May 7, 2024 • 49 mins
Discover sci-fi horror as we unwrap the Mothership RPG Kickstarter rewards and share our candid reactions. Picture the tense corridors of "Alien" and the haunting void of "Dead Space" as we analyze the game's system, designed for hair-raising one-shot adventures. Our friend Ryan hops aboard for this interstellar discussion, comparing editions and debating the impact of components from GM screens to cardstock figures on your gameplay experience. We also delve into the community's response to the game's delays and additional costs, highlighting the patience-testing journey from pledge to play.
Navigating the oft-overlooked seas of shipping costs, we recount the tales of European backers grappling with exorbitant fees and the logistic loopholes that inflated delivery prices.
Wrapping up with a look under the hood of Mothership RPG's gameplay, we discuss the stress mechanic's ability to ratchet up tension and the strategic decisions it imposes. The rulebook's approachability for rookies and richness for veterans receives its due praise, along with GM advice on creating an enthralling atmosphere.
Contact us at:
EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog
HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to Roll2Save, the RPG history
podcast.
Mothership Kickstarter review.
(00:28):
previously on Roll to Save,recorded in January 2022.
That's over two years ago.
That elapsed time will becomeimportant for what follows.
SPEAKER_02 (00:41):
I also backed the Mothership RPG.
Me too.
Still waiting for the backer fitto come in for me to give my
address and everything.
They're getting worried that itis going to be much later than
they say that it's going to be.
But I'm excited for that.
I told some friends about it andkind of gave like a general
concept of what it is and theyseem very excited to play too.
So I think I'm probably going toend up playing that one first
(01:02):
because it's also shorter andmuch simpler.
It's not a full set.
I mean, it's a full set ofrules, but it's not as
complicated as 5e or anythinglike that.
So that's pretty much the twothings I've done.
SPEAKER_00 (01:13):
Yeah, Mothership is one I'm definitely looking
forward to.
I love the whole space bodyhorror setting.
SPEAKER_01 (01:19):
I was tempted.
I didn't do it, but I wastempted.
SPEAKER_00 (01:23):
I'm going to go to the deluxe edition.
SPEAKER_01 (01:25):
Of course
SPEAKER_02 (01:25):
you are.
I think I got the deluxe atleast got the box set I was very
excited about that
SPEAKER_00 (01:31):
but it's you know it has that whole alien vibe like
the original alien it seemed
SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
more of a bit sort of dead space to me yeah it is
SPEAKER_00 (01:40):
yeah it's that kind of setting and it looks
fantastic I'm excited to play itas well I think it's it's one of
these settings that sets itselfup nicely for one shots yeah
exactly you're not supposed tolive you're not doing a campaign
in that you
SPEAKER_01 (01:53):
like games like that you seem to have a little bit of
a a punch on for that kind ofgame
SPEAKER_00 (02:00):
I'm a lazy GM that's why they're writing a campaign
I'll write a one off and youguys can have fun in that little
box until they get bored andhave you killed Oh, how
optimistic we were.
The Mothership RPG arrived inApril 2024, and at the time of
(02:24):
recording, it is May 2024.
Hello and welcome to a specialepisode of A Role to Save.
I have with me friend of thepodcast, Ryan Mossbadger.
How are you, Ryan?
Hi, I'm doing all right.
I
SPEAKER_02 (02:43):
finally got Mothership.
SPEAKER_00 (02:45):
finally get Mothership.
That is what we are here to talkabout today is Mothership
because back in at the beginningof 2022 we did our 2021 year in
review which I predictablyreleased four months late but
part of it was me and Ryan heregetting very excited about
Mothership and talking aboutwell it's been through a rough
(03:07):
patch but it's going to becoming soon and two years later
we finally have
SPEAKER_02 (03:12):
it.
Two years later and a$20 inshipping later
SPEAKER_00 (03:18):
yeah well I mean that's something we'll come on
to when we talk about theKickstarter but for those of you
who don't know Mothership is asci-fi horror RPG very much in
the mould of Alien but also youcan really run any sort of
horror sci-fi RPG it's designedto mimic the likes of Event
(03:40):
Horizon or Dead Space or Alienor any of those other sci-fi
films in that genre.
At the level of the Kickstarterwe backed, Ryan and I both went
for the Deluxe set, which comesin a lovely box.
But before we get into what's inthe box and what we like about
it and what we don't like aboutit, let's just talk a little bit
(04:01):
about the Kickstarter itself.
So, Ryan, when did you firstback this Kickstarter?
SPEAKER_02 (04:08):
I think, I mean...
I think pretty soon after itlaunched, it was like November,
2021.
Right.
Um, I think is when it launched.
And I, I knew that there waslike a game called mothership
out there.
There was like some beta rulesand stuff like that.
I had never played it, but I wasthis, I was still using Facebook
at the time.
And I guess the Facebook, uh,advertising algorithm was, it
(04:31):
was locked onto me and that itshowed, it showed mothership.
And I was like reading through,it's like, Oh, this kind of
sounds great.
Cause at that time I wasstarting to get into other
tabletop RPG I was moving awayfrom solely doing Dungeons&
Dragons.
So I was like, oh, this soundsgreat.
Sci-fi horror tabletop RPG.
I love sci-fi horror.
Let's get it.
And at the time, too, to get thebox set, it was only...
(04:54):
I was like, oh, that seemsreasonable,$60.
I didn't know better at thetime.
And it just seemed veryattractive to me.
And then when I did look into itand ask some people about it,
they're like, oh, Mothership isa lot of fun.
It's a pretty flexible...
OSR style framework.
It's D100.
(05:14):
Very simple to run.
Very simple to play.
They already have adventures andstuff for it.
So I was like, oh, that'sperfect.
This will be out in like sixmonths and I'll grab it and then
I can start playing it.
SPEAKER_00 (05:25):
I think that's what fooled me as well that it
already existed and this was ourwe're going to send it to print
and it'll be amazing it's alwaysa red flag to me when a
Kickstarter doesn't have thematerial produced but this
seemed to have it all there asyou said there's adventures as
well there's a whole communityaround it then there were delays
and I get that the guy runningit he was pretty good with his
(05:46):
communication but he was sayingoh we've got a lot of sickness
in the family and various thingshave happened and you've got to
show a bit of compassion to thatbut I do get the impression it
was a complete one man band jobin terms of getting that out
there the actual content asopposed to the production
SPEAKER_02 (06:03):
yeah I don't like I've gone through a couple of
Kickstarters.
So to put in perspective, Ithink this is one of my first
Kickstarters that I backed.
This is maybe the 10thKickstarter I have received.
A lot of games have finished andshipped to me.
Yeah.
Like another one that, I mean,honestly, within the span of a
(06:25):
year, Eat the Reich, I think Ibought into some point in the
last year.
It's already here.
I got all my rewards.
I got all my stuff.
Like it came.
I got the, they put out PDFs andeverything.
I think they did put some putout some pdf for mothership um
as they were working through itbut like that was i think that
whole cycle was less than a yearif i remember correctly this and
(06:46):
what was it there's other ones idid um there's been a couple of
morkborg type things that i'vebacked less than a year there
was a girl by moonlight which isa like blades in the dark but
sailor moon game that i gottalked into that one was less
than a year i mean but that'sevil hat productions or whatever
so they have like a whole athing but still like i It did
(07:07):
feel like it was maybe like oneperson.
I mean, I don't know how bigTuesday Night Games is.
I don't know if it's just themain writer and maybe a bunch of
people that they hire on forwhatever they're doing, like
Sean McCoy.
I don't know if that's just aSean McCoy.
I mean, because it looks likethere's a lot of people.
I'm looking at the front of thebook, The Warden's Operation.
There's a lot of people in herefor developed and written by and
(07:29):
edited.
It didn't feel like it at thetime.
There's a lot of people
SPEAKER_00 (07:35):
working on it.
I don't know if Sean was theonly one who kept rolling out to
the angry being Kickstarter mobto say, you know, communicate
what was going on.
But you're right about otherKickstarters.
And I know it's not always fairto compare them even, but we
were talking about this in aprevious podcast.
There's a company I alwaysrecommend.
(07:55):
They're called the Merry Mushmenand they make a supplement
called Knock, which is like alittle bric-a-bac of stuff for
fantasy gaming.
How about their
SPEAKER_02 (08:02):
most recent one?
That
SPEAKER_00 (08:03):
one was like a couple of months.
Yeah, it was like four weeks toget there.
Those guys just turn thataround.
I've got the book here next tome.
It's a thick old book, but theyproduced it in those times.
I don't know why I'm holding abook up to a camera for people
to listen to in a podcast.
That makes no sense.
It's
SPEAKER_02 (08:21):
a thick book.
It's filled with art.
It's got a lot of user-basedsubmissions and stuff.
It's a lot of really fun ideas.
I think the difference is thatI've seen some people, because I
know a few people that have runKickstarters, there's people
that make the Kickstarter at thebeginning of the project and
people that make the Kickstarterat the end of the project.
And I think this may have beensomewhere either in the
(08:43):
beginning or in the middle.
And
SPEAKER_00 (08:47):
you brought up earlier shipping.
So shipping is, we talked aboutthis on our Call of Cthulhu
round table, but shipping is thebane of any Kickstarter.
People don't think about it.
And when I was looking into thesort of the reading for this and
I looked in the comments,
UNKNOWN (09:06):
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (09:07):
The shipping in other parts of the world was
insane.
It was like a guy in Greece whowas just kicking off because it
was something like$190 to shipit.
And he pledged, I think,$40.
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (09:24):
I saw that.
I was reading the commentsbecause I was like, wow,$20 is
kind of expensive.
I don't remember that being theestimated shipping at the time.
Honestly, from what I remember,it was like somewhere in the$10
range.
But other people were saying,oh, this is spot on.
But I was reading through thecomments.
and a lot of people in Europewere getting raked over their
coals.
There was a person in Londonthat said, how is my shipping
(09:46):
$150?
It's a book.
Are you guys sure that you areinputting this correctly with
your shipping coordinator?
Because it's just books.
It's not something weird thathas to be taxed heavily and
shipped specifically.
A lot of people were, I think,too, it was the tax.
It was getting taxed.
Whatever information they weregiving to the people that handle
(10:06):
all the logistics sticks i thinkwas incorrect because they were
able to fix it for the most parti think for a lot of people they
were to bring it downsubstantially but that's still
it's still an extra cost
SPEAKER_00 (10:17):
i'm never that bothered when they estimate a
high shipping cost at thebeginning because to me that
always suggests or they've donetheir homework
SPEAKER_02 (10:25):
yeah
SPEAKER_00 (10:25):
and you know this is a fairly hefty box and again
when we were um doing the callof cthulhu history podcast
because there's a whole debaclearound call of cthulhu 7th
edition and shipping likethey've actually charging five
dollars to ship a you know callcthulhu rule book and you're
like that thing weighs threepounds there's no way it's five
dollars to ship
SPEAKER_02 (10:44):
in america it can be um because there is a special
postage rate um for media mailwhich is books and that's why
like i used to sell books onlineand it was a lifesaver you know
it'd be twelve dollars if you'reshipping a normal but it starts
out like if it's a pound i don'tknow if it's with the current
rate but when i was doing it's adollar 79 for a pound and it's
(11:05):
like 50 cents extra per poundafter that So you could fill a
box full of books.
It could weigh like a hundredpounds and only shipping would
be like$25.
But
SPEAKER_00 (11:14):
the instant you start putting other things in
like dice, it doesn't becomebooks anymore.
Yeah.
They dice.
