The adventure support for Mothership is out of this world.

(Pun intended.)

Mothership is a sci-fi horror RPG, inspired by films like Alien, The Thing, Annihilation, and Event Horizon. It takes a lot of inspiration from the Old School Renaissance, but it also pulls in a lot of new-fangled ideas from games like Apocalypse World.  The result is a fast-paced, high-octane system that can somehow support both high body count slaughterfests and deep, long-term campaign play.

What I want to focus on right now are the plethora of trifold modules available for Mothership. Each of these is just two pages long – printed on two sides of a single sheet of paper and designed to fold up into a trifold pamphlet.

These are similar to One Page Dungeons and Monte Cook Games’ Instant Adventures. The intention is that the GM can grab one of these, read through it in just ten to fifteen minutes, and then immediately run it. They make it so that playing an RPG can be a spur-of-the-moment decision, no different than grabbing a board game.

And Mothership is an ideal game for this type of adventure support because character creation is lightning fast. You can take a group of complete newbies, teach them the rules, and have them roll up their characters in ten minutes or less.

Whether you’re looking for something to on a rainy day; need a pickup session because a player canceled at the last minute; or just burned out on elaborate campaign prep and looking for something simple to run, these trifold adventures are a godsend.

This review is going to cover all of the first-party trifold adventures released by Tuesday Knight Games. Most or all of these exist in two forms: A 0E version designed for use with the original, “pre-release” version of Mothership, and an updated 1E version compatible with the boxed set. (I’m reviewing the current 1E versions.) Each is available in both PDF and physical formats.

Before we get started, let me share a couple of notes on potential biases here.

First, I got my copies of these adventures as a backer of the Mothership Kickstarter campaign. So I paid for them, but they did kind of feel like cool bonus content. With that being said, I will be trying to judge them with an eye towards what it would cost for you to buy them ($5).

Second, I’m planning to run Mothership as an open table. The primary reason for this is because the trifold adventures are so ideal for an open table – just grab one and run it for whatever group shows up each night – but it does mean that as I’m reading, evaluating, prepping, and running them, I’m definitely thinking about how they can fit into that open table.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

CHROMATIC TRANSFERENCE

Our first adventure, Chromatic Transference, is a riff on H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space,” but venue-shifted to an abandoned secret laboratory built inside an asteroid.

I’m a big fan of “The Colour Out of Space” (see my own The Many Colours Out of Space), so this is right up my alley. Reece Carter makes the most of their material, presenting a delightfully creepy nine-room location crawl coupled to an excellent treatment of the strange colour and its mind-rending / body-altering effects. (It’s notably well-integrated with the mechanics of Mothership and also gives the GM excellent support for responding to PCs attempting a scientific inquiry into the colour.)

The only real weak point of Chromatic Transference is that it’s lacking any kind of scenario hook. Given the strong, iconic nature of the premise, though, you shouldn’t find it terribly difficult to brainstorm some options:

• The PCs are hired by the Corporation. They recently bought out a smaller company and, while sorting through the assets, discovered records of an abandoned research base. They’d like the PCs to go check it out. (Maybe accompanied by a corporate assessor?)
• The ship’s sensors detect the dormant docking bay of the asteroid base while the PCs are on a cargo run… do they want to go check it out?
• While sorting through a mass of data they pulled out of Aerodyne’s computers, they stumble across references to the asteroid research facility.
• They’re trying to track down Dr. Everton, who’s been missing for several years. They finally find records indicating that he was sent to a top secret research facility built into an asteroid.

However you decide to use it, the quiet horror of Chromatic Transference makes it a perfect pace-change from blood-drenched bug hunts, while the high stakes risks of allowing the colour to escape the facility – which the PCs may only figure out after it’s too late – ensure that the adventure will be a memorable one.

GRADE: B+

CRYONAMBULISM

A microbial parasite has infected the ship’s cryopods, trapping the PCs in a nightmare-infused hypersleep.

Things begin with the PCs “waking up” at the “end” of their journey. The nightmare version of their ship that they end up exploring is very smartly presented in a modular system that makes it easy to swap out rooms on whatever ship the PCs might be traveling on.

The core gimmick of the adventure – by which the PCs “wake up” one sense at a time (so that, for example, their eyes might be seeing the real world while their ears are still hearing the nightmare; or vice versa) – is a brilliant twist, elevating the kaleidoscopic action to a whole new level. (While also proving a very unique challenge to actually run.) The melding of real world and nightmare world also keeps all of the PCs involved in the action.

