As I’ve begun expanding my Mothership open table from sporadic one-shots to a jump-cluster with persistent continuity, the economy of the game has been giving me endless headaches.

PAY

A simple question, for example, would be: How much money should the PCs get paid for doing a job?

Unfortunately, the answers given in official books are vague, contradictory, and vary by multiple orders of magnitude for little or no apparent reason.

The Warden’s Operations Manual, for example, bases everything around the concept of salary.

• You calculate a monthly salary in credits based on what skills a PC possesses (e.g., 1,000cr/month for every Expert Skill). This generally results in a salary between 3,000 and 5,000 credits.
• Some jobs pay Hazard Pay, which is generally 2-3x your salary.
• You get a 1,000 credit bonus per Jump made through hyperspace.
• Pay might increase by 10% to 50% based on the crew’s rep, etc.

So the pay for jobs would be listed as “6 MOS SALARY” or “3 MOS SAL + JUMP PAY.” This would seem that most jobs would pay a few thousand credits.

This makes sense for regular employment, but gets pretty vague for a job like “assassinate the head of the Wittgenstein cartel.” (You also get some weird interactions with the default travel times in Mothership, which are a whole different issue.)

Which may be why none of the official adventures or supplements seem to use this system. Many don’t include details about pay at all, while those that do are all over the  place:

• Gradient Descent pays mostly in the form of retrieved artifacts, which generally range from 1,000,000 credits to 250,000,000 credits.
• Chromatic Transference: If you retrieve the McGuffin, you can earn 30,000,000 credits.
• Pound of Flesh: The Babushka offers jobs from 2,000 to 40,000 credits. Tempest Company offers jobs from 500 to 5,000 credits, but if you can earn a higher rank your jobs jump up to 50,000 to 500,000 credits. Canyonheavy missions range wildly from 10,000 to 750,000 credits, plus one big outlier at 30,000,000 credits.

And, of course, without any clear guidance from the official supplements, third party supplements are all over the place when it comes to pay.

Let’s rephrase the question as an order of magnitude. In general, should Mothership PCs be earning:

• Thousands of credits per job?
• Tens of thousands?
• Hundreds of thousands?
• Millions?
• Tens of millions?
• Hundreds of millions?

The answer, obviously, will have a profound effect on how the game plays. But, frankly, Mothership seems really uncertain about what the answer should be. Broadly similar jobs can pay radically different amounts of money.

COSTS

And it turns out that this is unsurprising, because the costs in the game are ALSO separated by orders of magnitude.

In the core game, there a few different categories of purchasable stuff.

Weapons range in price from 50 credits to 1,400 credits.

Armor ranges from 2,000 credits to 12,000 credits.

Equipment mostly ranges from 20 credits to 8,000 credits, with a few key exceptions:

• Exoloaders cost 100,000 credits.
• Jetpacks cost 75,000 credits.
• An organic pet costs 200,000 credits.

Starship supplies (fuel, etc.) seem likely to cost 50,000 to 500,000 credits. (I need to explore this a bit more.) The starships themselves can be hundreds of millions or even billions of credits, but these costs are far more likely to be handled through alternative systems rather than spending individual credits.

Contractors cost roughly 1,000 to 10,000 credits per month.

Shore Leave gets interesting, because the average cost basically steps up through orders of magnitude:

• C-CLASS — 1,000 credits
• B-CLASS — 10,000 credits
• A-CLASS —100,000 credits
• X-CLASS — 500,000 credits
• S-CLASS ­— 1,000,000 credits

Looking at these numbers, what becomes apparent is that there’s a roughly tiered experience here: In order for a group to be making choices about shore leave, for example, the need at least 10⁵ credits. If they have that much money, though, then decisions about basic equipment become essentially meaningless: They can trivially buy anything and everything they want.

And then there seems to be another tier at 10⁶ credits, where you can access top-tier shore leave and begin doing ship-ownership stuff.

A POUND OF FLESH

The A Pound of Flesh supplement adds several new categories of things you can buy: cyberware, slickware, and drugs.