You see what you did
SPEAKER_02 (11:21):
there.
SPEAKER_00 (11:22):
So we have, we have the box in front of us and it's
a lovely hefty box.
I
SPEAKER_02 (11:28):
forgot to measure it.
It's a small format box.
Oh wait, did you guess?
I got the little one.
Maybe we got different ones.
Oh, you got the full format one.
Big, shiny one,
SPEAKER_00 (11:38):
yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (11:38):
I thought I got the
SPEAKER_00 (11:39):
nicer one, but maybe I guess I didn't.
It's my equivalent of the fullleatherette box.
SPEAKER_02 (11:44):
You're a big fan of the leatherette,
SPEAKER_00 (11:48):
yeah.
Honestly, stick full leatherettein anything.
I'm buying it.
You get some very questionablebooks.
I'm like, yeah, but it's a fullleatherette version of
Minecraft.
I'm sure it's fine.
SPEAKER_02 (11:58):
Knowing that yours is larger format, I do have a
question.
How big is your little GameMaster Storyteller screen?
SPEAKER_00 (12:06):
It's still fairly small so in the box there's a
bunch of fluff leaflets andhere's how you get the app and
some conversion rules um interms of the screen itself it's
it's that size oh that's waybigger that's way
SPEAKER_02 (12:21):
bigger let me show you the one that came with mine
it is ridiculously
SPEAKER_00 (12:26):
small for the
SPEAKER_02 (12:27):
tape we're comparing
SPEAKER_00 (12:28):
the size of the gm screens ryan's one it looks
about the size of like a novel
SPEAKER_02 (12:33):
it's like it's it is like it's the size of a book you
would bring to the beach like asoftback book.
It is not very big.
It's maybe like four or fiveinches by like six inches.
I mean, it's a trifold, so itfolds out.
It's not big enough.
Like if you were worried aboutpeople peeping your notes or you
wanted to do like a secret role,it's not tall enough to hide
(12:55):
anything you've got.
If you're playing with peoplethat are sitting at a table.
Now, if their head were levelwith the table, as much privacy
as you'd ever want.
SPEAKER_00 (13:04):
If you were playing mothership with children, you'd
be fine.
without any booster seats.
The GM screen's pretty nice.
It comes in landscape format,which is God's chosen format for
GM screens, which is good.
And it has basically all thestuff you need to run the game
on the back, which is really allyou ask for.
It's not particularly pretty.
(13:25):
It's got a bunch of vaguelysci-fi looking...
Yeah,
SPEAKER_02 (13:29):
I think I like the art on mine because it's more of
like a Morkborg-ish kind of likealmost Knorr-like quality that I
really...
I should have bumped up mystyle.
SPEAKER_00 (13:40):
This actually amused me.
It gives...
There's two patches that comewith it.
Oh, I only got a
SPEAKER_02 (13:44):
single patch.
SPEAKER_00 (13:45):
The most amusing thing is his launch crew and
it's got the date of 2021 on it.
Yeah.
That's kind of funny.
SPEAKER_02 (13:53):
You can tell that some of these were bought a
while ago.
Yeah, the one I got was LandingCrew.
And some of the books...
The books inside here actuallysay 2023 as the publishing date.
So they've had them for a littlewhile.
Mine also came with a bunch ofcardstock little figures.
Oh yeah, mine came with some.
I think it maybe cut that inhalf and then was able to fit it
(14:14):
in here.
SPEAKER_00 (14:14):
And then there's our sort of map thing for space, I
guess.
Yeah, I got that as well.
It's like a little fold-out mapof space for you to put counters
on so you can have that kind ofexciting aliens moment of
something pings on the radar andyou you put something down but
the important stuff is the booksthat come with it this set came
with the player survival guidewhich is the rules the warden's
(14:37):
operation manual which is likethe GM's guide they obviously
have to have their ownproprietary name for GM so they
call the GM the warden I thinkcalled the ship breakers toolkit
which is a list of ships thatyou can put in the game and A
book called Unconfirmed ContactReports, which we'll get into,
which is like a bestiary,basically, of things that you
(14:59):
can throw your players at.
And then there's, I think it'sthree adventures.
No, it's actually fouradventures.
I just got
SPEAKER_02 (15:04):
the one adventure.
I got the bug hunt.
SPEAKER_00 (15:06):
Yeah, so I got the bug hunt adventure, Gradient
Descent.
SPEAKER_02 (15:10):
Gradient Descent is supposed to be incredibly good.
I own that separately.
A
SPEAKER_00 (15:14):
Pound of Flesh and Dead Planet.
And all of those were availableas PDFs when they were launching
the game and trying to pacifythe howling masses.
but let's start with the playersurvival guide there's been
loads of criticism online I'veseen people say about the
artwork so the art in this bookis it's all it's all black and
white line drawings yeah andsome of them actually look like
(15:35):
doodles
SPEAKER_02 (15:36):
some are doodles so I think some are first pass like
setting up the artwork Iactually don't
SPEAKER_00 (15:43):
mind that I like it I like it I think it adds to the
the atmosphere the actualpicture the front is literally a
doodle it's of a guy who looksthat something has burst out of
his spacesuit chest.
I think this
SPEAKER_02 (15:54):
is a good example of the doodle quality.
On page 29, there is like alegitimate, like this is my,
like somebody thinking out theprocess and like drawing what it
could look like without doing alot of detail.
I didn't mind that.
I think it's kind of funny.
SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
And they do, there's nice things with some of the
artwork.
For example, there's a sectiontalking about range and distance
and they explain adjacent, closerange, long range and extreme
range.
And they do it through a pictureat the top of some alien world.
monstrosity like fighting abunch of space guys.
In terms of the actual systemitself so this player survival
(16:29):
guide is everything you need asa player and I kind of like the
way it was laid out because ittakes you through how to build
your character as if you had noidea what you were doing and it
lays it all out on a page forhow you build this character and
then it gives you references ofwhere you need to go to find out
(16:51):
what your stats mean and whatyour skills mean and in terms of
the system you mentioned at thebeginning Ryan it's super simple
you get four stats and you getfour saves and I love the way
they explain them that yourstats are something you roll
against when you're proactivelydoing something and your saves
are something that you roll whenyou're reactively avoiding
something bad happening to youand you have skills that
(17:13):
basically allow you a bonus toyour stat when you try and do
something so if you're trying tofight something you add your and
if you fight can scale you add abonus to your strength for
example really simple and youroll a d100 to find if you're
successful i say you to find outyou're successful the thing that
i loved about the system says ifyou fail a roll it doesn't
(17:33):
necessarily mean you've not donethe thing you're trying to do
you can do it but things getworse yeah so like if you're
firing an alien you might missyour shot and you hit a pipe and
like something startsdecompressing
SPEAKER_02 (17:46):
you might take some damage i really did like that
they also have some really niceexamples in there uh showing
like this is kind of what itwould look like.
I think there might be maybesome more in the world.
I can't remember what I readfirst, but I noticed that
there's quite a few.
I really liked the player'sbook.
I think it mostly because Ithink it already jived pretty
well with my views of like gamemastering.
(18:07):
It made a lot of sense.
It was pretty cogent.
There were a few times where Ihad to like go back and forth
and be like, what are youtalking about here?
I do think it waits a little toolong considering that it talks
about like armor on like thefirst couple of pages.
It doesn't explain armor untilthe last few pages But it does
actually in a lot of placespoint like, hey, if you want to
know more about this, check thisother.
Here's the page number.
(18:27):
So I appreciate that.
I thought it was pretty welllaid out.
I think it had really goodinformation in there.
And the one thing I really likeabout both the warden and the
players books is it's set uplike you've never played a
tabletop RPG before, but itdoesn't like some books.
They'll have whole sectionsabout like what a tabletop RPG
is.
I think this is a pretty goodmiddle point to that.
Like you're not wasting.
(18:47):
You're not really wasting anytime because they're also like
defining what this tabletop RPGis in its own context so I
really like that I think it'sit's set up for newbies really
well it also is really good foryou know somebody that's already
played a bunch of tabletop RPGslike explaining what it's about
versus other tabletop RPGs whichI think is good I
SPEAKER_00 (19:08):
always cringe a little bit whenever you buy a
new RPG and you've got the whatis a role playing game section
and you get some pontificatingpurple prose but this is like
improvisational theater theygive you an example of play and
you read the example of playlike nobody nobody sounds like
that when they play the examplesof play in this are brilliant
they are they're spot on theysound just like a game session i
(19:33):
mean literally there's one bitwhere there's one guy arguing
with the gm about whether heshould be able to do something
yeah
SPEAKER_02 (19:38):
the hiding section because yeah they talk about and
also the thing i really i thinkthey maybe talk about more in
the warden warden's things butlike this is like a very
flexible framework feel free toadd or delete at will um so it's
like there is no like hidingskill that's really up for like
at the table and they have likea genuine discussion it's like
well I feel like I have amilitary training the whole idea
(19:58):
behind my characters thatthey're gonna like like special
forces sneaky character like Ishould be able to do this and
they go back and forth and likethe player is still like I don't
know if I like that I don't knowif I like that and the warden is
like well what if we do this andthen another player chimes in I
think that's very accurate tolike a first time playthrough of
the game and I think is a goodto have it in there because in
(20:19):
some games and I don't want toname names, but they give you
this idea that the warden or thegame master, dungeon master,
whatever, is supposed to be Godand their word is final and that
it's not like a, you know, it'sjust not like a conversation.
I think this is a great way toshow that it is a conversation,
especially when you have a ruleframework that is very skeletal,
(20:42):
like on purpose.
The more specific you get, theless, the bigger the book it
gets and the more things youhave to remember.
If you keep things general andjust add things as you need
them, it's way easier foreverybody involved.
SPEAKER_00 (20:54):
There's also a very nice touch to it where it talks
about when you should roll dice.
Yes, I love that section.
You only need to roll dice whensomething's at stake.
If you're doing your day-to-dayjob, like you're playing a
scientist character and you'redoing science stuff, you don't
have to roll for the sciencestuff.
And it specifically says yourstats are there to show how you
(21:15):
perform under duress.
Which is great because sometimesyou play games and you roll for
everything.
And it's like, I'm this topscientist guy.
I'm a Nobel laureate inastrophysics.
I've got 80%.
I'm doing an astrophysics thing.
And oh, you're 81.
Oh, you fail.
I'm Einstein.
(21:36):
Why would I fail?
Exactly.
SPEAKER_02 (21:37):
I like that section.
I think, I can't remember if therolling is in the Warren's book
or not.
I like the way that it reallywent through and explained,
like, here's the reasoning whyyou would need to roll.
Here's when you don't need toroll.
And I really like the idea thatit's like, you'll really need to
roll when something is not rightlike if their plan isn't very
good if they don't have enoughtime to like be careful or they
(22:01):
don't have the materials likethey don't have the tools
necessary that's when you startrolling and it makes a lot of
sense because every time youfail a roll you take stress and
max you can only take 20 stressbefore you basically break and
you're gonna have a really badtime afterwards so it makes a
lot of sense i really like thatas I really like, there are some
(22:22):
great things in here that Ithink are awesome tips,
regardless of game.
I think there's a really goodsection on here about safety
tools.
It's just like a page isbasically the writer basically
says, this is me, the writertalking to you, the warden
specifically in this moment.
