Crewmember Retirement and Roguelike Progression in Mothership

When the crew is in port, a player may decide to retire their current crewmember and start over at level 0. Here’s the rules:

• It has to be a friendly port. If everybody hates you, you can’t retire there.
• A retired crewmember is no longer playable, and instead becomes an NPC. Their money and Stress will affect the kind of life they lead as an NPC.
• Retirement does not necessarily mean ‘doing nothing for the rest of your life’, but instead adopting a safer, less risky lifestyle. For instance, a retired crewmember may settle down with a menial job and start a family.
• If the Warden brings back a retired crewmember you used to control as an NPC, you may discuss their role with the Warden to ensure they are acting in-character.
• If circumstances affecting a crewmember’s quality of life are not dealt with, they may cause a drastically less peaceful retirement. A crewmember being actively hunted down by foes would do well to deal with those foes before retiring, for example.
• A retired crewmember can come out of retirement at any time but they’ll be reset to level zero- they’ve gotten rusty.

A crewmember’s total amount of money upon retiring affects their lifestyle. If they have any outstanding debts, subtract them from their funds. If the crew holds their funds communally, a retiring crewmember must negotiate their percentage with the rest of the crew (or steal the money). Relevant storyline factors (very wealthy benefactors willing to help out, etc) can be included in the total money calculation at the Warden’s discretion.

• Negative 25+ mcr: Utterly wretched poverty, debtor’s prison, or even worse.
• Negative 10-24mcr: Poverty, or worse if the entity to whom they owe their debt is vindictive.
• 0 to negative 10mcr: Poor, but able to eke out an existence.
• 1cr to 999kcr: A comfortable life, if not a luxurious one.
• 1mcr to 499mcr: A comfortable life, able to afford an occasional extravagance.
• 500-999mcr: Able to afford a decadent lifestyle and finance large-scale personal projects of their choosing.
• Over 1000mcr: Filthy rich, enough to be considered a major, setting-wide power.

This being Mothership, it’s far easier to fall into poverty than to get rich.

A crewmember’s Stress upon retiring affects their overall state of mind during their retirement. It's totally fine to reduce Stress right before retiring, but large-scale Stress reduction can be expensive.

• 0: Optimistic and at peace with their lot in life. Things generally tend to work out well for them.
• 1-5: Well-adjusted and able to put the horrors they’ve faced behind them.
• 6-10: A bit jumpy, tends to be distrustful, but not so bad that it gets in the way of day-to-day life.
• 11-15: On the bad days, they can’t stop thinking of the things they’ve seen. On good days, they can put it out of their mind.
• 16-20: Haunted by the past. Never quite at ease. Probably keeps has a weapon close at hand at all times.
• Over 20: Completely traumatized. Difficulty reintegrating into civilian life. Constant nightmares, intense paranoia.

After retiring a crewmember, a player may take ONE of these boons when creating their new crewmember (some may require the player to have an in-story explanation):

• One unique piece of gear from the retired crewmember.
• One skill of any level that the retired crewmember had.
• One-quarter of the amount of funds the retired crewmember ended up with (this takes those funds away from the retired crewmember).
• One stat that the retired crewmember had, or reroll any one stat during character creation.

If the retired crewmember had negative funds or over 20 stress, the new crewmember doesn’t get a boon. If the retired crewmember had over 500mcr AND zero stress, the new crewmember may choose two boons.

EDIT:

I’ve decided to rework how the boons are assigned. Here are a few principles I’m keeping in mind while doing it:

1. The boons should reward a skilled player for retiring a character.
2. The boons should take into account a character’s funds, stress, and level upon retirement.
3. The system for assigning boons needs to be simple because actually retiring a character is rare- most die instead. A game system players rarely interact with should be lightweight.
4. You should roll a die at some point during the retirement process because rolling dice is fun.

