Blue Collar Sci-Fi Horror IV

In the ecologically ravaged future, twelve billion people live on Earth in environmentally sealed kilometre high city blocks clustered around ‘lungs’, the colossal city-sized atmosphere processors located on the coasts. Many attempt to get off Earth and sign up to crew the service vessels maintaining stations, outposts, and mines in other star systems; the tugboats hauling the refineries back to Earth; the Arbiter ships as Colonial Marshals investigating crimes on behalf of the Interstellar Department of Trading; as military units preventing (or even conducting) civil unrest or hostile takeovers; as scientific survey teams; or as Deep Space Support Teams—DSSTs, or ‘Dusters’, effectively serving as troubleshooters for their employers. Last twenty-five years and you get to retire to a life of luxury. However, it is not that easy… Space travel takes time, even with the Gravity Assisted Drive, a minimum of a week per light year, meaning trips can take months with most of that time spent in LongSleep. Starships are places to work, utilitarian, but capable of protecting you from the vacuum of space, radiation, and random asteroids. Therese though are not the only dangers involved in space travel and mankind spreading beyond the Solar System...

Spending time in space has a psychological effect and has been known to send men mad. Murderously mad. A.I.s and other systems can malfunction. Outbreaks of diseases and viruses—known and unknown—can ravage colonies, starships, and space stations. Terrorist groups have their own agendas, like The Children of the Cradle, which wants to stop mankind spreading beyond Earth. There are cults too with their own aims and even corporations have their often, highly secret aims. Colonists, scientists, star crew and others report ghosts out in the black, but who believes that? Does not mean that it cannot send them mad... There is even the whisper that the Gravity Assisted Drive itself has a psychological effect on people, though no one has been able to prove and to be honest, no one wants to, especially the corporations. Of course, nobody has yet found any sign of any alien species, and certainly not any face-chomping xenomorphs. Faced with all that, it is wonder that anyone engages in any space travel, and if any starship crew run into any of this, the best they can do is survive. There are those that will do more then just survive. They will investigate. They identify the nature of the threat and they will nullify its effects—if they can. Special Operations Squads (SOS), equipped, armed, and trained to deal with dangerous situations, have been trained by the government of Earth to face these problems, even though it often means working for one of the corporations.

This is the set-up for Pressure: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, a roleplaying game inspired by the Blue Collar Science Fiction of the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, such as Alien, Outland, Silent Running, and Blade Runner, plus computer games like Dead Space. Published by Osprey Games—the imprint of Osprey Publishing best known for its highly illustrated military history books—Pressure: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying is in fact a sequel to Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, in which the Player Characters are members of corporate Deep Space Support Teams—DSSTs, or ‘Dusters’. In Pressure, the Player Characters are members of the Special Operations Squads Division, knoen as SOS Operatives. If Those Dark Places is the equivalent of Alien, then Pressure is the sequel, Aliens. Notably, Pressure uses the same conceit as Those Dark Places, that the play of the roleplaying game is actually an internal training programme, a test of the potential abilities of the ‘Duster’, or in this case SOS Division operatives. This does not always have to be case, but it is what the roleplaying game defaults to, and notably, Pressure is more upfront about it. Further, in addition to being a sequel to Those Dark Places, this roleplaying game is also an expansion, both in terms of the mechanics and the setting. That said, the Game Master can run Pressure without needing to reference Those Dark Places.

An SOS Division operative is defined by his name and description, CASE File, his skills, and Pressure. His CASE File represents his actual attributes—Charisma-Agility-Strength-Education, which are rated between one and four. It should be noted that Strength works as the equivalent of a Crew Member’s Hit Points, as well as his physical presence. Where in Those Dark Places a Duster has one or two Crew Positions he is qualified for, such as Navigation Officer or Medical Officer, SOS Division operative has skills and this includes combat skills, which notably, Those Dark Places did not have. Some skills require specialist training and if a player does not invest any points in them, his SOS Division operative cannot use them. To create an SOS Division operative, a player assigns ten points to his operative’s CASE File and then three points to skills of his choice. The process is more complex than that of Those Dark Places, but only slightly so, and it is still very simple. In addition, the player is encouraged to answer a number of questions to help develop his operative.

One alternative offered instead of a standard SOS Division operative, a player can roleplay a SAM or Synthetic Automation. A SAM is not affected by Pressure, but all Charisma or Education rolls require an extra round of processing to complete. A SAM is also not fully human in appearance, with smooth features, lack of hair, and unblinking eyes. SAMs are banned from the massive HyperCities of Earth.

SOS Division Operative Rosen was recruited into the SOS Division pending a conviction for computer hacking. Despite her technical role, she has put through the routine physical training, but this has not curbed her cynical edge. She is fascinated with discovering secrets still (which is what got her into trouble in the first place) and knows that being part of SOS Division will actually give her greater access than before.

Rachel Rosen
Charisma 3 Agility 1 Strength 2 Education 4
Pressure Bonus: 6
Pressure Level: 0

Skills: Charisma/Con 1; Education/Computers 2

Mechanically, Pressure is very simple and requires no more than a six-sided die or two per player. To have his SOS Division operative undertake a task, a player rolls a six-sided die and adds the values for the appropriate Attribute and skill, or just the Attribute if the SOS Division operative does not have the skill. The target Difficulty Number is typically seven, but may be adjusted down to six if easier, or up to eight if more difficult. If the task warrants it, rolling the target number exactly counts as a partial success rather than a complete success. In that case, the player needs to roll over the target difficulty.

In the long term, the combined value of an Attribute plus Skill cannot exceed six. If all the skills of an SOS Operative reach their maximum, he is considered to have achieved Elite Team status. One element of game play preventing this that Experience Points can be be spent immediately, during play, to modify rolls. This can be rolls made by the player and rolls made by the Game Monitor—as the Game Master is known in Pressure—so that a player can improve his SOS Division operative’s chance of success at succeeding in an action or chance of failure when an NPC acts against him. This can be before or after the roll. Experience Points spent in this way are permanently lost.