And it's like, I understand thatthere might be some things, but
like, imagine you're at a, likea party and people, and it
(22:44):
really kind of breaks it downinto like common sense, kind of
like terms, like in the same waythat like, Oh, you, you may
occasionally overstep.
that's fine just make sure thateverybody talks about it and
then you work towards not doingthat again like i thought it was
maybe one of the best wordedlike safety tool sections i've
ever seen in a book
SPEAKER_00 (23:02):
no you're absolutely right about that it felt very
natural not heavy-handed likeyou get some safety tool
sections and rpg rule books andit's just like you're a bad
person at your core and you needto acknowledge hello okay but as
this it was like yeah it'scommon sense advice i love the
example of if you're under myroof and i invite you to a pal
yeah you can expect x y and zand if that doesn't happen then
(23:27):
we'll talk about it and not tryand ruin it next time it should
be the same at your table Ithought that was that was nice I
also love that the book is setup and it assumes that you're a
brand new player and basicallysays here's how you roll up a
character really quickly becauseyou're probably gonna have to do
this mid game you're probablygonna do it quite often you're
(23:47):
probably gonna die and youmentioned the stress mechanic
which is really nice it'ssimilar to an alien where you
get stressed but the idea is asthings go wrong your character
gets more and more stressed andthe more stressed they get the
more the chance there is of thempanicking and doing something
ridiculous it's a nice way ofsimulating the sort of sanity
blasting horror that you come upagainst Again, I talked about
(24:09):
this in the Call of Cthulhupodcast, but one of the things I
loved about the sanity mechanicin Call of Cthulhu was it
actually forced the players toact in a certain way.
If you know that just looking atthat thing can drive you
bananas, you might not want togo and look at the thing until
you know what you're dealingwith.
Likewise in this, if you knowthat you're probably going to
get stressed out by attemptingto do the thing, you're going to
(24:31):
wait until you've got the bestcircumstance possible to do it
so you don't wig out and freakout and shoot at your teammates
or whatever it's a really niceway of doing it all the rules
are really simple combat isreally simple there's a
brilliant bit where it actuallysays use the ward and what you
should be saying is not that thecreature's going to attack you
it's here's what's going tohappen if you fail to stop the
(24:54):
creature doing its thing it'sgoing to bite John's head off or
it's going to throw Clara out ofthe airlock and it gives the
players something to actuallywork against rather than just oh
I'm going to try and blast itand take down its hit points
SPEAKER_02 (25:08):
and that's really nice it also gives the players a
chance to be a little creativeit's like oh you know the more
you describe and the more youset the parameters like oh well
I don't want you know John toget bitten gives me an
opportunity like I could get infront of him I could do
something maybe we picked up anitem or we did something earlier
that allows me to set up aninteresting situation other than
like oh here's monster X inhallway who's just standing
(25:32):
there until you finish acting soI really I really like that way
of setting it up on the
SPEAKER_00 (25:38):
back of the player's guide here, you literally have
the system on the back on onepage.
It's kind of Mork
SPEAKER_02 (25:46):
Borg-ish where they have basically all the rules
SPEAKER_00 (25:49):
on one thing, which is great.
But if we move on to theWarden's Manual, these are A5
style, almost like zines, tiny.
And I have to say the Warden'sOperation Manual has some of the
best GM's advice that I haveread in any book.
It basically walks you throughhow you set up a session and it
(26:11):
gives you this whole example oftaking a notebook and what you
should write on each page andhow you set up an adventure.
More importantly it talks abouthow you set up the atmosphere
for a Mothership game how youshould slowly reveal horror
there's a lot of detail in herebut it's fantastic around how do
(26:33):
you set up puzzles how shouldyou put clues in and one of the
things I love is essentially nothiding things behind clues not
hiding the progress and I usedto always say this when I talk
to people about Call of Cthulhufor example I would always say
to them that if a playersearches for something you
should give them the informationmake them roll to get additional
(26:57):
insight that can help them lateron but it's not one of these
things of if you don't find thatclue you can't do anything
because then the game justgrinds to a halt and this gives
some wonderful advice alongthat.
It gives you advice on how yougenerate a campaign, how you...
It also points out there's nosocial skills in this game that
(27:18):
you roleplay at all, which Ithink I really like.
I always have issues with socialskills becoming mind control
powers in games.
I intimidate him into goingaway.
Problems dealt with.
But it's fantastic.
One of the nice little featuresof the game is it talks about
survive solve or save being likethe pillars of the game and it's
(27:43):
like the player should only everbe able
SPEAKER_02 (27:46):
Yeah, two Macs.
So they can save themselves,they can solve the problem, or
they can be the hero.
And it says, usually they'regoing to be able to do one at
most.
If they try super, super, superhard, they can do two, which I
think is great.
Which, honestly, when you thinkabout a lot of sci-fi, that
makes a lot of sense.
A lot of sci-fi, they don't everreally beat the monster.
(28:09):
They escape from the monster.
Occasionally, especially ifyou're talking about something
like Aliens, like the Alienfranchise.
Like sometimes they beat it.
Sometimes they just escape.
It's always comes back.
Um, which I think you weretalking about before.
Like they, they have in here,like the story cycle,
transgression, omens,manifestation, banishment, and
slumber.
So you do something to awakenit.
(28:31):
You start to get signs, youknow, people start to, you know,
you start to see dead people orlike physical signs on people
manifestation.
That's when it actually eruptsand happens and like starts
being an issue.
Then banishment is the playersdealing with it.
But at the end, there's alwaysthe slumber aspect.
Like you may have defeated that,but there's always this inkling
that it could come back and be asource of new trouble in the
(28:52):
future.
I think that's a really greatstory structure, especially for
sci-fi horror, that you couldprobably take really to
anything.
You could probably even bringthat into fantasy games if you
want to bring more horroraspects to, which I really like.
SPEAKER_00 (29:04):
And it chimes perfectly with the example of
the Aliens franchise.
If you look at the originalAlien, it follows that arc
perfectly.
Ripley in the original Aliensurvives.
She doesn't solve anythingaliens hero yeah she doesn't
save anyone in the originalalien apart from the cat it's a
really great format and theypack a lot into that little
(29:28):
design and wouldn't hesitate torecommend it to anyone wanting
to run a horror game becauseit's just fully good advice and
again the artwork is very doodlybut it works nicely
SPEAKER_02 (29:38):
yeah maybe that's just me enjoying Morkborg and
stuff like that as long as theartwork gives vibe I'm fine with
it especially one thing too thatI like about there being like
more fiddly doodly artwork isthat's close to what I would be
able to draw in a given momentif I was coming up with my own
creature so I think it's nicethat it shows like hey it
(29:59):
doesn't have to be some like VanGogh art piece it can be just
like a scribble and still beillustrative of the point that
you're trying to make and bescary
SPEAKER_00 (30:08):
one of the pieces I loved is in the section about
basically making your horror inthe game those things we talked
about transgression omensmanifestation etc they've got a
little picture above each ofthem that tells a story so like
in the transgression there'slike these two scientists in the
lab and they've got a petri dishwith some alien thing in it and
he picks it up and it squirtshim in the face and then for
(30:30):
omens it's the same scientistbut he's got little things
spikes out his neck inmanifestation it's him erupting
into some alien horror and thenbanishment is a dude with a
flamethrower shooting him butthe slumber it's a picture of
the close up of the body And youcan see the alien parasite
crawling out his eye as if it'scut off someone else, which is a
(30:50):
lovely illustration of...
SPEAKER_02 (30:51):
The artwork is very illustrative of what they're
trying to explain.
It's very explanatory.
And I think one of the coolthings about the Warden's Guide
is that it has consistentexamples.
It doesn't change...
So all the little sidebars, ituses the same characters.
So you have some idea for theexamples that it gives for
character creation.
It uses that same character.
I think it's Cleo.
And then when it's talking aboutyour little journal, it talks...
(31:15):
It keeps that consistencythroughout it.
Like it talks about this littleadventure where there's like
this like hive mind that istaking over things.
So it keeps consistent.
So it shows you how you canevolve and like move these
things around.
And because a lot of tabletopRPGs will show examples, but
sometimes it'll be completelydifferent examples.
(31:36):
So there might be some questionin somebody's mind, like, well,
how do I take this and turn itinto that?
And then in this one, it showsit like it gives you all the
examples.
It shows you like the layout,like because it does a pretty
good job of explaining.
how to build like a map andinstead of you know getting very
granular and showing like thesizes of rooms and all that
stuff it's really like what youreally need is like a block
diagram this block diagram andthen right next to it you have a
(31:59):
key that says like you knowgeneral dimensions the vibe of
the room what's in here theadventures follow that pretty
well so i looked at bug hunt andnot another bug hunt and but
that showed like those blockdiagrams it had keys it had like
little bullet points kind ofexplaining what was in the room
like the high points and lowpoints and or if there's
anything like icky that mightattack them.
I think that's a really good waybecause I think a lot of games
(32:22):
will show you these reallyornate maps like Dungeons and
Dragons, super ornate maps thatyou're like, oh God, what am I
supposed to do with all this?
So you have like pages of mapsand then it has all these like
huge amount of details that youhave to like espouse or like
somehow fill in the blanks.
This is like very simple.
Two pages, you have your entireadventure and they basically say
like this is what you would haveopen in front of you for the
(32:42):
majority of the game.
This map and this key and andyou're just like bouncing off
it.
I really like that.
SPEAKER_00 (32:48):
Yeah.
I like the fact with the blockdiagram it gives, it says each
one of these blocks, it could bea star system or a closet.
Yeah.
But the thing is, it'simportant.
It's an important thing for theplayers to go to.
What you're showing is how you,how the link, it's not a
physical, this thing isn'tnecessarily right next to this,
but it's like, if you have thisinformation, you will know about
(33:08):
this location and you can gothere and do things.
And again, it lets you as thewarden fill in the, like the
journey stuff between locationsbut it keeps your players moving
it keeps them interested becauseit means they know when they go
somewhere something's going tohappen they've got something
relevant it's not like oh wewander around to you know
(33:31):
generic cabin number five to seebecause it's on the map it must
have something it's something Iremember running years ago
Shadows over Bugenhafen forWarhammer Fantasy roleplay and
it had a massive beautiful mapof the city of Bugenhafen it
must have locations on the mapand that was the player's map
and the intent was the playerswould look at it and go ah well
(33:53):
these things are markedtherefore they're important
therefore we're going to go tothose places rather than it just
being a blank map and then goingoh well that street looks nice
let's go there and then you as aGM are you know making up lots
of incidental nonsense andanyway moving on for the Wardens
Operations Manual great bookwe've got the Shipbreakers
Toolkit which is I think it'sbasically just a a list of
(34:15):
ships?
It
SPEAKER_02 (34:17):
is a list of ships.
I think could be extremelyuseful given your campaign or
you would never look at this atall.
If you were a purely terrestrialthing or even if you're in space
station, like this gives a lotof like pre-done ones.
So I guess if you were to do anadventure on one of these, it
would give you a bit of a playermap that you could use.
But a lot of them are so small,like the map is like pretty bare
(34:40):
minimum.
I do think that there's supposedto be maybe, I guess, like
ship-to-ship combat as an optionin this.
But I don't think I would dothat too often because, I don't
know, I just don't seeship-to-ship combat being
SPEAKER_00 (34:53):
survival horror-y,
SPEAKER_02 (34:54):
I guess?
SPEAKER_00 (34:54):
Yeah, what it specifically says, and I think
it's the Warden's OperationsManual, if you get to the point
where it's ship-to-ship combat,everyone is losing because the
weapons are so deadly that youjust need to damage a ship and
suddenly people can't breathe.
