeeked]

Sometimes the PCs will be super-powerful vampires rampaging through Nazi-occupied Paris.

Now that's a game I really want to get to the table.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Now that's a game I really want to get to the table.

I suspect this is the year for it, for a lot of tables.