A starfield filled with thousands of stars and shining clouds of dust. The Milky Way\u2019s elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Spanning more than 100,000 light-years, Earth is located along one of the galaxy\u2019s spiral arms, about halfway from the center. Credit: NASA

OH. MY. GOD.

THIS IS THE MILKY WAY SHOT BY THE ARTEMIS II CREW. LOOK AT ALL THOSE STARS!!!!

Crazy and totally unpopular opinion:

Corporations formed to perform the duties of various apparatus of state are self interested above any other interest and it is citizens of that state that suffer.

This post brought to you by my frustration with my water company. That is actually 5 companies.

That’s definitely an idea I like.

Death Pays All Debts showed up a minute ago now and I might be able to tie into what I plan for Gradient Descent.

If they had fun then I’d call that a win.

A piece of advice I heard for horror games was that it’s really hard at the table to display horror but tension is much easier. So you might have more people make it out but how challenging was that survive/save side of things?

Definitely one I had not considered! I’ll add it to the list to take a look at.

Coming soon: Dying Hard on Hardlight Station: Anthology Edition Return to Hardlight Station in this hardback Mothership RPG anthology, featuring expanded locations and new adventures in Sector 1365.

Hardlight Station is back…with a Vengeance!
200+ pages of corporate intrigue and survival horror for @mothership.bsky.social lands on Kickstarter March 3rd.

Click below for the launch trailer and get notified the moment we go live!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/mag...

Does anyone have any ideas on good modules to run as preludes for Gradient Descent? I am looking at running some players through separate stories before bringing them together for a run on Cloudbank. Got some ideas but hoped to crowdsource.

#rpg #ttrpg #mothership #mothershiprpg

This was such a touchstone of my childhood. I rented the first one and went into a Game Stop to buy it after the rental period was over. The second one had just come out and I was asked if I wanted it instead. It became one of those games I was always playing for the next few years.

So I hope both of these parts were a fun read! We tried to set it up for a sequel one-shot of bounty hunting and salvaging or maybe a campaign kick-off.

I definitely want to try running the full thing sometime.

The story would end with both Nyx and Duffie on their ship having ran back after their suits got punctured by the almost zombie like Echo Bloom which would pursue.

Infected and adrift their only hope would be to make it back to civilization unaware of the bounty being placed on them...

Nyx and Duffie would run at that point. Duffie would jury rig the shuttle systems to bypass the computer lockout on the autopilot and they would return to De Lange.

Duffie took his 9-iron back before getting on their ship, prompting the Echo Bloom that was Melvin to break free and attack.

In the end, everyone would parish.

Melvin, betrayed, would use the relay to inform Dyson that the party was sabotaging the mission and had betrayed him before becoming an Echo Bloom.

Mariana would lie to Eunha about helping over the radio and go into the maintenance tunnels unawarned of Knot.

So that's where we ended and I posed a question of continuing since we were essentially 3 out of an initial 5 because of actions taken. We ended up wrapping up with a narrative epilogue.

As they boarded the elevator, they started their descent. Questions on loyalties were forming like who Nyx was to have all these maps and codes but also while she was at the center of every conflict of trust. All while a small white flower peaked out from the black metal panels.

Duffie tried some random passwords, not having the code. Mariana had the codes and tried to play into their hacking skills to keep it a secret. Before they got a chance to, Nyx publicly identified they had the code and took over.

So returning to the shuttle, Mariana undid Denny's work and installed their own lockout code on the return. The thing is where Denny was working with Nyx, Mariana didn't trust anyone and shared the wrong passcode with everyone else. From there, they moved to the elevator.

The survivors then all started suffering false infections. The turned the communications consoles back on allowing connection from the labs to the relay fully and ultimately completing their job. Then they started making their way to the labs proper. But the lockout on the shuttle came to mind.

Dramatics aside the creature can't survive on the surface. It's too cold. Everyone is breaking though. Duffie came back and panicked, getting an adrenaline rush. He and Nyx followed the motile into the basement and shot first when they found it, realizing it was already dead as were the spiders.

I added a basement to the building to house a generator for the settlement which is where the motile crawled. Mariana got spurted with blood from Denny's death and Nyx returned with water just after and in time for his hand to release the Dyson Phytology branded stress ball which rolled to her feet.

So everyone came back and we went ahead.

Denny, ribcage twisted and pulled away like something out of The Thing, taking some of his upper spine and even his jaw with it before scurrying away using his ribs as legs with a flock of slick blood red spiders akin to daddy long legs.

The stage 4 infection had him failing his panic and body save killing him. This was noted via DM. We paused, took a bathroom break, and I spoke to him while the others were out to discuss how this would go down.

I worked out with Denny's player having him narrate the change in his death scene.

They attempted to apply some levels of first aide. Nyx shoved two fingers down his throat before pushing one of the anti-nausea medications into his mouth while Duffy looked around the building. Mariana stayed with Denny as Nyx went to go get water. That's when the timer rolled over on him.

Duffie drug Denny into Admin after Nyx shot the lock open and kicked the door. Mariana felt pain from their metal fingers pushing sanity and when Denny was dropped down and his suit opened, they found his ribcage reshaped and his organs moved. It was a beautiful time of organized horror.

Important to note here. When the second group landed, Denny locked the auto-return out with a passcode only he knew as the party's trust was breaking down and he didn't want to get stabbed in the back. Nyx knew but Duffie didn't.

The others met back up with Mariana between the Storage and Administration building with Mariana having retrieved the grease grass from the greenhouse. This was when everything started moving very quickly. The 3rd level progression happened with Duffie and the second level with Mariana.

Regarding Mariana, their inspiration was Cyborg ala Teen Titans. I had reviewed the art and elected to make their infection a false infection. On the planet they had enough time to poke around Japelene's Ache before the others could land but only was able to get into the Greenhouse.

I figured automatic controls meant a whole automated system and resolved that it was an hour long round trip. In the meantime, Denny's infection creeped up while he alone worked and the other two tried to rest - Unsuccessfully. Stress was starting to rack up.

Meanwhile Mariana gave the rest of the crew, now 4, a 5-minute window before they would initiate the shuttle launch and go down to the planet. Everyone was debating about a plan for the generator and the zero-g situation long enough that the shuttle launched with only Mariana on board.

Following our recap, no one had trusted Melvin. So they conspired to lock him in the maintenance bay of DeLange. It didn't take much effort, and they secured the airlock hatch door on the main side by jamming Duffie's 9-iron into the mechanism.

We had meant to run this sooner, but the player of Melvin was unable to join us for two scheduled days in a row. The first, we pivoted and I ran Year of the Rat. This time we pushed through with the idea that I could position him where he could catch up.

The crew had other plans however.