#another bug hunt

[agentfuse]

I ran my first game of Mothership using the Another Bug Hunt module, and one of my players (who was playing an Android) only ever failed a single check at the very end of the session, and they died immediately after. And to make it better, another player failed their Panic check after seeing their corpse and proceeded to roll the Haunted condition - so now the android's ghost is haunting them (aka the dead android's player talking to them).

This game is great.

[zoydraft]

Computer simulation of infection timelines in the module Another Bug Hunt (Chapman, Crader, Gearing, Gerding, Kimball, Vaupen, 2023) for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG.

I got asked on Discord, so confirming that yes this real, but it's very noisy. It's a simulation of 64 random characters (roll Sanity, apply the bonuses for a random Class), and then roll the infection procedure (2d10 hours until next check, then Sanity check to see if infection progresses) until infection gets to Stage 5.

Ideally provided to players by Edem if they complete her mission, but could also work in the medbay if you're doing a one-shot and don't mind being a little loose with who would've known what and when.

[readysetquest]

Get Out of There!

Find out what happens to Cory next by watching Ready Set Quest! on YouTube!

[onion-souls]

[onion-souls]

That Zach Hazard post reminds me: this is the sketch I did of a Carcinid about three years ago (AAAH) when Sean and I were brainstorming the species.

[zoydraft]

Another Bug Hunt Review, Part 3

See the rest of the review and some of my prep here.

Once you leave Heron Station, you’re met with the text, “It takes a half-day’s hard scrabble through the foothills to get to the ship” and no other details. This is a hard contrast with the trip from Greta to Heron, which had light scaffolding to support you.

Flux through the Jungle

I decided I didn't want to skip over the travel. Getting through an alien jungle didn't feel trivial.

The solution I arrived at was a shallow flux space (5 random points of interest, and 6th “deep” location), with the intention of giving more insight into what the carcs are doing while they aren’t assaulting the colony. I enjoyed coming up with these spots, but I know my friends felt like they weren’t sure what they need to do. Of the five I wrote:

Four gave clues about the carcs’ intelligence and/or intentions

Two had avoidable violent encounters

One gave the opportunity to learn how to solve a later puzzle

None presented obstacles for proceeding

I then re-worked the ones they hadn’t visited for the trip back, with the complication of warring carcs.

I didn’t design in enough player agency. These areas were exhausted once you learned what you could and engaged with or avoided the violent encounter, but with no clear indication that you were ready to move on. They needed problems to solve. In contrast, the deep location--a carc path to the ship--did feel pretty good, because it has a clear conclusion. I think I would keep this flux space for a replay, but I would have to do significant work making it more game-able.

Starting from the blank canvas of, “I don’t want to just skip over this travel,” to researching options for handling it, to writing the points, was a ton of prep time for not a lot of play time, and was enjoyable, but took away from other prep I could’ve done. It didn’t feel like it was worth it for the group, but it did feel like an investment in my own skills.

Prepping the Ship

I like the room designs in the ship, but the three linear paths felt designed to invalidate prep. I’m going to try to internalize a bunch of puzzles, and I know that once the party picks an entrance, there’s a minuscule chance that they'll encounter two-thirds of them. My friends figured out how to open the airlock and took the extremely short [B1], [B2], [B5], [D] route. I know there’s always going to be stuff players miss, but this makes the feel-bad explicit.

The strength of the linear design is that it turns gameplay into a series of puzzles to solve, which in some ways was a really nice change of pace. What it failed to do was make the ship feel like a real, labyrinthine, alien location, and my players commented that it felt a little anti-climactic. If I were to run this again, I would seriously consider re-working the layout of the ship, but that did not feel like a realistic option for me as a new Warden running a published adventure, and I wanted to try it as written rather than assume I knew better. There would also need to be some kind of mechanic to guide players in the right direction, in case they lost or didn't find have the tracker for Hinton.

Hinton and the Nobles

When I initially read the module, the Court sounded very under-explained, but at least for me, this ended up one of the spots where I had the most fun thinking through how it ought to play, and how to tie all the threads together, without feeling like it was a burden. No notes.

