There is so much included in this little package - great value!

The module tells such a dark, twisted, adult, and modern story. I loved it.

This is an entire campaign in 52 pages, almost everything you need is here.

I will definitely buy more from Tuesday Knight Games.

This system is unlike any I've seen before in a very, very good way! I've ran it only once or twice, can't remember, but it is a very simple system with lots of room for creativity. The core mechanics (1d100, roll below stat, doubles = crits, 00=success, skills give percentile bonuses, advantages and disadvantages like in D&D, class based saves) is very unique and has potential to be used for other systems, possibly fit for other genres.

OK so the Art is best described as abstract, however I am with the people who feel clear pictures of unspeakable horrors ruin the mystery of the monster. The derelict ship generator is worth the price of admission, and will serve you well for Alien RPG as mush as for Mothership. I love thr tightness of the module and in particualr the weird heart at the centre of the game.

Fantastic. Maybe 5 stars is too generous and 4.5 would be something more appropriate. But simply put MOTHERSHIP is a light weight, cleary written(for the most part), zine-sized, packed full of nifty rules that can be hacked and taken apart and slapped back together with whatever bioplastic you can find around you. I have ran this with small and large groups, veteran players and people who don't know what a tabletop is and it was a blast. Everyone engaged with the narrative and they (and myself) enjoyed the player facing rolling of dice. Perhaps not for the inexperienced GM as some leg work needs to be done if you are just using the Player's Survival Guide (creating creatures for encounters is one thing that comes to mind, however if you purchase any adventure module they will give you a spring board to work from. (or if you are used to hacking together baddies from OSR games you'll be at home.)) And with such small size structure of this zine, you can purchase it and print and play as a neat little A5 booklet!

I do recommend grabbing The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 along with this as both this zine and that pamphlet will allow you to fill in the blanks and either run a one-shot or a nice start to develop a small campaign. Tuesday Knight Games kills it on all fronts and the community on discord/reddit are fantastic - the offical modules and additional content from the community is amazing to see and fun to run.

This was supposed to be a 5 star review. I want to give it a 3 to highlight the publisher's shortcomings, but I really can't justify knocking two stars off of such a cool product.

I'm running the latest version of the PDF and there is STILL NO OUTLINE. Your 44 page "rules light" system is absolutely packed with information on each page, some of which is easily accessible up front, but much of which (for the GM) is scattered throughout. While it is logically "scattered" (scattered is probably unfair), you could easily make an outline for your PDF in under an hour.

With the kickstarter coming up, this is making me question how much I'm willing to sink into this product.

Again, this is a 5-star game. Not to be missed. Just please, with all the effort you've put into your amazing design of this product, can you please put in a PDF outline so we can navigate your document?

I will update this to 5 stars as soon as you put the finishing touches on your document.

Criticisms of the system? Well I haven't seen it play out yet, but it does seem like stats for combat, even for extremely well-trained marines, are kinda low. Like unloading an SMG at an enemies face who is 10 ft away has an incredibly low chance of hitting for what this scenario would represent. As a GM I'm not totally sure how to fix this, but will work on it I guess if it becomes an issue as I run games. I'm hoping the product that the kickstarter puts out balances things a little better. (I understand we're supposed to run and not battle every alien, but incompetent marines are different than strong aliens that are to be feared)

I still cannot bring myself to knock off more than one star, and even this is more of a plea to the publisher. This is a 5 star game.

Great stuff, Not sure if 10 NPC is not too much but you can always adjust to what it want. I used thisas my first game being DM.

I ran this as my first ever Mothership game with 3 brand new players. I had a great time with it! It's perfectly themed for Mothership and prep is a breeze. You can expand the adventure if you want. One tip: you'll want a reason for your players to be trapped on Ypsilon 14, at least for a while.

This is an incredibly dense 2 pages of hacker, network, account priviledges, and hacking / network / hardware inventory list. The concepts introduced here are very versatile, clever, and based on real world network concepts. It can easily be plugged into any game that uses a skill check for hacking and to give non-hacker characters a way into a system through user accounts. Smart and useful details! The example of a pair of networks on a ship are also really handy for any GM that wants to build this sort of hard sci-fi into their game.

There are two parts that give me pause (and loses a star).

*equipment list. Some of it is clear, like +1 on system security reactions with a tougher console for 1.5k credits. Other parts have no explanation of what they do mechanically. What are the software slots used? Maybe it's there so that the system can have ice or a firewall added on but really I have no idea.

