Operative’s Primer

What is it like being Operative for SLA Industries? What do you do all day? Where do you live? How do you handle BPNs? How do you get around? What do you have for dinner—a Piggy Wiggy roll or sausage and mash? When you get bored in your Downtown studio closet with its leaky basin, wipe-down, guaranteed one prior owner, roll-up futon, collapsible closet, and self-installed AA rated security locks, where do you go for a good time? Hit a Ye-Old Tavern or if you are on the up, get into the Pit, the premier Uptown nightclub? Got a hobby, like darts or hoops, gambling on the Pig Runs, or collecting BPN Coins or Carrien teeth? Do you have a side hustle such as a Sponsor, selling recovered gear on the black market, an actual second job, or even a life of crime? These are all questions a graduate from Meny University might ask, as might his player. Then how do you play SLA Industries? How does a skill roll work and what modifiers do you apply? What do you need to roll for combat—shooting your Fen 603 Auto Pistol or stabbing that carrien with your Bosh SLA Blade? How do you actually create a Player Character? What do you play? These are all questions a player new to SLA Industries might ask.

Fortunately, Operative’s Handbook: A Sourcebook for SLA Industries Second Edition is the supplement which will answers both sets of questions. This is a supplement for S.L.A. Industries, the roleplaying game set in a far future dystopia of corporate greed, commodification of ultraviolence, the mediatisation of murder, conspiracy, and urban horror, and serial killer sensationalism published by Nightfall Games. Specifically, it is an introductory supplement for the setting and thus the Player Character, but is also an introductory supplement for the setting and the rules, and thus the player. The supplement is designed as complete an introduction to SLA Industries Second Edition as is possible for it to be and it succeeds at this admirably. It is literally designed to be given to the prospective player who can take it away, read up about the basics of the World of Progress and how to be a SLA Operative, and then create a SLA Operative. In doing so, it more or less replaces those sections of the core rulebook and a player could even buy it and use it without the need to purchase his own copy of the core rulebook. Plus, it gives a player an accessible book to reference at the table during play. However, the Operative’s Handbook is not just for the new player and new Player Character. There is background information included that the Game Master can bring into her campaign, especially in terms of flavour, detail, and verisimilitude. There is a whole new species and new equipment too—as well as the old, so that an existing player will find the supplement useful if he does not have the core rulebook.

The Operative’s Handbook does start out with a description of what a roleplaying game is, ordinarily surprising in a supplement, but not so here given its remit. Very quickly it moves on to the World of Progress, the setting for SLA Industries, written with the worries of a recent graduate from Meny University in mind. It eases him through graduation, explaining that every six months, three hundred students graduate—always in the presence of Mr. Slayer, even if he cannot be seen—knowing that if he cannot move up the ladder before the next group graduates, he might as well count himself as a failure. It has all the worries of a graduate in his first job. Where will he live? How does my job actually work? And in answering that, gives a means of randomly determining his initial accommodation and even creating Bespoke Accommodation if his player wants to spend build points on it. Rated for comfort, security, location, and neighbours, all of these factors add to play of the game and are there for Game Master to make the SLA Operative’s downtime that little bit more ‘interesting’. This is accompanied by a good guide to Mort City, from Mort Central down through Uptown into Downtown, noting how large these areas are and that there is an area of Downtown called ‘Sector Dark’, actually two adjacent sectors currently dominated by gangs with deep DarkNight connections, where there is no surveillance as all the infrastructure has been vandalised and both SLA Operatives and Shivers are really not welcome. Numerous options for travel across and up and down Mort City are discussed, the most notable of which are the Shift Blocks, massive elevators capable of transporting vehicles, cargo, and people like a large ferry, up and down Mort City. However, to limit widescale access between districts, Shift Blocks can only lower and raise a limited number, so travellers often have to change to travel further up or down, effectively staggering their journey in order to main security.

Besides the question of where an Operative will live, there is a lengthy lifestyle section in the Operative’s Handbook. This covers food (unsurprisingly British in feel), restaurants and fast food outlets, bars and clubs, care products—for all species, clothing styles—including a fashion for wearing mock-power armour which means that an operative can mingle on a night out in his actual power armour and not look out of place, hobbies and gambling—the latter including various sports like sector racing and the bloodsport events held in the District Two Arena, and collecting. There is a great deal here that will add verisimilitude to a campaign. The supplement takes a left turn with a discussion of politics in Mort City, more interesting background that the Game Master can use to create details for her campaign, but noting that although there are numerous political parties and there are governors who control the various districts in Mort City, politics are an effective distraction for the masses for SLA Industries which has no problem replacing a governor with silent prejudice. Law enforcement is something that Operatives are more likely to be working with, made slightly challenging because laws can differ from district to district, and if one citation does not fit the crime, the Shivers usually have the time to apply another.

Whether the accused goes through civil mediation, televised arbitration, or gives himself over the bureaucratic complications of a public trial, if found guilty, the most common sentence is a fine and since most Mort City citizens cannot afford to pay this, prison time to work this off. Of course, the prison system is designed to extract the most out of its inmates, so getting out is really, really difficult. Several other forms of punishment are discussed, all of them with their own unpleasant futility.

In terms of the job, what a SLA Operative is doing is picking up BPNs—Blueprint News Files, completing them, getting paid, and gaining Security Clearance bonuses, and working up the corporate ladder. The Operative’s Handbook breaks down the Security Clearance structure, how a squad goes about getting a BPN, raises issues and gets paid either straight to each Operative’s Finance Card or oddly in cash (something that criminal gangs like to take advantage of if an Operative owes them a favour), and if there is anything amiss, how a BPN review is handled by the Auditing and Sanctions Office, which often staffed by failed Meny graduates! Since the focus of SLA Industries’ play is completing BPNs for the income and the promotion, any impediment to that is going to be frustrating, but will expose the Operative and his player to SLA Industries’ bureaucracy. In addition to a SLA Operative’s main source of income, the supplement also examines other options.

The Operative’s Handbook devotes just a handful of pages to the rules for SLA Industries. It does not need more than that to explain everything that the player needs to know in terms of rolling dice and making skill tests followed by combat.

More detailed are the rules for character creation. Every species is clearly presented and a nice touch for each is the advice for new players. This includes an ‘It’s My First Day’ box and suggestions on how to build the optimal character. For example, the ‘It’s My First Day’ box states that, “A Carrien is a skull faced dog person whose planet and civilisation was stolen from them. While you might be lovely as an individual, as far as most of Mort is concerned, you’re a scary dangerous animal responsible for unknown terrors.” It is followed by the ‘Building an Adv Carrien’ which suggests which stats to favour. Each species includes suggested values as explanations of species specific abilities, and a table of random species elements (for Carrien these are trinkets that personally value), and tables of ‘Good’ and ‘Unfortunate’ Life Events that add some background and some variation to the Operative.

In addition to doing this for Ebonites, Frothers, Humans, Neophrons, Shaktar, Stormer 313 Malice, Storner 711 Xeno, and Wraithen, it also does it for the Omaja. This is a new species introduced in the Operative’s Handbook. The Omaja, a pre-Formation Era that has recently returned to the World of Progress, are allies of the Neophron, and are trying to earn enough to buy back their original home world from SLA Industries. They are short, monkey-like, with a mane of bright blue hair for males and bright orange for females, are quadrodextrous meaning that all four limbs end in hands, have three eyes, and known for their technical aptitude. They also have a reputation for being very grumpy. In play they give any Neophron Operative a natural ally, whilst their technical aptitude means that they are good at fixing things, handling machinery, and modifying equipment, so focusing on skills that tend to be secondary for other Operatives.

The Operative’s Handbook even explains how Meny University and SLA Industries goes about organising graduates into squads as well as presenting fifteen new Training Packages as well those from the core rulebook and also the supplement, Threat Analysis 1: Collateral. The new includes the Academic Institute of Meny (representing academics who want to conduct field research into Operative activities), Advanced Ebb Training, Alternate Vendor Recruitment (handling Props and Contract Killers for SLA Operative operations), Combat Pilot Training, Combat Property Management, Construct Exploration, Employee Headcount Reduction, Media Management, Modern Policing, Motorised Recon, Radical Conflict De-Escalation Unit, Rapid Conflict Resolution Teams (previously known as ‘Kick Murder Squads’), Rapid Site, Breach & Entry, Sector Ranger Survival School, and Stakeholder Appeasement & Crisis Management. These all have minimum Stat requirements and many have electives to choose from as well. These open up the options not just in terms of the training for the Player Character SLA Operative, but the NPC too. Plus there are lists of the Skills and Traits for SLA Operative creation both old and new. Only the new are fully explained, meaning the that player may still need to refer to the core rulebook for full explanations.