Ian Yusem also does a good job of considering how android PCs fit into the scenario’s biological threat. (For a game where Android is one of the four core character classes, a surprising number of adventures just kind of blindly assume all of the PCs will be human.)

If you’re running a Mothership campaign, Cryonambulism is the perfect filler episode: Don’t have the next adventure prepped yet? Good news! As the PCs blast off to their next destination, you can just hit the pause button by having the nightmare parasite infect their hypersleep!

On the other hand, I’m a little more skeptical about using this adventure as a stand-alone one-shot. The setup for the adventure seems to work best if the players are a little disoriented and uncertain about what’s happening. (Did we actually arrive at the destination and our ship was bizarrely wrecked in transit? Or is something else going on here?) And a lot of the payoffs feel like they’ll land a lot better if the players are more familiar with (and personally attached to) their ship. As a stand-alone, I think it can still work; but I think it’ll also be a tougher sell.

GRADE: B-

HIDEO’S WORLD

Hideo K designed a video game console that lets you play video games in your dreams. Unable to mass produce it, Hideo hooked himself up to his prototype and put himself into a drug-induced coma where he could live in the game world he’d created forever. To wake Hideo up, the PCs will need to enter the game world themselves!

This adventure doesn’t do it for me.

For starters, the lack of a scenario hook really hurts here: No reason is given for why the PCs might be motivated to seek out a washed-up video game developer. And when you start thinking about the premise to gin up your own scenario hook, you quickly realize that there are a lot of unanswered questions. (For example, where is Hideo’s body?)

Unfortunately, once you’ve entered the game world, it doesn’t get better. Hideo is supposed to have been trapped in this world for years or decades, but, of course, in just two pages you can’t really describe a world with a scope that would sell that idea. Most of the module actually describes the game’s main menu, and the rest is a single tower with eight rooms which is apparently the entirety of the game world.

This also contributes to the game world just not being very interesting, which is kind of a death knell for this sort of adventure. There’s possibly a weak stab in the direction of satire and also a friendly wave in the direction of Inception’s dream world logic, but there’s a lack of a strong, coherent vision.

I should also mention that Hideo’s World also comes with an audio file representing the soundtrack of the virtual world.  This is okay, but has the pretty typical problem of many tabletop soundtracks of being too short: Do you really want to listen to three minutes and thirty seconds of video game menu music on a loop for a couple of hours?

GRADE: F

It occurs to me that you might be able to make a bit more sense of all this if you ditch the idea of Hideo being trapped for years and instead make the machine a prototype device whose code has been corrupted by Hideo’s subconscious mind. Then you could have his investors hire the PCs to go in and pull him out. Or, in a long-running campaign, you could even set things up by having Hideo pitch the idea to the PCs after a big pay day and try to get them to invest. That’s a lot of remixing for a two-page adventure, though.

Go to Part 2

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Chaos Lorebook: The Bloated Lords

Some among the zaug were transformed by the Galchutt and “turned to a new purpose”. As the zaug were made living receptacles for manifest corruption, the zaug soulharvesters became living prisoners for captured and tormented souls.

“Their very flesh burned with the fire of the souls which screamed within them.”

“Their hunger was without end, fed eternally by the torment of those who seared their flesh.”

This week’s campaign journal is The Bloated Lords, a lengthy chaos lorebook describing the zaug, one of the Servitors of the Galchutt.

In the Ptolus campaign setting, the Galchutt are lords of chaos and the Servitors of the Galchutt are demon-like creatures who, as their name suggests, serve them. Along with the strange arts of chaositech which are inimically tied to these entities, you can point to a goulash of antecedents Monte Cook is drawing from — Lovecraft, Moorcock, Warhammer, cenobites, etc. — but the result, particularly when blended into traditional D&D fantasy, is very distinct.

When I brought Ptolus into my own campaign world, however, the Galchutt posed a conundrum: I already had my own pantheon of Mythos-adjacent strange gods.

I thought about replacing the Galchutt with my own pantheon, but then I’d lose a lot of cool stuff. It would be a bunch of extra work for, at best, a neutral result.

Another option would have been to simply add the Galchutt to my pantheon: The more strange gods the merrier! For various reasons, though, they didn’t really sync. I’m a big fan of adaptation and reincorporation, but it’s not always a boon. Sometimes you shove stuff together and you’re left with less than what you started.

