Mothership AP: The Kids Are Alright

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
MOTHERSHIP EDITION
OR 
I LOVE A PLAN THAT HAS AN AIRLOCK IN IT

Art by Marcel van Vuuren

Players:
Ryan, Teamster, Pilot and Jack of Many Trades
'Doc' Krober, probably not a real doctor?, Scientist, Curiosity Fulfiller
Willow, Former Marine, current computer / hacker specialist
Ed, Mercenary-stat'd Android, (Combat: 30 (?), Instinct: 40, Loyalty: 45, Revolver, Flight Suit)

If you played in this game pls leave now. Spoilers for y'all.

Ed courtesy of Alien Isolation

I ran a amalgamation of 'Alpha Gaunt is here' and 'asteroid mining and pirates.' This was a combined set of advice from the excellent Mothership discord (thanks Sean, Uncle Kudzu, and doghairedinfant!). The pirate attack was cut short by them jump-driving away; they elected to ditch 33% to 45% of the asteroids for less damage, which was very sensible. 

Ryan's player drew up an extensive mining ship and so I had to use that as where they were being hunted by a lightly-reskinned alpha gaunt.

The crew of the Honeybadger, a mining vessel, had heard rumor of some asteroids drifting in from the deep, a short jump from Prospero's Dream. We open on them looking at 1 water and 2 ore asteroids in a decaying orbit around a pulsar.

Willow's player rightly points out the water asteroid will melt away, so they mine that first. Ryan flubs a piloting roll and the ship is caught out in a solar flare. They hunt down the fire on-board the ship and Willow, in her vacc suit, foam guns it away. Ryan tries to repair as Willow and Ed mine the asteroid - Ed fails a roll, giving them less profit as the mining rig cracks and scatters too much ice. 

Krober meanwhile studies telemetry of the other two asteroids. The larger one has regular striations on it that look like wind erosion, but there's no evidence the asteroid was part of a planet at some point. Keeping some of this to himself, mad-scientist-style, he tells them to mine it next.

The asteroid has three triangular ridges. At a closer distance (no piloting roll this time, they're in the asteroid's shadows), the ship's telecope picks up eroded-looking characters. Writing. Krober and Ryan (who studied linguistics) attempt to decifer it.

The Fibonacci Sequence. "We are understood and so we are." Snatches of language. Sanity saves are the order of the day. 

They decide to use the ship's laser cutter to collect the plinths and stow them on the ship's exterior, covered. The ship's computer fails an Intellect / Sanity check.

Pirates in a courier jump in-system and announce on stuttering comms that 'those are ours' - the asteroids. They try to line up an autocannon run. Willow dumps mining tailings right on the courier's vector, giving its sensors hell trying to target the mining ship. Ryan adroitly spins up the jump drive and they see bright pulsing light before the safety shutters clamp down and Ed hustles the humans off the cryo.

WRITING ON THE WALL

They wake up to Ed, holding a roughly-made rebar barricade against the cryobay door. Ed indicates that the ship computer had turned on them, lying to him, locking away the science lab, and that something was aboard the ship, moving around the main deck. 

After checking their bioscanners and getting more details from Ed, the crew moved out of the cryobay. After being told all was well by the computer, Willow rolled a 00-0 hacking the computer and managed to find the real logs showing that Ed had told the truth. Ryan welded the rebar barricade over the ladderway down to the lower deck, and began trying to see if anyone would go down and investigate with him staying up and monitoring body cams over his HUD, providing advice.

I pointed out that splitting up rarely ends well in the horror genre. They ultimately descended as a group, leaving Ed at the helm, heading to investigate the pounding and screaming that had started up after about 40 minutes of me timing their command deck exploration and planning. They knew the mining arms of the ship held escape pods, that there was no airlock access from the command deck big enough for a human in a vacc suit - Ed could squeeze through it - and that they had arrived at Prospero's Dream. From talking on the comms they found out that a Tempest Co. fighter was inbound to vaporize the ship if it continued to show unsanctioned life on far-range bioscans.

On the main deck, bioscanners showed 2 lifeforms, one moving in the science lab, another there but still. They were in an accessway between air lock, the science lab, engine and thruster rooms. The corridor nearest the science lab was covered in eroded characters, much like the asteroid-chunks on the ship exterior. 

They had a clear run to an escape pod, but decided to stay and try to lure whatever it was into an airlock and blow it out into space. 

Ryan acts as the lure, Doc hides in an Engine room, and Willow crawls into a nearby air duct. They plan on Ryan running into the airlock and keeping the screaming thing busy, Willow triggering the airlock, and Doc as kind of the floater / backup. Ryan and Doc were in their vacc suits; Willow had to remove hers to squeeze into the air vent.