The prices for drugs all hang out in the same range as basic equipment, but cyberware and slickware notably have prices that seem to be significantly divided by these tiers:

• 10³ credits: holoprojector, loudmouth, lumatat, prosthetic, slicksocket, tattletale, terminal jack, looky-loo, twitchbooster
• 10⁴ credits: big switch, deadswitch, fangs, handcannon, hotswap, huntershot, little switch, OGRE, panic button, panzerfist, revenant protocol, scapegoat system, god mode, espernetic feedback loop, holopet, vox box
• 10⁵ credits: retractable nanoblade, spidermount, spinal rig, machine code, sentinel system, skillslick (trained)
• 10⁶ credits: remote uplink, sockpuppet, subdermal armor, whiplash injector, skillslick (expert/master)

The biggest thing to note, I think, is that there doesn’t really seem to be a smooth spectrum of costs in these price lists. Rather, perhaps encouraged by the system denoting costs in cr, kcr, and mcr, there are distinct phase shifts.

CONCLUSIONS: SETTING JOB PAY

With all this in mind, my tentative conclusion is that we can break job pay into three echelons, each of which can be multiple by hazard pay.

Basic Jobs pay in the echelon of 10³ credits — roughly 1,000 to 10,000 credits. Hazard pay can multiple this base rate, though, to 10⁴ credits, up to 50,000 credits. At the low end, these jobs give you enough money to cover your costs and seek treatment for your wounds/stress. At the high end, after one or two of these jobs, you can probably buy a really nice piece of equipment.

Restricted Jobs pay in the echelon of 10⁵ credits — roughly 50,000 to 500,000 credits. Here you can start buying some really nice stuff, but you also start unlocking some really powerful character advancement options (training skills, better shore leaves, etc.). The trick is that you can’t just grab these jobs off the street: You need to unlock them in some way. That might mean gaining ranks in a mercenary outfit; earning a high enough reputation score; or just having the right connections.

Windfalls pay 1,000,000 credits or more. These might be rarely offered as jobs (to even higher ranks, etc.), but are more likely to be lucky opportunities PCs can stumble into or pursue (like the artifacts in Gradient Descent). This is the stuff that, literally, makes you a millionaire: There’s a thin layer of massive luxury goods that unlock at this level. This might also be the point where you can make a down payment on a ship. Retirement options (WOM 51) also unlock here.

(For both ships and retirement options, I want to give some deeper thought into how these could be made compelling and interesting options, particularly in an open table.)

OPEN TABLE

For my open table, I think this means I want to create a jobs board that includes a selection of basic jobs.

This jobs board represents the Phoenix Contracting Mesh, which will further divide these jobs into:

• Green List, which are simpler, safer jobs. In most cases, in fact, these jobs can be rapidly resolved, leaving enough time for another job to be selected for the evening. This allows cash-desperate PCs a pathway for earning the credits they need to, for example, treat their wounds.
• Green List – Complicated, which look like simple green list jobs, but when you deliver the mining equipment to Ypsilon-14 – whoops! Aliens!
• Black List, which are jobs offering hazard pay and incentive bonuses. These are more direct links to adventure content,

(I will likely also be adding Bounties to the board once the Wages of Sin supplement is released.)

To these basic jobs, though, I’m going to want to figure out how to add higher paying restricted jobs. I’m currently thinking this might include:

• Red List, which are jobs on the Phoenix Contracting Mesh jobs board that can only be accessed via a Reputation system. (You’d earn rep by successfully completing jobs, which also gives me an additional opportunity for rep-based incentives and/or complications.)
• Direct follow-ups, where being part of the team that completes one job may cause your employer to offer you a “follow-up” contract at higher pay.
• Patrons, which PCs might hook-up with in any number of ways. These might be independent employment offers, or maybe just personal relationships that unlock red list jobs that would otherwise require higher reputation scores.

Finally, windfalls will be scattered semi-randomly. I’m also planning to include Gradient Descent in the campaign, which would also give players the opportunity to proactively decide to seek windfall payments in an extremely hostile environment (and possibly without any guaranteed base pay?).

OPEN TABLE SALARY

The other thing I’ve been workshopping for my open table is salary.

By the book, salaries for starting characters are:

• Marine: 2,000 credits/month
• Android: 2,500 credits/month
• Scientist: 4,000 credits/month
• Teamster: 2,500 credits/month

In a standard Mothership campaign, I think the idea is that you earn this salary by taking jobs.

For my open table, on the other hand, I’ve been letting PCs earn their salary during downtime (with the assumption that they’re working various jobs between sessions). The problem is that, due to a confluence of factors (including how travel time is calculated in Mothership), the PCs are simply earning too much money: The multipliers yeet them straight out of the basic jobs tier, which rapidly causes the entire game table economy to collapse.

