First Impressions: Mothership 1e Deluxe Set

This is not a review. I have not played Mothership. I hope to soon. This post is simply my first impressions after reading the four core rulebooks included in the boxed set (Player's Survival Guide, Warden's Operation Manual, Shipbreaker's Toolkit, and Unconfirmed Contact Reports). After this, I hope to run some adventures (starting with those included in the deluxe set), review those, and then finally author a more informed review of the system as a whole.

Mothership is very popular right now. It caught my interest because everyone is talking about it. They often review Mothership modules on Between Two Cairns. I went to PAX Unplugged and 90% of the non-boardgame and non-D&D stuff were module-zines "compatible with Mörk Borg/Mothership". I already had Mörk Borg (and perhaps will write about that some other time), so I decided to check out Mothership next.

I got the Deluxe Set for Christmas and, speaking purely of aesthetics, it's awesome. The box looks cool. The Warden's screen is the kind of overwhelming presentation of raw information that it should be. It comes with a double-sided poster map thing (which, admittedly, I have no idea how I'm supposed to use, if at all) and little cardboard standup miniatures with cool character and monster art. The box itself (the "Warden Containment System") is a great place to roll dice.

And the books are great. The black and white aesthetic of the rulebooks alongside the neon of the modules is eye-catching. I love that I can carry all eight booklets around with me in a little stack that fits in one hand. I was so excited to open this box, spread everything out on my table, take a picture, and share it online. 

The game's presentation at a very superficial level can draw new players in. D&D gets new players based on name recognition, ignorance about the alternatives, and mistaken assumptions that it's the best place to start. D&D books do not look cool. The majority of Mothership zines I've seen do.

Player's Survival Guide

In case it isn't obvious, this is Mothership's PHB. It's pretty good!

I love that it begins with an explanation of the character sheet and step-by-step instructions for randomly generating a character. I've written before about how I favor random character creation. In a game that my friends and I have already played to death, like D&D, I find it helps veteran players break out of their comfort zones and try out different types of characters.

However, I favor random character creation even when playing D&D with new players. It makes character creation a game, and eases the burden of learning every character option and then weighing those options against the game's rules to make "optimal" decisions. With random character creation, new players can focus on the fun of discovering who their character is, and worry about learning the rules and how they affect that character later. This is a great way to introduce players to a new game.

Mothership even has randomized equipment loadouts based on the character's class, which is great, because starting a new game by going shopping is a great way to kill the momentum.

The classes (Marine, Android, Scientist, and Teamster) are thematic and unique to the system and the genre of fiction the game is attempting to emulate. I do wonder if there's enough there to distinguish the Android from the Scientist. 

Several reviews of Mothership have pointed out that it isn't super clear what exactly Androids are or how they differ from humans (aside from not needing to breathe). My assumption is that they're most similar to Alien's synthetics. I imagine they can do all sorts of things a human can't which aren't accounted for in the game's rules. I anticipate that being a source of difficulty in play.

Aside from bonuses to stats and Saves and Wounds, classes are distinguished by their Trauma Response, which is a neat mechanic that again enforces the theme and the game's genre lineage. Marines make their allies afraid when they panic. Androids make people uneasy just by being around them. Scientists make people stressed when they lose it. Teamsters are less likely to panic. 

One thing that's strange is that Mothership's character creation process gives no insight to the character's personality. I'm sure the assumption is that creative players can come up with that sort of thing on their own, which is fair. But players new to RPGs may need some help getting into the headspace of someone other than themselves. And as I've already said, even new players can sometimes benefit from prompts that might encourage them to play a different kind of character than is typical for them.

I'm kind of shocked that the Deluxe Set doesn't include character sheets. The character sheet is really cool. It's available as a free download on Tuesday Knight Games' website. But I don't have a printer. I work from home. It would be sweet if the set had included at least four blank character sheets with which to get started. 

Luckily, there's the Mothership Companion, a free character creation app that has some other add-ons for things like ships. This is great because it includes descriptions of skills and equipment, which eliminates the need for new players to constantly reference the Survival Guide to find out what these things do. One can also use it to shop for new equipment, which means multiple players can do that during downtime without the need to share the one booklet.

The game's core mechanics revolve around Stat Checks, Saves, Stress, and Panic. 