From DEAD PLANET

The creature came into view - its torso ending in a fleshy twitching maw, its long arms almost folded in on themselves, its pallid flesh. Ryan passed a panic check, Doc failed and gained 1d10 stress. Ryan sprinted for the airlock but failed a speed check - it caught up to him and swung its long-fingered hand at his back, hurting him. (I forgot that the alpha gaunt has 2 attacks per action, foolishly.) The creature had stopped at the edge of the airlock, just outside - Ryan had been left sprawling in it. 

Willow climbed from her vent and peered around a corner at the creature, passing her panic check. It noticed her, just as she shot it in the back with her laser cutter. It staggered into the airlock, turning to lift her into the air and hurt her, screaming to scare everyone. Ryan regained his feet, sealed himself into the airlock and tripped the explosive bolts, firing himself and it into the void.

They collided and then he was trying to scramble onto the mining arms of the ship, and failed. The beast grappled on and clung to the ship. Ryan, floating away, managed to line up a laser cutter shot and the creature lost its grip on the ship and floated free.

Meanwhile, Willow and Doc came into the science lab and found that it had been wrecked, and that a small jointed gate stood glowing in the middle - the bioscanner read it as alive. It was silicon, metal, and generating its own energy - enough to run the ship for a few years. They decided to heave it into an escape pod and fire it off into the void, and did so just as something began to emerge from it.

Free of organic life, their ship was allowed to dock as Prospero's Dream. The crew had their ice-asteroids to sell, and a potential quest to find a buyer for the asteroids covered in infectious writing, if they thought such prudent. As for the creature and the gate, I'm sure Tempest Co. did its job dilligently and eliminated them via fighter-craft fire. 

Willow discovered that she had a character from that alien language eroded into her flesh. 

MY THOUGHTS YES I HAVE THAT

I think I did a good job leading up to the monster, building scary feels. I don't feel my use of the monster as a threat of death quite lived up to that. I think I ran the monster in combat a little too stupidly - I forgot that it could attack twice, physically, for one action. I feel like it stressed them out a great deal but did little damage to them. And maybe 1 panic check for the whole mission was too few? I dunno. Maybe the monster wouldn't lose its grip on the ship when shot, but I thought of it as a graceful viral-language spreader and not a Meat Powerhouse. I definitely should have thought more about what would tear a vacc suit.

One thing that might've helped was if I simply thought more about this thing's motivation. Turn entire ship into virus-writing, fly it at Prospero's Dream? Then it could simply inspire panic, stress, and ignore the PCs unless they attack it. A horrid monster that just doesn't care about the PCs. Or, turn them into parts of its gate to enlarge it? Then it would want to not act so aggresively, maybe flee the PCs and try to ambush them singly. As is, it responded more like an animal than an erosion-writer.

(Of course, the MOST obvious thing is that Dead Planet's Alexis was written with other monsters on it. The God of Route 11B I wrote has minions in the forms of its congregation.)

WHAT THEY DID WAS SMART

On the other hand, their plan was decent, they rolled quite well, and Willow distracting it (and pushing it back a step into the airlock with a powerful laser-cutter shot) and Ryan wearing his vacc suit were vital lynchpins in their plan, as was no one freaking out and going all catatonic. The monster still had 4 (45) hits as it floated away from the ship. They focused entirely on getting it out of the ship, not getting in a stand-up fight. They played it smart and rolled well. They didn't figure out what was going on (other than the fact that the language itself was dangerous around computer systems), but they did survive, and saved their payday cargo and their ship.

Notes on running Mothership tonight

HELLO - if I am running Mothership for you, please leave now. 

You're delivering a Box to Lyons. You have a Grizzly ATV, driving up 11B, surrounded by grass and desert and the wrecks of Crashland. 

Art by Rust Shake

What's In The Box

1 - 5) Viral nanohive. 1-2. Inactive 3-5. Active (Body save or replaces lungs, disadvantage running, can spit viral nanomachines)
6-10) Atlas of Hell - smoking skull surrounded by a black mold. Sanity save or 1d10 stress and 1d10 damage from self-harm, per round of exposure. Can ask it questions when exposed. Mysticism to figure out this is in the box without opening it. (stolen from Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud) (Edit: Once a day you can ask it for stuff but there's always a delivery person and they may be or become something from Hell)

Art by Joshua Cotter

What's On The Radio / Fear Save Static Hiss

1) "God is here"
2) "You are already in Heaven"
3) "God will save you next"
4) "Save... us..."
5) :Latin shouting, mysticism or theology / Int roll to decode, hint about monster:
6) "God is a black duststorm"
7) "God will strip our flesh and show the truth"
8) "God is hungry"
9) "God is suffering"
10) "We are with you and God is with us"

God of Route 11D

10' tall, bone-white, whippet-thin, face is like a distorted honeycomb that winks and screams and emits corrosive dust which it controls. Some of what it kills are animated corpses when within 200 meters of it. They may or may not fall under its control (instinct save to resist). They understand that it is close. They want to worship the God whether they succeed or fail the instinct save. 

