From Alien to Aliens
On bringing more action to Mothership's sci-fi horror
One of the stretch goals for The Bloodfields on Blackstar Station is ULTIMATE BADASS, an idea I’ve had for a while now about providing some tweaked and optional rules for Mothership that would shift the game from its rules-as-written Alien-style horror focus to more of the action-horror vibe of Aliens. Inspired by Pulp Cthulhu (which takes the fairly mundane characters of Call of Cthulhu and turns them into pulp novel heroes), it’s ideally a way for players to take more powerful characters and tell a more over-the-top story at the table. Just like how I really love both Alien films, I am hoping to make something that will give me a quick and easy way to shift the game between those two styles of stories.
DISCLAIMER: All of this is work-in-progress and pre-playtest! Keep that in mind!
So, what is key to a more action-oriented style of story and how can I tweak the specific elements of Mothership to create that?
First, there’s a shift in the baseline power of the characters. In Aliens, Hudson is, in fact, not the Ultimate Badass he believes he is but he is far more powerful from the jump than Ripley is through much of Alien. He and his squad have equipment, training, and more that makes them capable of mowing down dozens of xenos. Plus, it’s just a fundamentally different type of story. Characters in UB should be more powerful as a baseline but still killable and prone to panicking, just like Hudson.
With that in mind, I’m boosting character stats - not as far as something like Pulp Cthulhu would go but definitely making them more capable (and giving them a few avenues in which they are more likely to succeed than fail on a roll—a rarity for many Mothership characters).
My main concern here and one big element that may change prior to playtesting is that raising the total Wound count and going above 20 Health per Wound would make the standard character sheet no longer work for folks’ playing with UB. I am likely going to tweak the health/wounds down and give Marine and Android a perk that will make them beefier for better compability with existing game docs.
Speaking of Perks, that’s another big element of UB! Perks are a way to make all characters more action hero-like AND to further customize your specific character. There will be a small number of universal perks (like Blaze of Glory below) that apply to all UB characters and then several other options to choose from during character creation (some open to any characters—like Funny Guy and Creative below—and some tied to a particular class).
The other two main elements of play that UB changes are the Panic and Wound Tables. Panic rolls, in the context of action movies, are the make-or-break moments for a character where they either shine more brightly than before or collapse. I’m rewriting the stock panic table to me much more dramatic on both sides. More of the table will be dedicated to positive outcomes than before but the other end of the spectrum will be stronger too, more opportunities for large-scale chaos, character “death” and more. I have some fun ideas here too around character betrayals and such.
For me, rolling on the Wound table feels like hitting the moment in a movie where suddenly the character actually takes a blow that matters - they may get shot at or punched a hundred times earlier but suddenly they get hit and their arm is broken. That’s what I want the Wounds (along with the more capable player health and stats) to feel like in UB. Damage won’t carry over from one wound to the other and death will not be possible early on but later wounds will be just as dramatic as base Mothership.
That is going to be a lot of the pamphlet! The last bit of space will be used to guide Wardens on how to tweak existing monsters and scenarios to make them appropriately challenging to UB characters so that you’ll still have an exciting and dramatic story rather than just a case of too-powerful characters who are never afraid of anything.
I think the basic structure of swapping out two tables and having character creation work a bit differently will mean that it’s a smooth ruleset to implement at the table, especially if you are already familiar with Mothership. I don’t see this as a better version or a replacement for the standard game but another tool in the Warden toolkit for storytelling. I love the idea of playing a standard Mothership adventure and then using UB to have a squad of marines roll in to clean up the place after the first missions went totally wrong, for example.
I’ll have more on this coming to future updates on the Kickstarter page and it will be getting a wider release as well after the campaign finishes up!
Is there an element of the genre I’m missing here? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
MORE COOL STUFF
Physical copies of my latest Mothership pamphlet adventure THERE IS A GOBLIN ON THE LOOSE IN ICARUS STATION are in stock at a few retailers! For now, check out:
More retailers coming soon!
Playtesting and work on Tacticians of Ahm continues as well! We had a great first session where I am running Keep on the Borderlands for a group of 3 players each playing 3 characters! It’s a big test campaign where I’m looking at how easy Ahm is to adapt OS/OSR material to, how approachable it is for players to play multiple heroes (longer than they would in a funnel) due to the simplicity of combat, and getting a better feel for the progression. I already have a doc full of the first set of patch notes that’ll be coming with the first supplement here in the next month or so!
Speaking of Ahm, there’s already been some awesome homebrew coming from @SahhWasTaken over on Twitter. Seeing other folks playing my game alrady is awesome to see (plus, these are some great enemies)!
I revamped my website too. Not much there at the moment though (just some errors, unfortunately).
Thank you so much for checking out my latest ramblings! I really appreciate your time and support as always. Feel free to share this post if you know someone else who may be interested with the button below and be sure to subscribe if you haven’t so you don’t miss any future Missives. - Christian