As well as adding skills to the setting of Those Dark Places, what Pressure also adds is a set of combat mechanics. Combatants can undertake two actions per round, initiative is handled via an Agility roll, mêlée is handled as opposed rolls, and ranged combat as standard tests, with the number to hit being seven, increased to eight if the target is in partial cover. Attacks can be dodged using the Dodge skill, but the defending combatant can only focus on this action and loses his next action. A partial success means that he will suffer only one point of damage, a complete success means he avoids all of it. Damage is rolled on a six-sided die, but each weapon or attack type has a Damage Cap. For example, a punch or kick inflicts one point of damage, but a Gauss Pistol inflicts three. Damage is still rolled for, with a roll higher than the Damage Cap indicating that the maximum amount of damage has been inflicted. In addition, each point of damage suffered serves as a penalty, raising the Difficulty Number for all tasks. Combat is brutal, but SOS Division operatives are given BallCom Mk II body armour as protection. On a roll of five or six, this will protect the wearer against direct kinetic attacks, but not explosive or energy damage.

However, Pressure does get more complex when dealing with stress and difficult situations, or Pressure. An SOS Division operative has a Pressure Bonus, equal to his Strength and Education, and a Pressure Level, which runs from one to six. A Pressure Roll is made when an SOS Division operative is under duress or stress, and all a player has to do is roll a six-sided die and add his operative’s Pressure Bonus to beat a difficulty number of ten. Succeed and the SOS Division operative withstands the stress of the situation, but fail and his Pressure Level rises by one level. However, when an SOS Division operative’s Pressure Level rises to two, and each time it rises another level due to a failed Pressure Roll, the SOS Division operative’s player rolls a six-sided die and the result is under the current value of his Pressure Level, the SOS Division operative suffers an Episode. This requires a roll on the Episode table, the results ranging from ‘Jitters’ and losing points from a SOS Division operative’s Attributes, up through Exhausted, Rigid, Catatonia, and ‘Insane Fear’. Whenever an SOS Division operative’s player needs to make a roll on the Episode Table, the maximum result possible is limited by the SOS Division operative’s Pressure Level. So at Pressure Level 3, an SOS Division operative can only be In Shock and suffer points lost from either his Agility or Strength, but not anything worse.

One issue with Pressure Level and Episodes is that a Crew Member cannot immediately recover from either. It takes time in LongSleep or back on Earth to even begin to recover… Worse, once an SOS Division operative suffers an Episode, its effects linger, and he can suffer from it again and again until he manages to control his personal demons.

And that is almost the extent of the rules to Pressure. There is a list of equipment and of typical salaries for a range of roles, a range of NPCs, and there are rules for vehicles and vehicle combat, spaceships and space combat. Spaceships are working spaces, with only a fifth of their displacement dedicated to crew and cargo space, the rest being ship’s system. In keeping with brutality of personal combat in Pressure, the rules for spaceship combat are equally as brutal, but on a bigger scale and a greater chance of death or damage from explosions, fire, electricity, and decompression.

If Pressure expands the rules from those in Those Dark Places, it also does something of greater significance—it greatly expands the setting shared by both roleplaying games. This is delivered as part of the Officer’s Briefing that Pressure is written as, but what both this Officer’s Briefing and Pressure do is present information that the average person on Earth does not have access to. Already, SOS Division operatives are being treated as different and as being part of elite, privy to information that they cannot share. This includes what the SOS Division operatives might encounter ‘Out in the Darkness’ of the furthers reaches of space, such as dangerous terrorists and cults, rogue A.I.s, malfunctioning SAMs and bio-pets, ‘ghosts spirits’, and so on, but again, notably not aliens, bug-eyed or otherwise. In terms of the setting, Pressure provides a complete future history with a timeline from the early twenty-second century to the mid twenty-fourth century, descriptions of the four dominant corporations and other organisations (including criminal and terrorist), and information about the state of Earth, installations and stations in orbit and throughout the Solar System. It touches upon what might be found beyond in ‘Explored Space’, but leaves much of this to be developed by the Game Monitor herself.

Rounding out Pressure is a short mission, ‘The Foster Report’, intended to be played as part of the SOS Division operatives’ training in the ‘Edu-Net’. The squad responds to a distress call from research facility run by Foster Private Endeavours, reporting that it has suffered a containment failure. It is a quick and dirty affair, with advice for the Game Monitor for handling various aspects of the rules, and should offer a single session’s worth of play.

Physically, Pressure is cleanly and tidily laid out. Although it is an attractive looking book, Pressure does have an issue in being delivered as an officer’s briefing because it does not make all of the content easy to use. So for example, the rules for SOS Division operative creation is spread out over several sections where the relevant rules are explained and there is no one cheat sheet guide to operative creation. Similarly, the rules for using Experience Points to adjust rolls are listed under the general rules for Experience Points, but not mentioned in the explanation of the core rules, and the rules for using cybernetics are squirrelled away in the description of Earth and its environs. That said, Pressure, being delivered as an officer’s briefing, is written in an engaging, conversational style.

What Pressure does is take the background and setting of Those Dark Places and expand from a tightly-focused genre emulation into a full Science Fiction roleplaying game. Within the setting itself, it moves Those Dark Places from the survival horror genre to more actioned-orientated horror, where the Player Characters, or SOS Division operatives, have to investigate and confront the horror, rather than merely do their best and run away. It opens up the possibility of Pressure being run as a more general Science Fiction roleplaying game as well, and thus a wider range of plots and possible source material to adapt. Fundamentally no less brutal—even with the guns and the armour—Pressure: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying is not just Aliens to the Alien of Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, taking the action straight to the horror, but a fuller, more detailed roleplaying game whose expanded rules and setting open up a wider range of stories and adventures.

