Review: Another Bug Hunt (Mothership)

Another Bug Hunt (MRPG-M4) is the introductory adventure for Mothership 1e. It contains four scenarios which can be strung together consecutively to form a larger adventure or run as one-shots. 

The crew (how Mothership refers to the PCs/the party) is hired by the Company to investigate the Greta Base Terraforming Colony on Samsa VI. The colony has not made contact in six months. The crew needs to rendezvous with 2ndLt Kaplan, figure out what's going on, re-establish satellite communications, and get the terraformer back online. Failing that, they need to evacuate the head scientist Dr. Edem and retrieve the android Hinton's logic core. The crew is aware that the colonists have been at war with an alien species of arthropods called carcinids for about a year, and that the colonists captured a carcinid larva nine months ago.

The module has great art and layout. It has an orange, white, and green color scheme which allows for some really great blocking. The org chart, character portraits, and map of the terraforming station are my favorite illustrations. There are also a few scene illustrations which really standout. 

The orange text on white font was very difficult for me to read unless I was in bright daylight. I can read it very easily while sitting at my desk in the middle of the day, but not so much when I'm in bed or at the gaming table on a Saturday night, which is when I'm more likely to be reading it. It feels like an aesthetic choice which was made because it looks "cool" or because it looked good on the computer. It is not, in my opinion, accessible.

The module features Warden Education Support (WES), a sort of designer commentary with advice for Wardens about running the game (both Mothership in general and Another Bug Hunt specifically). It also includes advice for running each scenario as a one-shot.

I think WES is pretty great. When I read modules, I'm constantly scratching my head wondering what the designer's intent was. Is this encounter supposed to be a TPK? Is this trap supposed to be impossible to detect? WES comes right out and says it, which is something I wish more designers would do. 

I've run just one session of Mothership so far, and started with this module. In that one session, we were able to finish the first scenario, so WES's advice about running at least that one scenario as a one-shot is pretty sound.

So, what's really going on here?

SPOILERS for Another Bug Hunt incoming!

There is an alien mothership in the planet's jungle. The "nobles" of this alien race are sleeping aboard the ship. When the colonists landed on the planet, the ship started birthing carcinids to defend itself. Dr. Edem and Hinton learned that the carcinids transmit a memetic virus through their Shriek, which turns other creatures into carcinids. Hinton went rogue and converted the Shriek into a signal which could be broadcast over the radio, then used it to transform several colonists into carcinids during a birthday celebration, causing chaos. The survivors fled from Greta Base to Heron Terraforming Station and barricaded themselves inside. Hinton traveled to the mothership to awaken the carcinid nobles, hoping to become one himself.

Unfortunately, the timeline doesn't make much sense. The colony hasn't been in contact for six months, which coincides with when Hinton discovered how to transmit the Shriek over the radio. We eventually learn that Hinton actually strapped a carcinid into the controls of the radio tower in order to accomplish this. However, three months then passed before the birthday massacre. The tower is just on the other side of the dam from the terraforming base. Did no one go there for three months to investigate what was wrong with the comms?

It is important now to discuss the Shriek. Anyone who hears the carcinids' shriek must make a Sanity Save or become infected. The infection has five stages. Every 2d10 hours, the infected person must make another Sanity Save, or else the infection advances. A fully-grown carcinid emerges from the infected individual's neck, chest, or abdomen at stage five.

The average character in Mothership has a Sanity Save of 21 (2d10+10). To make a Sanity Save, the character must roll under that number on d100, meaning that the average character makes a successful Save roughly 20% of the time.

First, I find it hard to believe that an infected colonist didn't transform in the middle of Greta Base or the Terraforming Station a lot sooner, considering the colonists have been fighting the carcinids for a year. Second, the adventure is very clear that anyone who attempts to use comms is exposed to the Shriek due to Hinton's sabotage. That means that roughly 80% of the colonists should already have been infected six months ago when Hinton first executed his plan (it also means that roughly 80% of the player characters will be infected immediately upon beginning the scenario through no fault of their own, if by chance they happen to have the very reasonable idea to try talking to each other over comms).

That doesn't sound unreasonable until you do the math. A Sanity Save is made, on average, every eleven hours. On average, 80% of Sanity Saves are failed. It takes four failures to transform after initial infection. That means that an average person, after infection, can expect to pass just one save before transforming. The average infected person transforms after something like 55 hours - about two and a half days.

So, how did three months pass between Hinton's sabotage and the birthday party massacre without any other colonists transforming into carcinids? How did several colonists transform at the birthday party simultaneously if the course of infection varies slightly for everyone? How has the Shriek been broadcast over the radio for six months without the majority of colonists being transformed? Why has a month and a half passed between the birthday massacre and the siege on Heron Terraforming Station? Were Hinton and the carcinids just waiting around? 

To add to it, Greta Base ceased all communications six months ago. The Company hired the crew three months ago. This needless padding of the timeline causes all sorts of problems with the credibility of the scenario.

The reason I'm pedantic about all of this is because when I run a module I want all of this stuff figured out for me. I run modules because I've been running my own stuff and am tired of figuring stuff out all the time. I want someone else to map and key the locations, give the NPCs motivations and secrets, and figure out the logistics of timelines so that I can focus on simply adjudicating the game and accurately presenting the information to the players. In a fantasy game it's easy to handwave inconsistencies as magic, but in sci-fi the soundness of the scenario's logic is incredibly important. 