The Operative’s Handbook even explains how Meny University and SLA Industries goes about organising graduates into squads as well as presenting fifteen new Training Packages as well those from the core rulebook and also the supplement, Threat Analysis 1: Collateral. The new includes the Academic Institute of Meny (representing academics who want to conduct field research into Operative activities), Advanced Ebb Training, Alternate Vendor Recruitment (handling Props and Contract Killers for SLA Operative operations), Combat Pilot Training, Combat Property Management, Construct Exploration, Employee Headcount Reduction, Media Management, Modern Policing, Motorised Recon, Radical Conflict De-Escalation Unit, Rapid Conflict Resolution Teams (previously known as ‘Kick Murder Squads’), Rapid Site, Breach & Entry, Sector Ranger Survival School, and Stakeholder Appeasement & Crisis Management. These all have minimum Stat requirements and many have electives to choose from as well. These open up the options not just in terms of the training for the Player Character SLA Operative, but the NPC too.

Similarly, the Operative’s Handbook does not list or detail all of the equipment options available in the core rulebook. This is understandable as it would substantially increase the supplement’s page count. What it does do is suggest starting packages based on a SLA Operative’s Training Package, which is very useful, handily speeding up character creation. There are new items of equipment too, such as lightweight, recyclable Shiver Ties used by Shivers instead of handcuffs (which weigh too much for a Shiver to carry on patrol), the FEN 603A Automatic Pistol (a fully automatic version of the venerable FEN 603 that is much heavier and no body likes because it is unwieldly), and a host of weapon upgrades such as a bayonet mount or Klip Killer reconfiguration to fit standard weapons on armour shoulder mounts. There are several new types of ammunition, like ABC or ‘Airburst Biological Countermeasures’, which have limited applications; new armour options and options for customisation; and vehicles. The new equipment list is not extensive, but all adds to the variety.

Finally, and if players are do not have the time to create their own SLA Operatives, the Operative’s Handbook includes a complete, ready-to-play squad of five Operatives. Complete with biographies, the Squad Arnold Nutter II, heirs apparent to the infamous Squad Arnold Nutter, whose leader, Arnold Nutter, died on camera in Cannibal Sector 1, became hero to the masses, and was subsequently restored to life via the Life After Death process. Still famous, he and his squad have their own television show and his catchphrase is now, “Pigeon!”. Nobody knows why and this is not a good for a squad that looks good on camera, but not all of them want to be members and there are some serious trust and attitude issues between them. The squad would work as media darling NPCs too, but would be fun to play for a short campaign as intended.

The Operative’s Handbook is not quite perfect. As a means to create new SLA Operatives, it is still going to rely upon the content of the core rulebook in places. In particular, equipment and skill definitions. Also, Squad Arnold Nutter II is not a typical starting Squad. It is too high profile for that and playing anyone of its members could be a challenge to the target audience, that is, someone new to the World of Progress and SLA Industries. It probably works better for more experienced players who will appreciate its twisted backstory and set-up. If the supplement is missing anything, it is a map of Mort City.

Physically, the Operative’s Handbook: A Sourcebook for SLA Industries Second Edition is well presented, is full of great artwork as you would expect, and is an easy read. It does need an edit in places.

The Operative’s Handbook: A Sourcebook for SLA Industries Second Edition an impressively useful book. A solid and accessible introduction to the World of Progress and SLA Industries in terms of both setting and rules. As a quicker means to helping create SLA Operatives, it does contain a lot that is old and been reprinted, but that is point, and there is plenty of new content too, especially about the life of a new Operative. All of which the Game Master can read and take inspiration from as much as the player simply reads through it. The Operative’s Handbook: A Sourcebook for SLA Industries Second Edition is good supplement, but not one that the Game Master and her players absolutely have to have in order to play SLA Industries. However, it is undeniably very useful.

The Other OSR: Another Bug Hunt

It is curious to note that since its original publication in 2018, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG from Tuesday Knight Games has been reliant upon the single rulebook, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide. First as a ‘Zero Edition’ and then as an actual ‘First Edition’. Curious, because despite the horror roleplaying rules detailing no alien threats and giving no advice for the Warden—as the Game Master is known in Mothership—the has proved to be success, with numerous authors writing and publishing scenarios of their own as well as titles from the publisher. What the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG offered was a stripped down, fast playing Science Fiction system that supported a number of sub-genres. Most obviously Blue Collar Science Fiction with horror and Military Science Science Fiction, the most obvious inspirations being the films Alien and Aliens, as well as Outland, Dark Star, Silent Running, and Event Horizon. Yet the authors of third-party content for the roleplaying game have also offered sandboxes such as Desert Moon of Karth and Cosmic Horror like What We Give To Alien Gods, showing how the simplicity of Mothership could be adjusted to handle other types of Science Fiction. This combination of flexibility and simplicity has made it attractive to the Old School Renaissance segment of the hobby, despite Mothership not actually sharing roots with the family of Old School Renaissance roleplaying games derived from the different editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, at best, Old School Renaissance adjacent.

With the publication of the Mothership Core Box and the Mothership Deluxe Box following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2024, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG has a complete set of rules for what is its first edition. The includes rules the construction and option of spaceships with Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, monstrous threats with Unconfirmed Contact Reports, and a guide for refereeing the roleplaying game in the form of the Warden’s Operations Manual.

—oOo—

Contact has been lost with Samsa IV. A survey detected signs of biochemistry on the planet and the Company assigned a team of researchers, engineers, and marines to establish a base of operations, a terraforming station, and investigate the signs. Doctor Edem, the team xenobiologist reported finding a species of arthropods on the planet, nicknaming them ‘carcinids’ or ‘carcs’. A subsequent report informed the Company that one had been captured for further study and examination. That was nine months ago. Six months ago, communication ceased with Gretna Base on Samsa IV. Three months ago, the crew was hired to investigate the loss of communication and reestablish contact. Specifically, they are to rendezvous with the marine commander, Second Lieutenant Kaplan, re-establish satellite communication and restore the terraforming machinery to full operation, and if that fails, evacuate Doctor Edem and the colony’s synthetic science officer, Hinton, or at his logic core. After several weeks in cyrosleep and following a briefing by Company representative, Maas, the Crew finds itself dropped at the landing zone for Gretna Base, surrounded by jungle and in the pouring rain, the rusty, scarred, base ahead along the muddy path.

This is the set-up for Another Bug Hunt, which describes itself as ‘The Introductory Adventure for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG’. As an introductory scenario to the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, what Another Bug Hunt does is almost exactly not what you want it to be doing, but the good news is that it does it well. In fact, very well. What Another Bug Hunt does is take direct inspiration from the most obvious of influences over the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, which are the films Alien and Aliens. That would seem too obvious, too easy, too derivative. Whereas what you would expect the scenario to do is show how Blue Collar Science Fiction horror can be done without any reference to either film. Especially since the Warden’s Operations Manual was about running the game and creating your own content and Unconfirmed Contact Reports contained numerous examples of threats that the Player Characters might contend with in Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. Instead, what Another Bug Hunt does is take that inspiration and show how it can presented as playable content without being derivative and does so as an extension of the Warden’s Operations Manual.

The Warden’s Operations Manual is the best of the core books for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. It takes the reader and prospective Warden through the first steps of getting started the roleplaying game, helping her think about the sort of scenario and horror she might want to run, decide what obstacles to present, what she wants each of the roleplaying game’s four roles to do, and so on. It is obvious advice, but that does not mean that it is not helpful. It is, because the scenario is an introductory scenario, written to be run and played by those new to the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG at the least. If the Warden’s Operations Manual tells the Warden how to run the roleplaying game, then Another Bug Hunt extends that advice by showing her. It goes beyond simply telling the Warden what she needs to run the scenario, but also calls out rules as needed, such as how to handle Fear Saves, how to describe locations, handle pacing and tensions, how to handle searches in locations, and asking something as basic as when should the players roll dice? At every stage of Another Bug Hunt, there is useful, helpful advice on how to handle the different aspects of the scenario, from set-up to the climax and then into the aftermath. This does include advice on running the individual parts of the scenario as one-shots, but doing so does mean that the players and their characters will not get the full story or the plot to the scenario.