*The network security reaction for failures are incredibly harsh if the hacking is supposed to take place several times (e.g. once per level of a ship where employees have different network access based on what levels they work in). The PCs would be screwed even earlier than in a standard Mothership game. Instead of 1d10 where 7 results are probably the beginning of game over AND where consoles can add to this roll to make a result like an alarm going off impossible, I'd consider rolling 2d10 -1 where the first 8 or so are not so harsh. The module even includes examples of other optional hacking failure results for inspiration as well.

I love all the official Mothership releases so far but these issues make it my first 4 star rating. Still, for 2 pages, there's a lot to like.

Very seldom do I get so much inspiration from such a simple document. This is breathing much more life into the hacking process of the game. I am also looking into taking some of these concepts and adapting them to my stars without number game!

I don't know if I'll ever be capable of running Gradient Descent, but the ideas and quality of the writing alone have earned it five stars. It's in that rare strata of "gameable" material that influences beyond just plucking a few cool npcs or a trap idea from. It made me rethink how things in a dungeon should hang together and what choices to make in building an atmosphere. Pick it up.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The player’s guide/rules book for the Mothership RPG clocks in at 44 pages (in 6’’ by 9’’/A5), 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, leaving us with 42 pages of content. Yes, I mean 42 pages of content. In the saddle-stitched softcover version, the back cover is a handy player’s cheat sheet, and the player sheet is 2 pages, as is the ship sheet; if you take away these pages from the total, we’d be left with 37 pages, but these sheets are very handy.

This review was requested by my supporters and thus moved up in my reviewing queue.

It should be noted that this book is a great example for extremely tight information design: What at first glance might seem like a mess of arrows on e.g., the character sheet, quickly becomes a rather clear and easy to read example of very tight compression of information. This extends to the inside of the front cover doubling as a page of all weapon stats for easy reference. Mothership uses d10s for everything.

So, character creation is pretty simple: You roll 6d10 4 times and record the results in order: These are your attributes (aka stats in the game) Strength, Speed, Intellect, Combat. When you check something, you roll a d% under the stat to succeed. Unsurprisingly, you can have advantage or disadvantage (rolling twice and taking the better or worse result, respectively), which, as customary, cancel each other out. Advantage is indicated by [+], disadvantage is indicated by [-]. Simple, easy to grasp. There is an interesting twist here: If you roll doubles, it’s a critical! (so 11, 88, 77, etc.); if the roll would be a success, it becomes a critical success instead; if the roll would be a failure, it becomes a critical failure instead. 00 is always a critical hit, 99 is always a critical failure. In opposed checks, whoever rolls higher WITHOUT going over their own stat wins.

This mechanic ties in with skills: Each class (we’ll get to that in a bit) comes with skills. If you aren’t trained in a skill, you roll a stat check; skills are grouped in three layers: Trained -> Expert -> Master. Trained nets +10%, Expert +15%, Master +20%. These values are added to the stat check you roll, and the skills have a skill tree of sorts; in order to take an Expert or Master skill, you need to have ONE of its prerequisite skills. So, e.g., a Trained skill would be Piloting; once you’ve learned that, you can unlock the Astrogation expert skill, and from there, you can unlock the Hyperspace master skill. Trained costs 1 point, Expert 2, and Master 3 points. For prolonged tasks, you may need to succeed at multiple checks in a row—this would be a crisis check, and you can reroll a failed check by taking 1d10 Stress. Even with master skills, the more mathematically-inclined will notice that the average success rate based on the stats isn’t that high.

This is intentional; this is a scifi horror RPG, and as such, it is deadly. It also emphasizes the importance of teamwork and trying to get that precious advantage. And that you’re pretty screwed if you’re alone… Anyhow, there are 4 base classes, each with their own starting skill array, and individual points for skills to allocate. The classes (plus my unsolicited comments in brackets) are teamster (crew, aka monster-munch), scientist (probably mad), android (killer and/or creep-azoid model) and marine (shoot the hull/go berserk in 3.2…1). The classes determine the save values, and boyo, here you’ll have fun: There are 4 saves (sanity, fear, body, armor): Teamsters have 30, 35, 30, 35; androids 20, 85, 40, 25; scientists 40, 25, 25, 30; marines 25, 30, 35, 40. The choice of class also notes modifications to the stats on arrows: Scientists net +10 Intellect; androids +5 Speed and Intellect…you get the idea. Now that you have really determined your stats, you can multiply Strength with 2 – that is your Health.

But back to saves: They work like stat checks, but if you fail, you gain 1 or more Stress (you start with 2 Stress) and suffer some other consequences as well, depending on the save; critically failing makes you subject to a panic roll. More on that later.