Make up your own Scenario IV mechanics

The ask for the final act is weird. It’s true that it would be difficult to pre-write, depending on the specifics of how your adventure has played out, but with the zooming out, simplifying big actions, the way the timeline works, you’re being asked to make something up that you haven’t done before. There’s not really any way to take what you’ve been taught so far and apply it. This involves changing the mechanics of the game to portray kinds of conflict that aren’t well-covered in the Player’s Survival Guide.

My work-around was to create a set-piece at Heron Station, with the survivors holed up in the hangar, fighting off a wave of carcs, and the drop ship incoming. I did about half an hour of work creating and balancing a slightly simplified combat system for the carcs attacking and the colonists defending, and that paid off. The party burnt some time on tactics that put them in good position, but likely cost them the lives of most of the colonist inside.

Ship combat for some reason

Mothership: Shipbreaker's Toolkit

The ultimate guide to space travel in the Mothership® universe. The Shipbreaker's Toolkit gives you all the tools for operating, maintaining

Once you’re on the ship, I followed rules as written for damage from the attack (it caused a fire, which led to a few rounds of damage before the sprinkler system took care of it), they dealt with Maas, and all the infected got into hypersleep.

I didn’t bother with teaching ship mechanics, because there’s really no payoff. The ship attacks once, then evades. It moves at a speed like they’ve never seen. So, what is the battle supposed to be? I don’t think there’s anything meaningful the players can do, except maybe get a lucky hit in… except that as described in the Shipbreakers’ Toolkit the executive transport has no weapons.

It’s not a problem -- I think a terrifying ship that outclasses you hitting you once provides lots of drama -- there’s just no benefit to participating in player-facing combat, except to check the box of the adventure including it.

What is Mothership trying to do as it teaches you how to run the game?

Mothership: Warden's Operations Manual

The Warden's Operations Manual takes you from prepping your first session, to running it, to prepping the rest of your campaign in a simple,

I really admire Sean McCoy’s work in trying to create an onboarding point for running TTRPGs that doesn’t rely on Wizards of the Coast, and I think he’s doing a great job. The Warden's Operations Manual offers incredible, practical advice that demystifies and tears down barriers to entry, but with both the manual and Another Bug Hunt, Tuesday Knight Games is pulling off some sleight of hand.

Arguably, Mothership’s killer app is the huge library of high-quality zines and pamphlets, both first- and third-party. I love the mechanics, and I initially picked it up because I want to use it as the system for my own zine, but I’ve seen a lot of people talk about the adventures as the real selling point.

The fact is, the Warden’s Operation Manual doesn’t give much advice to help you run published modules, and the later portions of Another Bug Hunt don’t do a very good job of prepping you for running published modules. They are both much more focused on getting you comfortable with the idea of making your own adventure.

I would call it insidious, except look at the outcomes: I suspect that trick is a big reason why there is such a virtuous cycle of people enthusiastic and confident enough to make stuff for people to play. Is Mothership built on a lie? Maybe, kind of! Am I going to hold it against them? No, I will not.

The early sections of Another Bug Hunt gave me exactly what I was expecting. The later sections provide something else, something that makes Wardens stronger, makes the community stronger, but doesn’t necessarily lead to the best experience for players, and doesn’t always feel like you’re getting what you signed up for. I’m really glad I ran it all the way through, but this is an adventure that is purposely incomplete, and as the introductory adventure, I don’t think that’s what everyone comes in expecting. As you get farther in, it stops being a fun, pre-written adventure to share with your friends, and starts being creative exercise.

That sounds like a dour note to end on, but there was so much in Another Bug Hunt that I loved, memories with my friends that I will cherish, and I think it made me better at running games, and especially writing my own stuff. I think it’s unlikely I’ll ever run a longer play-through again, but this provides great fodder for one-shots, and I’d easily recommend this, with the caveat that it’s going to make you do work.

Break a leg saving, solving, and surviving!

Another Bug Hunt

Another Bug Hunt the official introductory adventure for Mothership®. The players' crew must re-establish communications with a remote terra

[zoydraft]

Another Bug Hunt Paranoia Sheets

Spoiler-heavy player handouts for Another Bug Hunt!