The Warden’s Operations Manual is the best of the core books for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. It takes the reader and prospective Warden through the first steps of getting started the roleplaying game, helping her think about the sort of scenario and horror she might want to run, decide what obstacles to present, what she wants each of the roleplaying game’s four roles to do, and so on. It is obvious advice, but that does not mean that it is not helpful. It is, because the scenario is an introductory scenario, written to be run and played by those new to the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG at the least. If the Warden’s Operations Manual tells the Warden how to run the roleplaying game, then Another Bug Hunt extends that advice by showing her. It goes beyond simply telling the Warden what she needs to run the scenario, but also calls out rules as needed, such as how to handle Fear Saves, how to describe locations, handle pacing and tensions, how to handle searches in locations, and asking something as basic as when should the players roll dice? At every stage of Another Bug Hunt, there is advice on how to handle the different aspects of the scenario, from set-up to the climax and then into the aftermath.

In terms of that story, Another Bug Hunt is just another bug hunt. There is an isolated planet, contact has been lost with the team sent there, the Player Characters will find signs of chaos and discover a desperate situation on the planet, and the primary threat they face does consist of bugs, the aforementioned carcanids. Much like the Xenomorph of the Alien universe, the carcanids have a lifecycle which involves infecting victims—which it does with a shriek—and transforming them physically and mentally. The process gives a player with an infected character some interesting symptoms to roleplay before they completely transform and become an NPC for the Warden to control. If the parts of Another Bug Hunt are run as a one-shot, the Warden will need to speed the process up as it is more suited to the length of the whole scenario. Fortunately, there is scope for replacement Player Characters.

In terms of structure, Another Bug Hunt is divided into four parts. These start out simple and get increasingly more complex as the story progresses. The first part, ‘Distress Call’, is an exploration of the battered and chaotic ruins of Gretna Base, a mini-room crawl containing hints of the horrors to come. It ends with the first encounter with the carcanids, a surprisingly tough encounter that unnerve the players, let alone their characters. The Player Characters are free to move around wherever they want, so it is possible for them to encounter the carcanids very quickly. In ‘Hive Mind’, the Player Characters make contact with the survivors of the team sent by the company to investigate the biochemistry signals on Samsa IV. Here, the Warden has several NPCs to keep track off, three of whom give the Player Characters sub-missions to try and complete. These take place in and around the terraforming station, effectively a dam and pumping station, and they include attempting to call the dropship for evacuation, recover the team’s research from the laboratory, and rescue a squad sent to prepare the reactor against the oncoming storm. The latter, combined with the rising waters, is a growing threat in the scenario, especially when the Player Characters discover that the carcanids can swim! The Player Characters can tackle the three in any order, but the flooding makes them increasingly difficult to do. In addition, they have to deal with the tensions between the survivors and their clashing demands.

Each of the three missions has a cinematic feel to them, whether it is the drive and flight along the top of the dam; the creepiness of the laboratory which is completely in black; and descending down the chimney to cooling room of the reactor. If the first two parts take their cue from industrial spaces of Aliens, then the third part, ‘Mothership’, draws from Alien and Prometheus as the Player Characters ascend into the mountains and discover the carcanid mothership and clamber inside. The inside of the mothership is the setting for the scenario’s grand finale and showdown with its actual villain. It is great scene that the Warden should play for all its worth, terrifying and awe-inspiring, that should with a tense finale as the Player Characters flee for their lives! As the storm breaks and the carcanids swarm towards them in the fourth and final part, ‘Metamorphosis’, the survivors and the Player Characters race to evacuate the planet. This should be narratively exciting encounter as the Player Characters hold off wave after wave of the carcanids, now better equipped to deal with them—at least temporarily—as they make a run for it. This can end in a bang and a total party kill, but the subsequent scene has a sting in the tail and the final scene is a bit of an anticlimax as it purports to be a scene in which the spaceship combat rules for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG can be taught. As the scenario makes clear, the spaceship that the Player Characters are aboard is not capable of defeating the alien spaceship, so the best option is for them is to flee.

There are elements of the scenario that could have been better handled. For example, the flooding element lacks mechanical support, forcing the Warden to make up something to cover the omission. Which is pity since the scenario is designed to teach the Warden. The aforementioned spaceship encounter is a disappointment.

Physically, Another Bug Hunt is a busy affair. The layout is clean and tidy, accessible, but a little tight in places, but there is a lot going on. The artwork is decent and the cartography serviceable. It is well written and the use of the ‘Warden Educational Support’ to give out the advice is an entertaining touch.

Another Bug Hunt is not just ‘another bug hunt’. It is more than that. It is essentially a tutorial scenario for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG that draws from its primary inspirations and combines our familiarity with those inspirations with the unfamiliarity of its own story in a pleasing balancing act. Another Bug Hunt is well designed, it does a good job of showing where the rules come into play and where they do not, and it is a great introduction to both the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG and its genre.

The Other OSR: Unconfirmed Contact Reports

It is curious to note that since its original publication in 2018, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG from Tuesday Knight Games has been reliant upon the single rulebook, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide. First as a ‘Zero Edition’ and then as an actual ‘First Edition’. Curious, because despite the horror roleplaying rules detailing no alien threats and giving no advice for the Warden—as the Game Master is known in Mothership—the has proved to be success, with numerous authors writing and publishing scenarios of their own as well as titles from the publisher. What the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG offered was a stripped down, fast playing Science Fiction system that supported a number of sub-genres. Most obviously Blue Collar Science Fiction with horror and Military Science Science Fiction, the most obvious inspirations being the films Alien and Aliens, as well as Outland, Dark Star, Silent Running, and Event Horizon. Yet the authors of third-party content for the roleplaying game have also offered sandboxes such as Desert Moon of Karth and Cosmic Horror like What We Give To Alien Gods, showing how the simplicity of Mothership could be adjusted to handle other types of Science Fiction. This combination of flexibility and simplicity has made it attractive to the Old School Renaissance segment of the hobby, despite Mothership not actually sharing roots with the family of Old School Renaissance roleplaying games derived from the different editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, at best, Old School Renaissance adjacent.

With the publication of the Mothership Core Box and the Mothership Deluxe Box following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2024, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG has a complete set of rules for what is its first edition. The includes rules the construction and option of spaceships with Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, monstrous threats with Unconfirmed Contact Reports, and a guide for refereeing the roleplaying game in the form of the Warden’s Operations Manual.

—oOo—

Unconfirmed Contact Reports is the monster book for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. It contains descriptions of fifty strange entities and horrendous abominations with which to scare the Player Characters, stalk them, and bleed them, infect them, feed on them, or worse… It is designed to do several things. Obviously, it is intended to provide a range of threats that will strike fear into the Player Characters, but the authors also want to spur the Warden’s imagination. The entries—where appropriate—have the minimum of stats, so mechanically they are all easy to use. The collection begins with ‘The 4youreyez Algorithm’ which infects electronics and completely wipes, but seems to affect androids in some way, and continues with ‘Angels’, those who have communed with the great eye-like portals that have opened up in space, and ‘The Body Politic’, an invasive colonial organism which forms parliamentary voting body in all of the host’s cells rather than a single collective. ‘Cabin 102-B’ is a locked cabin that appears aboard one spaceship after another, ‘The Engineer’ is an itinerant ship’s engineer who high on stimulants sabotages the spaceships he is hired to work whilst the crew are asleep, and ‘Good’ is an alien ‘subtle, psychotropic “oversight and ethics committee.” that makes people good and so corporations and governments fear it.

There are a lot of entries Unconfirmed Contact Reports and some of are less interesting than others. For example, ‘Granny’ describes a hole in the ground from which an old woman’s voice emanates, begging to be fed. Whatever is thrown in is not enough, and on the colonies where this hole appears, the colonists begin feeding her everything they can—supplies, pets, children, and ultimately themselves. It is enough and soon Granny will leave the hole to hunt. Similarly, ‘The Sea of Silence’ is a viscous and vicious protoplasmic organism that absorbs any body of water it can and immerses its victims, scouring away any sense of self and awareness. In too many cases, the entries consist of nothing more than this description and some colour fiction accompanying the illustration. To which the response amounts to no more than, “Yes, and…?” There is no obvious way in which to bring these monsters, memes, mutterings, mutations, and more into play and so make them threats that arouse more than a similar, “Yes, and…?”. The book states that it aims to spark the Warden’s imagination and that, “Importantly, much about these entities, from their history to their reasoning, and even how they may be defeated (if they can be at all) has been left absent.” The Warden is the encouraged to these descriptions in Unconfirmed Contact Reports as a starting point for creating a scenario.