Stress is weird. It accumulates each time a character fails a Stat Check or Save, but it can also be handed out automatically by the Warden, which seems to sometimes require a Fear Save but sometimes doesn't. Stress is relieved by resting in a safe place and making a special Rest Save using the character's worst Save. A character has Advantage on the Save if they have sex, drink or use drugs, pray, etc.

I'm a bit confused by resting. Mothership is a sci-fi horror RPG. In my experience with the genre, the protagonists don't usually rest once things start to get stressful. Horror is often defined by urgency. Perhaps resting is meant to be done in between scenarios, when the characters don't have time or money to take Shore Leave? (The prospect of an ongoing Mothership campaign is a separate concern I'll get to later.)

Shore Leave is downtime. It costs time and money. During Shore Leave, characters can convert accumulated stress into improved Saves. Accumulating Stress can kill the character or cause them to behave sub-optimally, but it's also how they advance. It creates a delicate balancing act where players might want to accrue Stress during an adventure, but not so much Stress that their character has a heart attack.

It is weird that Shore Leave can only improve Saves. Mothership is a level-less system where advancement takes the form of equipment and relationships, but I'll admit I am something of a "numbers go up" man. There is an optional rule in the Warden's Operation Manual (I'll get to those) that allows both Stats and Saves to be improved during Shore Leave, which I'll probably use. 

Combat is pretty straightforward, though I did have some trouble understanding Armor Points at first. Wounds are pretty deadly, and I don't see how characters are meant to have a chance at surviving the ones that cause massive Bleeding. Does staunching the Bleeding require Expert Training in Field Medicine? It seems weird to have a system where characters can take multiple Wounds before dying, but also where Wounds have a really good chance of outright killing the character anyway.

Death Saves are cool. The Warden puts a d10 in a cup and keeps the die roll covered until someone checks that character's vitals. I don't see why one couldn't simply wait to roll the Save at that time and forego the cup entirely, but I guess this is more dramatic. It seems like it would work well as a unique mechanic for the Warden to evoke when pitching the game to players.

That's all for the Survival Guide. It's a pretty good primer, with everything needed to start playing the game right away.

Warden's Operation Manual

This is Mothership's DMG, and it accomplishes way more in its 50-some pages than the new D&D DMG does in...however many pages that is.

There are two key elements to the Manual that make it distinctly a Mothership manual and not simply a generic "how to run an RPG" book: Survive, Solve, or Save and the TOMBS Cycle.

The Manual makes explicit the goal of the Warden: to put the players in a situation where they must decide to Survive the ordeal, Solve the mystery, or Save the day. They can do one or maybe two of those things, but not all three. 

I can immediately imagine every scenario starting out with a clock. Whenever the players advance towards one of these three goals, time ticks away on the remaining two. That's a great framework to base a scenario on. It is so helpful for the game to just come right out and say what its intention is.

The TOMBS Cycle describes the cycle of horror as represented in Mothership. TOMBS stands for Transgression (what is done that awakens the horror), Omens (the signs that herald the arrival of the horror), Manifestation (how the horror finally reveals itself), Banishment (how the horror is defeated or suppressed) and Slumber (how the horror goes dormant and eventually returns).

These elements of horror aren't unique to Mothership, but their expression here is. The TOMBS cycle isn't simply Horror 101 for Wardens. The first page of the book has a d20 table (rolled using percentile dice for some reason) listing examples of each element. There's also a table of themes, and two ten-entry lists of scenario types and settings.

Using these tables, I can see how I might build an adventure for Mothership. It's similar to how, if I were to prep an adventure for D&D, I might roll on a series of tables to generate a location and its history, then roll on another series of tables to determine what problem needs to be solved. From there, it's much easier to determine appropriate monsters, NPCs, puzzles, and the like. In this way, Mothership makes generating adventure ideas fairly simple.

The Manual is filled with lots of other good advice for running RPGs in general, but for someone like me who knows how to run a game but doesn't know how to run a Mothership game specifically, it is super helpful for the game to provide a bunch of tables I can roll on to generate an adventure that feels like Mothership. More RPGs need to include this sort of thing. (There is also a list of "campaign frames" later in the book - i.e., the player characters are colonists, mercenaries, truckers, etc. - but I found these less useful, which I'll touch on in a minute.)