So here’s what I’ve come up with:

Roll Xd10, where X is the retiring character’s level, and compare it to the Retirement table. Yes, this means that retiring a level-0 character is pointless. If the character’s total money is negative or their Stress is over 20, roll [-]. If their total money is over 500 mcr or their Stress is 0, roll [+].

1-5	No boons.
6-20	New character gets to choose between getting 1/8 of the retiring character’s funds, one piece of their gear, or one of their Trained skills.
21-45	Choose between getting ¼ of the retiring character’s funds, two pieces of their gear, or any one of their skills.
46-60	Choose two: getting ¼ of the retiring character’s funds, two pieces of their gear, or any one of their skills.

Mothership Space Station in an Hour and a Half

Today I decided to make a space station for my Mothership game, using the random tables in the published module A Pound of Flesh. This post has my stream-of-consciousness hour-and-a-half-long design process and a fully detailed space station at the end- feel free to use it in your own game! First I rolled up some basic info about my station, which took about five minutes….

"Out on the rim, near an uninhabitable desert planet, the Marut’s Sword station (call-sign Control-82) spins. It’s outwardly controlled by The Apostles Gate Church, though is subtly undermined by Armadyne Weapons, Inc., led by a renegade android. There’s a 20% chance the station is dealing with a refugee crisis, otherwise everything is fine and you can buy fuel as per normal, but they are currently only offering warp cores for sale and there’s a rumor going around that the station is in dire need of out-of-work scientists.

It’s a tower- a station with an angular or blocky design, like a skyscraper flung into space. It’s got low security, so there’s plenty of thieving and skullduggery and so forth.

The Marut’s Sword has eight significant locations:

1. Defensive Weaponry

2. Cellarium

3. School/Training Facilities

4. Ore Trade/refinery

5. Food Court

6. Ablution fountains

7. Massive statue

8. Weapons Fabrication"

IMO, I could stop here and run the rest off basic sci-fi tropes and a few details of my own setting, and still have a unique, memorable space station. But I like to put my own spin on things, so I’ll spend a little bit of time fleshing out the Marut’s Sword as a fully-fledged adventure site.

The First Mission to the Andromeda Luxury Resort and Spa

I’m working on a third-party Mothership pamphlet module and had a great playest last wekk; we’re going to continue the adventure with this group, and I also plan to playtest with another group as well.

The level-zero crew consisted of:

@Volkovy, playing "Dog" Fairbanks, an ex-construction teamster.

@Burrbank playing Lana Zephyr, Marine. Top of their class but new to field work.

@Face_Fisted playing Dent, a vat-grown droid with strange eyes like Riddick.

The introductory text I provided them with, in full:

“You're a group of guns-for-hire who’ve fallen in with a small organized crime group, the Rivo Alto Syndicate. The Syndicate’s bosses and their bodyguards were at the Andromeda Luxury Resort and Spa for some low-risk negotiations yesterday when all communications between the resort and the outside world ceased. 

Your job is to go to the Resort, find the Rivo Alto bosses, and get them to safety if necessary. The monetary reward offered by the remaining Syndicate leadership is substantial, and should you happen across any of the legendarily decadent Resort’s stores of wealth, they don’t mind if you grab a few souvenirs. They’ve provided you with a ship- a 55-hull version of the Hunter from the PSG- and fine clothes to blend in at the Resort in addition to your usual loadout gear.

According to your mission briefing, the Resort is the only settlement on a small tropical moon called Calle-8. Its atmosphere is toxic but the Resort is contained within a climate-controlled geode with breathable air. You’ve been given a map based on the Resort’s own promotional materials, and datafiles on the missing Syndicate members so you’ll be able to recognize them.

Randomly roll up your stats, trinket and patch, pick out a class, skills and loadout, and prepare for your arrival on Calle-8, where your mission awaits you….”

The map I gave the players.

The crew approach Calle-8 (somewhat amused along the way by the automated piloting software’s goofy graphics), noticing that oddly enough, no security scans sweep their ship as they enter the semi-permeable geodome around the Resort. From far above they spot patches of red on the white pool deck, and don’t see anybody outside on the ground.