What this means that the entries in Unconfirmed Contact Reports are as just much prompts as they are descriptions of monsters. In fairness, there is advice on running scenarios and using monsters in the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. It is in the excellent Warden’s Operations Manual and it is called the ‘TOMBS Cycle’, which stands for ‘Transgression, Omens, Manifestation, Banishment, Slumber’ Cycle. This is neat little summary of how a horror scenario typically plays. So, in ‘Transgression’, the horror disturbs the horror and awakens; in ‘Omens’, signs of its activities appear; it begins to move openly in ‘Manifestation’; ‘Banishment’ can only be attempted once a means of destroying or stopping the horror has been found; and finally, under ‘Slumber’, it can be banished or subdued, at least temporarily, until someone else triggers the ‘TOMBS Cycle’ once again.

The ‘TOMBS Cycle’ is brilliantly succinct and not only a great way to outline a scenario, but to categorise a horror. Imagine if the ‘TOMBS Cycle’ had been applied to each and every one of the entries in Unconfirmed Contact Reports? Imagine how quick and easy it would have made each and every one of the entries in Unconfirmed Contact Reports to use? Imagine how quick and easy it would have made making a change to each and every one of the entries in Unconfirmed Contact Reports rather than think up any way to use them in a scenario from scratch? Imagine how not how much better Unconfirmed Contact Reports would have been if the ‘TOMBS Cycle’ had been applied, but simply just how useful?

It begs the simple question. Why was the ‘TOMBS Cycle’ not applied to Unconfirmed Contact Reports?

Physically, Unconfirmed Contact Reports is okay. The writing is okay. The artwork varies widely in quality and that is okay too.

If you have the Mothership Deluxe Box then you already own Unconfirmed Contact Reports. If you own neither, and perhaps want a good bestiary or book of threats to run with the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, the sad news is that Unconfirmed Contact Reports is a poor choice. It lowers the quality of the Mothership Deluxe Box because it more a work of fiction than a game book and more a book of prompts than something that the Warden can readily use in her game. Unconfirmed Contact Reports could have been very, very good, but as it is, it is just not good enough. One for the completionist rather than either essential or actually useful.

Inquisitorial Intelligence II

The light of the Emperor’s divine might reaches everywhere—but not always. Only in recent years has the Great Rift begun to unseal and the mysterious Noctis Aeterna begun to recede, the Days of Blinding ended, and links reforged with worlds in the Marcharius Sector lost under its pall and beyond the sector itself. As communication, trade, and psychic links have been re-established with Terra, the Imperium has worked hard to restore its rightful authority and ensure that no deviancy from creed has taken place in the Days of Blinding. Despite this still, from within heretics turn to the Dark Gods with their promises and falsehoods and corruption is rife, wasting the Emperor’s resources and wealth, and from without, there is always the danger of raids by Orks or worse, Tyranoids. Yet routing out such heresies and corruption is no simple matter, but an issue of politics and influence as well as loyalty and devotion. The Emperor’s great servants search out those they deem worthy to serve them and the Imperium, directing them to investigate mysteries and murders, experience horror and heresies, expose corruption and callousness, whether in in pursuit of their patron’s agenda, his faction’s agenda, the Emperor’s will, or all three. In return they will gain privileges far beyond that imagined by their fellows—the chance to travel and see worlds far beyond their own, enjoy wealth and comfort that though modest is more than they could have dreamed of, and witness great events that they might have heard of years later by rumour or newscast. This though, is not without its costs, for they will face the worst that the forces of Chaos has to fling at them, the possibility of death, and if they fail, exile and loss of all that they have gained. In the Forty-First Millennium, everyone is an asset and everyone is expendable, but some can survive long enough to make a difference in the face of an uncaring universe and the machinery of the Imperium of Mankind grinding its way forward into a glorious future.

This is the set-up in Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum, the spiritual successor to Dark Heresy, the very first fully realised roleplaying game to be set within the Warhammer 40,000 milieu and published in 2008, the very first roleplaying game that Games Workshop had published in two decades. Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum is published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment and sets up the Player Characters as Acolytes in service to an Inquisitor dedicated to protecting the Imperium of mankind from threats within, threats beyond, and threats without. The Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition Player’s Guide is the first of two supplements that make up a two volume set and together expand upon the role of the Inquisition within the Imperium and its mission within the Macharian Sector, the other being the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide.

The Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide is more than a simple guide to the Inquisition of the Marcharius Sector. It does expand upon the background material given in the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition Player’s Guide—and arguably, between the two, there is some repetition, but not a lot—but it includes much more that the Game Master can use and even develop as part of her Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum campaign. It includes expanded notes on the Inquisition and its philosophies, a guide to running Inquisition adventures and roleplaying Inquisitors, looks at some of the most radical tools has to hand in investigating, learning about, and eradicating heresy, details a decades-long campaign frame work, and provides contacts, threats, and case files. If the emphasis in the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition Player’s Guide was on the Acolytes, that is, the Player Characters, and their Patron Inquisitor, in Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide, the emphasis on the Patron Inquisitor, his rivals, and the Inquisition in general. Lastly, unlike Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition Player’s Guide, this is definitely a book for the Game Master rather than the player.

After a quick refresher about the three Holy Orders of the Inquisition—Ordo Hereticus, Ordo Malleus, and Ordo Xenos—and their goals, philosophies, and techniques, the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide gives a quick overview of some the allies that the Inquisition can rely upon if needs direct force and intervention, it presents a more detailed examination of the philosophies of the Inquisition. This expands upon the information given in the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition Player’s Guide and adds further eight Philosophies. These include Horusian, the belief that the God-Emperor will return as a living god, requiring an appropriate vessel to embody, which will be facilitated by the power of the Warp; Libricaranism, which holds that the status quo within the Imperium must be maintained at any cost, that no-one, no matter their status, is beyond reproach, and every Infractionist, revolutionary, and heretic must be put to death; and adherents of Seculos Attendous believe that the Adeptus Ministorum is slowly corrupting and hampering the growth of the Imperium, that the Adeptus Ministorum is unnecessary to embrace the God-Emperor’s Power, and for Mankind to be free, the Imperial Cult must be removed from power. In each case, the tenets and modus operandi of each Philosophy is outlined and suggestions are given as how to roleplay an adherent of the Philosophy, along with a scenario hook. This highlights further how the Inquisition is not a monolithic organisation and helps the Game Master portray both the Acolytes’ Patron Inquisitors and those Inquisitors that appear latter in the book.

Further help for the Game Master comes in the form an examination of how the Inquisition relates to the Imperium in terms of means, methods, and power. It is backed with a good guide to running adventures for Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum that includes direct pointers on how to make a campaign feel like Warhammer and on how to make it feel like Imperium Maledictum. Thus, it suggests for the former that everything should be big, from thousand-layer hive cities to cathedral-like voidships; that Mankind relies on technology despite the fears and restrictions imposed by Imperial law; and that on some level, everyone is terrified and that fear is pervasive. Whilst for the former, it suggests both Noir and Gothic themes, deadly encounters, the application of brains over brawn, and the unique nature of the relationship between the Acolytes and their Patron Inquisitor. The advice covers setting up a game, running a campaign, handling an investigation, and more.

In terms of investigation, Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide includes a great guide to what to look for when investigating first signs of Chaos and then Xenos. The section is particularly good in listing the marks of Chaos for the four gods—Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch. In comparison, the signs of xenos are less colourful. However, as much as the Inquisition works hard to eradicate signs of heresy, there are Philosophies in the Inquisition that hold that heretical knowledge can be turned on the heresies themselves. The supplement examines such Radical methods via the use of ‘Forbidden Knowledge’ as a skill specialisation. This requires the ‘Forbidden Knowledge’ Talent, which an Acolyte can only gain with permission of the Game Master, and its use is very much not without its dangers. There are Philosophies that hold that even knowing such knowledge is heretical, which would put a knowledgeable Acolyte in peril, but there is also the danger of possession by a demon! Of course, learning such knowledge means that an Acolyte is likely to gain Corruption Points and definitely will if he is possessed! The degree of demonic influence—and eventual possession—is tracked on the Possession Tracker, which goes from one and ‘The Puppet’ to one hundred and ‘The Chosen’. With the latter, there is no hope of the Acolyte being exorcised or redeemed, but otherwise there is a possibility. All of which presents the possibility of an interesting roleplaying challenge for a player willing to have his Acolyte fall under demonic influences and perhaps find a way back…

The advice on roleplaying Inquisitors is also good, looking at both their greater interactions and actions across the Marcharius Sector and their lesser interactions and actions with the Acolytes, which will primarily come through the briefings and debriefings that the Acolytes will receive from their Patron Inquisitor. All this leads up to the presentation of six sample Inquisitors, each complete with their own secrets and their own Inquisitor Patron Sheets. Any one of the six could be the Acolytes’ Patron Inquisitor, but all six have a role to play in ‘The Heresies Macharia’.