I’m pretty sure the solution (or, at least, the next thing I’m going to playtest) is to effectively reduce these salaries to 1/10^th their value:

• Marine: 200 credits/month
• Android: 250 credits/month
• Scientist: 400 credits/month
• Teamster: 250 credits/month

In practice, the character is still earning their fully salary, but most of it is being chewed up by basic living expenses (rent, food, etc.). (This is fairly similar to the guidelines on saving money, WOM 51.)

I might actually combine this with an actual Lifestyle system, but I think I’ll wait and see if these values are broadly working before adding another layer of complexity.

ADDITIONAL READING
Mothership: Thinking About Combat

The Paranoia of fantasy, Ork! is unashamed satire – targeting Tolkienesque tropes and gamer culture with equal parts aplomb and ruthlessness.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

I’ve been trying to think up clever ways to introduce the concept of Ork!. Here’s one:

Last year I wrote a review of John Wick’s Orkworld — detailing its lavish (and loving) detail of orkish culture, and lauding it for providing a remarkably complete picture of orkish life. Ork! is not that game. Ork! is, in very large part, a satire of Orkworld which managed to get published before Orkworld itself.

Here’s another one:

Ork! is the Paranoia of fantasy. It’s unashamed satire targeting Tolkienesque tropes and gamer culture with equal parts aplomb and ruthlessness.

And here’s the last one:

The concept behind Ork! is simple: You play an ork. An ork is big. An ork is dumb. An ork likes killing and smashing. If you play Ork! you will spend a lot of time saying things like, “Me am ork! Me am kill you!”

Half of Ork! is spent raising the stereotypes of orks specifically (and fantasy in general) to the level of comedy. For example: “An Ork earns respect from his peers by slaying his enemies. Should another Ork come along and call him a coward, that Ork will feel his honor is being attacked. A fight will break out, and someone will lose an eye.” Or: “For Orks, remembering what happened this morning is an exceedingly difficult task. It’s almost impossible to recall the events of yesterday, and last week might as well have been millennia ago.”

The other half of Ork! is spent winking its eye at the stereotypes of gamers (and game designers more particularly), and raising those to the level of comedy. For example: “As we’re sure you’ll be shocked to find out, every Ork has a set of skills that define what he’s good at. Equally shocking is the revelation that these skills are based on the attributes you’ve already chosen. Yes, that was indeed a bolt from the blue, as old Gary would say. A rare moment of genius, we assure you, and certainly not swiped from every RPG of the last 15 years.” Or: “Time in combat is divided into rounds. Yes, that’s right, rounds. We would have invented some clever acronym like TKU (Time Keeping Unit), but we know you’d end up calling them rounds anyway.”

In short, Ork! finds a set of solid themes (“orks are dumb”, “orks are violent”, “game designers do silly things”) and then plays them out over the course of 64 pages.

Oh, yeah, there’s also a game in there. Let’s take a look at that.

SYSTEM

Ork! is a simple game. Which is good, because, as the saying goes, comedy is hard and you don’t need the rules hassling you, too.

The rules of Ork! are also fun – which I also like to see, because it extends the fun environment of the game concept throughout the gaming experience. The one thing that always drove me nuts about Paranoia was the fact that you had this really hilarious game world coupled with a rule system which was just trying too damn hard.

To sum up Ork! in brief:

Character Creation: You have four attributes (Meat, Bones, Twitch, and Mojo) measured in die types. You choose between sixteen skills, which determine how many dice you roll.

Skill Resolution: “Many RPGs use what’s called a target number system. In these games, the benevolent GM decides on the difficulty of a given task, and the player only needs to exceed this target number to complete task. Such systems are for the weak, since they allow the GM to show the horrid trait of mercy while assigning target numbers. In Ork!, the GM represents Krom himself and even the simplest task requires the player to dice off with Krom!”

The GM does have some control over the situation by determining whether Krom approves of the action (2d6), doesn’t care (3d6), is annoyed by it (4d6), or hates the orc trying it (5d6). Beyond that, however, action is simply resolved by the GM rolling and the player rolling: If the player rolls higher than the GM, he succeeds. If the GM rolls higher, the player fails.

