You can purchase the Mothership 1e Core Set here.
You can purchase Dead Planet here.
You can read the rules for solo and wardenless play in Mothership 1e here.
With the release of the trailer for Alien: Romulus, a game like Mothership 1e will likely get a new wave of attention. Like the film that originated that franchise, Mothership is a science fiction horror system where players are a starship’s crew in a dystopic future. They encounter horrific supernatural phenomena that they cannot defeat, so escape and survival are the only options on the table. There are many warnings in the game materials that this is the type of game where extreme horror can happen, but that is fine-tuned based on the table you are playing at. This isn’t a game where you get attached to your character and get precious about them.
The Core Set consists of four zine-like books: The Player’s Survival Guide, Warden’s Operations Manual, Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, and Unconfirmed Contact Reports. The first gives the players all the details they need to create a character and play them, the second is for GMs to build scenarios, the third breaks down the information on the ship types, and the last one is a monster manual broadly drawing descriptions of all sorts of horrific entities to be encountered in the void. The book’s layout is extremely well designed, with lots of diagrams and flowcharts to help the players understand how each aspect of the game works.
Characters have four Stats: Strength, Speed, Intellect, and Combat. Stat checks operate on a d100 basis, where the player must roll under the number listed. With the average Stat being around 36, you can see how, more often than not, your characters will be fucking up, which makes sense as they are up against things beyond their understanding.
There are also three Saves you must roll in the proper context. These are Sanity, Fear, and Body. Sanity is related to confronting things that stretch your understanding of the universe or push against your logic. Fear is related to emotional surges like loneliness, depression, or others that might come up. Body is about your reflexes and ability to withstand things. Your Stats are used offensively, while Saves are defensive scores. Sometimes conditions come with [+] or [-] representing rolling at an advantage or disadvantage. You roll twice and either take the best or worst of the two rolls. Rolling doubles is a critical success or failure, depending on how that roll measures up to your score.
Players also have some skills they are formally trained in, ranked as Trained, Expert, and Master, each providing a bonus to the Stat you are rolling ranging from +10 to +20. For example, if you are a Marine, you get Military Training by default, so if you are using combat maneuvers you learned in the service as you work to corral the xenomorph into the cargo bay, you might roll against your Combat Stat and +10 for Military Training. If the d100 roll beats that number, then you have succeeded. If you roll under that number, your efforts to get the intruder on your ship near the airlock have failed. Perhaps they’ve scrambled deeper into the ship’s guts, or maybe they outmaneuver you and your Marine is the one being pushed back into the cargo hold.
Every time you fail a Stat check or Save, you gain 1 Stress. There are also Panic Checks triggered by Critical Failure. The Warden can also call on the players to roll a Panic Check if the scene’s context warrants it. If you watch a crewmate die or you encounter the entity face to face for the first time, you should likely roll a Panic Check. That roll is 1d20 against your current Stress total. With Stress starting by default at 2, you can see how quickly it can get out of control if things get dicey.
Rolling less than or equal to your Stress forces the player to roll on the Panic Table and take a debilitating condition that adds new rules to that player, like rolling a Fear Save anytime they engage in violence or All Critical Successes becoming Critical Failures. If Stress ever reaches 20 and an action results in you taking on more Stress, you must subtract that amount from the Stat you were engaged with instead. You can see why Stress management is a critical feature of the game and how spiraling out of control creates that panicky atmosphere that makes the horror of Aliens films and their kin so much fun.
The game has four classes: Marine, Android, Scientist, and Teamster. Each comes with thematically appropriate tweaks to Stats, Skills, and Saves. The Scientist gets more Intellect and Sanity, while The Marine scores more substantially in Combat, Body, and Fear. Each Class has their own Loadout table to roll on, giving them a uniform/armor, a weapon, and a couple of other items you might expect someone like them to carry.
While characters are built individually, the ship is a collective creation with its own sheet. The Shipbreaker’s Toolkit has multiple ship types, from crudely constructed raiders to sleek combat-ready military ships to massive cargo-rich freighters. Ship’s scores come in the form of Thrusters, Battle, and Systems representing movement, combat, and internal operations. Mothership emphasizes a slightly more realistic mode of movement in space, spending time explaining the three ranges – Detection (3+ months away), Firing (21+ days away), and Contact (3+ hours away). Evasion costs Fuel from your ship in predetermined amounts based on range. However, if you are Pursuing this is a mini-game – the players choose how much they want to spend in secret as the Warden does the same for the opponent. Fuel amounts are revealed, and the highest amount wins.
There are several more rules and details, but Mothership also emphasizes crafting as many house rules as you feel comfortable. Because of that, the system provides just enough of a skeletal framework without being too rules lawyer-y about things. Where things really shined for me was the fantastic Warden’s Operation Manual, which has some tremendous scenario construction tools. Wardens choose a starting scenario as simple as salvaging a derelict or transporting a mysterious cargo. The game uses the TOMBS cycle method (Transgression, Omens, Manifestation, Banishment, Slumber). A table on the inside front cover provides elements for each with just a few roles.