Much of the book I could take or leave. There's solid advice for creating asymmetrical combat scenarios (with a numbered list of examples), puzzles (with a numbered list of examples), NPCs (with a cool diagram organizing NPC types along axes of Power and Helpfulness), keying maps, teaching the game, describing situations, adjudicating actions, and the like. I've just internalized most of that from years of playing games and reading blogs. But I get why it's there, and I'm sure new Wardens will find it helpful.

There's some advice about when to roll dice (when the stakes are high, the outcome is uncertain, the players don't have the right tools, the plan is bad, or the player wants to). Mothership takes a very OSR approach to rolling dice. That is, players should avoid it if they can, and Wardens should require it only when strictly necessary. After reading Dwiz's review, I will probably be inclined to have the players roll much more often than the Manual advises, since the whole Stress/Panic mechanic works off of rolling dice, and I really want to use that mechanic. 

There's more concrete Mothership-specific advice later on: how to map a star system, how much a job should pay, negotiating better rates, how to get a loan, and what to do if players want to save money or end up getting rich. There are optional rules ("Difficulty Settings"), an Appendix N, and tables for generating planets, settlements, ports, and factions. Most of this is solidly useful or interesting.

Overall the Warden's Operations Manual is a good book for Wardens new to Mothership specifically, and probably invaluable to those new to RPGs entirely.

Shipbreaker's Toolkit and Unconfirmed Contact Reports

I don't have as much to say about these, so I'll collapse them into one subsection. 

In Mothership, in my mind, ships are a means of transport as well as a "home base" of sorts (it is probably more accurate to describe the various ports where the players can take Shore Leave as the "home bases" of Mothership, but the characters' ship is where they will literally live for most of the game). They're also kind of like strongholds. And dungeons.

All that is to say that it's great that Mothership provides a book with examples of the different types of ships and their typical deck plans. The book also includes a deck plan key, tables with fuel costs for ship maneuvers, travel costs, refueling and resupply costs, ship upgrades and weapons, needed repairs, and a ship character sheet. That's a Hell of a lot more support than D&D provides for bastions!

It would be really easy for Mothership to say "You've seen Alien. You know what a ship is like!" It's really great that it goes the extra mile. (In the case of Androids it basically says "You've seen Alien. You know what Androids are like!")

I really like the look of the ships, too. They are bizarre shapes. To me, it's clear that they are assembled entirely in orbit and never, ever break a planet's atmosphere (even if some of the official modules include in the Deluxe Set don't seem to have gotten the memo - *cough*DeadPlanet*cough*).

Unconfirmed Contact Reports is Mothership's Monster Manual. At first glance, it has evocative art and compelling, unique ideas. The "monsters" presented are quintessentially Mothership: algorithms, CEOs, lost media, and creepypasta alongside more typical sci-fi horror fare. 

However...there just isn't much to do with these things. The information is brutally scant. It's well-written. It's interesting. It's unsettling the way a well-written creepypasta is unsettling. It has nothing to say about how a Warden might use these horrors in their game.

The very same TOMBS Cycle so helpfully outlined in the Warden's Operation Manual isn't even mentioned here. Every entry should include an acrostic poem that spells out TOMBS with a brief sentence for each part of the cycle!  

I bet it would be really cool to run an adventure in which the horror is a viral algorithm hellbent on keeping its existence a secret, but if I want to do that, I have to come up with all of it by myself. 

I would be better off randomly generating a horror using the TOMBS Cycle and then making up the Manifestation and its game statistics myself, which...Contact Reports also doesn't tell me how to do. There are five "quick horrors" described on the book's back cover (Anomaly, Brute, Guard, Hunter, and Swarm) which is a good jumping off point, but I wish there was more guidance as to like, how much damage something should do or how many wounds it should have. Maybe that's just my D&D brainrot talking.

It's a neat book. It might be inspiring for some. I don't really find it useful.

The Modules

I haven't read all of them yet. I'm about halfway through A Pound of Flesh and read Another Bug Hunt and Dead Planet. I hope to write reviews and/or play reports of each of them in the near future. 

First of all, I love that the Deluxe Set comes with four modules. Teach me how to play the game and then give me a bunch of official examples as to how it's done.

I love that they all have different vibes. Another Bug Hunt is an Aliens action-horror scenario. Dead Planet is a Dead Space scenario where the players are stuck in a bad place and have to figure out how to get out. A Pound of Flesh details a settlement/port the Warden can use for Shore Leave along with intrigue and adventure the players can get involved in there. Gradient Descent is, as I understand it, a megadungeon.