Combat is fast and deadly and is classified in the traditional turns and rounds; a turn is when one creature/character acts, a round is the time during which everyone acts once. When you’d be surprised, it takes a fear save to act in the first round. Initiative is handled by the players making Speed checks. On a success, they act before the enemies, on a failure, they act after them. You get two significant actions per turn, such as attacking, checking wounds, opening doors, etc. Attacks are an opposed check of the assailant with Combat against the defender’s armor save. In close combat/melee, the opposed check can be Combat or a Body save instead. You can Aim by using both your actions. If you do not take damage during the round, you gain advantage with your next shot. Reloading is simple and actually has a small and efficient rule for trigger discipline being a factor with automatic weapons. Nice. Ranges are classified in three categories: short, medium (-10%), long (disadvantage). Cover nets advantage on the Armor save. Some weapons might penalize the Armor save, help with Combat checks, etc. Note that some weapons note their damage with an underline, e.g. 3d10. This is shorthand for a damage range of 30-300. You can move half your Speed stat in meters each round as a significant action, but in heavy suits, you might need a Strength check, or you move only half the distance.

When you take damage exceeding ½ your max health, or when you are critically hit, you need to make a panic roll. When resting for at least 6 hours, you make a Body save, and if you succeed, you heal Health of an amount by which you succeeded the save. If you failed, your wounds won’t heal naturally and need treatment, and on a critical failure, they become worse, and you take further damage. You can only heal wounds from resting 1/day. When you reach 0 Health, you make a Body save; on a failure, you die; on a success, the GM (dubbed Warden in Mothership) rolls on a nasty consequence table.

Well, that’d be the basics, but there is more to note: Beyond equipment and the usual shopping, the book also offers some flavorful patches to roll if you’re so inclined…and the XP system, particularly the optional aspect, deserves mentioning. Mothership knows 10 levels, and saving e.g. another crewmember’s life nets 3 XP, interacting with strange beings might net an XP, etc.; the cool stuff though, would be relegated to an optional list: XP by class. Marines, in that system, would gain 1 XP when they kill an enemy. Scientists when they secure a piece of tech or an organism; androids when they interface with alien tech…you get the idea. This rewards the players for acting in a way that is consistent with the genre tropes. It might not be WISE to do that…but few are the roleplayers who can withstand the delicious lure of XP…

When you level you can increase one Stat by 5 and another by 3 OR improve all saves by 4 – in both cases, the system caps advancement at 85. You also choose a minor benefit: 1 Resolve, remove one phobia or addiction, or heal all Stress. You also gain 2 skill points. The game is lethal, and as such, progression is pretty quick. Food & water and oxygen rules are provided. The booklet also provides the information for hiring mercenaries, determining their stats, motivations, and some sample personas.

But yeah, Stress and Panic. When you fail a save, when the ship’s hit, etc., you gain Stress. When you rest, you can attempt a Fear save to get rid of Stress: For every 10 by which you beat the save (rounded down), you lose 1 Stress; crits double that. Docking in civilized environments, therapy-related skills, drugs etc. can also help you deal with Stress. A panic check makes you roll 2d10 over your current Stress; on a success, you don’t panic and reduce Stress by 1. Equal or lower, though? You panic. This is bad news. You roll 2d10 on the panic table (which ranged from 2-3 to 30…with 30 being instant death), and this includes developing phobias, a death drive…or, if you’re lucky, a laser focus/adrenaline rush. For every Resolve you have, you reduce the result by 1. (so yeah, high results on the panic table are worse.)

The game also includes a rather succinct and simple, yet effective ship-builder system with some serious customization options; instead of Health, it has Hull, and 75%, 50% and 25% thresholds are important. Some basic ship classes are provided, or you can just take a careful look at the ship sheet: The good news here is that the engine used for characters also applies with variations to the ships. (As an aside note: Yes, there are rules for what happens when really big weaponry hits paltry small critters like player characters…MDMG. Mega Damage.)

Sooo…was that everything? Not exactly. You see, each of the 4 classes has a special feature: Teamsters may 1/session reroll panic; whenever a scientist fails a sanity save, every ally takes 1 Stress. Androids have great Fear saves (85!), but everyone else in their vicinity has disadvantage on Fear saves. And when a marine panics, every ally nearby must make a Fear save. Nice.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting of the current iteration of this extremely densely-packed RPG is impressive indeed, on both a formal and rules-language level; not perfect, but impressive indeed. In my print copy, there is one single example where the otherwise superb layout and information design falters slightly: The sample ship sheet that illustrates the ship rules covers two pages, and has 2 other pages in between the example ship sheet stuff. This may be intentional, but since the ship sheet also uses arrows from relevant components to explain how stats and other components are tied together, this imho makes grasping how it works actually a bit harder. Getting the full ship sheet first and then the rules, or vice versa, would have been the didactically smarter move, but I’m complaining at a very high level. The saddle-stitched softcover I have is b/w; its artwork (apart from the ones for equipment, which are solid), are okay, but probably won’t be the main reason for you to get this. The pdf is PWYW…and I can’t recommend it. Why? Because it…drumroll DOESN’T HAVE ANY BOOKMARKS OR HYPERLINKS.