[Fanzine Focus XXVII] Desert Moon of Karth

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

One of the trends in ZineQuest—the annual drive on Kickstarter to create fanzines, fan-created magazines supporting their favourite game—has been away from the more traditional format to the more focused. Traditionally, the fanzine consists of a collection of articles, covering a wide array of subjects. For example, in a fanzine devoted to Dungeons & Dragons or one of its many retroclones, such articles might provide new character Classes, spells, monsters, magical items, a scenario or dungeon, and so on. Although ZineQuest in 2021–ZineQuest #3–certainly included fanzines of that type, there were fanzines that were not so much fanzines as complete roleplaying games in themselves or complete supplements for existing roleplaying games. Desert Moon of Karth is a perfect example of the latter.

Desert Moon of Karth is a complete scenario for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. Designed and published by Joel Hines following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is also quite a different scenario in tone and flavour and set-up for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. The genre for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game is Blue Collar Sci-Fi horror, most obviously inspired by the films Alien and Outland, and the majority of the scenarios for the roleplaying game are horror one-shots. Not so, Desert Moon of Karth. Instead, Desert Moon of Karth is a sandbox scenario whose genre is that of the Space Western and whose inspirations include Dune, Firefly, Alien, John Carter of Mars, Cowboy Bebop, and The Dark Tower as well as A Pound of Flesh, Ultraviolet Grasslands, and Slumbering Ursine Dunes.

The setting for Desert Moon of Karth is a desert moon on the far edge of the galaxy. It is perhaps best known as being a source of Coral Dust, the addictive blue-grey powder harvested and ground from the bones of the ancient, almost mythic species known as the Wigoy, which have ossified into coral and when ingested stills the aging process and sharpens the mind. There has been a ‘gold rush’ to Karth, a ready flow of would be prospectors willing to brave the harsh environment and the attacks by the infamous Sandsquids attracted by their searches deep into the sand. Access to Karth is limited though via a rickety orbital elevator fiercely controlled by the colonial marines of the Manian Expeditionary Force, as a network of relic orbital satellites shoot down all ships or flying objects—incoming or outgoing. This combination of distance from the centre of the galaxy and inaccessibility means that Karth has gained another reputation—that of a haven for criminals and the galaxy’s most wanted. So the lawless desert moon attracts not just prospectors, but bounty hunters too.

Like any good sandbox—and Desert Moon of Karth really is set on a sandbox—Desert Moon of Karth is a toolkit of different elements. These start with ten highly detailed locations, beginning with the frontier boomtown, Larstown, and then continuing with the Shattered Visage of an angelic man, the Seahorse Mine, the played out location of the first Wigoy prospecting operation on Karth, the Silver Spire, home to a trio of immortal Old People known as the Dawnseekers who research and harvest organs to ensure their longevity, a Ship Graveyard of vessels brought down by the orbital defences, and the Krieg Ranch where the best though-flea-bitten camels for travel across the deserts of Karth can be hired, run by a cranky old woman who keeps her husband on ice in case he can be taken off world for treatment to a grievous injury. Around these locations, four factions dominate Karth. One consists of the Dawnseekers, another the Manian Expeditionary Force, but these are joined by the Valley Rangers, a cargo cult formed around the Lunar Park Service’s bureaucracy and conservationists who abhor technology and seek to maintain the world’s ecology, and the Wigoy themselves, aliens hiding from the other factions with long term aims for the whole of Karth and beyond…

All four factions and the majority of the locations include NPCs with often opposing aims and jobs—both known and secret—that the Player Characters might be employed to fulfil. These, though, are just the start in Desert Moon of Karth, because they are richly supported with table after table of random encounters, motivations, NPCs, rumours, and more! That ‘more’ includes tables of reasons why the Player Characters might have come to Karth, gifts that the Wigoy might grant, worn space hulks, bounty hunters and their possible quarries, oldtech artefacts, what happens when the Player Characters go Wigoy prospecting, and things to be found on bodies, and more.

Although there is potential future mapped out in Desert Moon of Karth, it really only plays out if the Player Characters do nothing. Ultimately then, the Player Characters have a huge opportunity to involve themselves in and influence events on the moon, but this is very much player driven. Once their characters have their motivations—either selected ahead of time or generated using the table in the book, it is very much up to the players to involve themselves in both life and the events going on across Karth.

Mechanically, Desert Moon of Karth is very light, and thus much in keeping with the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. There are various stats for the NPCs of course, but they are percentile and easily adaptable, whilst the specific rules cover things such as travel across Karth and prospecting for Wigoy coral—and that is it. What this means is that Desert Moon of Karth is not only very light, but easily adapted to the mechanics of the roleplaying game of the Warden’s choice. Any version of the Star Wars roleplaying games, Cepheus Deluxe, Stars Without Number, Firefly, HOSTILE, and others would work with this supplement with a minimum of preparation, as would many a generic system too.

However, the tone of Desert Moon of Karth may not necessarily match the campaign being run by the Warden if for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, and that likelihood increases if adapted to another Science Fiction roleplaying game. There is horror as you would expect for something written for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, but there is also a weirdness too in the presence of the Wigoy and their secrets, and they might have a profound effect upon a Game Master’s campaign if certain events happen. Nevertheless, the self-contained nature of Karth itself and of Desert Moon of Karth makes it very easy to use. Nor need that be as an addition to an existing campaign. It could be a one-shot adventure, a mini-campaign of its own, or as a source of ideas and tables from which the Game Master can pick and choose elements to add to her own game.

Physically, Desert Moon of Karth is a compact fifty-two page supplement—perhaps a little too big to be really called a supplement. It is well written, it is easy to read, the illustrations are excellent, and the maps, whether of the moon itself, or Larstown or the interior of a Sandsquid are all great.