So what I eventually ended up doing was nestling the Galchutt into a lower echelon, as “Dukes” in the Demon Court. They brought with them the Dukes (powerful, demon-like entities) and the Elder Brood (demonic monsters who serve the Dukes). This worked really well, creating an unexpected bridge (Elder Brood → Dukes → Galchutt → Demon Court → even stranger depths of the pantheon) between the inexplicable and the mortal world. It’s a good example of how you can pull in influences from a lot of different places and gestalt them into something cool.

Another example of this was the Elder Brood: In the Chaositech sourcebook, only two examples of the Elder Brood are given (the obaan and the sscree). I knew I wanted more than that, so I hit up one of my favorite monster manuals: The Book of Fiends from Green Ronin. (Which also played a major role in my remix of Descent Into Avernus.) I pulled all the cool devils and demons from that book that had the right flavor for the Elder Brood and added them to the roster.

Along similar lines, the zaug — one of the Servitors and described in The Bloated Lords lorebook — were expanded in my campaign to include the Soulharvesters. These were adapted from solamiths, a monster described in Monster Manual V.

If I recall correctly, the specific sequence here was:

• I was looking for a miniature I could use for the zaug (since I knew that one would appear in the Mrathrach Machine).
• I found the solamith miniature and realized it belonged to a monster from Monster Manual V.
• I checked out the solamith write-up and realized thar it could be folded into the mythology of the zaug.

It’s been a while, though, so my sequencing on this may not be correct. (I may have found the solamith write-up first while scavenging monsters for the campaign and then tracked down the miniature from there.) In any case, it’s a technique I’ve used with monster manuals for a long time. It’s similar to The Campaign Stitch, but rather than melding adventures it takes monsters and asks: What if these are the same monster?

It’s kind of like palette shifting, but rather than taking one stat block and using it to model a multitude of creatures, this technique — let’s call it monster melding — takes a bunch of different stat blocks and brings them together.

Another example is that, in my personal campaign world, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, and ogres are all the same species. (Which, conveniently, gives me access to a much larger variety of stat blocks to plug-‘n-play with while stocking goblin villages.)

What I like about this technique — in addition to utilitarian stocking adventages — is that, much like gods and ventures, the melded monsters can often be more interesting than using the two separately. (For example, the implications of hypertrophic dimorphism in goblins raises all kinds of interesting worldbuilding questions and the soulharvesters, in my opinion, make zaug society much more interesting to explore.)

So ask yourself:

• What if these are the same creature with slightly divergent careers, abilities, etc.?
• What if these are the same creature at different stages of its life cycle?
• What if they live in some kind of symbiosis or parasitic relationship?

Bring these creatures together and see what you get!

Campaign Journal: Session 40C – Running the Campaign: Moral Dilemmas of Magic
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

THE BLOATED LORDS
(Chaos Lorebook)

They were the least of those that served. They were corruption given flesh; a corpulence of festering death and decay. Rebellious in spirit, yet forever bound to the power of their masters.

This tome describes the zaug – one of the “servitors of the Galchutt”. Physically the zaug were grossly obese humanoids with no hair. They had wide mouths full of teeth, claws for hands, and short horns on their heads. Some are described as possessing vestigial, rotting wings. A few passages describe their bodies as “corrupted receptacles”. Sores and oozing pus and bile covered their fat flesh. And much of their skin hung loose in rotting folds, pocked with holes from which intestines and other guts hung out – spurting vile fluids.

Several passages are given over to describing festering poisons and other vile alchemical substances that could be created from the “bile of the zaug”, although no true details of the required procedures are given.

The flesh of the zaug itself is ever-regenerating – allowing it to survive despite the diseases, poisons, and parasites that teem through its body. They are said to never eat or drink or breathe, and to speak only telepathically.

THE SOULHARVESTERS

Some among the zaug were transformed by the Galchutt and “turned to a new purpose”. As the zaug were made living receptacles for manifest corruption, the zaug soulharvesters became living prisoners for captured and tormented souls.

“Their very flesh burned with the fire of the souls which screamed within them.”

“Their hunger was without end, fed eternally by the torment of those who seared their flesh.”

Where the flesh of the zaug festered, the beruned and corpulent flesh of the soulharvesters was glistening and taut. And pressing out against the green-veined and pallid skin of their guts were the screaming faces of those imprisoned within them.

The “soulfire flesh” of the zaug soulharvesters is described as an immense, living power source.

THE LORE OF THE LATTER YEARS

And while their masters slept, the labors of the zaug were endless.

Later lore describes the zaug working with the “titans of the Purple City” in labors of “the technology of the taint” as they worked to “perfect the crafts gifted from beyond the Demonweb”.