Dent runs some scans, determining that the geodome’s security scanners are down and that the only lifeforms in the area are humans and androids- though in the middle of the resort there’s a tiny but unexplained amount of radiation, although not enough to be harmful. Meanwhile, Lana and Dog prep for their landing; they’ve decided to land at Staffing’s cargo dock in the hopes that they’ll be able to use tools from Security or Admin to track their bosses down.

They land, logged by an automated computer terminal, and Dog scans local comms channels as the crew leaves the ship. He finds two separate encrypted channels-one is Rivo Alto, the other isn't immediately identifiable. Also, it seems that no comms have been sent on any channel since yesterday. Dent fails to hack into the mystery channel and instead alerts its owners of the hacking attempt.

As they all step offboard, they hear a faint, metallic voice from inside a nearby shipping container, big enough to walk into. It calls for help and beeps out an SOS. Everyone’s SMGs at the ready, Dog aims his flashlight into the jumbled shipping container, seeing a humanoid figure behind crates of rare fruits. Asked to identify itself, the figure claims to have been scavenged for parts (having its memory cores taken and its leg disabled), so it has no memory and can’t move. The distrustful crew toss a roll of gauze into the shipping crate, shut it, and move on. civilians. Dent tells it they’ll return, though.

They go towards the Admin entrance to the main utility building but find a group of five tall, poised people wearing white caftans and holding guns standing around the door, not speaking or moving. Before getting close enough to alert them, the crew instead decide to enter Security through the main entrance so they can find their extraction target. 

Upon entrance, a side door leads to 'SECURITY' and a main hallway to 'DROID RECHARGE HABS'; Dent quickly scans and determines that the building is full of droids. Footsteps approach from the Security hallway- Lana gets into a diagonal firing position, Dent takes cover with his SMG and Dog hides behind the corner of the hallway with his vibechete ready.

Two more of those tall droids wearing white step out. Their expressions are blank. Lana tells them to put their hands up, although they appear unarmed; the one in front sneers and informs the crew that something called ‘Flagler’, which controls them to some extent and helps humans run the resort, sends its regards and hopes they are enjoying the resort. They claim to pose no threat, suggest Lana and Dog drop their weapons and go relax at the spa, and tell Dent to get back to work and stop hanging around humans.

An illustration of the encounter. Credit: https://uncannyspheres.blogspot.com/

Dent tells the droids that they’d better put their hands up like Lana said, they don’t, and one pulls out a transmitter. Dog jumps out and chops its arm off. Dent snatches the transmitter and finding that it’s already broadcasting its location to other transmitters all over the Resort, so he smashes it. The unharmed droid retreats down the Security hallway but the injured one starts spouting wellness jargon, suggesting that a back massage would be helpful for such violent, unsettled people. 

The crew hear backup approaching from the Habs, so they push past the injured droid towards Security. They come to a locked door with a keycard reader, and peer through the door’s window to see see a large room full of monitors with security feeds- oddly, they seem to be taken from moving cameras at eye-level.  As they watch, they see one of the cameras enter a luxurious hotel room. A mass of writhing tumors is inside, oozing blood all over the floor. 

Dent suggests that the problem at the Resort is more than just a lack of staff, and although Lana fails to kick the door down, they draw the attention of three armed droids in Security in the process, who open the door to confront the crew. Pressed up against the wall to hide, they manage to shoot one’s arm mostly off as the droids come through the door. 

In unison, the three of them say, "Flagler doesn't want it to have to come to this. Guests aren't allowed in this area." The droids ones prepare to attack, but acting fast, Dent shoots another one’s arm off. One hits Dent with a stun baton but he crits on his Body save to avoid paralysis, so instead, it revitalizes him and gives him [+] on his next roll. Continuing their tried-and-true strategy of blasting their arms off, the party manage to fend off the droids, who retreat 

further into Security.