It's a roleplaying game that is an exercise in incredibly TIGHT design; the booklet manages to cram a ton of well-wrought content into its few pages. It is an impressive achievement regarding how one conveys information. It requires close reading as a consequence, but yeah. Considering this, considering that Mothership actually has quite a lot of helpful “see page XYZ”-references, it’s doubly puzzling to me that the pdf has no hyperlinks, and no bookmarks. This makes navigating the pdf a colossal pain. In short: Consider the pdf t be a kind of teaser, but if you actually want to run the game, I suggest printing this, or getting the rather affordable print version. Using the pdf in its current state was aggravating to me.

That being said, this game written by Sean McCoy, with development by Donn Stroud, Nick Reed, Tyler Kimball, and Fiona Maeve Geist, actually succeeds VERY well at what it tries to do.

If you want to play a game of high adventure among the stars, of heroes fighting monsters…then this is not the game for you.

Mothership is focused on scifi horror. You will fail, even in your specialties, and do so quite a lot. There’s a good chance you’ll only rarely have a 50% success chance; without teamwork and care, you will fail and die. This is intentional.

The GM needs to adopt a fail-forward mentality to a degree, and indeed, I think that a Warden’s/GM’s guide as a companion tome to this pdf would be helpful, as getting the degree of lethality right isn’t as easy as one might think. Similarly, creature design, prolonged campaigning, when to allow for a proper rest, etc…there is a lot of stuff that lurks on the side of the Warden that definitely requires an experienced roleplayer, which might be an unnecessary complication for an otherwise well-presented game.

That being said, this review is here not to bemoan the absence of a Warden’s guide, but to rate these core rules/player’s guide, and what can I say: The game does a pretty darn fantastic job at depicting a gritty horror framework where player skill is important, but certainly won’t be enough to save everyone. Indeed, a part of the fun of this game is that it encourages, with its composition and class-specific tweaks, the escalation of plots alongside the lines of established tropes. The characters do have a good reason to take that sample on board, to kill that googly-eyed alien thingy; the game rewards the players for playing their roles and having the situations, as a consequence, escalate.

I really like Mothership. In its print version. The booklet is delightful to handle, and it does a great job conveying information. That version gets a serious recommendation from yours truly—5 stars. The same can’t be said for the pdf-version; the lack of bookmarks and even hyperlinks renders it a mess to use, and that’s a big no-go for a rules-book. The pdf gets 3.5 stars; in total, that’d amount to 4 stars, but there is one more factor to consider: The pdf is PWYW, and the softcover is really inexpensive. That has always counted for something on my scale, and in this instance, I’d give this +0.5 stars for being so fair. You can just check out the guide, and see if it’s something for you. This leaves me with 4.5 stars, and I’m going to round up. Why? Because all of my real gripes beyond the navigation aids amount to me wanting stuff that should not be in a player’s guide.

Will I get a Warden’s guide if we get one? Heck yeah. Until then, I’ll grumble, but also chuckle with glee with this highly lethal scifi-horror-game.

Endzeitgeist out.

For a longer, more coherent version of the little review below, pls visit my review blog!

This is an excellent Mothership introduction to Mothership. The design, by Sean McCoy is A+ level, with the entire inner 3 folds of the pamphlet being the flow chart of the layout of the colony and all the descriptions that go with it. I absolutely LOVE the convenience of this. The game itself is super scary with just the right level of evocative, creepy detail. The challenge on this remote asteroid mining colony is tough, and the opponent extremely nasty in ways that should easily be as terrifying as Alien's xenomorphs or the predator with a large amount of body horror thrown in. It's tough, but beatable, though missteps or bad luck could easily lead to a TPK.

Amazing product, great aesthetics and amazing content. It only lacks a printer friendly version.

A crazy fun, amazingly compact game for running SF horror if you dont need a ton of fluff or want to pay for several pounds of books. A real old-school game with a super compact, modern zine design feel. if i wanted to play an Alien/Aliens game. This is the system I'd probably use, followed by (or perhaps melded with) Fate Accelerated. I liked this book so much that I bought a paper copy. One huge plus for Mothership is all the awesome stuff that has come out for it. A Pound of Flesh in particular stands out.

An absurdly good value for the price point and an excellent jumping off point for the Mothership RPG.