For the induction stage of infection, I created four player handouts that describe the visions players have during their catatonic state. Three of the four give hints at eventual puzzles in the ship, and the fourth gives insight into the conflict between the Hinton-influenced bugs and the others, once the Nobles are awakened.

Handing these out to players made everyone else extremely paranoid, and lead to the decision to throw the comatose body of a PC into the Armory, and a PvP death in the aftermath. We have a crab-girl now.

Each note follows this format:

You slip into a catatonic state for 2d10 minutes. I will point at you once it passes. Read this note, then give it back. Do not show it to anyone, but you may say anything you want about it once the state passes. You have the following vision:

[vision]

You now have sympathy for the creatures. You have disadvantage [-] on actions intended to harm crabs.

The specific visions are:

Room A4 (page 33)

Dark tunnels, mist, and fog. Rough walls like lava rock. Fleshy growths. You are working alongside the crabs. You enter a tall cylindrical space criss-crossed with calcified tendrils. A warty polyp pulsates with yellow light in the centre of the room. A long rusted metal limb protrudes from the polyp, and there is a metallic, beach ball-sized nodule on the floor in front of it. You push through the tendrils and find another metallic nodule.

2. Room B2 (page 34)

Dark tunnels, mist, and fog. Rough walls like lava rock. Fleshy growths. You are working alongside the crabs. A limb hangs limp at your side. A circular door opens in front of you and you step into a cavity with long thin arms dangling from the ceiling, each ending in a curved blade. The arms embrace you, and there is searing pain as they slice away your injured limb and graft on a replacement. You feel stronger than ever.

3. Room C5 (page 36)

Dark tunnels, mist, and fog. Rough walls like lava rock. Fleshy growths. You are working alongside the crabs. You march uphill through a long corridor with repeating rubbery ridges. You brush along the sides and feel something wet. You feel it gradually harden on your limbs, forming a crust. You continue marching, slightly slower now, with no end in sight.

4. Scenario 4

Dark tunnels, mist, and fog. Rough walls like lava rock. Fleshy growths. You are alongside the crabs. . . but, You hear two voices guiding you at once. One, fading, sounds like a toddler conducting a march. The other, rising, sounds like an symphony. Some of these crabs. . . smell wrong. You begin attacking those crabs still following the infantile, robotic drone.

[zoydraft]

Another Bug Hunt Review Part 2

See the rest of the review and some of my prep here

Scenario 2 has some high highs and some throw-you-in-the-deep-end stuff.

Shipbreaker’s Toolkit and the APC

It feels a little weird that in the absence of a description of the APC, the module doesn’t call out something like, “details on the APC are available in the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, or feel free to make it up yourself.” Because the toolkit is inessential for running most adventures, and an APC isn't a ship, it’s easy to miss that the APC is in there, even if you have it. I realized it was there during our one-shot, which is bad timing, but I was appreciative of not needing to improvise it.

Ride of the Valkyries

Scenario 2 opens with the suggestion of an encounter while your friends travel from Greta Base to the Heron Terraforming Station, with the explicit instruction to flesh it out as much or as little as you want.

This leans into play report territory, but I am getting to a point, I swear…

The situation I came up with is that there’s a bend in the path along the river, and just beyond the bend, bugs have downed trees, and dug hidden pits in the jungle. I had already decided that the jungle was majority bamboo, but I did some research on invasive trees that might be used for terraforming in thin soil. Taking elements from Black Locust and Honey Locust felt appropriate: black bark, long thorns, sparse leaves, and big pods. Alien-sounding, but purely terrestrial.

On the ride, the player in the turret spotted a glimpse of a carc in a tree. I used trait 73 from the random table, but that wasn’t rolled randomly. I decided to progressively ramp up the weirdness of traits. That paid off as players developed competing theories about them, and gradually had elements of those theories confirmed or (more often) contradicted.

The players decided that rather than ramming the trees, firing the APC’s mortar, or going off-road, two of them would get out and investigate, which is terrific horror movie logic. They got ambushed, one of their backup marines was dismembered and left comatose, before the carcs were drawn away by Valdez.

It is amazing that with around a hundred words the authors set up such a fertile but well-bounded prompt to get new Wardens to stretch their legs. Masterful, economical pedagogy.