As a sandbox, and a sandbox space western at that, Desert Moon of Karth pushes MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game in a new direction and opens up the scope of gaming possible for those rules—especially with the new edition available. Whatever the system used, Desert Moon of Karth is crammed full of gaming content adding a weird world to the Science fiction roleplaying game of your choice, but really offering a fantastic mini-campaign. Not just a good fanzine, Desert Moon of Karth is really good good Science Fiction supplement.

Blue Collar Sci-Fi Slasher

The AMC-222 Report is a scenario for Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, the roleplaying game of Blue-Collar Science Fiction horror published by Osprey Games. It is written by the roleplaying game’s designer and presents a short scenario which combines strong elements of action, investigation, and roleplaying and which could be played in a single session—two at the very most. It takes a traditional type of Science Fiction setting and gives it a horror twist which echoes that of the slasher film subgenre. It can be played as a training simulation to determine the suitability of the Player Characters for working between Earth and the frontier of space as part of the application process as described in Those Dark Places, or it can be run straight as an assignment during their years of employment. This also means that it can be run with new Player Characters or more experienced ones, but if played as a training simulation or early in their careers, its horror elements may foreshadow their eventual fate if the Player Characters spend too much time in space… However it is used, The AMC-222 Report will take relatively little time for the Game Monitor to prepare for play.

The setting for The AMC-222 Report is Asteroid Mining Catch 222 in the Peller System, a facility operated by Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. The head of facility has recently sent an emergency request for help. Two of its mining crew have been killed and a member of staff is missing, and worse, as far as the company is concerned, the deep space mining facility is not currently operating at full capacity, and that means it is losing money… The Player Characters—the crew of the DSRV Grahams, a light and fast Deep Space Reconnaissance Vessel typically used by many Duster and Arbiter crews for fast dispatch and first responder missions. They receive an emergency briefing and are reassigned to investigate and resolve the emergency. Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. wants Asteroid Mining Catch 222 back operating at full capacity as soon as possible.

The players and their characters should realise that there is something different about this mission from the off. Each member of the team is assigned a Dazer pistol and a medkit. When they arrive, the Player Characters find the station to be a bleak, dark, and depressing place. It seems to be in a constant state of power saving and this has affected the personnel assigned there. The staff are weary and worn out, even uncaring in the face of the current situation. This presents the Game Monitor with some entertaining NPCs to roleplay and some frustrated and frustrating NPCs for the Player Characters to interact with—or not!

The AMC-222 Report is divided into two acts, with each act being set on a different level of Asteroid Mining Catch 222. In the first act, the Player Characters arrive at the habitable level and investigate recent events and interrogate the base personnel as to recent events. In the second act, the Player Characters descend to the mine workings on the lower level. Here they encounter malfunctioning machinery, a less than ideal working environment, and worse…

Support for the Game Master for The AMC-222 Report includes deck plans of the DSRV Grahams and floor plans of Asteroid Mining Catch 222, the deck plans also being useful as a sample ship for the Player Characters in the long term. All of the scenario’s NPCs are given detailed backgrounds to accompany their often moody responses and explanations as to what is going on in the facility in the scenario’s first act. In addition to details of the Deep Space Reconnaissance Vessel, the other new item of equipment given is the Armoured Space Suit.

Physically, The AMC-222 Report is reasonably well presented. The deck plans and floor plans are simple, but clear, whilst the artwork is at best described as rough. If there is anything missing, it is perhaps a set of ready-to-play Player Characters which would both speed up the scenario’s already quick preparation time and make it suitable as a convention scenario.

The AMC-222 Report is more obvious in its plotting and in its inspiration as a horror scenario than the earlier The Ana-Sin-Emid Report. It might even be termed simple, but that should not necessarily be held against it. The AMC-222 Report is straightforward, but that does not mean it is not atmospheric and does not mean it cannot deliver a short, sharp shock of horror.

Blue Collar Sci-Fi Chiller

The Ana-Sin-Emid Report is a scenario for Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, the roleplaying game of Blue-Collar Science Fiction horror published by Osprey Games. It is written by the roleplaying game’s designer and presents a short investigative scenario which can be played through in a session or two. It takes a traditional type of Science Fiction setting and gives it a horror twist which echoes that of the film, Event Horizon. It can be played as a training simulation to determine their suitability for working between Earth and the frontier of space as part of the application process as described in Those Dark Places, or it can be run straight as an assignment during their years of employment. This also means that it can be run with new Player Characters or more experienced ones, but its horror elements will probably be more effective if the scenario is played with Player Characters who have encountered some scary situations and suffered Episodes of Pressure before. Either way, it will take relatively little time for the Game Monitor to prepare The Ana-Sin-Emid Report for play.

The setting for The Ana-Sin-Emid Report is the Iota Pegasi B System, the site of Grant Stellar Station, a Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. facility. The Player Characters are either stationed there or making a pickup or delivery, perhaps Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. employees, perhaps not. Whatever the reasons for their being on the Grant Stellar Station, a situation has arisen and the station manager grabs the first available crew and assigns them to resolve it. If they are Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. employees, then fine. If not, there is a set of emergency employment mandates written into their contracts—in very small print—which means that they have little choice in the matter. The situation is that in the last hour, the Deep Space Transport Vessel The Ana-Sin-Emid dropped out of FTL and began coasting towards the inner system. If it continues on its current path, it will disrupt operations and present a potential hazard. There has been no communication from the vessel and its current pattern of deceleration suggests that it is under automated piloting. The Ana-Sin-Emid is the property of the Wayne/Tanaka Corporation, but as it is Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. space, Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. has the right to offer assistance, board her and, if the opportunity presents itself, claim salvage. Which is where the Player Characters come in.