Another Bug Hunt seems like a great starting adventure, and I can't wait to run it. Dead Planet has some cool ideas but is super messy. Like, I have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to even get the scenario to make sense. A Pound of Flesh so far has a lot of potential to be really fun.

These modules are information-dense, but they're also kind of vague. Lots of big ideas that sound cool in an overview, but require a lot from the Warden to make them cohesive. In the modern fashion, descriptions of almost everything are terse bullet points that require the Warden to flesh them out with off-the-cuff details. In other words, the modules don't do a lot of the legwork. 

The modules also demonstrate how supplements like these can flesh out the base game. Dead Planet includes a derelict ship generator which can certainly be used in any Mothership adventure. A Pound of Flesh includes all the information on cybermods as well as a space station generator. Gradient Descent includes exploration procedures.

The layout and design of the modules is sick. The modules are so cool to look at. They're also sometimes extremely hard to read. Another Bug Hunt has white text on orange background. Dead Planet has white text on red background. A Pound of Flesh has white text on neon pink background. The text is so small. 

I'm red-green colorblind and I wear glasses. I have to hold these almost in front of my face and turn them so the light hits them at just the right angle so that I can read the text. Just stop using neon backgrounds with white text! The only reason I can imagine they did this is because it looks cool. That's not a good enough reason!

Reading Mörk Borg is a walk in the park compared to this. At least the text there is big and the colors are high contrast.

Hopefully, more to come on these modules in the future!

Putting It All Together

Despite griping about those last few things, I can't wait to play this game. My plan is to try running each of the four included modules to begin with. I'm going to try to make it a campaign.

Something that's always confounded me about horror RPGs is that I don't understand how they can even produce campaigns. Obviously, death looms large in horror. Of course, if everyone dies, it's game over. The players can still make all new characters and either try the scenario again or move onto the next one.

My issue is more with believability. Every (good) Alien movie is about Ripley. The alien follows her like an albatross. It refuses to let her live her life. Her struggles with it define her.

But it also kind of strains believability that she has to keep dealing with this alien every time she wakes up. It strains believability that the people from the first Jurassic Park keep managing to get stranded on the dinosaur island.

Yet those are scenarios where a single person or group of people interact with a single horror multiple times. They have a history with it. It's not hard to imagine that it keeps coming back to haunt them.

Rarer are the scenarios where a single group of people interact with multiple horrors over the course of their lives. The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural...

Returning to the campaign frames from the Warden's Operation Manual, how does one justify a group of space truckers, colonists, or miners continuously stumbling upon shoggoths and xenomorphs? They're not seeking them out. They're just profoundly, stupidly unlucky.

Here, I think being acclimated to the weird assumptions of D&D helps. Why does this one group of people keep going into horrible holes in the ground and risking their lives against murderous monsters? Because that's just kind of what they do. That's their job. They adventure.

A similar campaign frame could work for Mothership. They need to be a kind of adventurer - someone who needs or is obligated to seek out the unknown and risk their lives again and again. I plan to have my players be debt slave "fixers" for "the Company". They're a specialized team of spacers who go on classified missions to investigate strange events and protect the Company's interests against threats to the bottom line.

The Company connects everything. I just have to figure out what the connection is. That, I think, it a pretty decent way to run a Mothership campaign.

Spell Lists Suck: Fiction-Focused Magic in D&D

I typically propose very minor alterations to D&D: how to fix summoning, how to fix shapechanging, how to fix weapon damage. I'm not really interested in redesigning the core system - just relatively simple fixes to pain points I've experienced in play. This time, I'm proposing something a little more drastic.

Spell lists suck. The way that spellcasters pick and choose the spells they learn and prepare is dumb.

Now that I've stated my thesis, I will walk it back slightly by saying spell lists are okay. Every spellcasting class has its own spell list that the player chooses from when deciding what spells their character learns or prepares each day. The unique spell lists for each spellcaster do a nice job differentiating the classes. Spellcasters either use "magic magic", "holy magic", or "nature magic", and two classes that use the same type are further differentiated by the specific spells available to them - warlocks have "creepy" spells compared to wizards, and paladins have more "battle magic" compared to clerics.

