In the Mothership RPG, when your ship takes megadamage it advances along track where each point of megadamage also inflicts an additional effect, as described in the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, p. 35, and also on the ship manifest sheet:
00 All Systems Normal
01 Emergency Fuel Leak
02 Weapons Offline
03 Navigation Offline
04 Fire on Deck
05 Hull Beach
06 Life Support Systems Offline
07 Radiation Leak
08 Dead in the Water
09+ Abandon Ship!
Because you can suffer more than one point of megadamage per hit and you only apply the effect of the megadamage total you land on after, there is some variation within this system. But if you want to mix things up a bit more (so that, for example, you might suffer an emergency fuel leak after weapons go offline), you could deploy a basic megadamage pyramid:
You start on the top row and mark off boxes in a random order, once again only applying the last megadamage effect crossed off on each row.
Note: This pyramid is slightly less forgiving at the top end than the original rules, as it’s possible to hit Abandon Ship at 8 megadamage.
BRUTAL VARIANT: CAPRICIOUS FATE
Combat in the void is harsh and unforgiving, for this was a place that man was never meant to live or die.
In this brutal variant of the megadamage pyramid, each time a ship suffers megadamage roll the effect randomly:
If you roll an effect you’ve already rolled, it spills over to another effect on the same row. If all effects on the row are filled, then the effect rolls down to the next level of the pyramid.
While it’s possible for your ship to suffer catastrophic damage the very first time you’re hit in combat (Abandon Ship!), there is one glimmer of hope: On a roll of 00, you still suffer the megadamage, but it has no further effect.
Variant – Fast Escalation: If you roll an effect your ship is already suffering from, you instead sink down the pyramid to one of the two adjacent damage effects (determine which one randomly).
How timely – in an indirect way, this addresses one of the (very few) issues that Quinn’s Quest raised with Mothership a week ago.
Namely, he saw a discrepancy between how fragile ships are in the Shipbreaker’s Handbook, and a scenario which expected the PCs to crash land at the adventure site, then take off again later. Having only read the Player’s Survival Guide thusfar, it certainly looks to me like these systems would allow “only” one effect (such as Navigation Offline, or even Dead in the Water for the second one), meaning that if the players could repair that one thing, they’d be able to leave.
Of course, another thing which caught my ear in that review was his discussion of some really cool-sounding adventures, both from TNG and third party… I don’t suppose we dare to dream of The Alexandrian reviewing a few of those, as well?
“for example, weapons might go offline after there’s an emergency fuel leak)”
Don’t you mean before? Or am I reading it wrong? It also says “Hull Beach” on 05 in the list.
I like this but it seems a bit clunky, determine the effect randomly, so a d4, a d3 and flip a coin? It also seems a bit weird that weapons and nav are more exposed than the hull.
@Mike Hunt: First, “after” is correct because it’s highlighting how things might go *differently* from the original chart, in which weapons going online comes before the fuel leak and things are done sequentially so the order could not normally be reversed.
Second, “Hull Beach” is correct as long as the enemy is using a Sandification ray. :p
Third, the “randomness” in question seems more a question of GM whimsy than rolling differently-sized deciders for each row; it’s just that you choose a different order to count things off each time instead of progressing down a list in a linear fashion.
Fourth, weapons and (navigation) sensors being “more exposed” than the hull makes sense, because for them to function, the part of them *that sticks out beyond the hull’s protection* must be undamaged, but for a hull *breach* to occur, received damage must not just have affected the surface but pierced through entirely. That is: yes, in the sense of “exposure,” most of what gets hit is going to be hull. But in terms of the systems damage this system deals with, some systems are going to be more vulnerable to surface-level damage than the hull as a whole, so to speak.
@Confanity If you look at the chart, the weapons is already below fuel leak in order or amounts of mega damage, or is that not the original chart to which you’re referring?
I mean you don’t really need to state that you can do things differently, that’s already implicit, my point being that it’s not a very structured approach to say determine things randomly and then just leaving it vague, which is partially why I called it clunky. There ought to at least be an intended/recommended way of doing things, then if you instead want to play cow-bingo, go for it.
I agree about the exposed parts, but it seems like there ought to be degrees to that damage then, right now it’s as if the antenna gets damaged and the whole radio explodes. Like there’s no distinction between a sensor tied to weapons or navs being damaged and weapons and nav primary systems being damaged.
@Mike: Fixed!
This might help those wondering how to generate a random number!