The Player Characters are tasked with getting aboard The Ana-Sin-Emid, get to the bridge, and report back to the station manager. If they have their own vessel, they can use that, but if not, the Player Character are assigned the Deep Space Reconnaissance Vessel Grahams, a small starship designed to jump into distant star systems and conduct preliminary survey sweeps and collect information upon which the decision to conduct deeper survey or resource exploitation missions can be made. If the Player Characters lack a pilot amongst their number, then one will be provided. The Player Characters have about twelve hours before another ship can be readied and sent out to The Ana-Sin-Emid, so they are the first response to the emerging situation.

Once at their destination, the Player Characters find The Ana-Sin-Emid under power, but unresponsive. Energy and heat blooms can be detected, there is no sign of damage, and the airlocks are closed. Essentially, the Player Characters are free to explore the two decks of the vessel, and its eighteen locations as is their wont. They will quickly find that it has been abandoned and that there are signs of violence scattered throughout the ship. However, as they explore The Ana-Sin-Emid, the Player Characters—singly or in groups—begin see strange things. Are they hallucinations? Are they something else? And whatever they are, what is causing them? Is there a chemical agent in the ship’s air supply or is it something else? Ultimately, the cause of the problems aboard The Ana-Sin-Emid is relatively easy to determine, but this does not mean that the Player Characters will necessarily solve it. Strange incidents may place them under too much Pressure, and there is scope for both accidents and incidents of violence during their exploration of the apparently abandoned vessel.

In addition to the plot, The Ana-Sin-Emid Report includes for increasing the Pressure upon the Player Characters—either because they knew somebody The Ana-Sin-Emid or due to past experiences of Episodes of Pressure. An option is given for having an NPC Helm Officer, who would of course abandon the Player Characters aboard The Ana-Sin-Emid at the first sign of trouble, and there are clear deckplans given for The Ana-Sin-Emid. There is decent staging advice for the Game Monitor too.

The Ana-Sin-Emid Report is cleanly laid out, though the text needs a slight edit and the labelling on the deckplans is a bit tight in places. The various incidences of Pressure could also have been slightly more clearly marked for ease of running the scenario, especially if the Game Monitor is running with minimal preparation. The scenario does not require a great deal of preparation, but this would have helped.

The lightness of the mechanics in The Ana-Sin-Emid Report means that it is more plot than necessarily stats. This has the advantage of making it not only easy to run for Those Dark Places, but also easy to adapt to almost any Science Fiction roleplaying game. Of course, it is ideally suited to those which already combine Science Fiction with horror, especially Blue Collar Science Fiction, such as MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game or even the Alien: The Roleplaying Game, whether that is to run it straight and as is, or as a training exercise. (In fact, Those Dark Places would work as a training exercise or employment application in the setting of those roleplaying games!)

The Ana-Sin-Emid Report is nasty, weirdly creepy, and short. It is easy to run as a one-shot or add to an existing campaign, and should provide one or two sessions of play. It would also work as a convention scenario and so easily fit within a four-hour slot.

Blue Collar Sci-Fi Horror III

It has been almost thirty-five years since the publisher of Britain’s longest running Science Fiction comic, 2000 AD, dabbled in the field of roleplaying. Both times, it was with solo adventure books, first with the Diceman comic, and then with You are Maggie Thatcher: a dole-playing game, but that changes with the initial release of a new publication from Rebellion. This is Adventure Presents, essentially a complete roleplaying game and scenario in a magazine format. The first issue is Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror, from the designers of Spire: The City Must Fall. This consists of a simple roleplaying game and a full, three-session scenario designed for up to six players and the Game Master for which everyone will need three six-sided dice and some pencils. The Game Master will need to do some careful preparation, but Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror comes with everything necessary to play—six ready-to-play pregenerated Player Characters, a handful of NPCs, and some absolutely gorgeous cartography and art.

The setting for Tartarus Gate is the year 2130. For years, Earth has been dominated by the OBOL Corporation and in search of a better future—or at least proper employment, the Player Characters have taken positions as unpaid interns aboard the transport ship Charon, entrusted with shepherding cargo from Earth to the Tartarus Gate Waystation. Six months into the journey, they are awoken from their Deep Sleep Pods and after recovering from the process, they are given their first task. Visual feeds from the lower decks have gone down, but before they did, the computers registered that something was moving. All the interns have to do is descend to the lower decks, restore the visual feeds, and ensure that there is nothing moving down there that there should not be… The Charon is six months’ travel from the nearest help, so it is down to the interns. With luck, they can impress their employer and make their temporary employment permanent.

The format of Tartarus Gate is important. The centre twenty-two pages are intended to be pulled out. They start with the six four-page character sheets, each of which includes a briefing, the character description, equipment list, and deck plans of the Charon. Then they are followed by the various map handouts, all done in three dimensions and full colour, the four-page explanation of the rules for Tartarus Gate, and the eight-page GM Reference Book. This leaves the other twenty-two pages of Tartarus Gate devoted to the actual scenario.

A character or intern in Tartarus Gate is simply defined. He has four Abilities—Toughness, Agility, Smarts, and Wits—each ranging in value between one and four. He has a value for his Health and his Resolve—his willpower, the former as high as twenty, the latter as high as twelve. He also has three Drives, for example, Hasty, Selfless, and Haunted. Each character has a background and a given role, such as Veteran or True Believer, and an excellent illustration. It is left up to the player to name the character.

Mechanically, Tartarus Gate is simple and straightforward, its key mechanic, known as the ‘Adventure system’, best described as ‘roll three and keep two’—mostly. For his character to undertake an action, a player rolls three six-sided dice and removes one die. Which die depends upon the rating of the Ability being tested. If the Ability has a value of one, the highest die value is removed; if two, the die with the middle value is removed; if three, the lowest die value is removed; and if four, no die is removed, and all are counted. Either way, the total value of the remaining dice needs to equal or exceed the value of a Target Number to succeed, the Target Numbers ranging from six or doable to twelve or extremely difficult. The Game Master can adjust the difficulty of a task by temporarily increasing or lowering the Player Character’s Ability value. A supporting Player Character can help another and so temporarily increase the supported Player Character’s Ability, whilst the acting Player Character can spend Resolve to also increase his Ability value. Resolve can be regained by a Player Character pursuing one or more of his Drives and in Tartarus Gate, and may be reset at the beginning of some chapters, as can Health.