The existence of spell lists also allows for them to be subverted. Bards can, at certain levels, learn spells from any class's list. Clerics, druids, paladins, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks get access to a handful of thematic bonus spells to pad out their lists. For some reason, druids, rangers, and sorcerers don't always get these bonus spells, warlocks don't automatically learn them but instead can choose to learn them, despite every other class getting them for free, and some classes draw their thematic spells from other class's spell lists while others get free access to spells they could have had anyway...but this is a tangent.

I say spell lists suck because every class gets their spells the same way: by picking the "good" ones off a big list. There are minor differences in that clerics, druids, and paladins get all of their spells at each level at once and prepare a limited number each day, while bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks learn a limited number and always have them prepared. But the process by which clerics, druids, and paladins - or bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks - actually choose their spells is exactly the same from one class to the other.

The flavor text for the classes suggests that each is either channeling a different type of magic or else channeling the same type of magic in a different way (wizards memorize and recite arcane formula, sorcerers draw on their innate power, and warlocks use magic gifted to them by otherworldly patrons), but this isn't reflected at all in how the caster acquires the actual spells they can cast.

The cleric might acquire a couple spells which are thematic to their god, but they are otherwise preparing the same spells as any other cleric. The sorcerer doesn't unlock some new power specific to their unique origin - they just learn the next most optimal generic sorcerer spell. The warlock does not commune and negotiate with their patron for enhanced powers - they just get another warlock spell, most of which are available to all warlocks.

No class is acquiring spells in a way that's at all related to the fiction, and because everyone is just picking spells off their own little menu, the classes are distinct from one another, but multiple characters within a single class are often not.

The exception is the wizard, who we're told learns magic by reading spellbooks and scrolls, which is actually how they learn magic in the game...sometimes. Because the designers feel they can't trust the DM to include spellbooks and scrolls in their game, wizards also just arbitrarily learn spells each time they level up. Like everyone else.

If I were to redesign the spellcasting system in a drastic way, I would design fiction-focused rules for how each spellcasting class acquires their spells. What would that look like?

Wizards

It is a myth that wizards can only master "arcane" magic. All magic is arcane - even if the druids and the gods would like the world to believe otherwise.

In truth, wizards can learn any magic that is written down. The magic of the gods is written in prayer books and inscribed on altars and in reliquaries. The magic of nature is etched into ancient standing stones and trees. None of these are beyond the wizard's comprehension.

The process of learning a spell remains unchanged from the base rules - the wizard must spend a certain amount of time and money (representing the purchasing of magically primed rare inks and parchment), then succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) check, the DC equaling 10 + the spell's level, in order to write the magic in their spellbook.

As in the base rules, the wizard begins their career with a spellbook containing six 1st-level spells. These spells are usually taught to them by their master, but could also be acquired and learned by chance. The DM chooses which spells they are. To encourage the wizard to adventure and discover new magic, their master should probably be dead or estranged. The adventurer wizard can always find a new master through politicking or networking.

I feel very strongly that the DM should choose the new wizard's starting spells, but I'm sure there are many who find this unconscionable. The DM and player could also negotiate what the the six spells are. Or, to simplify things, perhaps all novice wizards learn the same six spells: comprehend languages, detect magic, mage armor, magic missile, shield, and sleep. A bit dull, but classic, and not at all useless.

Other subclasses which cast wizard spells (such as the arcane trickster and eldritch knight) also have spellbooks, and learn spells in the exact same manner as the wizard. Since this is a choice which is made later in the character's career, it's best for the player to declare their intention to take this option sooner rather than later, so that the DM can plan to include a spellbook which the character can acquire. Otherwise, a character who pursues this path does not have any spells until they can acquire a suitable spellbook (another wizard in the party can help them create one, or perhaps basic primers are sold in metropolitan markets).

One of the small things that bothers me about arcane tricksters and eldritch knights is that they learn the same magic as wizards but in an entirely different way. If wizards learn from books and can learn as many spells as they can find, other classes that cast wizard spells should do the same!

Clerics

Clerics do not learn spells - they are granted spells through faith and prayer. The deity and its intermediaries provide access to the magic. This is represented by a generic cleric spell list which is then supplemented with a selection of always-ready subclass-specific spells. This is fine, but it still results in largely similar clerics with just a few unique signature spells. Why is 90% of each god's repertoire the same spell list as every other god?