I need to understand what happened and be able to make sense of it so that I can communicate information to the players, allowing them to - maybe - also understand what happened. If I have unanswered questions, so will they, and with good play they should have a chance to answer those questions, which means I need answers to them myself. If the module doesn't provide the answers, I need to provide them. Now I'm figuring stuff out, which is what I was trying to avoid!

How I'd Run It

Lose the Shriek. The scenario is perfectly fine without it and it feels like too harsh of a middle finger to the players, who are probably playing Mothership for the first time. You could probably lose the whole infection mechanic entirely (it's just a play on a bad Reddit joke about how everything is always evolving into crabs) and the scenario as written will make a lot more sense. 

I would make it so that being injured by the carcinids is what causes someone to become infected (with a Body Save to resist instead of a Sanity Save, which doesn't make any sense to me). I would also rule that Androids can't be infected (I have no idea why they can be infected in the module as written).

I would also make the carcinids more docile by nature, so the colonists were not essentially at war with them for a year. My carcinids would be initially found only in the jungle and would act only to defend their mothership, which the colonists would not have discovered yet. I prefer it to be more mysterious that way, and it would make more sense that the colony hasn't already been overrun.

Hinton, meanwhile, would discover the mothership all on his own and keep it to himself. He would discover that the carcinids could be controlled using certain frequencies emitted by their nobles. Three months ago, he would have sabotaged the comms tower to emit a frequency that made the carcinids more aggressive, which disrupted comms. The aggressive carcinids prevented anyone from going there to investigate. The Company hired the crew immediately and they began heading to Samsa VI.

Meanwhile, the colonial marines did an admirable job fending off the carcinids at both Greta Base and Heron Terraforming Station. Unfortunately, Hinton was intentionally infecting the marines at Greta Base with carcinid larvae under the guise of administering routine medical procedures. He timed it carefully so the infected would turn all at once during the birthday massacre. The base was overrun and the survivors fled to Heron Terrforming Station.

And that's it. I think that fixes the vast majority of issues with this module. 

The Scenarios

Overall, they're nice and varied. 

In Scenario 1: Distress Signals, the crew gets to do some methodical investigation in the mostly-abandoned Greta Base. It's a good introduction to the game with just a single deadly combat encounter (with an easily-telegraphed solution that is guaranteed to make new players feel like geniuses). 

I think there is a missed opportunity here to build tension - the crew either goes in the front door and immediately enters the commissary where the birthday massacre happened, or they go in the side door and immediately encounter the monster, both of which kind of let all of the air out of the room at once. 

Scenario 2: Hive Mind is my favorite. Here there are three factions, Team Leave (led by HM3 Brookman), Study Group (led by Dr. Edem), and Hog Squad (led by Sgt Valdez). They all want different things, and the players have to choose what to prioritize (or risk splitting up). If the crew focuses on one thing, the other two tracks advance for the worse. Each faction has a good reason for wanting what they want. It's not an obvious choice.

Conveniently, the three options fit nicely into Mothership's "Survive, Solve, or Save" framework, which is outlined in the Warden's Operation Manual. Team Leave want to secure the comms tower to call for evac (Survive), Study Group wants to recover their research from the lab to find the carcinids' weakness - cue "What is the WEAKNESS" written on a whiteboard in the lab (Solve), and Hog Squad wants to rescue a missing squad of marines and stop the reactor from shutting down (Save). 

This is a brilliant and simple piece of design that reinforces the game's thesis - the players can't accomplish all three goals. It's a perfect scenario for an introductory adventure meant to teach both the Warden and players what kind of game Mothership is.

Scenario 3: Mothership is a Lovecraftian dungeoncrawl through the carcinid mothership. Lots of OSR-ish tricks, traps, and puzzles with an unknowable alien flavor. It does at times feel a bit too "alien" as in "random", i.e. just weird for weirdness's sake, and not necessarily weird in a way that makes sense for these particular aliens. The rooms don't really give the impression that the carcinids actually like, live here and use these weird devices. There is also, hilariously, a gun designed specifically to kill carcinids inside the carcinids' lair. 

Scenario 4: Metamorphosis challenges the crew to escape the planet during a monsoon and carcinid offensive. It comes with a timeline which describes hour-by-hour flooding, carcinid numbers, and evacuation possibility. It seems very unforgiving, but I guess that's Mothership. 

At the end, the carcinid mothership launches a messenger ship which flies off to alert the rest of the carcinids throughout the universe. It fights for one round before fleeing, and WES explicitly says "it is too difficult for the players to fight". This presents the players with one last choice: try to stop it and Save the day (they probably can't), or turn tail and flee (Survive).

Verdict

Overall, I like this module and think you could get around six sessions out of it. The timeline presented at the beginning is pretty much nonsensical and needs to be completely overhauled. The easiest way to do it is to change the way infection works and condense events onto a shorter timeline. 

Once you get that sorted out, you have a nice nonlinear adventure with clearly defined goals and a variety of possibilities for play. It's a good introduction to the game for both Wardens and players, and it more or less practices what the Warden's Operation Manual preaches.

My rating (F is worst and S is best): B. I like it, but it has problems that need fixing, and those are big conceptual problems that the Warden has to rationalize if the scenario's conceit is going to have any hope of holding up against scrutiny from inquisitive players. With a more casual group, this probably runs very well.

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.