In January, I started a westmarches campaign for Mothership RPG. This is the first post in a series of play reports and mini-reviews I intend to share of the campaign-in-progress.
Let's call this post "Zero Session #1," in a series of Zero Session posts, where I'll get into the how/why of organizing and running this campaign.
Why? Well, I own a ton of Mothership modules. I've been playing and writing for Mothership RPG for over two years, yet most of my sessions became playtests and that "work-only" connection to the game was burning me out.
So, I decided to build a sandbox campaign around the physical MoSh games I have in hand, and to find folk to play at an open table.
For now, ok, sure, it's more of an open table sandbox for interconnected one-shots than a "true" westmarches game, especially since the game has only one GM (me, but I'm hoping to open that up soon). But Outer Rim Marches sounds cool, eh?
Initial Forward Operating Base (F.O.B.)
The PCs arrived at Sater's Redemption. They work for The Company, who hired them to represent their new presence amid a mess of other factions, and leases a ship, The Orpheus, to the Crew.
(We decided the official corporation name of The Company that owns their ship will be revealed in play. That hasn't happened yet, eight sessions later. I love hanging this important piece of worldbuilding in the balance for when it can have a bigger narrative impact. Not knowing wtf is going to happen is one of my favorite parts of running ttrpgs.)
The Crew's job: explore the Outer Rim to establish footholds in new trading hubs (F.O.B.s), discover novel exploitable resources (artifacts), capture profitable exobiological lifeforms, and spread the influence of The Company.
The above graphic might be familiar to folk who follow my substack, the 5 Million Worlds Rokaner Report. Each month, I release a free sci-fi adventure setting, and this station was the featured world in the April edition. A taste of things to come.
When I set out to recruit players, the first important bit was setting a firm, regular playtime. When people reached out, I sent them the Consent in Gaming fillable PDF to get an idea of collective Lines/Veils. Once I got that back, I sent a google survey to gauge interest in modules and game commitment to split folks into ping-able groups.
The playtime is working out well. We had one three week break, I was out sick one time, and only once did we have not have enough folk to play. Ten sessions out of a possible fifteen since January!
I kinda fucked up the module-interest part of the survey though. I listed module names, and without content tags this was pretty useless for the players (outside the BIG names, like Hull Breach). I intend to redo this survey soon, and I'll share a copy here when I do!
The player commitment bit was super helpful, at least. Since I run games on Discord, I split players into three groups: the Command crew who vote on which job to take, the mainline players are the Crew I ping each week to advertise the game (I make an "Event" in Discord), and and a final Cryo group to call on when games don't fill up right away.
This has worked super well for me, even when I drop the ball on giving the players the Event ping in advance.
I built this hexmap using Sectors Without Number, which is a sector generator for Stars Without Number. I opted for this against the recommendations of Mothership's Warden's Operation Manual because in a westmarches campaign, from what I've understood, the world is meant to be established once the game begins. I think this is especially important should other GMs and player groups begin playing in this world.
To be blunt, I found using this is kind of annoying. There's a lot of irrelevant SWN info to delete, TONS of systems to hide individually, and it's pretty intensive to integrate module info into the systems.
In short, listen to Sean McCoy's advice in the Warden's Operation Manual if you're starting your own Mothership game and don't fucking do this, haha.
And to be honest, I'm not sold on this even being useful as a sandbox tool intended to be shared with other GMs, even. The verdict is still out. To be continued in another Zero Session post down the line.
ANYWAY! This map looks empty, but that's because it's the player-facing starcharts the Company gave them. PCs need to buy hyperspace route maps at various hubs to explore beyond these bounds. So the star and hyperlane layers hold loads of hidden info.
Feel free to poke around the current state of the sector.
And I do like the shift from a web to hexmap. Little swirls of points get me all crossed up. The Jump-drive distances in Mothership are amenable to using hexes, and tracking distance (i.e. time passed) is straightforward.
Mothership space travel takes a long-ass time, in case you didn't know. To date, we've played nine adventures over ten sessions, and over two years have passed in the campaign world.
The players skipped over a lot of systems to go to Hardlight, which they've recently learned is on the edge of the Public Sector (from Hull Breach). Gonna be some interesting sessions coming up.
The next Outer Rim Marches post will be the official ORM#1, in which the players board the lauded Year of the Rat.
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