In AD&D, cleric spells like bless, cure wounds, and remove curse were reversible, and the reverse versions were the purview of evil clerics only. 2e sorted cleric spells into spheres of influence and introduced specialty priests (the druid being used as an example) which had their own unique powers as well as access to specific spheres. These two elements gave distinction to good and evil clerics as well as clerics of specific deities.

Each of 5e's Divine Domains should have a unique spell list, accessible only by worshiping a god who rules over that domain. This domains akin to 2e's spheres of influence. I wouldn't only split all of the current cleric spells into these domains, but would instead go through all of the spells in the game to determine which domains (if any) each might fit into.

There would also be a general domain for the most essential cleric spells like bless. These I would divide into good and evil domains. Want to cast cure wounds? Worship a good deity. Want to cast inflict wounds? Worship an evil deity.

This is probably a great time to mention that these are broad ideas. I'm taking big hypothetical swings here. A lot of these ideas might be kind of impractical, but things that I want to toy around with on a very small scale eventually (like, if a player in my game wanted to be a Life cleric, I might create a custom Life Domain spell list for them instead of creating spell lists for every domain).

From there, clerics could remain much the same, simply choosing their domain depending on their deity, except they would have access to a specific spell list based on that choice. A single god could grant access to multiple domains at once, or a cleric may have to choose which aspect of the god they worship - i.e., the destructive firepower of the god-phoenix, or the healing power symbolized by its rebirth?

It's worth nothing that D&D is typically a polytheistic setting. I don't see why a single cleric couldn't simultaneously petition multiple deities, so long as they aren't opposed to one another. A piety system such as that in Mythic Odysseys of Theros could be used to determine what level of magic from each deity the cleric has access to, depending on their in-game actions, allowing a cleric to essentially "multiclass" with a variety of gods to gain access to a breadth of magic which rivals the wizard.

Druid

Druid spellcasting in most editions of D&D works exactly the same as for clerics, albeit with different spells. If we're making a spell list for each cleric domain, one could simply give them access to the Nature Domain spell list and call it a day, but that would be a disservice. 

My understanding of druids is not that they are just clerics for gods of nature, but instead that they are channelers of D&D's ubiquitous "background magic" associated with "nature spirits". The druid is not praying to the nature god to cast earth magic, but channeling the powers of the local earth spirits.

Because druids channel the magic of the natural spirits in their environment to cast spells, just as clerics need a unique spell list for each Divine Domain, druids need a unique spell list for each natural environment - grassland, forest, hills, desert, swamp, water, mountain, underdark, etc. Like clerics, they would also have a more general list to include things which aren't environment-specific like animal spells, healing, and the like.

Can druids cast spells in unnatural environments like settlements and dungeons? Those places still have natural elements, so I don't see why not. A mining town is still in the hills, a mummy's tomb is still in the desert, and a merfolk stronghold is still underwater, after all.

In some cases, environmental elements need to be woven into the components of the druid's individual spells. That is, casting entangle requires the presence of plant life, and call lightning requires the druid to be outdoors during a storm, which could preclude the use of those spells in certain environments.

Should druids still be required to prepare spells? If they are channeling the natural spirits of their current environment, that sounds like spontaneous casting. Spellcasters who prepare their spells do so at the beginning of the day. In the morning the druid could be in the forest, but by afternoon they might be in the swamp. Should they be able to carry forest magic into the swamp with them?

Maybe they should. There is something interesting about a high-level druid who flies quickly to the desert, communes with it, and then flies quickly to the dark wood to use the desert's withering spells against the corrupted plant monsters there. It has Pokémon vibes (complimentary). Much to think about.

Paladin and Ranger

I'll skip to these two as they are straightforward. My solution for the two of them is simple: paladin spellcasting works the same as for clerics, and ranger spellcasting works the same as for druids.

In older editions, paladins and rangers were akin to variants of the fighter with higher ability score requirements and some special thematic powers. They weren't even spellcasters until much later in their career (in 2e, 9th-level for paladins and 8th-level for rangers), and their spellcasting abilities were quite weak at that time.

I won't advocate for returning to that style of doing things. The "half-caster" spell progression of 5e works just fine (at most, I'd consider making them a "one-third-caster" like the eldritch knight or arcane trickster). 