Arguably, ‘The Heresies Macharia’ is the heart of the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide. This is not a campaign as such, but a campaign framework around which the Game Master can insert her own content as well as develop and run the suggested mission outlines. It follows the death of Inquisitor Lord Hieronymo Drake that left the Marcharius Sector and its Inquisitors without an Inquisitor Lord, a position which his former Interrogator, now Inquisitor herself, Sylvestrine Horst, schemes for over the course of seven Conclaves. A Conclave is an opportunity to share resources ad information, determine threats which need to be addressed, and perhaps agree on the activities of the Inquisition for the next few years before the next Conclave. However, they are also a chance to ascertain the status of rival Inquisitors, both learn and substantiate rumours, discover secrets, get involved in intrigues, and more. For the players and their Acolytes, it is an opportunity to engage in politics and decisions that have sector-wide and Inquisitorial repercussions and consequences as their support their own patron Inquisitor. It is also a chance for the Acolytes to spend more time in the company of their Inquisitor than they would normally do, and if they campaign hard and succeed, may put them on the path to potential greatness on the coattails of their patron Inquisitor as he is elevated to the position on Inquisitor Lord. This can be a Patron Inquisitor already created prior to the start of the campaign or one of the six detailed earlier in the book, each of which plays a role in the campaign. This can include the instigator of the campaign, Sylvestrine Horst.

A number of plots run in the background to ‘The Heresies Macharia’, one connected to the activities of the late Inquisitor Lord Hieronymo Drake, another to an imminent threat from outside of the borders to the sector, and yet another one deals with an internal threat. The first Conclave involves all six Inquisitors detailed earlier in the supplement and they will continue to play a role throughout the campaign, not at every Conclave, but with more of presence to expose the players and their Acolytes to their various philosophies, Puritan or Radical. Besides the attendees, each Conclave describes the Intrigues and rumours and secrets that the Acolytes can get involved in and the Strifes. Each Strife represents a major issue or agenda that will be brought before the Conclave and discussed in terms of possible resolution. For example, at the first Conclave, one Strife concerns a missing, presumed dead Inquisitor, whilst another deal with the worrying rise of four cults on the world of Goros Pok that require investigation and either eradication or re-education, the latter two options varying depending on whether an Inquisitor is a Puritan or a Radical.

Each Strife has an associated mission outline that the Game Master can develop into a proper scenario or even series of scenarios. Some might take a session or two to resolve, but others might involve multiple sessions. Some may also be ongoing simultaneously such that the Acolytes can only be assigned to deal with one rather than the other. This enables other plots to unfold in the background whilst the Acolytes are dealing with one Strife plotline. If successful in a mission, the Acolytes will improve their Patron Inquisitor’s Legitimacy once they attend the next Conclave, but reduce it if they fail. Ultimately, if the Acolytes’ Patron Inquisitor has proven to be the most capable—as measured by his Legitimacy versus those of the other Inquisitors—of dealing with the emerging and growing threats, he is likely to be elevated to the position of Lord Inquisitor of the Marcharius Sector.

‘The Heresies Macharia’ has a grand scope with lots of play packed into some forty pages. However, the Game Master still has to unpack it and then develop the finer details of each Conclave, add numerous NPCs, and expand each of the given missions, as well as adding more of her own, in order to work it up into a full campaign that is ready to play. It presents a lot of work and effort. Of course, it means that the Game Master can make it her own, but at the same time, the reader is left wishing that none of this was necessary, that ‘The Heresies Macharia’ was ready to play. It is a great campaign outline, but it really deserves a book of its own.

With ‘The Heresies Macharia’ placed in the middle of the book, it does feel as if the first third of the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide has been building support towards it, although there is plenty about that support which is useful outside of the campaign framework too. Contacts are barely touched upon in the core rulebook, but here the rules are expanded upon with guidance on finding, making, and maintaining contacts. This can be done both during a mission and during downtime, the strength of the relationship determined by the Influence that the Acolyte’s Patron Inquisitor has with the faction that the contact, but can be adjusted up and down depending upon the Acolytes’ actions and what they ask for. The mechanics are a good way in which to bring NPCs into play and they are supported by ten sample contacts from a variety of factions complete with the requests that they might make of the Acolytes and the rewards that the Acolytes in turn may receive.

Where the contacts can be inserted into any campaign, some of the supplement’s ‘Threats’ are more closely tied to ‘The Heresies Macharia’ framework. For example, ‘The Company of the Twisted Sickle’ is a traitorous guard regiment in league with Nurgle cultFists on Goros Pok, an agricultural world where the first Conclave will direct the Acolytes to investigate a number of potential heresies. Each threat is given a decent description, including resources, methods, and secrets. There are also Genestealer Cults, cults devoted to Tzeentch and Nurgle, and more. The creepiest of them is ‘Momas the Murmurer’, a rumoured fear that spreads from world to world across the Macharian Sector, seemingly capable of possessing anyone and directing their actions as if they were puppets, and then disappearing. In comparison to the more overt Chaos-related threats, this is nicely subtle and underplayed. Rounding out the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide is a set of ready-to-play ‘Open Case Files’ and a short bestiary. As with the Threats, the ‘Open Case Files’ can be used with ‘The Heresies Macharia’ framework or the Game Master’s own campaign.

Physically, Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide is very well presented. The book is cleanly, tidily presented and an easy read. The artwork is also good.

With so much of the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide dedicated to ‘The Heresies Macharia’ framework in one fashion or another, the supplement does not feel quite as useful as the companion Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition Player’s Guide. However, there is plenty that is useful and that can be used with the Game Master’s own campaign rather than the ‘The Heresies Macharia’ framework. The Inquisitors and their Philosophies, the Contacts and the Threats, and more are all useful to that end as is the supplement’s good advice for running Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition. Ultimately though, whilst the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Inquisition GM’s Guide does provide a great deal of support for the Game Master, at the same ‘The Heresies Macharia’ framework shows what a campaign for the roleplaying game would look like, but does not provide the Game Master with something that is really ready to play. It does provide the Game Master with a great basis for a very good campaign that she can work on until that ready-to-play campaign arrives.

Work is Scary

“A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!”—Blade Runner

Building Better Worlds is the second campaign supplement for Alien: The Roleplaying Game. It is unfortunately, the last supplement for Alien: The Roleplaying Game. It is fortunately, compatible with Alien: The Roleplaying Game – Evolved Edition, just as is every other release for Alien: The Roleplaying Game. There are several ways in which Alien: The Roleplaying Game can be played. It has three themes, two modes, and three models. The three themes are Space Horror and Sci-Fi Action, combined with a Sense of Wonder, whilst the two modes are Cinematic and Campaign. Cinematic mode is designed to emulate the drama of a film set within the Alien universe, and so emphasises high stakes, faster, more brutal play, and will be deadlier, whilst the Campaign mode is for longer, more traditional play, still brutal, if not deadly, but more survivable. Of the two, the Cinematic mode is suited to one-shots, to convention play, and as introductions to the mechanics and setting of Alien: The Roleplaying Game. The three models are Colonial Marines, essentially military missions like Aliens; Frontier Colonists—miners, prospectors, and settlers trying to survive for a better life on an all but barren planet; and Space Truckers—starship crews hauling goods and resources, as in Alien. Of the support to date, the trilogy of scenarios—Chariot of the Gods (also available in the Alien: The Roleplaying Game Starter Set), Destroyer of Worlds, and Heart of Darkness—have all been in the Cinematic mode, but for different models, focusing in turn upon Space Truckers, Colonial Marines, and Scientists. Together they form a thematically connected campaign, whereas the Colonial Marines Operations Manual not only detailed the United States Colonial Marine Corps, it also provided a full campaign for the Colonial Marines model. Building Better Worlds does the same, but for Frontier Colonists and Space Truckers.