Dog watches the screens some more to look for the bosses. He sees that a corpse resembling one of them is slumped over in the Bar but gets stressed out by seeing all those awful tumorous lumps. 

Lana decides to hack in and sync the security feeds to their HUD so they can view them at any time. They notice a feed where one of the cameras exits a normal, elegant elevator, and steps out into a glitchy void. Lana looks closer into the security footage and notices that each individual viewpoint is labeled from an origin following the template 'EMPLOYEE #XXX'. They continue flipping through the nightmarish feeds, trying to find the guy in the shipping crate. Meanwhile, Dent searches the records and finds a digital log of guest IDs and their room numbers, but no info as to who each ID refers to. And Dog wants to get back to the ship, fire off a flare to alert any surviving Rivo Alto bosses to get over there quickly, and get out of this creepy place.

And with that, our session ended. We’re going to continue soon. I’ve already learned a lot from this first playtest session that I’ll use to refine my adventure further.

Failed Careers for Mothership

Recently over in the Mothership discord I shared a pdf that details some interesting spects of my Mothership campaign setting, as well as my d100 failed careers table. 

Roll 1d100 during character creation for a failed career, most of which are affiliated with various galaxy-wide factions. When leveraging expertise from this career to aid a skill check, a crewmember may add +5% to their roll. This is enough to make the player feel that the background is meaningful, but not enough that it is actually very helpful (these are failed careers, they can’t have been very good at them). The careers failed so catastrophically that a crewmember would be unable to return to that line of work and retains no friendly contacts or resources from it; in fact they may have enemies.

I use these debt rules and start my players off with nothing but their ship, trinkets and starting loadouts; adjust accordingly based on the starting circumstances for your own players.

Upon starting the game, the crew are in a terrible situation. They have a used starship that’s ready to fall apart, but otherwise they’re flat broke. The crew have a Debt rating equal to the ship’s hull, owed to an agent of one of the following factions:

The Interplanetary League. Official, chrome-and-gray, repressive. Ideals are Law & Order, Peace Via Surveillance and Good Old-Fashioned Values. All-powerful in the hubward systems, nearly nonexistent in the furthest rimward reaches. Rife with corruption, bends to the will of Imperial-Class Corporate Interests but does not tolerate outright threats. Publicly wants to eliminate Organized Crime Syndicates but too deeply blackmailed to try anything. Bankrolls Jumpgate Hyperspace Cults but also keeps tabs on them to prevent insurrection.

Imperial-Class Corporate Interests. Corporations so old and established that they have become the empires of the future; beautiful androids carry CEOs on palanquins and directorial boards act as a royal court aboard palatial space stations. Quietly in control of the Interplanetary League. Unbearable bloodlust towards Organized Crime Syndicates. Want to infiltrate and take control of the Jumpgate Hyperspace Cults.

Organized Crime Syndicates. Mobsters, gangs, cartels. The expansion of humanity to beyond the stars has provided a ‘shadow government’ of loosely-defined organized crime groups to seize power in the galaxy’s rimward systems. Constant infighting and regime changes but most rule fairly to prevent population uprisings. Reams of blackmail on the Interplanetary League, quiet alliance with Jumpgate Hyperspace Cults, total warfare against Imperial-Class Corporate Interests.

Jumpgate Hyperspace Cults. Thruster-based space travel is slow and jump drives are unpredictable and finicky. Jumpgates, massive spaceborne docks that allow for transportation from one gate to another, are near-instantaneous and reliable, but acquiring a license to travel through them from the Interplanetary League is incredibly expensive. They are constructed through proprietary methods and maintained by star-touched cultists whose prophets induce madness by entering jumpgates without cryostasis, though for practical purposes the cults employ many nonbelievers. Protected and bankrolled by the Interplanetary League, under constant threat of replacement by Imperial-Class Corporate Interests, often offered under-the-table protection in exchange for forged licenses by Organized Crime Syndicates.

The crew may choose which faction they owe their debt to; all are equally ruthless in ensuring payment.