Contrition Through Conflict

Since 2018, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, beginning with the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide has proved to be a popular choice when it comes to self-publishing. Numerous authors have written and published scenarios for the roleplaying game, many of them as part of Kickstarter’s annual ZineQuest event, of which The Drain was published following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of ZineQuest 3. Written and published by Ian Yusem, this ashamedly steals the signature feature of Goodman Games’ highly popular Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and adapts it to the far future of the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. This feature is the concept of the Character Funnel in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. The result is a bloody, brutal scenario which can used as one-shot or as the means to create a set of ready-to-play Player Characters complete with shared backgrounds, histories, and relationships.

The Drain: A Funnel Adventure for use with MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror RPG sends the Player Characters into the hellish battlefield aboard the Within Wheels, a colony ship broadcasting the heresy of the 3rd Testament across the universe in order to retrieve a legendary religious relic—and this is not the grim and perilous future of Warhammer 40,000 and the Player Characters are not even soldiers or necessarily trained to fight. Instead they are prisoners, serving time for crimes they definitely did commit, their sentences being executed by corporate jailors, PrayCo. As the ship they are aboard, dodges its way through the ring of scavenging and salvage vessels, warships, and the wrecks of civilians which have already tried to get through, the Player Characters are given a choice—fight their way down through the four decks of the Within Wheels to its Command Centre and there recover whatever is broadcasting the 3rd Testament and return it to PrayCo. In return, the Player Characters will have their sentences commuted.

The digital version of The Drain comes with a set of pre-generated Player Characters, but the scenario includes quick and dirty rules for creating prisoner Player Characters. Being Level Zero, they have no Class, low stats, an absolute minimum of Hits, minimal responses to Stress Checks, and no skills. What a Player Character will have is a conviction for a crime, a single possession, and a piece of materiel which may or may not help him survive the assault. As with a Character Funnel for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, the latter is generated randomly, and if the crime is Android related, the Player Character is an Android. In addition, each prisoner is made to wear a PrayCo tinsel halo battle uniform and a Command Collar. The latter will explode if the Player Characters get too far away from each other! The players are expected to create three or four five of these characters.

Name: Bracket (Android)

Crime: Domestic Insufficiency

Class: None Level: 0

Attributes

Strength: 20 Speed: 25 Intellect: 30 Combat: 25

Saves

Sanity: 25 Fear: 50 Body: 25 Armour: 25

Hit Points: 25

Skills

Trained (+10%): Theology

Loadout: Tinsel halo, flyswatter, flare gun 

Notes

Fear saves made in the presence of Androids have disadvantages.

The flight through the ring of scavenger and warships can be handled using Wrath of God, but either way, The Drain begins with the Prison Soldiers at the top of the Within Wheels, in a series of trenches, opposing forces of the farmer-martyrs occupying the other trenches. Thus the scenario begins in a scene out of the Great War, right down to poison gas rolling across the battlefield. But from here it can only get worse. There are signs of battle everywhere, including a church full of refugees hoping for an armistice, a military dropship still tethered to the colony ship, but trying to get away, signs of the overengineered environmental collapse that forced the colonists to turn to their strange faith, an amusement park adjusted to be full of fire and brimstone warning, and more… 

Along the way there are encounters to be had with other Prison Soldiers, who may be as bad as or even worse than the Player Characters, Corporate Operators with plans of their own, Pilgrim Irregulars determined to protect the 3rd Testament, and worse. The Warden is also provided with a standard set of random events and features tables, as well as tables for every location, and a pair of general tables searching the area or looting the body, discovering equipment caches. The latter will be very useful given the minimal amount equipment the Prison Soldiers are given at the start of their mission. Of course, they have to survive long to find these caches… Either way, the tables will drive a lot of the game play in The Drain, as will the interaction between the multiple Player Characters.

Physically, The Drain is decently presented and organised. It needs a slight edit in places, but every location is given a good half page at least, and the set-up is nicely explained. The artwork suits the raggedy feel of the hell aboard the Within Wheels.

If the Player Characters deliver on their mission, then PrayCo delivers on its promise and that makes for a refreshing change—inserting an inevitable betrayal would have been boring. There is potential for a sequel though, with Meat Grinder, which together with The Drain and Wrath of God forms The Inferno Trilogy. If there is an issue with The Drain, it is perhaps that the description of its McGuffin feels underwritten, so the Warden may want to develop that.

The Drain serves up exactly what a Character Funnel should—a brutal, bloody experience in which survival is an achievement in itself. It combines war-as-hell with the dark horror of heresy and creates Player Characters with memorable back stories for Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG in the process. 

—oOo—

An Unboxing in the Nook video of The Drain can be found here.