Building Better Worlds is a book that will take you out—far out—into the Alien universe to the Outer Rim Territories as far as the frontier of the Weyland Isles Sector, and then quite literally beyond, that is, ‘Beyond the 20 Parsec Limit’ where there is little hope of help or rescue if an outpost or colony gets into trouble or needs rescuing. Building Better Worlds is a book about the future of humanity and finding new worlds, living on worlds and settlements far from Earth not always best suited to colonisation, about making the lengthy journeys between them, and surviving some of the deadliest of secrets and dangers in the galaxy. With Building Better Worlds, the Game Mother can run campaigns that focus on searching for and discovering new planets—hopefully suited to settlement or exploitation, if not both; on settling, working, and developing colonies; and on transporting goods and passengers between them. It is designed to be used by both player and Game Mother and so is book of two halves. The first half includes an explanation of the fundamentals of exploration and colonisation, the colonisation timeline, a mix of governmental non-governmental organisations, guidelines to creating suitable Player Characters as well as two new careers, numerous weapons, vehicles of all types, and other equipment, and some ideas around which campaigns could be based. This half, roughly a third of the book, is for the player, whilst the longer second half is for the Game Master. That half includes two catalogues, one of the systems and colonies of the frontier, the other of the parts of the Weyland-Yutani Extrasolar Species Catalogue that Weyland-Yutani does not want you to see, ‘The Lost Worlds’, a complete sandbox campaign beyond the frontier, and the expanded means to create new worlds and colonies, and for running a colony.

The supplement opens with the facts of colonisation and space travel. That it is heroic, that it is dirty, that it is dangerous, and that it is expensive. That explorers need to be hardy and well-trained and that the pay is invariably good, whilst colonists need to be even more hardy, prepared for life on another world, and expect to be paid little, if at all. Both are likely to need to pay back for their training, though this is easier for explorers who make more income, and both exploration and colonisation expeditions are going to be funded by wealthy corporations, governments, or institutions. The history of colonisation runs from 2029 CE and the Weyland Era to the 2190s and the Black Gold Rush following the terrorist nuclear bombings of petroleum supply colonies, the Colony Wars, and the Great Mother Mission launched to contact lost colonies. However, the explanation of events is organised by category and the timeline crammed into a two-page spread, so it is difficult to get a proper feel for the flow of events.

The organisations chapter includes descriptions of positions on Scientific Exploration Vehicular (SEV) Expeditions and the Extrasolar Colonization Administration (ECA), useful as potential roles for both Player Characters and NPCs, whilst the governmental organization and corporation descriptions are a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the Seegson Corporation, United Americas, Colonial Marine Corps, Union of Progressive Peoples, and more will be familiar, expanding upon the information in both the Alien: The Roleplaying Game corebook and the Colonial Marines Operations Manual. The less familiar includes the Central Confederation of Africa, which is a minor, but rising interstellar power, and the New Albion Protectorate, a former colony located in the Weyland Isles, which seceded from the Three World Empire (3WE) and is prompting other colonies to follow suit in an effort commonly called ‘3WExit’ (you can tell that the author is British).

In terms of character options, Building Better World offers two new Careers as well as discussing how the different Careers from Alien: The Roleplaying Game can find their way onto exploration missions and colonisations expeditions and why they might join both, along with a table of possible personal agendas, which is very good. Each is also given two new Frontier Talents and two items of Frontier Gear. For example, the Frontier Talents for the Colonial Marshal are ‘Menacing’ and ‘Tough’, whilst the items of Frontier Gear are a ‘Bounty hunter/Investigator licence’ or ‘Handcuffs’. The two new Careers are the Wildcatter and the Entertainer. The Wildcatter is a prospector or surveyor who explores new worlds looking for resources or suitable sites for colonisation. The Entertainer is suggested as being a performer, croupier, unofficial club owner, waiter, barkeep, or other profession, which is less useful for most campaigns. It would need a static set-up—a base or a colony or a space station—to be a logical character option, and when things go sideways as they should, would also be the basis for a replacement Player Character.

There is a good selection of new gear and ships which can be found all across the frontier and beyond. New weapons, armour and suits, other equipment, vehicles, and spacecraft. The other equipment ranges from items as simple as a Folding Spade and Digging Fork (which of course, can be sued as a weapon) and as complex as the ‘Omni-Tech SDDG Sonic Deterrent Defence Grid’ designed to deter indigenous wildlife and pests from getting inside a perimeter. It is effective against humans though, inducing stress. The vehicles are typically large, multi-wheeled, and rugged, the COBB-C/D ‘Grasshopper Multivector Helijet’ an exception. The spaceships include the Lockmart Model 439SL Class 7 Excavator which has a heavy mining drill in its prow; the Weyland Heliades-Class, the first FTL-capable spacecraft; and colony vessels such as the Lockmart Model TB22C Borrowdale Class Transfer Vehicle and W-Y Model CY78.3 Affiance-Class U Colony Ship.

Surprisingly, the advice and suggestions for campaigns is in the half of Building Better Worlds for the player rather than in the section for the Game Mother. There are rules for surviving new environmental conditions, but the most interesting content here is the discussion of campaign types, set-ups, and expedition types. There are some colony classifications described too, including the ‘Shake and Bake’, ‘Extra Crispy’, ‘Giffy Popped’, and ‘Armed and Hammered’, that will give certain colonies similar feels. The two types of campaign discussed are Explorer and Colony Campaigns and together with the list of potential expedition types, such as supply and cargo runs, salvage ops, prospecting, scientific field-trips, and more, gives the Game Mother a decent range of ideas around which to base campaigns and plots. These are solid prompts, but as much they give the Game Mother some good starting points, the reader is left wanting more as each is worthy of further expansion and discussion.

For the Game Master, Building Better Worlds is also broken into two halves, one more general in nature, the other specific to the campaign, ‘The Lost Worlds’. The more general half begins with details of eighteen new systems located in the Outer Rim Territories, the Frontier, and Beyond the 20 Parsec Limit. Each has a description that gives its history and current status, plus list of stats and details that includes affiliation, classification, climate and temperature, terrain, notable colonies, population, and key resources. There are no hooks given so the Game Mother will need to work hard to develop these into fuller adventure locations with reasons why anyone would visit them. At half a page, they are underwritten and perhaps point towards the need for a world guide for Alien: The Roleplaying Game – Evolved Edition.

The second section is the ‘Weyland-Yutani Extrasolar Species Catalogue’. From Abominations and Fulfremmen (Perfected) to Protomorphs and and Xenomorphs, this is an expanded bestiary of your worst nightmares that nobody wants to meet and this being for Alien: The Roleplaying Game, unfortunately will. Many of these have been taken from the film Prometheus and the cinematic scenario, Heart of Darkness. Some also appear in the campaign that follows, but this still expands the options available to the Game Mother wanting to surprise and unnerve her players and their characters.

The second half of the section for the Game Mother is ‘The Lost Worlds’, a campaign that takes up just under half of Building Better Worlds. It builds off the timeline given earlier and set in the 2190s, concerns the Great Mother Mission. This is a combined multi-national, multi-corporation humanitarian, recontact, and recolonisation expedition launched by the United Nations Interstellar Settlement Corps to discover what happened to the settlements and peoples of the Far Spinward Colonies following their isolation from the Outer Rim due to a series of massive solar ejections, gamma bursts, and waves of radiation. It has been seventy-five years since contact was lost and numerous vested interests want to know what has happened to the millions of people who settled the region. There is even hope that if successful, the Great Mother Mission will serve as an example of co-operation and goodwill in the face of increased hostilities between the United Americas and the Union of Progressive Peoples. Of course, the expedition is rife with tensions and issues, both political and corporate, and these will drive the actions of the expedition members NPCs for much of the campaign and influence those of the Player Characters too.

The Player Characters are members of the expedition assigned to the UNCSS Solovetsky Island, one of Great Mother Mission’s four Magellan-class J Science Exploration Vessels (SEV). They can take just about any role about ship, but need to be free to conduct planet-based missions too. Otherwise, the players have a lot of freedom in terms of what characters they can create and roleplay. The campaign consists of seven chapters or expeditions, the first six of which can be played in any order as a sandbox, the completion of each one reward the players and their characters with another piece of the campaign’s metapuzzle, whilst the seventh serves as the campaign’s finale. Alternatively, they can be run as one-shots, but that would negate the tension and mystery that builds as the campaign progresses. The lose structure of the campaign also means that the Game Master has room to create her own scenarios set on other worlds in the Far Spinward Colonies. She may want to do that to have her Player Characters discover what happened to the other colonies that were not necessarily affected by the campaign’s emerging threat. The campaign includes a Session Zero for set-up and guidance on how to handle downtime scenes between the expeditions, as well as list of events that can occur as necessary or because of the Player Characters’ actions.