Combat in Tartarus Gate consists of opposed rolls. The lower roll is subtracted from the higher roll and the remaining value deducted from the losing combatant’s Toughness. Combat is designed—much like the rules in general—to be fast and in the case of combat, potentially deadly.

Tarsus Gate as a scenario is broken down into three chapters. In the first chapter, the Player Characters will waken from their Deep Sleep Pods and put through their paces as a ‘recovery process’, much like the first though steps of a video game as a player is taught the controls and what each button does. Given their assignment by Assisti, the ship’s AI, they make their way to the engine room and there they have their first and then second strange encounter—the former with a bloodless, mangled corpse, the latter with a figure from Earth’s recent and wrought past… This figure will come to dominate the mystery which lies in the bowels of the Charon and will be revealed as the Player Characters moves from one chapter to the next.

It should be no surprise that the plot and structure to Tartarus Gate is linear. After all, the Player Characters have been tasked with going from one end of a spaceship to another and the scenario is quite short. However, there is still plenty for them to do and explore, and interact with the handful of NPCs the Game Master has to portray. As well as the detailed NPCs to run, the Game Master also has events to throw at the Player Characters in every location.

The chapter breaks are also used as moments of reflection, for the players to check how the game is going and perhaps a chance for them to change their characters’ Drives if necessary. Tartarus Gate also makes clear that its play is meant to be fun—for everyone, and that if anyone is made uncomfortable, then he should raise his hand and say so. 

Physically, Tartarus Gate is very nicely presented. It is well written, but what really stands out is the artwork—which is as good as you would expect from a publisher which puts out 2000 AD each week. If the illustrations are good, then the maps are even better. Overall, the production values, for what is just a ‘magazine roleplaying game’ are stunning.

Adventure Presents Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror is intended as a first roleplaying game and for the most part succeeds. Its combination of a simple, straightforward plot, set-up, and quick mechanics certainly supports that, as does the vibrantly exciting presentation. However, whilst it works as a first roleplaying game for those new to roleplaying, it is a slightly different matter for the prospective Game Master. If the Game Master has played a roleplaying game or two before, then this is not as much of an issue, but if the Game Master is coming to this totally anew, it will be more difficult for her. For the experienced Game Master, readying and running Tartarus Gate is relatively easy.

Adventure Presents Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror is an impressive first issue, an attractive package that is easy to pick up, prepare, and run—it could be ready to play in thirty minutes!

Blue Collar Sci-Fi Horror II

In the ecologically ravaged future, twelve billion people live on Earth in environmentally sealed kilometre high city blocks clustered around ‘lungs’, the colossal city-sized atmosphere processors located on the coasts. They grow and  process the algae that provides humanity with air, and eventually, food. Life is about surviving, but there is a way to make it better—work in space. Sign up to crew the service vessels maintaining stations, outposts, and mines in other star systems; the tugboats hauling the refineries back to Earth; the Arbiter ships as Colonial Marshals investigating crimes on behalf of the Interstellar Department of Trading; as military units preventing (or even conducting) civil unrest or hostile takeovers; as scientific survey teams; or as Deep Space Support Teams—DSSTs, or ‘Dusters’, effectively serving as troubleshooters for their employers. Last twenty-five years and you get to retire to a life of luxury. However, it is not that easy… 

Space travel takes time. Even with the Gravity Assisted Drive, a minimum of a week per light year. It means that trips can take months with most of that time spent in LongSleep. Fortunately, that time counts towards time served. When not in LongSleep crews work to maintain their ship, because if anything went wrong, it could be weeks before anyone responded. Starships are not luxurious, but places to work and protect you from the vacuum of space, radiation, and random asteroids. Yet despite the safety standards, there are budget considerations, especially if your employer is a corporation, and whilst your ship might protect you, it will still have been built on the cheap. The same goes for outposts and mining facilities and the few settlements on other worlds—for no one has struck it lucky and found the equivalent of an Earth as she was planet. So living and working space is rough, hard, and sometimes lonely. And that is before you consider the dangers of corporate feuds, off-the-books scientific research, the psychological stresses of working cooped up with others for long periods, and then there is always the unknown… 

This is the set-up for Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, a roleplaying game inspired by the Blue Collar Science Fiction of the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, such as Alien, Outland, Silent Running, and Blade Runner, plus computer games like Dead Space. Published by OspreyGames—the imprint of Osprey Publishing best known for its highly illustrated military history books—Those Dark Places is its third roleplaying game after Paleomythic and Romance of the Perilous Land. Although it very much wears its influences on the hard-wearing material of its sleeves, Those Dark Places is not necessarily a Science Fiction roleplaying game in which the crew will encounter strange aliens which morph into xenomorphs that want to hunt them and turn them into incubators. This is not to say that it could not be, but that is very down to what type of game that the General Monitor—as the Game Master is known in Those Dark Places—wants to run. Instead it is a game of environmental horror and dread, of loneliness and fear, of stress and strain, at the limits of mankind’s survival. Expect encounters with crazed killers driven to madness and murder by loneliness and never being able to walk under an open sky—or poisoned by their environment or the drugs they have been taking to numb the boredom; feuds over scientific discoveries and research which have escalated from industrial espionage to open conflict between corporate militaries; scientific discoveries and research gone to devastatingly deadly effect and which a corporation will do anything to cover up or prevent from being stolen; and more… 

A Crew Member is defined by his name and description, CASE File, Crew Positions he is qualified for, and Pressure. His CASE File represents his actual attributes—Charisma-Agility-Strength-Education, which are rated between one and four. It should be noted that Strength works as the equivalent of a Crew Member’s Hit Points, as well as his physical presence. His Crew Position can be Helm Officer, Navigation Officer, Science Officer, Security Officer, Liaison Officer,  Engineering Officer, or Medical Officer. To create a Crew Member, a player assigns values of one, two, three, and four to his Crew Member’s CASE File. Then he selects his Crew Member’s primary Crew Position, which is rated at +2, and his secondary Crew Position, which is rated at +1. The process is as simple as that! 