Running NPCs

Heron Station's NPCs are… daunting. You’re given more than enough information to do a good job with Valdez, Brookman, and especially Edem, but damn, running a situation where three NPCs are in the same spot and all trying to get you to go along with their competing plans is intense.

This was intimidating, and in my pursuit of guidance I came across a couple reviews of the module that called this out as a difficult spot to put a novice GM in, which was reassuring. The warden's manual focuses on the roles of NPCs in an adventure, more than the front-line work of playing an NPC, so wasn't much help. I will come back to the interaction between the warden’s guide and published modules in a later post, because I think that dynamic is interesting.

I mitigated the issue by having Valdez give her spiel to the players outside the base before you’ve met anyone else, but it still felt like a juggling act.

I liked having Sobol as the voice of god to answer questions about the base and technology. They're enriched past being an info-dump by their suspicions about Hinton, which Valdez can dismiss as prejudice.

Edem’s secret is a great opportunity to stress-test the lack of social abilities, and frankly, it just works. It works for players to ask, “can I get a read on this?” and be told that she seems like she’s hiding something, and let them pick at it. I didn’t feel like it lost anything at all by not being hidden behind a roll.

I think I under-developed Brookman, but my friends decided they would go to the lab and then the tower, which feels like the default path a lot of groups will take, although I'm sure that my bias leaked in. 

Hinton’s Whereabouts and the Logic Core

One bit of timeline-breaking is that if the players find the long-range scanner in Greta Base and then speak to Valdez in Heron Station, you get two tough-to-reconcile reports on Hinton’s location: he’s already up in the mountains, but he just went down to the reactor. Not impossible, but I thought it was more interesting to lean into the weirdness.

Meanwhile, what is there to stop you from calling down a dropship and just waiting for it to arrive without ever engaging with the later material?

My solution was:

Hinton managed to either clone or surgically remove his logic core (yes, hand-wavey sci-fi), and it is in the mothership, which is what is being picked up by the scanner. He really did go down to the reactor. Sobol can speak to android technology, and that he doesn’t have an answer for how he could be in two places.

When you restore comms, Maas is enthusiastic and then asks for the identification number off the logic core, which would require either physically having it or getting that information from Hinton. He does not respond in any way after requesting it.

When you get to Hinton at the end of part 3, he has already deduced everything, and is more than happy to hand over his logic core, for his own nefarious reasons.

I was happy with how all of this played out. The downside was that spending time on this siphoned time away from other prep that I should have done, like writing evocative descriptions that I’m not good at improvising.

The Laboratory

The laboratory was pleasantly self-contained, but I made a mistake. The party was extremely cautious going in and engaging with Ziegler, and I let them get the jump on him and had him less far along in his infection, because I just didn’t think another fight with a carc would be fun in the moment. The issue was that it made the whole laboratory feel very minor. That was the wrong call, and the module doesn't bear any blame for that.

The Dam and the Tower

Without getting into play-by-play, the dam and the tower went better than I could have expected. I’ve heard of prepping situations instead of props, and loading them up with potential energy, and this was an incredible demonstration of that power. The players’ actions, the complications, and the consequences flowed naturally, and ended up cinematic and exciting. I think it hinges on the attack ending with the death of the carc as a release valve, because otherwise the situation would be doomed. There’s lots I bet I can learn by studying this section, and this was the highlight of the whole adventure. The only snag was that the players who got into the control room didn’t understand that they could kill the carc, and I’m not sure how I could’ve communicated it better. One of the others was on the roof (the fourth was hiding in the storage room at the base of the tower with a broken collarbone after being knocked down when Brookman slipped on the ladder), and he did get it and eventually asked, “why aren’t you killing it?”

The Reactor

My friends did decide to go to the reactor after the tower. It felt awkward having them run into the wall (not a literal wall) of the flooded reactor, and I ended up just saying outright that they should stop trying because the only option would be to swim down the staircase, which would be extremely dangerous. Not the module’s fault, just my inexperience at running dead-ends. The cleanest option in retrospect is to move Franco from the hydroreactor to the top of the stairs.