Other passages refer to the zaug working in the laboratories of Ghul the Skull-King. “And their works turned to the binding and changing of the flesh, and the lesser races were turned into weapons of dark might.”

KASTRALATHAKASAL

And in the sleep of the Galchutt and the sealing of the Vaults of the Rhodintor, the zaug at last found their freedom. And in their caverns of the deep, their works turned inward.

Deep beneath the surface of the earth, it is said that Kastralathakasal – the City of the Zaug – “stands citadel upon the Throne of Darkness”. The city itself is described as a stronghold of alien metals and living, organic components.

Running the Campaign: All Your Zaug Belong to Us – Campaign Journal: Session 40C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Androids have a lot of advantages in Mothership, being functionally immune to a bunch of dangers that humans have to contend with.

So I thought it was only fair to level the playing field a bit…

PSEUDOMILK PARASITES

[W:1(3), Android Infestation: Body Save or 1d10 DMG/minute]

These opal-white flatworms have evolved to feed on the pseudomilk “blood” used by most androids and some supercomputer installations. They can notably infest android production lines, grinding synth factories to a halt.

They are, of course, also dangerous to individual androids, clotting their pumps and damaging their cybertronic systems (both directly and due to depriving them of pseudomilk).

In addition to individual androids, pseudomilk gestation pools, pseudomilk infusion bags, and the like, the parasites have evolved to embed themselves in synthflesh and plastic. They can also be found dormant in other liquids. This is particularly true of the parasite’s embryos, up to 40,000 of which of which may be found in a fertile proglottid.

They pose no known threat to humans.

Officials have now confirmed the reports of a massive outbreak of parasites among the pleasurebots on Pandora Station.

CUT TO—

Dr. Eberhaus: We’ve never seen anything like this. It appears that the Taenia lacsitienti on Pandora have evolved to infect human gonads with their larvae, allowing them to pass between android hosts via human sexual contact.

CUT TO—

It remains unclear what effect, if any, the worms may have on their human hosts, but those who may have been exposed — directly or indirectly — to the Pandora outbreak should schedule a medical scan as soon as possible.

LX-510 SuperNEWS Broadcast

Android Infestation: If an android touches a pseudomilk parasite, the worm will aggressively burrow into their skin with shocking speed. The android must succeed on a Body save [-] to prevent the worm from burrowing in, and must make an additional Body save once per minute or suffer 1D10 damage.

Treatment is difficult:

• Immediately amputating a limb has a 90% chance of stopping a burrowed parasite (-20% chance per round).
• Applying flame or acid to the wound may kill the worm, dealing 1 point of damage to the worm for every 3 points suffered by the android.

If the worm has burrowed deep, a cybernetic diagnostic scanner may be able to locate the worm, although extracting it without inflicting significant physical trauma will likely be difficult or impossible without proper treatment facilities.

An emergency exsanguination will disable the android and, if not carried out with proper equipment, carries a risk of significant damage (Body save or 3D10 DMG). But it can also force the worm to make a Body save or suffer 1D10 DMG. (Even if it survives, the worm will usually enter a dormant state and reduce damage checks to once per day, possibly allowing enough time for the android to be moved to a proper treatment facility.)

If an android has been infested by a worm for more than ten minutes, they must also make a Body save to determine if they have a larval exposure (see below).

Larval Exposure: When individual androids are exposed to parasitic larvae, for example,

• wading or bathing in contaminated liquids
• physically interfacing with an infested android/system
• using a contaminated synthflesh or plastic item
• wearing infested power armor or clothes

they must succeed on a Body save [-] or become infested, with 1D6-1 worms hatching 2D10 hours later and every hour thereafter. (Each additional worm after the first adds +1 damage per damage check.)

Risky Environments: Androids in risky environments — e.g., powering down in a parasite-infested facility — might have a 1 in 6 chance per hour of attracting the attention of a pseudomilk parasite.

Valpurna Cyberdoc: Bite marks identified on right calf. Source biological or synethetic?

Ettin 5: Synthetic. w0lf-XYα security pack.

Valpurna Cyberdoc: Initiating emergency parasitic scan.

Next: Pseudomilk Predators

Learn the fine art of getting everybody in the same room to play the game! We’ll talk about both types of schedules and attendance policies. And discover why Jessica just won’t let us play.

TYPES OF SCHEDULE

• Regular
• Ad Hoc
• Open Table

ATTENDANCE POLICY

• Mandatory
• Minimum Threshold

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