From there, you determine your three Ss – what you will Survive, what you will Solve, and what you are Saving. Survival is all of the physical and psychological things you will endure. Solving ensures you have some non-supernatural obstacles to overcome, like a broken lift or the ship’s oxygen systems shutting down. Who you will Save helps build relationships with either allies or enemies. In a film like James Cameron’s Aliens, social relationships are just as precarious as xenomorphs. Maybe someone among your crew is trying to bring this horror back for the corporation’s sake. Maybe your best friend is infected, and you have to make some tough choices about whether to provide them with a mercy killing or seek a cure for the condition. In just a few rolls, you can have the framework of a fantastic night or two of gameplay.
For solo play, I chose to use the Mythic GM Emulator 2e and the Advanced Rules advice on leveraging the rules for Contractors. These are like Hirelings in a dungeon crawling game, and in a typical Mothership situation, they are NPCs controlled by the player who hired them. In this situation, the Advanced Rules provide structure for creating Reaction tables so that when you encounter a crewmate in solo, you can have an unexpected reaction. As for Mythic, I really leaned into Fate Questions and Keyed Scenes for this playthrough, as they helped keep me surprised and provided a well-paced structure. I also employed the supplement Dead Planet for its incredible derelict creation rules, but more on that when we get there.
I decided to set my Mothership game in the same science fiction universe as I’ve been playing with Starforged and, more recently, Sundered Isles. This will occur in the last region I’d written up but never played in – CorpSec. Inspired by Alien, Blade Runner, Akira, Starship Troopers, and other associated media, this is a world of corporate dominance. In my lore, the humans that would found the United Planetary Alliance (reskinned Star Trek) are descended from this place. Their ancestors boarded massive ark ships and went into cryosleep once they realized the corrupt nature of the interplanetary society they lived in. Those ships disappeared over a thousand years ago and have never been heard from. The people of CorpSec assumed they just died.
A faster-than-light driver is an expensive commodity here, and only the most vital corporate ships are equipped with them. They are limited in range and can’t make the more significant jumps between the colonies and the Terran System. That is made possible by the three gargantuan jump gates – Neumarkt (Terran System), Minnesang (Outer or Bug Colonies), and Tannhauser (Ridge or Mining Colonies). The story I’m playing with Mothership is set in the Ridge Colonies, where the Woong-Yarbury Corporation monopolizes every operation. They came from a merger between Yarbury Technologies in NorthAm and the Woong Conglomerate out of the SinoEuropean continent.
The Ridge Colonies are a dark, quiet, and creepy place. Few planets are naturally home to organic life. The colonists helped terraform several worlds, but that was a costly endeavor. Most colonies are plopped onto bleak, lifeless rocks and told to keep the minerals and ores coming. Freighters crisscross the Ridge Colonies carrying these rare metals, which are processed and used in every type of manufacturing. Many horror stories have emerged from this vast, dark corner of space, especially about monstrous creatures and bizarre entities. It’s mainly chalked up to the psychological effects of long-term space travel, so cryosleep is encouraged on exceptionally long journeys as a means to combat it.
My character is Jerome, an Android. He is the property/an employee of Woong-Yarbury and serves as a warrant officer aboard one of their sector patrol ships. These are privately employed law enforcement meant to stop and seize cargo from mining freighters operating illegally in the Ridge. Jerome has been programmed and built with several features to combat the unease of his human crewmates while working alongside an android. Their entire psych profiles are uploaded into his hard drive, where complex software builds algorithms on how to productively interact with them. His lab-grown skin is fitted with millions of microscopic tubes that take in atmospheric moisture, mix with chemicals installed in him, and produce something approximating the perspiration and oils you would find on human skin. So, if you shake Jerome’s hand it feels like shaking a human human hand.
Jerome is working with a skeleton crew of two others in the Nal Seeta sector – Lowry (the pilot) and Kent (the engineer). Typically, a patrol ship would have eight crew, but it’s the winter solstice holidays back in the Terran System. Most people can’t afford the journey back to Terra, so they celebrate in the cold, distant outposts in the Colonies. Lowry never married, spending his entire young adult life in the service of the Corps until retirement, and transitioned into corpcop patrols. Kent ran away from home as a kid, and they never looked back. Jerome, of course, doesn’t feel the need to celebrate holidays.
The patrol ship picks up a distress ping from a mining freighter about three days away. It’s a TL9C Platypus registered to the Valecore Corporation. They are widely known as a mining corporation specializing in industrial metals, of which the Ridge Colonies have a plethora. There are valid contracts between Valecore and Woong-Yarbury that allow the former company to mine in select regions. The freighter won’t respond to radio calls from the patrol ship, which is odd. Jerome has Lowry set a course to meet up with them. If anything, the corporation can receive a cut of the cargo onboard per the Commerce Treaties of XX34. What is onboard that ship and the problems that will arise will be covered in our next session of this fun and horrifying game.
PopCult Reviews 
One thought on “Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Mothership 1e Part One”