The point is that paladins are warriors who cast cleric spells, and rangers are warriors who cast druid spells. They don't need their own spell list or unique mechanics. They will benefit from the versatility that comes from the broader cleric and druid lists.

The elephant in the room is that this requires paladins to go back to worshipping gods. I like that in 5e, paladins draw their power from the magic of the oath they swear. It's very thematic, and it implies a setting where oaths carry cosmic weight. However, I have no idea how to make it fiction-focused with regards to what spells they can cast or how their magic works.

So, paladins have to worship gods again, which is fine by me. Like clerics, their spell list is determined by their deity's domain of influence. They should still have an oath with principles they must adhere to, but the oath is sworn between them and their deity, and the deity provides the magic so long as the paladin continues to abide. The chosen deity informs which oaths are available.

Bard

In 5e, the bard learns a set number of spells and casts them spontaneously. Their spell list is mostly arcane magic, but is also a weird grab bag of divine and nature magic. Their Magical Secrets feature allows them to pilfer spells from other class's spell lists. There's some flavor text about how the bard utilizes the "Words of Creation", which are learned from "hard study" and "natural talent", but of course this isn't actually reflected in how they learn their spells.

My bard is instead inspired by the bards of editions past.

The AD&D 1e bard is famously weird. It is essentially the first "prestige class" - part fighter, part thief, and part druid.

In 2e, the bard is largely similar, except the druid spells are replaced with wizard spells. Bards in 2e keep a spellbook.

To split the difference, the fiction-focused bard uses both the wizard's and druid's rules for spellcasting simultaneously. They have a spellbook and can learn any spell that's written down, and they can also channel the magic of nature spirits and cast druid spells spontaneously. It's up to the player to choose which slots to spend on which spells.

This preserves the main element which makes bards' spellcasting unique - the hodgepodge of spells they get from different types of casters. It also fully embraces two very different interpretations of the bard of which I'm equally fond.

Sorcerer and Warlock

I'm lumping these together because the post is getting long, I don't have a lot to say about them, and the systems I have in mind for them are very similar.

In 5e, both sorcerers and warlocks learn spells as they level up and can cast them spontaneously. Some sorcerer subclasses get bonus spells that they learn automatically. Every warlock subclass gets an expanded spell list, but they don't learn the spells automatically. They have to pick them as the spells they learn when they gain levels.

Fiction-focused sorcerers have a unique spell list determined by their Sorcerous Origin, and fiction-focused warlocks have a unique spell list determined by their Otherworldly Patron. Not every sorcerer regardless of their magical origin can cast control winds. Not every warlock patron has the power to grant their petitioners finger of death. 

This makes sorcerers and warlocks the most tightly-focused casters in the game, which they should be. It doesn't make sense to me that anyone with a magical soul/anyone who makes a pact with an otherworldly entity can cast from almost exactly the same list of spells.

Conclusion

So, that is a pretty crazy system I'm proposing. The 5e PHB has eight spell lists (one for each spellcasting class). If I were to follow my own advice and make all of the specific spell lists I'm proposing - only counting classes and subclasses in the PHB - I would end up with 20 unique spell lists (seven for the cleric domains, eight for each type of natural environment, two for the sorcerer subclasses, and three for the warlock subclasses - the bard, paladin, ranger, and wizard don't need their own lists).

It is incredibly obvious why the 5e design team did not do this. The unique spell list for each class plus signature spells for things like Divine Domain, Druid Circle, Sacred Oath, and the like is an elegant solution. 

But, I just can't shake the feeling that spellcasters who use different types of magic should feel different beyond just the flavor of their spells and what kind of armor they can wear. Clerics, druids, and paladins, bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks should not be learning and using magic exactly the same way as one another.

Mostly, I want the spells that casters can access to make sense in the fiction. If the wizard is supposed to learn spells by finding them in dungeons while adventuring, they should not be stumbling upon 9th-level spells in the spellbook their master gifted them as an apprentice. Not all gods should grant access to the same magic. A druid who draws magic from the environment should not be casting the same spells in the desert as in the forest. A sorcerer or warlock with a very specific magical power source shouldn't have the same spell selection as every other sorcerer or warlock.

Well, it's easy enough for me to argue in favor of doing all this extra work without putting my money where my mouth is, so I totally understand if this sounds like a bonkers idea to anyone else. It sounds pretty bonkers to me. But in a kinda cool way.