(This system created a bit of a soft spot in my heart. The first RPG I ever read was MERP. I didn’t get it. Then I bought Batman, based on Mayfair’s DC Heroes game. I didn’t get it. Frustrated because I thought this whole “roleplaying game” concept was really cool even if these games I were buying might as well have been written in Greek, I created my own Batman RPG – which consisted of me (the GM) rolling 1d6, and my brother (Batman) rolling 1d6. If I rolled higher, Batman would crash the Batmobile while driving back to the Batcave. If my brother rolled higher, Batman would get back to the Batcave successfully… although he might still slip and fall while getting out of the car.)

Combat: Combat resolution works just like normal skill resolution – except the role is contested with another character, rather than with Krom. Damage is handled through a wound level system (Right as Rain; Just a Scratch; Oww, Quit It!; Arrrrgghhhhhh!; Call the Sawbones!; and See You In Hell).

CONCLUSION

The only real downside to Ork! is a couple of spelling errors scattered spasmodically here and there through the book (given the subject matter, though, you could consider this a feature rather than a bug). And, of course, the fact that – like most combat-heavy comedy games — Ork! is most suitable for the occasional one-shot (rather than any sort of prolonged campaign). Not a big deal when you look at the Big Picture:

Ork! is fun. It’s fun to read. It’s fun to play. It’s fun to joke about with your gamer buddies.

So if you don’t pick up a copy of Ork! at your earliest opportunity, I have only one thing to say to you:

Me am Ork! Me am kill you!

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Todd Miller and Chris Pramas
Publisher: Green Ronin Publishing
Price: $12.95
ISBN: 0-9701048-0-4
Product Code: GRR1001
Pages: 64

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Go to Table of Contents

Named after Myliesha, an elven goddess of the wind (Ptolus, p. 73), the Myliesh’a Sail is the smallest vessel in the Fleet of Iron Sails. It’s notable for being the only ship in the fleet not armed with cannon or ballista. The absence of ship weaponry allows the Sail to avoid inspections at certain foreign ports, making it easier for them to engage in smuggling, slave-trade, and other illicit activities.

CAPTAIN CROTIKA: Use stats for pirate captain (MM 2024, p. 242).

SHIP’S MAP: Fat Goblin Games’ Simple Ship battlemap.

AREA 1 – MAIN DECK

The deck is well-scrubbed and kept in good order. Despite this, a large, black stain extends from the cargo hatch and runs for several feet across the deck. (Anyone watching onboard activity will notice that crewmembers avoid stepping on the stain.)

STAIN: Careful inspection notes that there are small arcane runes carved into the surface of the stain. Anyone stepping on the stain is must make a DC 12 Wisdom saving throw or be affected as per bestow curse.

DC 14 Intelligence (Arcana): The stain is from a blood curse. Someone cursed their own blood and then spilt it upon the deck in order to place a curse upon the Myliesha’s Sail. (GM Note: This was a lizardman witch who was being transported as a slave.)

DC 18 Intelligence (Arcana): The arcane runes are designed to seal in the curse. This prevents it from affecting the ship, but it would still be a good idea to avoid stepping on it.

CARGO HATCH: The cargo hatch is secured with a pair of hefty padlocks.

• AC 19, 7 hp, DC 18 Dexterity (Thieves’ Tools)

AREA 2 – THE WHEEL

The wheel is coated with dragon bile (contact poison, DC 20 Constitution saving throw, 5d6 poison damage (half on save), and disadvantage on Strength checks). Crewmembers know to wear gloves while steering the ship.

AREA 3 – CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS

TABLE: On the table is a small mahogany box containing a ring of counterspells (a serpent of mithril and a serpent of taurum, the true gold, swallowing each other’s tails) and Letter to Guildmaster Arzan (see handouts).

Ring of Counterspells (rare, requires attunement)

This ring might seem like a ring of spell storing upon first examination. However, while it allows a single spell of 1^st through 5^th level to be cast into it, that spell cannot be cast out of the ring again. Instead, should that spell ever be cast upon the wearer, the spell is immediately countered, as if per a counterspell. If a counterspell is casting into the ring, it can be used to counter any spell, as per the spell.

Once used, the spell cast within the ring is gone. A new spell (or the same one as before) may be placed in it again.