Warrant Officer Grieg is an Engineering Officer aboard the CSV Lullaby, a commercial tug owned by Bellerophon Incorporated. He is six years into his contract and is a strong advocate of workers’ rights. He is always the Union representative on any vessel he serves aboard. 

Oran Greig
Charisma 3 Agility 1 Strength 4 Education 2
Pressure: 6
Pressure Level: 0

Crew Position: Engineering (Primary)
Crew Position: Liaison (Secondary) 

Mechanically, Those Dark Places is very simple and requires no more than a six-sided die or two per player. To have his Crew Member undertake a task, a player rolls a six-sided die and adds the values for the appropriate Attribute and Crew Position. The target difficulty is typically seven, but may be adjusted down to six if easier, or up to eight if more difficult. If the task warrants it, rolling the target number exactly counts as a partial success rather than a complete success. In that case, the player needs to roll over the target difficulty. Combat uses the same mechanics, with damage inflicted being deducted from an opponent’s Strength. A Crew Member is unconscious when his Strength is reduced to zero and dead when it drops to minus two. Sample damage is just one for a punch, three for a pistol, and four for a rifle. 

However, Those Dark Places does get more complex when dealing with stress and difficult situations, or Pressure. A Crew Member has a Pressure Bonus, equal to his Strength and Education, and a Pressure Level, which runs from one to six. A Pressure Roll is made when a Crew Member is under duress or stress, and all a player has to do is roll a six-sided die and add his Crew Member’s Pressure Bonus to beat a difficulty number of ten. Succeed and the Crew Member withstands the stress of the situation, but fail and his Pressure Level rises by one level. However, when a Crew Member’s Pressure Level rises to two, and each time it rises another level due to a failed Pressure Roll, the Crew Member’s player rolls a six-sided die and the result is under the current value of his Pressure Level, the Crew Member suffers an Episode. This requires a roll on the Episode table, the results ranging from ‘In Shock’ and losing points from a Crew Member’s Attributes , up through Rigid, Catatonia, and ‘Insane Fear and Driven to Violent Flight’. Whenever a Crew Member’s player needs to make a roll on the Episode Table, the maximum result possible is limited by the Crew Member’s Pressure Level. So at Pressure Level 3, a Crew Member can only be In Shock and suffer points lost from either his Agility or Strength, but not anything worse. 

One issue with Pressure Level and Episodes is that a Crew Member cannot immediately recover from either. It takes time in LongSleep or back on Earth to even begin to recover… Worse, once a Crew Member suffers an Episode, its effects linger, and he can suffer from it again and again until he manages to control his personal demons. 

And that is the extent of the rules to Those Dark Places. For the General Monitor, there is a more detailed discussion of how they work, the various roles or Crew Positions aboard ship, the types of campaigns that can be run—typically based around the type of ship that the Crew Members are operating. So tugboats, passenger ships, science vessels, arbiter ships, tactical vessels, and more, each suggesting ideas about what such a crew would be doing and it might be tasked with doing. These are accompanied with descriptions of the types of reports that the Crew Members will be expected to make. These include Personnel Reports, Accident Reports, Industrial Espionage Reports, and more. Essentially combine a Personnel Report and a ship type and a General Monitor has a decent selection of campaign ideas to inspire her. Rounding out Those Dark Places is The Argent III Report, a complete scenario surrounding the sudden appearance of a research vessel thought lost for decades. It is playable in a session or two. 

Physically, Those Dark Places is well presented, although untidy in one or two places. The artwork is good, definitely showcasing its inspirations. 

Although clearly inspired by films like Alien, Those Dark Places is not a roleplaying game about facing strange, horrible creatures. This is reflected in the fact that there are no rules for creating such things in the book. Indeed, the rules for creatures focus on creating pets like cats and dogs for companionship in space rather than monsters. There are though, rules for running and playing Synthetic Automatons if the General Monitor includes them. Essentially, Those Dark Places is about facing horrors human and environmental rather than actual monsters. Nor is it a roleplaying game with a set background, although one is outlined should the General Monitor want one. At two pages, even this background is short enough to allow the General Monitor room aplenty to insert content of her own, that is if she does not want to create a background of her own. 

However, all of this is not about roleplaying Blue Collar or Industrial Science Fiction and Horror in space—although Those Dark Places could be run like that. In actuality, what Those Dark Places is about is applying for a career working in deep space. The process of creating a Crew Member, of filling in a CASE File, is writing the application form. And then, the playing of Those Dark Places is not roleplaying missions out on the frontier, but simulations—run by the interviewer as part of the application process—run to test their suitability for working between Earth and the frontier of space. All of this is delivered in an game voice that is a mix of wearied tone, corporate cheeriness, and faux ‘I believe in you’ attitude of a Human Resources interviewer that manages to both capture the tiresome nature of applying for employment and make the reader/potential Crew Member want to punch the writer/speaker. It is a brilliant conceit which creeps up on the reader as he works his way through the book. 

Unfortunately, Those Dark Places is being released when there are already two roleplaying games within its genre, the Alien Roleplaying Game from Free League Publishing and Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG from Tuesday Knight Games, both having been released relatively recently onto the market. However, Those Dark Places is very much its own thing, a combination of simple mechanics and human and environmental horror—plus its simulation/employment application conceit rather than necessarily being a game of facing horror and horrible monsters in deep space or being based on a licence. 