And it said so the actual horrorshould come from the
negotiations and the hailing andtrying to get the other people
(35:16):
not to fire on them and ifyou're in fact it does say that
about combat as a whole it saysonce you're in a fight you've
kind of chosen the worst optionbecause everyone loses
SPEAKER_02 (35:27):
yeah it yeah it says that in the book like nobody
ever really wins the fightespecially when you look at
monster stats you know a marinemight have at max like i don't
know 60 70 percent chance ofsuccess a lot of the the
monsters and oogie boogie weirdythings in here like Their combat
starts at 70.
(35:48):
I didn't see anything below a 70with thumbing through.
Most of them are up to 90 to100.
Every time they attack, they hitunless it's a very small...
There's always a very...
I think there is...
What is it?
A 99 through 00, I think, isalways...
It's an always failure.
I don't think there'sanything...
Actually, I think the good canhit on anything.
(36:10):
I think good might be God.
Let's talk about the other one.
I think this is cool.
I think it's a good um becauseof the time frame that it gives
i don't know how much you readinto like the downtime
activities this stuff's supposedto take place over like years
like a campaign is like there isan option to go and join the
space marine or like thecolonial marines that's a
six-year contract you don't getto play your character for six
(36:32):
in-game years but then they comeback and they have military
training and some other stuffthey also just might die they
might die yeah they just mightdie um so like i do think this
is like a cool idea almost likehey here's things that you can
buy As you guys progress and getcooler and cooler, because they
have a lot of things that youcan spend money on in this book,
a lot of the like going tospecific ports and like using
(36:56):
your stress to turn that intopoints that you then put into
different skills and stuff likea lot of those ports.
They're measured in thekilocredits, so a thousand
credits.
So you need a lot of money tospend.
And I think at a certain point,especially if you do more role
play instead of like if youbreak free from your corporation
and like start selling secretsand doing things like that,
you're going to have a lot ofmoney to spend.
you could probably make a lot ofmoney.
(37:17):
So this is like a cool thing tobe like, hey, well, if you guys
get up there enough, you couldafford, you know, this gas-fack
Grendel Corvette.
SPEAKER_00 (37:26):
Or gauss-fack Grendel.
I love the artwork in this forwhat they've made the ships look
like because they look verysimilar to the sort of stuff you
see in a lot of these survivalhorror sci-fi films like Alien
and Aliens.
They don't look like sleep StarWars style or Star Trek style
ships.
They look very induced.
industrial and a bit clunky andthey don't look the sort of
(37:48):
things that can...
A lot of squares.
Yeah, lots of squares and...
Things popping off of them,yeah.
Spinny round things.
I do love that there's a megadamage table.
Yeah, the mega damage table.
Which reminds me of like rifts.
But yeah, that's theshipbreakers guide, which is,
you know, it's fine for what youdo.
However, I think this isprobably both you and I's
favorite book, The UnconfirmedContact Report.
SPEAKER_02 (38:11):
There is a lot of great art in this book.
I do have...
um, one critique.
And that's if, um, there's like,there's a lot of art.
There's a lot of space on here.
If I have to go and they put allthe stats in a line on the top,
I think this is one of my OSRleast favorite things to do.
Um, because if you have to put akey in the beginning of the
(38:32):
book, explaining what all ofthese random numbers and letters
mean, especially when you haveso much space to just like put a
little block here and said, Oh,it's damage is this it's combat
is this it's instinct is that Ifeel like you've kind of like
missed an you've oversimplifiedone thing to the detriment of
itself like you I have to I meanluckily monsters are pretty
(38:54):
simple they simplify all thestats into instinct if they have
something very specific thatthey are good at they outline
that but again if I have to goand flip to the front another
thing a strike against all ofthe books involved they don't
have an index which I understandthese are paper vaccines no
index and they have no table ofcontents I think they would be
better for them
SPEAKER_00 (39:14):
the best thing about this book though is it's not
written like a traditionalmonster manual in terms of here
is this thing this is where itcomes from this is what we can
do it's written as reports fromsurvivors
SPEAKER_02 (39:27):
yeah
SPEAKER_00 (39:27):
who have encountered this thing and a lot of these
things are genuinely horrificlike there's a creature called
throat leeches which is that'sfairly grim in itself you get
other things like like justreally sinister things there's
one called cabin 102b and it'sjust a mysterious room that
appears on liners and the staffare like this room isn't part of
(39:49):
our ship people go in the roomstart going mad one of the most
sinister ones is called familymeal number five and it's a bit
like the ring it's a tape thatshows footage of a human being
strapped down the table and thenlike five pigs appear and start
devouring him over the course ofa few hours and then people who
(40:11):
watch it start becomingcannibals which It's just a lot
of really, really dark stuff.
SPEAKER_02 (40:19):
The cool thing about the unconfirmed reports is that
it would be very easy to fillthis full of just like alien
abominations that have like alot of tentacles.
There's a lot of like esotericnonsense in here.
I think I mentioned before,there is the good, which
basically its power is that itmakes people like they can't
lie.
They can't hurt others.
(40:40):
It's like power is technicallyinfinite.
I don't think you can kill thegood.
Like it gives infinity symbolsfor its stats.
So this idea that they're likecorporations might view this as
a bad thing and maybe send youto like you can't kill it maybe
you could send it somewhere it'slike you mentioned before there
it's like all like littlereports but it's all like
reports hearsay it the images alot of them and I'll say oh this
(41:04):
is like graffiti found on abathroom stall and like a space
station that was massacred orthis is like for the demon in
here it's like oh this is anacrylic painting made by a
prisoner that survived somethingI thought that was really cool
it all I think I might like thismost because it is also again
very Morkborg in quality wherelike the artwork is very
(41:24):
evocative but not necessarilylike the most pristine like
strokes and things like that itdefinitely has like a bit of
like a do-it-yourself vibe whichI really enjoy like there's
weird stuff like the headjackersand that artwork is super messed
up it's just like something likediving into the back of this
person's head and it says giveme a better brain art therapy
(41:47):
exercise patient 1771 one sevenparentheses deceased stuff is
messed
SPEAKER_00 (41:53):
up in here one of the things i liked is because as
you said it's not just a it's analien gribbley that you know
comes at you with teeth andfangs now they have some like
that there's one creature inthere that is essentially the
creature from the thing you youread it and how it you know it
takes on the form of things downto the dna level but it will
like violently explode intosomething else and so that's
(42:15):
your your bog standard alienthat you can start and shoot at
and fight.
But they've got other thingslike there's a sentient computer
virus.
SPEAKER_02 (42:23):
There's a sentient TV show.
It's called The Brownstream 2 orsomething that slowly corrupts
you.
One
SPEAKER_00 (42:30):
of the monsters quote unquote I loved was
C-level executives.
Oh
SPEAKER_02 (42:34):
yeah.
Very easy to get.
The Hatchet Man.
I don't know if you saw TheHatchet Man but it's like when I
first read it I was like oh it'sjust talking about like a
corporate headhunter but no it'slike some weird like configured
organism created by thecorporations to like basically
give certain people quoteunquote pink slips which I
(42:56):
thought was very clever and veryfun I do think the one cool
thing about Mothership isthey're very creative I think
it's that comes from theunconfirmed reports super
creative and like what a monstercan be and how it can affect you
SPEAKER_00 (43:08):
that's what I liked about it I thought that it was
not just it's an original takebut it's an original take on
horror you can see the thehorror tropes are in there And
they just twist it a little bitto give something where it isn't
just the monster rushing throughthe airlock at you.
It's something that you're like,well, we can't actually fight
(43:29):
this.
So how do we get rid of it?
Yeah, exactly.
That makes them, again, it goesback to their pillars of save,
solve and survive.
You can build that actuallyaround the creature.
And then spin off the adventureoff the back of that, which I
think is great.
I think the example it gives inthe warden's operation manual,
like the horror, is that thismassive alien head that is being
(43:53):
worshipped by people in thisfacility.
There's brainwashing children orsomething horrible like that.
And figuring out how to dealwith something like that is
brilliant because you're like, Ihave no
SPEAKER_02 (44:04):
idea what I would do.
So it talks about that a bitbecause when it shows the
notebook, it explains that.
And it basically says thatthe...
It gives them, because they havean idea of like how they would
solve this.
It basically says that thatalien thing is functionally
immortal because it's like somepsychic thing that's intertwined
with everybody.
It has some psychic shieldingand that the only real way to
(44:27):
escape would probably, theeasiest way to escape would be
to give people to it.
So I thought that was a veryinteresting take outlining like
the easy path and letting yourplayers figure out the hard
actual path that they're goingto want to take.
I think that's clever.
Cause you can very easily findyourself.
I mean, they were already set upas a cult in the way that it's
set up.
They, they allow new people tocome in.
(44:49):
If you were just be like, Oh,we're going to send you like 20,
30, 40 people or give you halfof us.
And then we'll send more likethat would be a way to negotiate
with a monster that likefunctionally is immortal, but
also wants things.
SPEAKER_00 (45:02):
And just looking at these adventures here.
So again, they're in the littledesign format, but they're
fairly substantial.
I mean, it's like you have 50plus pages in that.
they're, you know, as you wouldsay, very murk-borgy in terms of
how they're laid out, theartwork, the format.
And I really like that.
It makes it very easy on theeye.
(45:22):
And it's also laid out in a waythat it's easy to use as a, as a
warden because the, all theinformation you need is on a
single page.
Yeah.
You don't have to go flickingback and forth.
Again, no, it's still noindexes, which is certainly
annoying.
Love an index.
Love a table of contents.
Love an index.
Yeah.
Always, I have at the beginningor the end but just don't not
(45:45):
have it at all but yeah that isthat is mothership and I have to
say I'm despite the long waitvery happy with with what I
received very
SPEAKER_02 (45:54):
happy with it I like it I will say one thing the
small box that was$59 shippingis$21 where I don't know if
taxes are included in that we'reup to around$80 I think there is
some good stuff in here comeswith a little encounter tracker
thing it comes with the littlecutouts comes with a little
stand so you can you don't haveto make 3d printed stuff comes
(46:16):
with a little very teeny tinycutesy warden screen comes with
some bonuses$80 not terribledragonbane box which you can get
retail$30 depending on the dayis comes with dice it comes with
the same kind of like cutoutthings here but they're in color
(46:38):
and fully like illustrated comewith a little stands it comes
with with a source book.
It comes with a couple, it comeswith like seven or eight
adventures.
It's a, it, it has a box that iscompletely full.
There's not much more you couldfit inside there, including maps
and everything for less thanhalf the price, including
shipping.
The one thing that I, the, theone thing I have grown to
(47:00):
dislike about Kickstarter is Iwill see, I was like, Oh, I'll
buy that.
I ended up buying it basicallyfull retail price.
I pay for shipping.
And then I would not besurprised to see this on Tuesday
night games uh website forticket price but with shipping
being five dollars which is thething i mean i haven't i haven't
checked but i would not besurprised if that's the case it
(47:24):
does feel like especially it'sone thing when you're if you get
the early adopter advantage butwe've waited so long for this it
doesn't feel like we're earlyadopters anymore so
SPEAKER_00 (47:51):
And that was our review of the Mothership
Kickstarter.
We hope you enjoyed it.
Thanks must go again to Ryan forjoining us and offering his
insight into his experienceswith the Kickstarter.
Fans of the podcast will bepleased to know we actually cut
out 25 minutes of rambling atthe end where Ryan and I just
went off and on about variousKickstarters that we backed and
(48:14):
failed.
So due to the magic of editing,you didn't have to listen to
that nonsense.