Over the course of the campaign, the Player Characters will visit colonies riven by a family feud, divided into extreme haves and have-nots, on the edge of insurrection, and seemingly empty bar strict automation. They will also conduct a search and rescue mission for a lost expedition vessel and even help set up and run a colony. The latter makes use of the colony creation and operation rules and advice in the supplement’s appendix which also include expanded rules for creating star systems and planets. Structurally, since ‘The Lost Worlds’ can be played in any order, it does lack a sense of space or urgency as written. Rather urgency is going to build from the narrative and the discoveries that the Player Characters make as opposed to inbuilt timing mechanism. Thus, by the end of the sixth part of the campaign, the Player Characters will have uncovered, even encountered, and hopefully understood the nature of a threat to not just the Far Spinward Colonies, but all of occupied space. Again and again, the Player Characters will find signs of ‘alien’ activity and even be confronted by it, but where in a Cinematic scenario, the objectives are simply survival and escape, here they are also to learn and wonder at some the secrets that the campaign will reveal.

Building Better Worlds does feel as if it should be two books, one focusing on its themes of colonisation and exploration, the other on its campaign. Perhaps as two books, the one devoted to colonisation and exploration would have had more room for colonies of the Alien universe to be expanded upon and detailed. Plus, ‘The Lost Worlds’ is more of a re-exploratory campaign than an exploratory campaign and were it not for the expedition where the Player Characters get to set up and run a colony, that part of the supplement would have been ignored. However, this does not mean that as just the one book, Building Better Worlds is a bad book by any stretch of the imagination.

Physically, Building Better Worlds is a great looking book. It is well written and the artwork is as excellent as you would expect for the line. As with other books for Alien: The Roleplaying Game, the layout is fairly open and thus easier to read. Being for the first edition of the roleplaying game, it still uses the black background that some readers have an issue with.

Building Better Worlds expands Alien: The Roleplaying Game—and consequently Alien: The Roleplaying Game – Evolved Edition—with a wealth of options, campaign ideas and playstyles, threats and other dangers, that all together open the possibilities of the roleplaying game’s Campaign mode and the Frontier Colonist campaign model. It then showcases them with a great campaign that delivers an escalating combination of horror and hubris.

The Other OSR: Shipbreaker’s Toolkit

It is curious to note that since its original publication in 2018, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG from Tuesday Knight Games has been reliant upon the single rulebook, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide. First as a ‘Zero Edition’ and then as an actual ‘First Edition’. Curious, because despite the horror roleplaying rules detailing no alien threats and giving no advice for the Warden—as the Game Master is known in Mothership—the has proved to be success, with numerous authors writing and publishing scenarios of their own as well as titles from the publisher. What the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG offered was a stripped down, fast playing Science Fiction system that supported a number of sub-genres. Most obviously Blue Collar Science Fiction with horror and Military Science Science Fiction, the most obvious inspirations being the films Alien and Aliens, as well as Outland, Dark Star, Silent Running, and Event Horizon. Yet the authors of third-party content for the roleplaying game have also offered sandboxes such as Desert Moon of Karth and Cosmic Horror like What We Give To Alien Gods, showing how the simplicity of Mothership could be adjusted to handle other types of Science Fiction. This combination of flexibility and simplicity has made it attractive to the Old School Renaissance segment of the hobby, despite Mothership not actually sharing roots with the family of Old School Renaissance roleplaying games derived from the different editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, at best, Old School Renaissance adjacent.

With the publication of the Mothership Core Box and the Mothership Deluxe Box following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2024, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG has a complete set of rules for what is its first edition. The includes rules the construction and option of spaceships with Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, monstrous threats with Unconfirmed Contact Reports, and a guide for refereeing the roleplaying game in the form of the Warden’s Operations Manual.

—oOo—

The Shipbreaker’s Toolkit fulfils a void in the rules for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. For despite the fact that as the title suggests, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG is a Science Fiction roleplaying game and that spaceships play an important role in its primary inspiration, which have been until the publication of the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, no have been actual rules for spaceships and their use for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. The Shipbreaker’s Toolkit presents all of the rules that a Warden and her players are going to need for handling spaceships in the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. This includes designing them, operating them, running them in combat, repairing them, and so on. If the Player Characters in Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG own or operate a spaceship, it is their collective home from home, their base of operations, and/or their means of making a living. It is, of course, also their means of transport from place to another, one scenario to another. It can be a millstone around their collective necks if they need to make repairs or cannot make the mortgage payments. In the hands of the Warden, a spaceship is a means of travel as well as an opponent (or source of opponents), a potential mystery, and so on.

The good news is that the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit keeps its rules short and simple. A spaceship in the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG has three stats—Thrusters, Battle, and Systems—and just like a Player Character’s attributes, they are expressed as percentiles. In addition, a spaceship is rated for its Hull (the amount of Megadamage it can withstand), how much fuel it carries, the number of Warp Cores its is fitted with indicating how far it can jump in hyperspace, how many cryopods and escape pods it has, how much it carries, the number of crew and what their positions are, how many hardpoints it has and what it is armed with, and so on. All of which is recorded on a ‘Mothership Ship Manifest’ sheet.

Interstellar space travel in the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG is achieved via hyperspace, a typical journey taking between two and twenty days. There is the danger of relativistic time dilation with every space trip, which more likely the longer the distance travelled. Hyperspace can only be entered or exited at Jump Points a safe distance—typically equal to two-weeks’ travel time—outside of a star system. Travel in hyperspace is handled automatically whilst the crew and passengers are in cyropods. Ships are categorised Class 0 to Class V. Class 0 vessels are shuttlecraft, shuttles, fighters, and dropships, whilst Class V vessels are medium military ships, exploration vessels, and troopships. A crew of a merchantman might operate a Class II medium commercial like a freighter, a team of scientists might be assigned to a Class V Exploration Vessel, and a squad of marines might be assigned to a Class V Troopship.

The Shipbreaker’s Toolkit details nine starships as well as various spaceships. They include a Raider for pirates, Executive Transport, Freighter, Patrol Craft, Salvage Cutter, Corvette, Jumpliner, Troopship, and Exploration. Each one has its own stats, a decent illustration, a good idea of the ship’s layout rather than deck plans, and some extra details. All of the vessels are long rather than squat and quite open in their construction. The extra details really do add to the nature of the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG future. For example, the Patrol Craft also includes details of how customs inspections are handled along with possible contraband that might be found; the Salvage Cutter includes the Law of Salvage; and the Jumpliner describes what a typical space journey is like for its passengers. All of which can be brought into play as needed.

There is no means of handling ship construction in the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit. Rather, the Warden and her players are expected to pick a ship off the shelf and modify it, as necessary. There is a large table of Upgrades which can be added to most vessels such as ‘Agar Cushioning’ to help reduce Cyrosickness or an ‘Enhanced A.I.’ to improve a ship’s Systems’ stat. There is space on the ‘Mothership Ship Manifest’ sheet to note these in addition to the standard details as well as draw some simple deck plans.

Mechanically, to have a character operate a ship, his player rolls against the Thrusters, Battle, or Systems stats as appropriate, just as he would for a stat for his character. A player can add an appropriate skill rating as well. For example, the Pilot skill can be added to Thrusters to manoeuvre the spaceship and Systems and Asteroid Mining when scanning for mineral deposits. The rules also cover scanning and sensors, communications, distress signals (with a table to roll on indicating how long before the signal is picked up and someone comes to investigate), and of course, combat. Ship-to-ship combat is designed to be short and deadly. A round can be minutes or hours, and if either ship elects to pursue or evade, it requires the expenditure of fuel. Damage, whether from autocannons, laser cannons, or missiles, is inflicted as Megadamage. The Hull rating protects against Megadamage, but once destroyed, the amount left over is added to a roll on the Megadamage Table. This can result in ‘Navigation Offline’, damaging navigation data and preventing Thruster Checks, a ‘Hull Breach’ which forces all aboard to make a Body Save or suffer a Wound, or simply ‘Abandon Ship! (in less than ten minutes). Overall, fast-playing, and brutal.

Encountering space aliens and engaging in spaceship combat is, of course, stressful. Unfortunately, so is operating a starship. There is constant need for maintenance and the chance that issues will arise. Failing a Maintenance Check can lead to a Stress Check and for Owner-Operator, there is a new Save called a Bankruptcy Save. Rolled every quarter or year, failure and critical failure ends up with the crew and/or owner owing a massive debt to the wrong people. Even successful Bankruptcy Save gives limited options—purchasing one Minor Upgrade for the ship, paying for one Minor Repair for the ship, paying each crewmember several months salary, or investing to improve the Bankruptcy Save for next quarter. A Critical Success provides better options.

Physically, the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit is clearly written and easy to read. The illustrations are decent and the rules are supported by examples of play. The only thing that the book might have benefitted from is clearer and more deckplans.