It can run slightly faster than the average ATV or Grizzly delivery vehicle. 

6(30) hits, Combat 66%, Instinct 35%, Run Fast 55%

It can swing its rubbery limbs at you for 1d10[-] damage (ie you roll 2d10 and take the worse result). On a 5+ body save or get knocked over or tossed around. 

At range it emits a corrosive black dust that can cause up to 4d10 damage - it can target multiple opponents if it doesn't move. Armor save at disadvantage unless you're in a sealed env suit of some kind, which it will eat through given a few rounds. 

It can also blast a bright light from its honeycomb face, a hellish glow that causes a fear save or take 1d10 stress.

Wants: to absorb cyberbrain prosthetics and nanohives, gaining more Black Dust. To be worshiped by its victims.

Landscape Features d66 table for hiding on a Semi-Arid Planet

One
1. Bouldering-sized scree / stones tightly packed
2. Reedy pool of salty water
3. Dry riverbed / rocky trench
4. Low walls of an old ship bulkheads, strewn about
5. Stripped ship generator and large (1' tall) power conduits
6. Unpowered airlock door, closed, explosive bolts, opens to a 40' drop into a derelict

Two
1. Wrecked, flipped buggy
2. Tall grasses
3. Ridge top
4. 40' tall stone outcropping shapped like a talon
5. 4' 'cliff'
6. Copse of hardy bush-trees

Three
1. Fallen-in concrete hut
2. Still-smoking crater
3. Cliff Racer nest, 50/50 empty. Large hole-riddled mounds
4. Geiser outgrowth / stalagmite
5. Low (crawl-height) gas. 1) methane 2) sulfur 3-6) fog
6. Dunetop plateau of sand stone

Four
1. Concrete pipes, 8' tall, 1d10 in a cluster. Stood so they're open at the top
2. Mummified corpses in vaccsuits, 1d10
3. Scruffy shrubs surround a tiny saltwater spring
4. Flat-top stone with a narrow (2') deep (8') crack running its length
5. Rusting dumpsters in a pile as though dropped from on high
6. Tall dry grasses (dead, very flammable)

Five
1. Blacktop cracked road with ditches on either shoulder
2. Thick mass of creepers and vines over rotting soft ground
3. Waist-high fungal growths
4. 20' stone arch
5. Throny shrub with exposed roots at crawling-level
6. 8' x 8' x 2' steaming animal turds / bones / shed skin

Six
1. Manhole cover to small dry sewer
2. Power line pylones, 60' tall
3. Fallen-over Company billboard
4. Crashed lifepod
5. Narrow crooked valley
6. Mining sump, hastily abandoned

Mothership setting notes: CRASHLAND

A LOT of this was cribbed from Throne of Salt's Great Screaming Hell and Unnamed Mothership Setting.

War in Heaven

We don't know why they fight. We fight for the castoffs, or we fight the castoffs. Our posthuman Angels rarely notice us. Their machinations are abstract and distant. Or close, next to us, inside us, destroying our worlds, our minds, our reality. We don't even know if it's a war. We just know it is destructive.

Their leavings, in part:

• Exowombs
• Warframe armor
• MTHR computer cores
• Automated nanofactories
• Infested radio waves hacking and repurposing machines and minds
• Origins of cyber brains and backups and uploading
• Jump drives - we can't create them
• Some androids

CRASHLAND

Y03D, or 'Yonder,' was meant to be a number of things. A depository of debtors working down their sentences. A mining colony. A shipbreaker facility. An out-of-the-way part of the galactic economy where exiled researchers could be parked. 

In time, the workers re-dubbed it Crashland.

The place was a ball of scree and comet-impacts orbiting a star. The Company shellacked atmosphere on it as fast as they could, leaving a few mild gaps in the high desert where there's essentially none - the ideal place to drop ancient ships to be broken and recycled, after orbital stations removed delicate parts. 

Salty seas were made from ice comets crashing into the planet. Desalination stations were set up, settlements sprouted in various places. Grasslands grew.

One had to get a cyberbrain prosthesis to move to Crashland, and modern medical facilities are still set up to convert people to such. Nanite injections can painlessly convert brain flesh to silicone, grow in the ports needed for work, entertainment, registration, anesthesia. Rumors of the company editing memories were not to be repeated; they were prosecutable examples of subversion. 

Then the Company foresaw a tiny thread of the War in Heaven drifting towards Crashland. They drew straws - or rather, the local executive board handed out straws to their lessers, and a general evacuation was sounded for 'non-essential personnel.' 