We are a semi-regular podcast onthe history of RPGs and we have
a whole big back catalogue of 60plus episodes that include
history episodes reviews likethis one round tables author
interviews and even some actualplays so if you're bored go and
(48:37):
check them out if you want toget in touch with us you can do
so on twitter at savepodcast oryou can email us at
role.to.save.pod at gmail.com ifyou're feeling kind please nip
on to your podcast directory ofchoice and leave us a review.
We really do appreciate them andit helps us with visibility.
(48:58):
Anyway, we hope you enjoyed theepisode and we will see you on
the next one.
Welcome to Roll2Save, the RPG history
podcast.
Mothership Kickstarter review.
(00:28):
previously on Roll to Save,recorded in January 2022.
That's over two years ago.
That elapsed time will becomeimportant for what follows.
SPEAKER_02 (00:41):
I also backed the Mothership RPG.
Me too.
Still waiting for the backer fitto come in for me to give my
address and everything.
They're getting worried that itis going to be much later than
they say that it's going to be.
But I'm excited for that.
I told some friends about it andkind of gave like a general
concept of what it is and theyseem very excited to play too.
So I think I'm probably going toend up playing that one first
(01:02):
because it's also shorter andmuch simpler.
It's not a full set.
I mean, it's a full set ofrules, but it's not as
complicated as 5e or anythinglike that.
So that's pretty much the twothings I've done.
SPEAKER_00 (01:13):
Yeah, Mothership is one I'm definitely looking
forward to.
I love the whole space bodyhorror setting.
SPEAKER_01 (01:19):
I was tempted.
I didn't do it, but I wastempted.
SPEAKER_00 (01:23):
I'm going to go to the deluxe edition.
SPEAKER_01 (01:25):
Of course
SPEAKER_02 (01:25):
you are.
I think I got the deluxe atleast got the box set I was very
excited about that
SPEAKER_00 (01:31):
but it's you know it has that whole alien vibe like
the original alien it seemed
SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
more of a bit sort of dead space to me yeah it is
SPEAKER_00 (01:40):
yeah it's that kind of setting and it looks
fantastic I'm excited to play itas well I think it's it's one of
these settings that sets itselfup nicely for one shots yeah
exactly you're not supposed tolive you're not doing a campaign
in that you
SPEAKER_01 (01:53):
like games like that you seem to have a little bit of
a a punch on for that kind ofgame
SPEAKER_00 (02:00):
I'm a lazy GM that's why they're writing a campaign
I'll write a one off and youguys can have fun in that little
box until they get bored andhave you killed Oh, how
optimistic we were.
The Mothership RPG arrived inApril 2024, and at the time of
(02:24):
recording, it is May 2024.
Hello and welcome to a specialepisode of A Role to Save.
I have with me friend of thepodcast, Ryan Mossbadger.
How are you, Ryan?
Hi, I'm doing all right.
I
SPEAKER_02 (02:43):
finally got Mothership.
SPEAKER_00 (02:45):
finally get Mothership.
That is what we are here to talkabout today is Mothership
because back in at the beginningof 2022 we did our 2021 year in
review which I predictablyreleased four months late but
part of it was me and Ryan heregetting very excited about
Mothership and talking aboutwell it's been through a rough
(03:07):
patch but it's going to becoming soon and two years later
we finally have
SPEAKER_02 (03:12):
it.
Two years later and a$20 inshipping later
SPEAKER_00 (03:18):
yeah well I mean that's something we'll come on
to when we talk about theKickstarter but for those of you
who don't know Mothership is asci-fi horror RPG very much in
the mould of Alien but also youcan really run any sort of
horror sci-fi RPG it's designedto mimic the likes of Event
(03:40):
Horizon or Dead Space or Alienor any of those other sci-fi
films in that genre.
At the level of the Kickstarterwe backed, Ryan and I both went
for the Deluxe set, which comesin a lovely box.
But before we get into what's inthe box and what we like about
it and what we don't like aboutit, let's just talk a little bit
(04:01):
about the Kickstarter itself.
So, Ryan, when did you firstback this Kickstarter?
SPEAKER_02 (04:08):
I think, I mean...
I think pretty soon after itlaunched, it was like November,
2021.
Right.
Um, I think is when it launched.
And I, I knew that there waslike a game called mothership
out there.
There was like some beta rulesand stuff like that.
I had never played it, but I wasthis, I was still using Facebook
at the time.
And I guess the Facebook, uh,advertising algorithm was, it
(04:31):
was locked onto me and that itshowed, it showed mothership.
And I was like reading through,it's like, Oh, this kind of
sounds great.
Cause at that time I wasstarting to get into other
tabletop RPG I was moving awayfrom solely doing Dungeons&
Dragons.
So I was like, oh, this soundsgreat.
Sci-fi horror tabletop RPG.
I love sci-fi horror.
Let's get it.
And at the time, too, to get thebox set, it was only...
(04:54):
I was like, oh, that seemsreasonable,$60.
I didn't know better at thetime.
And it just seemed veryattractive to me.
And then when I did look into itand ask some people about it,
they're like, oh, Mothership isa lot of fun.
It's a pretty flexible...
OSR style framework.
It's D100.
(05:14):
Very simple to run.
Very simple to play.
They already have adventures andstuff for it.
So I was like, oh, that'sperfect.
This will be out in like sixmonths and I'll grab it and then
I can start playing it.
SPEAKER_00 (05:25):
I think that's what fooled me as well that it
already existed and this was ourwe're going to send it to print
and it'll be amazing it's alwaysa red flag to me when a
Kickstarter doesn't have thematerial produced but this
seemed to have it all there asyou said there's adventures as
well there's a whole communityaround it then there were delays
and I get that the guy runningit he was pretty good with his
(05:46):
communication but he was sayingoh we've got a lot of sickness
in the family and various thingshave happened and you've got to
show a bit of compassion to thatbut I do get the impression it
was a complete one man band jobin terms of getting that out
there the actual content asopposed to the production
SPEAKER_02 (06:03):
yeah I don't like I've gone through a couple of
Kickstarters.
So to put in perspective, Ithink this is one of my first
Kickstarters that I backed.
This is maybe the 10thKickstarter I have received.
A lot of games have finished andshipped to me.
Yeah.
Like another one that, I mean,honestly, within the span of a
(06:25):
year, Eat the Reich, I think Ibought into some point in the
last year.
It's already here.
I got all my rewards.
I got all my stuff.
Like it came.
I got the, they put out PDFs andeverything.
I think they did put some putout some pdf for mothership um
as they were working through itbut like that was i think that
whole cycle was less than a yearif i remember correctly this and
(06:46):
what was it there's other ones idid um there's been a couple of
morkborg type things that i'vebacked less than a year there
was a girl by moonlight which isa like blades in the dark but
sailor moon game that i gottalked into that one was less
than a year i mean but that'sevil hat productions or whatever
so they have like a whole athing but still like i It did
(07:07):
feel like it was maybe like oneperson.
I mean, I don't know how bigTuesday Night Games is.
I don't know if it's just themain writer and maybe a bunch of
people that they hire on forwhatever they're doing, like
Sean McCoy.
I don't know if that's just aSean McCoy.
I mean, because it looks likethere's a lot of people.
I'm looking at the front of thebook, The Warden's Operation.
There's a lot of people in herefor developed and written by and
(07:29):
edited.
It didn't feel like it at thetime.
There's a lot of people
SPEAKER_00 (07:35):
working on it.
I don't know if Sean was theonly one who kept rolling out to
the angry being Kickstarter mobto say, you know, communicate
what was going on.
But you're right about otherKickstarters.
And I know it's not always fairto compare them even, but we
were talking about this in aprevious podcast.
There's a company I alwaysrecommend.
(07:55):
They're called the Merry Mushmenand they make a supplement
called Knock, which is like alittle bric-a-bac of stuff for
fantasy gaming.
How about their
SPEAKER_02 (08:02):
most recent one?
That
SPEAKER_00 (08:03):
one was like a couple of months.
Yeah, it was like four weeks toget there.
Those guys just turn thataround.
I've got the book here next tome.
It's a thick old book, but theyproduced it in those times.
I don't know why I'm holding abook up to a camera for people
to listen to in a podcast.
That makes no sense.
It's
SPEAKER_02 (08:21):
a thick book.
It's filled with art.
It's got a lot of user-basedsubmissions and stuff.
It's a lot of really fun ideas.
I think the difference is thatI've seen some people, because I
know a few people that have runKickstarters, there's people
that make the Kickstarter at thebeginning of the project and
people that make the Kickstarterat the end of the project.
And I think this may have beensomewhere either in the
(08:43):
beginning or in the middle.
And
SPEAKER_00 (08:47):
you brought up earlier shipping.
So shipping is, we talked aboutthis on our Call of Cthulhu
round table, but shipping is thebane of any Kickstarter.
People don't think about it.
And when I was looking into thesort of the reading for this and
I looked in the comments,
UNKNOWN (09:06):
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (09:07):
The shipping in other parts of the world was
insane.
It was like a guy in Greece whowas just kicking off because it
was something like$190 to shipit.
And he pledged, I think,$40.
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (09:24):
I saw that.
I was reading the commentsbecause I was like, wow,$20 is
kind of expensive.
I don't remember that being theestimated shipping at the time.
Honestly, from what I remember,it was like somewhere in the$10
range.
But other people were saying,oh, this is spot on.
But I was reading through thecomments.
and a lot of people in Europewere getting raked over their
coals.
There was a person in Londonthat said, how is my shipping
(09:46):
$150?
It's a book.
Are you guys sure that you areinputting this correctly with
your shipping coordinator?
Because it's just books.
It's not something weird thathas to be taxed heavily and
shipped specifically.
A lot of people were, I think,too, it was the tax.
It was getting taxed.
Whatever information they weregiving to the people that handle
(10:06):
all the logistics sticks i thinkwas incorrect because they were
able to fix it for the most parti think for a lot of people they
were to bring it downsubstantially but that's still
it's still an extra cost
SPEAKER_00 (10:17):
i'm never that bothered when they estimate a
high shipping cost at thebeginning because to me that
always suggests or they've donetheir homework
SPEAKER_02 (10:25):
yeah
SPEAKER_00 (10:25):
and you know this is a fairly hefty box and again
when we were um doing the callof cthulhu history podcast
because there's a whole debaclearound call of cthulhu 7th
edition and shipping likethey've actually charging five
dollars to ship a you know callcthulhu rule book and you're
like that thing weighs threepounds there's no way it's five
dollars to ship
SPEAKER_02 (10:44):
in america it can be um because there is a special
postage rate um for media mailwhich is books and that's why
like i used to sell books onlineand it was a lifesaver you know
it'd be twelve dollars if you'reshipping a normal but it starts
out like if it's a pound i don'tknow if it's with the current
rate but when i was doing it's adollar 79 for a pound and it's
(11:05):
like 50 cents extra per poundafter that So you could fill a
box full of books.
It could weigh like a hundredpounds and only shipping would
be like$25.
But
SPEAKER_00 (11:14):
the instant you start putting other things in
like dice, it doesn't becomebooks anymore.
Yeah.
They dice.
You see what you did
SPEAKER_02 (11:21):
there.
SPEAKER_00 (11:22):
So we have, we have the box in front of us and it's
a lovely hefty box.
I
SPEAKER_02 (11:28):
forgot to measure it.
It's a small format box.
Oh wait, did you guess?
I got the little one.
Maybe we got different ones.
Oh, you got the full format one.
Big, shiny one,
SPEAKER_00 (11:38):
yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (11:38):
I thought I got the
SPEAKER_00 (11:39):
nicer one, but maybe I guess I didn't.