GM Background: This ring was recovered from ruins in the Serpent’s Teeth. It currently contains a gate seal spell and it’s possible the Red Magi might be able to research the spell by studying the ring. (The gate seal spell can be found in Planescape: Sigil and the Outlands.)

IRON COFFER: 465 gp, 79 pp, potion of blur

• Lock: DC 16 Dexterity (Thieves’ Tools)

AREA 4 – SHIP SUPPLIES & ARMORY

In addition to hard tack, barrels of water, rope, and other necessary supplies, this room contains an unusual number of weapons:

• scimitars & dragon pistols (Ptolus, p. 522), enough to arm the sailors
• dragon rifles (Ptolus, p. 522) to arm the Advanced Vladaam Guards

AREA 5 – VLADAAM MAGE’S QUARTERS

The Vladaam Mage assigned to the ship keeps their quarters here. Their personal belongings include their spellbook, a potion of superior healing, and a shield of missile attraction (that they’re studying).

AREA 6 – CREW QUARTERS

This chamber is filled with crisscrossing hammocks and where most of the crew sleep.

DOOR: The door leading to the hold is steel-cored and securely locked.

• AC 19, 40 hp, DC 18 Dexterity (Thieves’ Tools)

AREA 7 – HOLD

Although Myliesha’s Sail transports slaves, they usually carry no more than a half load, and often much less than that.

Greater effort is made to keep the hold well maintained and cleaned (with the Vladaam Mages using prestidigitation spells, among other measures), making it easier for the ship to fulfill its role as a smuggler when the hold is used for mundane goods (or seemingly mundane goods).

Go to Vladaam Slave Ship – Eye of the East

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Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

Mystick: Domination takes a different approach to the card-building games: A “premium card game”, Mystick encourages “customizability without collecting” by selling only complete decks (with every deck including every card).

THE GOOD AND THE BAD

Getting introduced to Mystick requires a steep learning curve which is – thankfully – lessened considerably by the thoughtfully included and well-executed Basic Tutorial pamphlet. Essentially the game boils down to this: With a Tarot-inspired card- and ruleset, Mystick allows you to play out Pawn cards. Pawns are then used to obtain Power, either from a central pool or from other Pawns. This basic mechanic is complicated with various action and environment cards, and a set of elegantly interlocking rules which give rise to a number of tactical possibilities.

The game can be played by 2-5 players. The Basic Deck only supports play by two players, however, and, unfortunately, I find the game to be severely lacking in two player mode: It is far too easy for the player with the first turn to build an unassailable lead, and the game’s mechanics generally seem to become either too simplistic or catastrophically clogged. On the other end of the spectrum, playing with 5 players also seems to strain the game (the round advancement mechanic – based on how times a “draw” action has been used – seems to speed play up too much with this number of players).

THE DEAL

Mystick: Domination has a sweet spot of 3-4 players, but when you’re at that sweet spot the game behaves like a well-tuned Ferrari (and its not exactly a Yugo at the extremes, either). The game is gifted with evocative and beautiful artwork which, in its classical stylings, is a refreshing breath of fresh air in the current card game market. Its playable straight out of the box. And it appears that Anoch is dedicated to giving all of this the support it deserves. Give this one a try.

The Verdict: B+

Publisher: Anoch Game Systems, Inc.
Category: Fantasy Premium Card Game
Release: August 2000
Format: 78 card Basic Deck; 78 card Power Deck
Suggested Retail: $19.99

In response to the rise of collectible card games, Mystick: Domination was experimenting with a form factor that Fantasy Flight Games would later call a Living Card Game (LCG). Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite perfected here: The Basic Deck and Power Deck were basically indistinguishable from each other on store shelves and, as noted in the review, if you only bought the Basic Deck, the game wasn’t terribly good.

(In point of fact, it turns out the designer of this game — Eric Lang — a bunch of LCGs for FFG.)

This review was originally written for someone other than RPGNet, but I have no memory of who that might have been. Since I have no record of its publication elsewhere, it must have either been rejected or the magazine it was intended for went out of business before printing it. Either way, I salvaged the piece by publishing it on RPGNet. And now, many years later, I’m salvaging it once again.

I debated whether to actually post this review: It’s for a fairly obscure game that’s long out of print. But the whole goal is to archive all of these older reviews, and I also have a lot of fond memories of this game. So if it encourages even one person to maybe go grab a used copy off eBay, it’ll probably be worth it.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.