Now, a skeleton crew squats around a space elevator, nominally ruling the world. Factions vie for legitimacy, land, water. Ship remnants rain down every night. In the depths of the wilds, in the depths of the planet, from the depths of the void, old machinery left by the angels of Heaven sometimes stir. 

We pray we are not noticed by them.

The Trickle Down

Orbital decay causes old shipbroken vessels to crash down and spill their rotten guts. Often they're dropped into parts of the Crashland with little or no atmosphere. Some make a living scavenging. Others worship artifacts gleaned from the old ships.

Edited Memories

Cyberbrains installed via a technovirus, and the Company covered it up? Remote backdoors utilized by ghoulish operatives left behind to catalogue and safeguard Company secrets? Cyberbrain architecture derived from posthuman technologies? Random blackouts in some locations? Puppeteering? Mind viruses uploaded to the local internet? Brain-thief factions setting up neural networks from prisoners / captives and leasing out processing time? Hermits living isolated and alone developing cyberbrains spontaneously? Edited memories a hoax to hide breakdown in reality? Company never left and will never leave and walks among us in secret at night and we cannot see them? 

None of this is true or worth repeating.

d100 Mothership Ship Names

Here you are!

Like it says, there's an easy source of spaceship names - historic and modern ship names culled from the Wikipedia lists of accidents at sea. It's also worth looking at Wikipedia's list of fictional ships. Especially if you want to rip off George RR Martin, apparently. 

Harvesting the system from City of the Crepuscular Queen

I'm interested in systems that resolve combat in a less granular or faster way than, say, 5th edition DnD, but still give a sort of DnD feeling. I think gg no re's City of the Crepuscular Queen does this quite well - the system in it, I mean. It's very similar to Dungeon Squad or In the Light of a Ghost Star, though the way HP works is very different, and combat resolution can be a lot faster. Admittedly one can speed up combat the way those systems do - just give everyone few HP and let damage be fairly normal, and combat will be fast! But I am nothing if not a magpie for systems. Here is what I have harvested from the mind of the fellow who made the system, Daniel from Detect Magic.

General resolution - you roll a d4, d6, d8, d10, or a d12, and you want to roll 4 or more to succeed. You never modify the roll. If you would normally roll a d8 and have an advantage, you roll a d10 or d12.

You roll a d8 if what you're doing is related to your class/profession. You roll a d6 if, say, you're a rogue in a stand-up fight, or the wizard trying to sneak around. You roll a d4 if you have really bad odds - maybe the wizard sneaking through a brightly-lit prison. You roll a d10 or higher if you have special equipment, lots of time / little stress, if you're a fighter and other fighters are helping you, etc. Wizards roll to cast their spells, rogues roll to sneak (if sneaking is actually dangerous in the situation).

You have 9 'hit points,' which I call save points, because they're not like HP. If you fail a roll, generally you lose 1 save point and you start rolling the die you just rolled, and you keep losing save points until you roll a 4 or higher. So, a fighter fighting, you rolled a d8 and got a 2. You lose 1 hp, and re-roll the d8. You keep losing 1 hp at a time until you roll a 4 or more. This means dangerous things can take you out - if you're fighting, you got hurt or killed, if you cast a spell, it ate up your health and you had a magical mishap, if you were sneaking, you got ambushed and attacked.

However, if you succeed, you will take out lesser foes or do serious damage to greater foes. You don't roll once per attack, the system is closer to rolling once per major part of the combat - taking out a lesser foe if they're in a group, lopping off some part of the big monster, casting a spell to demoralize a bunch of enemies and have them flee, killing the low-level solo critter and winning. There's no 'lose 4 HP out of 35, next round' moment.

Armor would give you some extra save points in a fight, good weapons can help you fight better, and so on. Encumbrance is a list of up to 20 things you bear, and if you get into a chase, you need to roll a d20 over the number of things you have to get away. I would give strong-ass fighters (ie any fighter in this system) a +3 to that roll. 

It's definitely possible to roll and not lose save points - say, if you lie to someone, you don't immediately lose save points. But the situation should change for the dramatically worse.

Also the CCQ episodes have ideas of Moments, where you narrate a slice-of-life bit of what's going on during a rest, or you reveal things about your character's past, or relieve a burden. A burden is something that drives your character. Relieving one has no mechanical benefit but it's something that they're trying to do. The idea with these is there's no mechanical reward or 'evaluate other people's role playing', thank God, but it's just something baked into the system that one does, in order to flesh out one's character more. 

I made a very simple character sheet for this system and am going to give it a go with some folks soon.

May wind up doing more of the Dungeon Squad warrior/rogue/wizard stats and use these rules for advantage / disadvantage, focus on how CCQ's system runs combat - which I think Daniel expounded on more in Simple Fights.