It's my equivalent of the fullleatherette box.
SPEAKER_02 (11:44):
You're a big fan of the leatherette,
SPEAKER_00 (11:48):
yeah.
Honestly, stick full leatherettein anything.
I'm buying it.
You get some very questionablebooks.
I'm like, yeah, but it's a fullleatherette version of
Minecraft.
I'm sure it's fine.
SPEAKER_02 (11:58):
Knowing that yours is larger format, I do have a
question.
How big is your little GameMaster Storyteller screen?
SPEAKER_00 (12:06):
It's still fairly small so in the box there's a
bunch of fluff leaflets andhere's how you get the app and
some conversion rules um interms of the screen itself it's
it's that size oh that's waybigger that's way
SPEAKER_02 (12:21):
bigger let me show you the one that came with mine
it is ridiculously
SPEAKER_00 (12:26):
small for the
SPEAKER_02 (12:27):
tape we're comparing
SPEAKER_00 (12:28):
the size of the gm screens ryan's one it looks
about the size of like a novel
SPEAKER_02 (12:33):
it's like it's it is like it's the size of a book you
would bring to the beach like asoftback book.
It is not very big.
It's maybe like four or fiveinches by like six inches.
I mean, it's a trifold, so itfolds out.
It's not big enough.
Like if you were worried aboutpeople peeping your notes or you
wanted to do like a secret role,it's not tall enough to hide
(12:55):
anything you've got.
If you're playing with peoplethat are sitting at a table.
Now, if their head were levelwith the table, as much privacy
as you'd ever want.
SPEAKER_00 (13:04):
If you were playing mothership with children, you'd
be fine.
without any booster seats.
The GM screen's pretty nice.
It comes in landscape format,which is God's chosen format for
GM screens, which is good.
And it has basically all thestuff you need to run the game
on the back, which is really allyou ask for.
It's not particularly pretty.
(13:25):
It's got a bunch of vaguelysci-fi looking...
Yeah,
SPEAKER_02 (13:29):
I think I like the art on mine because it's more of
like a Morkborg-ish kind of likealmost Knorr-like quality that I
really...
I should have bumped up mystyle.
SPEAKER_00 (13:40):
This actually amused me.
It gives...
There's two patches that comewith it.
Oh, I only got a
SPEAKER_02 (13:44):
single patch.
SPEAKER_00 (13:45):
The most amusing thing is his launch crew and
it's got the date of 2021 on it.
Yeah.
That's kind of funny.
SPEAKER_02 (13:53):
You can tell that some of these were bought a
while ago.
Yeah, the one I got was LandingCrew.
And some of the books...
The books inside here actuallysay 2023 as the publishing date.
So they've had them for a littlewhile.
Mine also came with a bunch ofcardstock little figures.
Oh yeah, mine came with some.
I think it maybe cut that inhalf and then was able to fit it
(14:14):
in here.
SPEAKER_00 (14:14):
And then there's our sort of map thing for space, I
guess.
Yeah, I got that as well.
It's like a little fold-out mapof space for you to put counters
on so you can have that kind ofexciting aliens moment of
something pings on the radar andyou you put something down but
the important stuff is the booksthat come with it this set came
with the player survival guidewhich is the rules the warden's
(14:37):
operation manual which is likethe GM's guide they obviously
have to have their ownproprietary name for GM so they
call the GM the warden I thinkcalled the ship breakers toolkit
which is a list of ships thatyou can put in the game and A
book called Unconfirmed ContactReports, which we'll get into,
which is like a bestiary,basically, of things that you
(14:59):
can throw your players at.
And then there's, I think it'sthree adventures.
No, it's actually fouradventures.
I just got
SPEAKER_02 (15:04):
the one adventure.
I got the bug hunt.
SPEAKER_00 (15:06):
Yeah, so I got the bug hunt adventure, Gradient
Descent.
SPEAKER_02 (15:10):
Gradient Descent is supposed to be incredibly good.
I own that separately.
A
SPEAKER_00 (15:14):
Pound of Flesh and Dead Planet.
And all of those were availableas PDFs when they were launching
the game and trying to pacifythe howling masses.
but let's start with the playersurvival guide there's been
loads of criticism online I'veseen people say about the
artwork so the art in this bookis it's all it's all black and
white line drawings yeah andsome of them actually look like
(15:35):
doodles
SPEAKER_02 (15:36):
some are doodles so I think some are first pass like
setting up the artwork Iactually don't
SPEAKER_00 (15:43):
mind that I like it I like it I think it adds to the
the atmosphere the actualpicture the front is literally a
doodle it's of a guy who looksthat something has burst out of
his spacesuit chest.
I think this
SPEAKER_02 (15:54):
is a good example of the doodle quality.
On page 29, there is like alegitimate, like this is my,
like somebody thinking out theprocess and like drawing what it
could look like without doing alot of detail.
I didn't mind that.
I think it's kind of funny.
SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
And they do, there's nice things with some of the
artwork.
For example, there's a sectiontalking about range and distance
and they explain adjacent, closerange, long range and extreme
range.
And they do it through a pictureat the top of some alien world.
monstrosity like fighting abunch of space guys.
In terms of the actual systemitself so this player survival
(16:29):
guide is everything you need asa player and I kind of like the
way it was laid out because ittakes you through how to build
your character as if you had noidea what you were doing and it
lays it all out on a page forhow you build this character and
then it gives you references ofwhere you need to go to find out
(16:51):
what your stats mean and whatyour skills mean and in terms of
the system you mentioned at thebeginning Ryan it's super simple
you get four stats and you getfour saves and I love the way
they explain them that yourstats are something you roll
against when you're proactivelydoing something and your saves
are something that you roll whenyou're reactively avoiding
something bad happening to youand you have skills that
(17:13):
basically allow you a bonus toyour stat when you try and do
something so if you're trying tofight something you add your and
if you fight can scale you add abonus to your strength for
example really simple and youroll a d100 to find if you're
successful i say you to find outyou're successful the thing that
i loved about the system says ifyou fail a roll it doesn't
(17:33):
necessarily mean you've not donethe thing you're trying to do
you can do it but things getworse yeah so like if you're
firing an alien you might missyour shot and you hit a pipe and
like something startsdecompressing
SPEAKER_02 (17:46):
you might take some damage i really did like that
they also have some really niceexamples in there uh showing
like this is kind of what itwould look like.
I think there might be maybesome more in the world.
I can't remember what I readfirst, but I noticed that
there's quite a few.
I really liked the player'sbook.
I think it mostly because Ithink it already jived pretty
well with my views of like gamemastering.
(18:07):
It made a lot of sense.
It was pretty cogent.
There were a few times where Ihad to like go back and forth
and be like, what are youtalking about here?
I do think it waits a little toolong considering that it talks
about like armor on like thefirst couple of pages.
It doesn't explain armor untilthe last few pages But it does
actually in a lot of placespoint like, hey, if you want to
know more about this, check thisother.
Here's the page number.
(18:27):
So I appreciate that.
I thought it was pretty welllaid out.
I think it had really goodinformation in there.
And the one thing I really likeabout both the warden and the
players books is it's set uplike you've never played a
tabletop RPG before, but itdoesn't like some books.
They'll have whole sectionsabout like what a tabletop RPG
is.
I think this is a pretty goodmiddle point to that.
Like you're not wasting.
(18:47):
You're not really wasting anytime because they're also like
defining what this tabletop RPGis in its own context so I
really like that I think it'sit's set up for newbies really
well it also is really good foryou know somebody that's already
played a bunch of tabletop RPGslike explaining what it's about
versus other tabletop RPGs whichI think is good I
SPEAKER_00 (19:08):
always cringe a little bit whenever you buy a
new RPG and you've got the whatis a role playing game section
and you get some pontificatingpurple prose but this is like
improvisational theater theygive you an example of play and
you read the example of playlike nobody nobody sounds like
that when they play the examplesof play in this are brilliant
they are they're spot on theysound just like a game session i
(19:33):
mean literally there's one bitwhere there's one guy arguing
with the gm about whether heshould be able to do something
yeah
SPEAKER_02 (19:38):
the hiding section because yeah they talk about and
also the thing i really i thinkthey maybe talk about more in
the warden warden's things butlike this is like a very
flexible framework feel free toadd or delete at will um so it's
like there is no like hidingskill that's really up for like
at the table and they have likea genuine discussion it's like
well I feel like I have amilitary training the whole idea
(19:58):
behind my characters thatthey're gonna like like special
forces sneaky character like Ishould be able to do this and
they go back and forth and likethe player is still like I don't
know if I like that I don't knowif I like that and the warden is
like well what if we do this andthen another player chimes in I
think that's very accurate tolike a first time playthrough of
the game and I think is a goodto have it in there because in
(20:19):
some games and I don't want toname names, but they give you
this idea that the warden or thegame master, dungeon master,
whatever, is supposed to be Godand their word is final and that
it's not like a, you know, it'sjust not like a conversation.
I think this is a great way toshow that it is a conversation,
especially when you have a ruleframework that is very skeletal,
(20:42):
like on purpose.
The more specific you get, theless, the bigger the book it
gets and the more things youhave to remember.
If you keep things general andjust add things as you need
them, it's way easier foreverybody involved.
SPEAKER_00 (20:54):
There's also a very nice touch to it where it talks
about when you should roll dice.
Yes, I love that section.
You only need to roll dice whensomething's at stake.
If you're doing your day-to-dayjob, like you're playing a
scientist character and you'redoing science stuff, you don't
have to roll for the sciencestuff.
And it specifically says yourstats are there to show how you
(21:15):
perform under duress.
Which is great because sometimesyou play games and you roll for
everything.
And it's like, I'm this topscientist guy.
I'm a Nobel laureate inastrophysics.
I've got 80%.
I'm doing an astrophysics thing.
And oh, you're 81.
Oh, you fail.
I'm Einstein.
(21:36):
Why would I fail?
Exactly.
SPEAKER_02 (21:37):
I like that section.
I think, I can't remember if therolling is in the Warren's book
or not.
I like the way that it reallywent through and explained,
like, here's the reasoning whyyou would need to roll.
Here's when you don't need toroll.
And I really like the idea thatit's like, you'll really need to
roll when something is not rightlike if their plan isn't very
good if they don't have enoughtime to like be careful or they
(22:01):
don't have the materials likethey don't have the tools
necessary that's when you startrolling and it makes a lot of
sense because every time youfail a roll you take stress and
max you can only take 20 stressbefore you basically break and
you're gonna have a really badtime afterwards so it makes a
lot of sense i really like thatas I really like, there are some
(22:22):
great things in here that Ithink are awesome tips,
regardless of game.
I think there's a really goodsection on here about safety
tools.
It's just like a page isbasically the writer basically
says, this is me, the writertalking to you, the warden
specifically in this moment.