In terms of the future of the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit makes clear that being an operator-owner is difficult and expensive, and spaceship combat is really dangerous. Operating a vessel for a corporation, institute, or the military means avoiding some of the expense at least, but it does not give the Player Characters the same sense of freedom. In whatever way the Warden and her players want to involve spaceships in their Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG game, the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit has them covered with a solid set of uncomplicated rules that still leaves room for Warden input.

The Other OSR: Warden’s Operation Guide

It is curious to note that since its original publication in 2018, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG from Tuesday Knight Games has been reliant upon the single rulebook, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide. First as a ‘Zero Edition’ and then as an actual ‘First Edition’. Curious, because despite the horror roleplaying rules detailing no alien threats and giving no advice for the Warden—as the Game Master is known in Mothership—the has proved to be success, with numerous authors writing and publishing scenarios of their own as well as titles from the publisher. What the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG offered was a stripped down, fast playing Science Fiction system that supported a number of sub-genres. Most obviously Blue Collar Science Fiction with horror and Military Science Science Fiction, the most obvious inspirations being the films Alien and Aliens, as well as Outland, Dark Star, Silent Running, and Event Horizon. Yet the authors of third-party content for the roleplaying game have also offered sandboxes such as Desert Moon of Karth and Cosmic Horror like What We Give To Alien Gods, showing how the simplicity of Mothership could be adjusted to handle other types of Science Fiction. This combination of flexibility and simplicity has made it attractive to the Old School Renaissance segment of the hobby, despite Mothership not actually sharing roots with the family of Old School Renaissance roleplaying games derived from the different editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, at best, Old School Renaissance adjacent.

With the publication of the Mothership Core Box and the Mothership Deluxe Box following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2024, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG has a complete set of rules for what is its first edition. The includes rules the construction and option of spaceships with Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, monstrous threats with Unconfirmed Contact Reports, and a guide for refereeing the roleplaying game in the form of the Warden’s Operations Manual.

—oOo—

The Warden’s Operations Manual is the other of the core rulebooks after the Player’s Survival Guide for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. It is the guidebook for the Warden—as the Game Master is known in the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG—and it takes the Warden, neophyte or not, from the first steps of making the initial preparations for a campaign all the way up to running a campaign. Not just advice, but also suggestions, prompts, and more. In the process, it talks about creating and portraying horror, creating compelling mysteries and investigations, how to be a Warden—and a good at that, how to support player agency, interpreting the rules and making good rulings, handling different aspects of the rules, introducing house rules, and more. And in just sixty pages. It packs a lot into those pages.

The Warden’s Operations Manual is at its heart a book of questions and answers, asking and answering such questions as how do I get started? What should I run? Where do I find the horror in my scenario? What challenges do I give my Player Characters? There are effectively ten questions that it poses and gives answers to in explaining the step-by-step process. More experienced Wardens might want to miss or two, and in the long run, the Warden omit some too as she gets used to the process. It starts with simplest of things. Buying a notebook to serve as the Warden’s ‘Mothership Campaign Notebook’, inviting friends to play, and reading the Player’s Survival Guide, before choosing a scenario and asking what is the horror going to be? As it expands here, it suggests options, such as ‘Explore the Unknown’, ‘Salvage a Derelict Spaceship’, and ‘Survive a Colossal Disaster’, and to find the horror it gives the ‘TOMBS Cycle’, which stands for ‘Transgression, Omens, Manifestation, Banishment, Slumber’ Cycle. This is neat little summary of how a horror scenario typically plays. So, in ‘Transgression’, something has disturbed the Horror and caused it to activate or awaken; signs hinting of its activities or effect are found in ‘Omens’; its ‘Manifestation’ means that the Horror moves into the open and everyone can see what it is, and will now be hunted by it; ‘Banishment’ sees the Player Characters race to find a way to destroy or stop the Horror; and lastly, in ‘Slumber’, the Horror is banished or subdued, at least temporarily, until someone else triggers the ‘TOMBS Cycle’ once again. It is both a superbly succinct summary of just about any horror film—and very obviously of the key film which inspires the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG—and a framework that the Warden can return to again and again to construct further scenarios.

Once the horror is in place, the Warden adds obstacles for the Player Characters to be overcome, which the Warden’s Operations Manual categorises as ‘Survive, Solve, or Save’. These are then broken down, offering choices. For example, for ‘Solve’ it offers questions or mysteries, puzzles or obstacles, and answers or secrets, and further expands upon them. The most common questions are ‘What happened here?’, ‘Who did it?’, and ‘Where are they?’ and some ideas are given as what they could be. For ‘Solve’, there is a really good table for defining NPCs along two axes—‘Helpful versus Unhelpful’ and ‘Powerful versus Powerless’. A helpful, but powerless NPC is a drinking buddy, whereas a powerful, unhelpful NPC is a gatekeeper. Lastly. The supplement takes the Warden through the process of drawing her scenario onto a map and then in tying it all together, providing something for each of the four roles in the roleplaying game. Violence for Marines, something that Humans cannot do, but Androids can, some science or research for the Scientist, and something to build, repair, or pilot for the Teamster.

With the writing and the design out of the way, the middle part of the Warden’s Operations Manual is dedicated to advice on actually running the game. Here we are on more familiar territory, good for running almost any other roleplaying game, but very much focused on the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. There is direct and more immediate advice for the prospective Warden not to worry about the rules, to use common sense, to build up the horror slowly, to treat every violent encounter as if it could be last, and more. The advice on teaching the game is good for a Warden’s first game as much as it is the players as well as if the Warden runs the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG at conventions, and there is advice on that as well for setting the tone and safety limits for strangers (at conventions) in addition to that for friends.

It breaks down the cycle of play, examining each of the stages in turn, from the Warden describing the situation and answering the players’ questions through waiting for them to decide what they want their characters to do, the Warden setting the stakes for any conflict and explaining the consequences, and again waiting for the players to commit, to resolving the action. This is such a usual deconstruction of the game flow from minute to minute and what is so useful is that like a lot of the advice in the Warden’s Operations Manual, it applies to a lot of other roleplaying games and not just the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. And as with the earlier ‘TOMBS Cycle’ and ‘Survive, Solve, or Save’, it examines these aspects of play in further detail, noting how to handle time and tension, what to do about technology (lots of good options here such as offloading the explanation as to how a device or technology works onto the players and having futuristic technology work as badly as our own, alongside simply keeping track of it to make it part of the campaign background and focusing upon what it does rather than how it works), when to not roll dice and when to roll dice as well as resolving the action and the consequences of failure.

The suggestions for social situations are interesting in that NPCs should be obvious in their manner so that the Player Characters have a greater understanding of who they are and be in a better place to decide how to interact with them and what to do with the information they learn about or from them. The Warden is also told that she should tell players when an NPC is lying. Similarly, the Player Characters can lie to the NPCs. And all this without resort to dice rolls, although the Player Characters will suffer the consequences if found out and knowing that an NPC is lying leads to further investigation (or confrontation) as the Player Characters try to confirm it.

The advice on investigations is kept surprisingly short, boiling down to giving the players clues rather than making them roll for them, except when their characters are in a hurry or when time is short. Monsters and horrors are to be kept that, as ‘boss’ monsters that the Player Characters cannot readily defeat until they have more information about them. When it comes to combat and death, the Warden’s Operations Manual reiterates that the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG is a roleplaying game about people in the worst and most stressful situation possible and that this, in addition to the possibility that their characters might die, should always be made clear to the players.

The latter third of the Warden’s Operations Manual focuses upon building campaigns. Here it talks about style and types of campaign frames, such as space truckers, dogs of war, bounty hunters, and mining and salvage, creating factions, handling money and debt, and more. There is a bibliography too and some advice on telling a good story, like the fact that the game is about what the players do, that story happens in retrospect, and for the Warden to use her best ideas first rather than build up to them, and how to end a campaign. All of which is supported by tables of prompts and ideas that the Warden can pick from or roll on.

Physically, the Warden’s Operations Manual is well produced and very nicely illustrated, with many illustrations actually serving as examples of elements of the game, such as the illustration for tactical considerations or the ‘TOMBS Cycle’. The book is very readable. 

The Warden’s Operations Manual is a very good book of advice, help, and suggestions for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, but there is room for expansion in places. For example, the individual parts of ‘Survive, Solve, or Save’ get more attention than those of the ‘TOMBS Cycle’ and the campaign frames amount to no more than elevator pitches rather than actual frameworks. Despite this, the Warden’s Operations Manual is useful not just for the first time Warden, but worth reading and dipping into for the experienced one too. In going back to basics before giving sound advice that will give the prospective Warden a very good start in setting up and running her first game of the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, the Warden’s Operations Manual is an exceptionally good book.