And it's like, I understand thatthere might be some things, but
like, imagine you're at a, likea party and people, and it
(22:44):
really kind of breaks it downinto like common sense, kind of
like terms, like in the same waythat like, Oh, you, you may
occasionally overstep.
that's fine just make sure thateverybody talks about it and
then you work towards not doingthat again like i thought it was
maybe one of the best wordedlike safety tool sections i've
ever seen in a book
SPEAKER_00 (23:02):
no you're absolutely right about that it felt very
natural not heavy-handed likeyou get some safety tool
sections and rpg rule books andit's just like you're a bad
person at your core and you needto acknowledge hello okay but as
this it was like yeah it'scommon sense advice i love the
example of if you're under myroof and i invite you to a pal
yeah you can expect x y and zand if that doesn't happen then
(23:27):
we'll talk about it and not tryand ruin it next time it should
be the same at your table Ithought that was that was nice I
also love that the book is setup and it assumes that you're a
brand new player and basicallysays here's how you roll up a
character really quickly becauseyou're probably gonna have to do
this mid game you're probablygonna do it quite often you're
(23:47):
probably gonna die and youmentioned the stress mechanic
which is really nice it'ssimilar to an alien where you
get stressed but the idea is asthings go wrong your character
gets more and more stressed andthe more stressed they get the
more the chance there is of thempanicking and doing something
ridiculous it's a nice way ofsimulating the sort of sanity
blasting horror that you come upagainst Again, I talked about
(24:09):
this in the Call of Cthulhupodcast, but one of the things I
loved about the sanity mechanicin Call of Cthulhu was it
actually forced the players toact in a certain way.
If you know that just looking atthat thing can drive you
bananas, you might not want togo and look at the thing until
you know what you're dealingwith.
Likewise in this, if you knowthat you're probably going to
get stressed out by attemptingto do the thing, you're going to
(24:31):
wait until you've got the bestcircumstance possible to do it
so you don't wig out and freakout and shoot at your teammates
or whatever it's a really niceway of doing it all the rules
are really simple combat isreally simple there's a
brilliant bit where it actuallysays use the ward and what you
should be saying is not that thecreature's going to attack you
it's here's what's going tohappen if you fail to stop the
(24:54):
creature doing its thing it'sgoing to bite John's head off or
it's going to throw Clara out ofthe airlock and it gives the
players something to actuallywork against rather than just oh
I'm going to try and blast itand take down its hit points
SPEAKER_02 (25:08):
and that's really nice it also gives the players a
chance to be a little creativeit's like oh you know the more
you describe and the more youset the parameters like oh well
I don't want you know John toget bitten gives me an
opportunity like I could get infront of him I could do
something maybe we picked up anitem or we did something earlier
that allows me to set up aninteresting situation other than
like oh here's monster X inhallway who's just standing
(25:32):
there until you finish acting soI really I really like that way
of setting it up on the
SPEAKER_00 (25:38):
back of the player's guide here, you literally have
the system on the back on onepage.
It's kind of Mork
SPEAKER_02 (25:46):
Borg-ish where they have basically all the rules
SPEAKER_00 (25:49):
on one thing, which is great.
But if we move on to theWarden's Manual, these are A5
style, almost like zines, tiny.
And I have to say the Warden'sOperation Manual has some of the
best GM's advice that I haveread in any book.
It basically walks you throughhow you set up a session and it
(26:11):
gives you this whole example oftaking a notebook and what you
should write on each page andhow you set up an adventure.
More importantly it talks abouthow you set up the atmosphere
for a Mothership game how youshould slowly reveal horror
there's a lot of detail in herebut it's fantastic around how do
(26:33):
you set up puzzles how shouldyou put clues in and one of the
things I love is essentially nothiding things behind clues not
hiding the progress and I usedto always say this when I talk
to people about Call of Cthulhufor example I would always say
to them that if a playersearches for something you
should give them the informationmake them roll to get additional
(26:57):
insight that can help them lateron but it's not one of these
things of if you don't find thatclue you can't do anything
because then the game justgrinds to a halt and this gives
some wonderful advice alongthat.
It gives you advice on how yougenerate a campaign, how you...
It also points out there's nosocial skills in this game that
(27:18):
you roleplay at all, which Ithink I really like.
I always have issues with socialskills becoming mind control
powers in games.
I intimidate him into goingaway.
Problems dealt with.
But it's fantastic.
One of the nice little featuresof the game is it talks about
survive solve or save being likethe pillars of the game and it's
(27:43):
like the player should only everbe able
SPEAKER_02 (27:46):
Yeah, two Macs.
So they can save themselves,they can solve the problem, or
they can be the hero.
And it says, usually they'regoing to be able to do one at
most.
If they try super, super, superhard, they can do two, which I
think is great.
Which, honestly, when you thinkabout a lot of sci-fi, that
makes a lot of sense.
A lot of sci-fi, they don't everreally beat the monster.
(28:09):
They escape from the monster.
Occasionally, especially ifyou're talking about something
like Aliens, like the Alienfranchise.
Like sometimes they beat it.
Sometimes they just escape.
It's always comes back.
Um, which I think you weretalking about before.
Like they, they have in here,like the story cycle,
transgression, omens,manifestation, banishment, and
slumber.
So you do something to awakenit.
(28:31):
You start to get signs, youknow, people start to, you know,
you start to see dead people orlike physical signs on people
manifestation.
That's when it actually eruptsand happens and like starts
being an issue.
Then banishment is the playersdealing with it.
But at the end, there's alwaysthe slumber aspect.
Like you may have defeated that,but there's always this inkling
that it could come back and be asource of new trouble in the
(28:52):
future.
I think that's a really greatstory structure, especially for
sci-fi horror, that you couldprobably take really to
anything.
You could probably even bringthat into fantasy games if you
want to bring more horroraspects to, which I really like.
SPEAKER_00 (29:04):
And it chimes perfectly with the example of
the Aliens franchise.
If you look at the originalAlien, it follows that arc
perfectly.
Ripley in the original Aliensurvives.
She doesn't solve anythingaliens hero yeah she doesn't
save anyone in the originalalien apart from the cat it's a
really great format and theypack a lot into that little
(29:28):
design and wouldn't hesitate torecommend it to anyone wanting
to run a horror game becauseit's just fully good advice and
again the artwork is very doodlybut it works nicely
SPEAKER_02 (29:38):
yeah maybe that's just me enjoying Morkborg and
stuff like that as long as theartwork gives vibe I'm fine with
it especially one thing too thatI like about there being like
more fiddly doodly artwork isthat's close to what I would be
able to draw in a given momentif I was coming up with my own
creature so I think it's nicethat it shows like hey it
(29:59):
doesn't have to be some like VanGogh art piece it can be just
like a scribble and still beillustrative of the point that
you're trying to make and bescary
SPEAKER_00 (30:08):
one of the pieces I loved is in the section about
basically making your horror inthe game those things we talked
about transgression omensmanifestation etc they've got a
little picture above each ofthem that tells a story so like
in the transgression there'slike these two scientists in the
lab and they've got a petri dishwith some alien thing in it and
he picks it up and it squirtshim in the face and then for
(30:30):
omens it's the same scientistbut he's got little things
spikes out his neck inmanifestation it's him erupting
into some alien horror and thenbanishment is a dude with a
flamethrower shooting him butthe slumber it's a picture of
the close up of the body And youcan see the alien parasite
crawling out his eye as if it'scut off someone else, which is a
(30:50):
lovely illustration of...
SPEAKER_02 (30:51):
The artwork is very illustrative of what they're
trying to explain.
It's very explanatory.
And I think one of the coolthings about the Warden's Guide
is that it has consistentexamples.
It doesn't change...
So all the little sidebars, ituses the same characters.
So you have some idea for theexamples that it gives for
character creation.
It uses that same character.
I think it's Cleo.
And then when it's talking aboutyour little journal, it talks...
(31:15):
It keeps that consistencythroughout it.
Like it talks about this littleadventure where there's like
this like hive mind that istaking over things.
So it keeps consistent.
So it shows you how you canevolve and like move these
things around.
And because a lot of tabletopRPGs will show examples, but
sometimes it'll be completelydifferent examples.
(31:36):
So there might be some questionin somebody's mind, like, well,
how do I take this and turn itinto that?
And then in this one, it showsit like it gives you all the
examples.
It shows you like the layout,like because it does a pretty
good job of explaining.
how to build like a map andinstead of you know getting very
granular and showing like thesizes of rooms and all that
stuff it's really like what youreally need is like a block
diagram this block diagram andthen right next to it you have a
(31:59):
key that says like you knowgeneral dimensions the vibe of
the room what's in here theadventures follow that pretty
well so i looked at bug hunt andnot another bug hunt and but
that showed like those blockdiagrams it had keys it had like
little bullet points kind ofexplaining what was in the room
like the high points and lowpoints and or if there's
anything like icky that mightattack them.
I think that's a really good waybecause I think a lot of games
(32:22):
will show you these reallyornate maps like Dungeons and
Dragons, super ornate maps thatyou're like, oh God, what am I
supposed to do with all this?
So you have like pages of mapsand then it has all these like
huge amount of details that youhave to like espouse or like
somehow fill in the blanks.
This is like very simple.
Two pages, you have your entireadventure and they basically say
like this is what you would haveopen in front of you for the
(32:42):
majority of the game.
This map and this key and andyou're just like bouncing off
it.
I really like that.
SPEAKER_00 (32:48):
Yeah.
I like the fact with the blockdiagram it gives, it says each
one of these blocks, it could bea star system or a closet.
Yeah.
But the thing is, it'simportant.
It's an important thing for theplayers to go to.
What you're showing is how you,how the link, it's not a
physical, this thing isn'tnecessarily right next to this,
but it's like, if you have thisinformation, you will know about
(33:08):
this location and you can gothere and do things.
And again, it lets you as thewarden fill in the, like the
journey stuff between locationsbut it keeps your players moving
it keeps them interested becauseit means they know when they go
somewhere something's going tohappen they've got something
relevant it's not like oh wewander around to you know
(33:31):
generic cabin number five to seebecause it's on the map it must
have something it's something Iremember running years ago
Shadows over Bugenhafen forWarhammer Fantasy roleplay and
it had a massive beautiful mapof the city of Bugenhafen it
must have locations on the mapand that was the player's map
and the intent was the playerswould look at it and go ah well
(33:53):
these things are markedtherefore they're important
therefore we're going to go tothose places rather than it just
being a blank map and then goingoh well that street looks nice
let's go there and then you as aGM are you know making up lots
of incidental nonsense andanyway moving on for the Wardens
Operations Manual great bookwe've got the Shipbreakers
Toolkit which is I think it'sbasically just a a list of
(34:15):
ships?
It
SPEAKER_02 (34:17):
is a list of ships.
I think could be extremelyuseful given your campaign or
you would never look at this atall.
If you were a purely terrestrialthing or even if you're in space
station, like this gives a lotof like pre-done ones.
So I guess if you were to do anadventure on one of these, it
would give you a bit of a playermap that you could use.
But a lot of them are so small,like the map is like pretty bare
(34:40):
minimum.
I do think that there's supposedto be maybe, I guess, like
ship-to-ship combat as an optionin this.
But I don't think I would dothat too often because, I don't
know, I just don't seeship-to-ship combat being
SPEAKER_00 (34:53):
survival horror-y,
SPEAKER_02 (34:54):
I guess?
SPEAKER_00 (34:54):
Yeah, what it specifically says, and I think
it's the Warden's OperationsManual, if you get to the point
where it's ship-to-ship combat,everyone is losing because the
weapons are so deadly that youjust need to damage a ship and
suddenly people can't breathe.
And it said so the actual horrorshould come from the
negotiations and the hailing andtrying to get the other people
(35:16):
not to fire on them and ifyou're in fact it does say that
about combat as a whole it saysonce you're in a fight you've
kind of chosen the worst optionbecause everyone loses
SPEAKER_02 (35:27):
yeah it yeah it says that in the book like nobody
ever really wins the fightespecially when you look at
monster stats you know a marinemight have at max like i don't
know 60 70 percent chance ofsuccess a lot of the the
monsters and oogie boogie weirdythings in here like Their combat
starts at 70.
(35:48):
I didn't see anything below a 70with thumbing through.
Most of them are up to 90 to100.
Every time they attack, they hitunless it's a very small...
There's always a very...
I think there is...
What is it?
A 99 through 00, I think, isalways...
It's an always failure.
I don't think there'sanything...
Actually, I think the good canhit on anything.
(36:10):
I think good might be God.
Let's talk about the other one.
I think this is cool.
I think it's a good um becauseof the time frame that it gives
i don't know how much you readinto like the downtime
activities this stuff's supposedto take place over like years
like a campaign is like there isan option to go and join the
space marine or like thecolonial marines that's a
six-year contract you don't getto play your character for six
(36:32):
in-game years but then they comeback and they have military
training and some other stuffthey also just might die they
might die yeah they just mightdie um so like i do think this
is like a cool idea almost likehey here's things that you can
buy As you guys progress and getcooler and cooler, because they
have a lot of things that youcan spend money on in this book,
a lot of the like going tospecific ports and like using
(36:56):
your stress to turn that intopoints that you then put into
different skills and stuff likea lot of those ports.
They're measured in thekilocredits, so a thousand
credits.
So you need a lot of money tospend.
And I think at a certain point,especially if you do more role
play instead of like if youbreak free from your corporation
and like start selling secretsand doing things like that,
you're going to have a lot ofmoney to spend.
you could probably make a lot ofmoney.
(37:17):
So this is like a cool thing tobe like, hey, well, if you guys
get up there enough, you couldafford, you know, this gas-fack
Grendel Corvette.
SPEAKER_00 (37:26):
Or gauss-fack Grendel.
I love the artwork in this forwhat they've made the ships look
like because they look verysimilar to the sort of stuff you
see in a lot of these survivalhorror sci-fi films like Alien
and Aliens.
They don't look like sleep StarWars style or Star Trek style
ships.
They look very induced.
industrial and a bit clunky andthey don't look the sort of
(37:48):
things that can...
A lot of squares.
Yeah, lots of squares and...
Things popping off of them,yeah.
Spinny round things.
I do love that there's a megadamage table.
Yeah, the mega damage table.
Which reminds me of like rifts.
But yeah, that's theshipbreakers guide, which is,
you know, it's fine for what youdo.
However, I think this isprobably both you and I's
favorite book, The UnconfirmedContact Report.
SPEAKER_02 (38:11):
There is a lot of great art in this book.
I do have...
um, one critique.
And that's if, um, there's like,there's a lot of art.
There's a lot of space on here.
If I have to go and they put allthe stats in a line on the top,
I think this is one of my OSRleast favorite things to do.
Um, because if you have to put akey in the beginning of the
(38:32):
book, explaining what all ofthese random numbers and letters
mean, especially when you haveso much space to just like put a
little block here and said, Oh,it's damage is this it's combat
is this it's instinct is that Ifeel like you've kind of like
missed an you've oversimplifiedone thing to the detriment of
itself like you I have to I meanluckily monsters are pretty
(38:54):
simple they simplify all thestats into instinct if they have
something very specific thatthey are good at they outline
that but again if I have to goand flip to the front another
thing a strike against all ofthe books involved they don't
have an index which I understandthese are paper vaccines no
index and they have no table ofcontents I think they would be
better for them
SPEAKER_00 (39:14):
the best thing about this book though is it's not
written like a traditionalmonster manual in terms of here
is this thing this is where itcomes from this is what we can
do it's written as reports fromsurvivors
SPEAKER_02 (39:27):
yeah
SPEAKER_00 (39:27):
who have encountered this thing and a lot of these
things are genuinely horrificlike there's a creature called
throat leeches which is that'sfairly grim in itself you get
other things like like justreally sinister things there's
one called cabin 102b and it'sjust a mysterious room that
appears on liners and the staffare like this room isn't part of
(39:49):
our ship people go in the roomstart going mad one of the most
sinister ones is called familymeal number five and it's a bit
like the ring it's a tape thatshows footage of a human being
strapped down the table and thenlike five pigs appear and start
devouring him over the course ofa few hours and then people who
(40:11):
watch it start becomingcannibals which It's just a lot
of really, really dark stuff.
SPEAKER_02 (40:19):
The cool thing about the unconfirmed reports is that
it would be very easy to fillthis full of just like alien
abominations that have like alot of tentacles.
There's a lot of like esotericnonsense in here.
I think I mentioned before,there is the good, which
basically its power is that itmakes people like they can't
lie.
They can't hurt others.
(40:40):
It's like power is technicallyinfinite.
I don't think you can kill thegood.
Like it gives infinity symbolsfor its stats.
So this idea that they're likecorporations might view this as
a bad thing and maybe send youto like you can't kill it maybe
you could send it somewhere it'slike you mentioned before there
it's like all like littlereports but it's all like
reports hearsay it the images alot of them and I'll say oh this
(41:04):
is like graffiti found on abathroom stall and like a space
station that was massacred orthis is like for the demon in
here it's like oh this is anacrylic painting made by a
prisoner that survived somethingI thought that was really cool
it all I think I might like thismost because it is also again
very Morkborg in quality wherelike the artwork is very
(41:24):
evocative but not necessarilylike the most pristine like
strokes and things like that itdefinitely has like a bit of
like a do-it-yourself vibe whichI really enjoy like there's
weird stuff like the headjackersand that artwork is super messed
up it's just like something likediving into the back of this
person's head and it says giveme a better brain art therapy
(41:47):
exercise patient 1771 one sevenparentheses deceased stuff is
messed
SPEAKER_00 (41:53):
up in here one of the things i liked is because as
you said it's not just a it's analien gribbley that you know
comes at you with teeth andfangs now they have some like
that there's one creature inthere that is essentially the
creature from the thing you youread it and how it you know it
takes on the form of things downto the dna level but it will
like violently explode intosomething else and so that's
(42:15):
your your bog standard alienthat you can start and shoot at
and fight.
But they've got other thingslike there's a sentient computer
virus.
SPEAKER_02 (42:23):
There's a sentient TV show.
It's called The Brownstream 2 orsomething that slowly corrupts
you.
One
SPEAKER_00 (42:30):
of the monsters quote unquote I loved was
C-level executives.
Oh
SPEAKER_02 (42:34):
yeah.
Very easy to get.
The Hatchet Man.
I don't know if you saw TheHatchet Man but it's like when I
first read it I was like oh it'sjust talking about like a
corporate headhunter but no it'slike some weird like configured
organism created by thecorporations to like basically
give certain people quoteunquote pink slips which I
(42:56):
thought was very clever and veryfun I do think the one cool
thing about Mothership isthey're very creative I think
it's that comes from theunconfirmed reports super
creative and like what a monstercan be and how it can affect you
SPEAKER_00 (43:08):
that's what I liked about it I thought that it was
not just it's an original takebut it's an original take on
horror you can see the thehorror tropes are in there And
they just twist it a little bitto give something where it isn't
just the monster rushing throughthe airlock at you.
It's something that you're like,well, we can't actually fight
(43:29):
this.
So how do we get rid of it?
Yeah, exactly.
That makes them, again, it goesback to their pillars of save,
solve and survive.
You can build that actuallyaround the creature.
And then spin off the adventureoff the back of that, which I
think is great.
I think the example it gives inthe warden's operation manual,
like the horror, is that thismassive alien head that is being
(43:53):
worshipped by people in thisfacility.
There's brainwashing children orsomething horrible like that.
And figuring out how to dealwith something like that is
brilliant because you're like, Ihave no
SPEAKER_02 (44:04):
idea what I would do.
So it talks about that a bitbecause when it shows the
notebook, it explains that.
And it basically says thatthe...
It gives them, because they havean idea of like how they would
solve this.
It basically says that thatalien thing is functionally
immortal because it's like somepsychic thing that's intertwined
with everybody.
It has some psychic shieldingand that the only real way to
(44:27):
escape would probably, theeasiest way to escape would be
to give people to it.
So I thought that was a veryinteresting take outlining like
the easy path and letting yourplayers figure out the hard
actual path that they're goingto want to take.
I think that's clever.
Cause you can very easily findyourself.
I mean, they were already set upas a cult in the way that it's
set up.
They, they allow new people tocome in.
(44:49):
If you were just be like, Oh,we're going to send you like 20,
30, 40 people or give you halfof us.
And then we'll send more likethat would be a way to negotiate
with a monster that likefunctionally is immortal, but
also wants things.
SPEAKER_00 (45:02):
And just looking at these adventures here.
So again, they're in the littledesign format, but they're
fairly substantial.
I mean, it's like you have 50plus pages in that.
they're, you know, as you wouldsay, very murk-borgy in terms of
how they're laid out, theartwork, the format.
And I really like that.
It makes it very easy on theeye.
(45:22):
And it's also laid out in a waythat it's easy to use as a, as a
warden because the, all theinformation you need is on a
single page.
Yeah.
You don't have to go flickingback and forth.
Again, no, it's still noindexes, which is certainly
annoying.
Love an index.
Love a table of contents.
Love an index.
Yeah.
Always, I have at the beginningor the end but just don't not
(45:45):
have it at all but yeah that isthat is mothership and I have to
say I'm despite the long waitvery happy with with what I
received very
SPEAKER_02 (45:54):
happy with it I like it I will say one thing the
small box that was$59 shippingis$21 where I don't know if
taxes are included in that we'reup to around$80 I think there is
some good stuff in here comeswith a little encounter tracker
thing it comes with the littlecutouts comes with a little
stand so you can you don't haveto make 3d printed stuff comes
(46:16):
with a little very teeny tinycutesy warden screen comes with
some bonuses$80 not terribledragonbane box which you can get
retail$30 depending on the dayis comes with dice it comes with
the same kind of like cutoutthings here but they're in color
(46:38):
and fully like illustrated comewith a little stands it comes
with with a source book.
It comes with a couple, it comeswith like seven or eight
adventures.
It's a, it, it has a box that iscompletely full.
There's not much more you couldfit inside there, including maps
and everything for less thanhalf the price, including
shipping.
The one thing that I, the, theone thing I have grown to
(47:00):
dislike about Kickstarter is Iwill see, I was like, Oh, I'll
buy that.
I ended up buying it basicallyfull retail price.
I pay for shipping.
And then I would not besurprised to see this on Tuesday
night games uh website forticket price but with shipping
being five dollars which is thething i mean i haven't i haven't
checked but i would not besurprised if that's the case it
(47:24):
does feel like especially it'sone thing when you're if you get
the early adopter advantage butwe've waited so long for this it
doesn't feel like we're earlyadopters anymore so
SPEAKER_00 (47:51):
And that was our review of the Mothership
Kickstarter.
We hope you enjoyed it.
Thanks must go again to Ryan forjoining us and offering his
insight into his experienceswith the Kickstarter.
Fans of the podcast will bepleased to know we actually cut
out 25 minutes of rambling atthe end where Ryan and I just
went off and on about variousKickstarters that we backed and
(48:14):
failed.
So due to the magic of editing,you didn't have to listen to
that nonsense.
We are a semi-regular podcast onthe history of RPGs and we have
a whole big back catalogue of 60plus episodes that include
history episodes reviews likethis one round tables author
interviews and even some actualplays so if you're bored go and
(48:37):
check them out if you want toget in touch with us you can do
so on twitter at savepodcast oryou can email us at
role.to.save.pod at gmail.com ifyou're feeling kind please nip
on to your podcast directory ofchoice and leave us a review.
We really do appreciate them andit helps us with visibility.
(48:58):
Anyway, we hope you enjoyed theepisode and we will see you on
the next one.
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