Combining light mechanics and an easily familiar genre, Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying is a pleasingly accessible treatment of Blue-Collar Science Fiction of the seventies and eighties. It enables the General Monitor to run simulations in which the horror lies not only in isolation and what we might find on the fringes of space, but also in what humanity brings with it.

Blue Collar Sci-Fi Horror

It is over twenty-five years since the hobby had a roleplaying game set in the same universe as the films as Alien and Aliens. The roleplaying games the Aliens Adventure Game, published by Leading Edge Games in 1991. Now the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG is not the Alien or Aliens roleplaying game anew, but a Science Fiction roleplaying game in which a starship crew must survive the horrors of outer space, of confronting the unknown on worlds yet unexplored, of salvaging derelict spaceships and discovering what drove its crew to abandon their vessel, and of being terrorised by aliens intent on using them as incubators for their eggs. This is a roleplaying game of blue collar Science Fiction, of films like Outland, Dark Star, Silent Running, and Event Horizon, as well as Alien and Aliens.

Published by Tuesday Knight Games, Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG looks like a thick fanzine. Even at forty-four pages, its content is rather cramped, but around some rather scrappy illustrations, Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide covers character creation, game mechanics and combat, handling stress and panic, and all you need to know about the starships. There is no specific background supplied for Mothership, but any Warden—as the Game Master is known in Mothership—should be able to develop something of her own with relative ease.

As presented in Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide, this is a Class and Level roleplaying game. Characters are defined not only by their Class and Level, but also their Attributes and Saves, Skills, and how they react to Stress and Panic. The four Classes are Teamsters, Scientists, Androids, and Marines; the four Attributes are Strength, Speed, Intellect, and Combat; and the four Saves are Sanity, Fear, Body, and Armour. Character creation is a matter of rolling six ten-sided dice for the attributes, picking a Class, noting down various values, and finally choosing some skills. These come rated at Trained, Expert, and Master levels, indicating the bonus they grant to any roll. Each Class starts off with the same basic skills in addition to giving some options and some points with which to take more skills or improve those already known. No character begins play with any skill at Master level, but will typically have one skill at Expert level as well as a handful at Trained. Lastly, there is the matter of the Loadout, the equipment they start play with. There are four to choose from—Excavation, Exploration, Extermination, and Examination. A character also receives a random patch and a random trinket.

Character generation is simple and quick, taking no more than five minutes if you take your time. What speeds it up is the fact that the process is actually built into the character sheet. In a clever piece of graphic design, character generation can be done on the page. All a player has to do is go through five steps following a flowchart and he is done in minutes without any real reference to the Player’s Survival Guide. It is as simple as it is impressive.

Our sample character is an Android currently owned by Rasmussen Salvage Rights, a husband and wife, now husband and wife and android salvage team, which operates a salvage scow called the Mother’s Pride. She is a reconditioned Matsui-Poulton Class-12 model who has been named Sindy, a name that everyone laughs at for reasons she does not understand. Her current tasks involve computer operations aboard ship as well as tending to the hydroponics bays. Sindy sense that that is something that is missing from her programming, something that her owner is not telling her. Unfortunately she cannot break into certain files on the computer. Nor can she answer why is wearing a DNR Beacon Necklace and who it belonged to. In her spare time, she has been searching for answers in religious texts.

Name: Sindy
Class: Android Level: 1
Attributes
Strength: 36 Speed: 43 Intellect: 53 Combat: 32
Saves
Sanity: 20 Fear: 85 Body: 40 Armour: 25

Stress: 2 Resolve: 0 Health: 72

Skills
Trained (+10%): Computers, Hydroponics, Linguistics, Mathematics, Theology
Expert (+15%):; 
Master (+20%)

Loadout: Excavation Trinket: DNR Beacon Necklace  Patch: #1 Worker 

Notes
Fear saves made in the presence of Androids have disadvantages.

In terms of mechanics, Mothership is a percentile system. Rolls are either made against an attribute or an attribute plus an appropriate skill. If a character has the Advantage in a situation, his player rolls twice and keeps the best result, but rolls twice and keeps the worst result if the character is at a Disadvantage. Rolls of doubles are counted as critical successes or fumbles depending upon if the roll is a success or a failure.

Saves represent a character’s reaction to bad situations and his ability to survive against the horrors of space. Again, they are percentile rolls. If a Save is failed, a character gains Stress and potentially other effects too. For example, when a character is shot at, his player makes an opposed roll of his character’s Armour Save against his opponent’s Combat roll. If the Armour Save roll is failed, not only does the character gain Stress, he also takes damage. Making a Save with a critical success and a character will gain some other benefit, such making better use of cover in combat or gaining insight into a situation. Fail it with a critical fumble and a player will have to make a Panic roll. This requires a Stress Check, a roll of two ten-sided dice against the character’s current Stress. If the player rolls over his character’s current Stress, he succeeds, the character loses a little Stress, but if it fails, the player needs to roll on the Panic Effect table. This is another roll of two ten-sided dice, but modified by the character’s Resolve score. It can result in the character being struck by crippling fear, gaining a nervous twitch, or even suffering an Adrenaline rush. 

Although it  is possible to gain relief from Stress through rest, but this will only be a few points, if that, at a time. Instead, there is a constant chance of a character gaining, whether from when the ship a character is in is hit, going without food and water, from certain locations and creatures, and so on. So it is likely that a character will be constantly accumulating Stress. The Panic Rolls will be occurring when the ship a character is in suffers a critical hit, he sees another character die, encountering a strange and terrifying alien, and so on. The There is some balancing between them across the four Classes, so that the Android has a better Fear Save, the Scientist a better Sanity Save, the Marine a better Combat Save, and so on, but the Save mechanics in Mothership are designed to be unforgiving.

Combat itself is pretty straightforward, generally involving Combat versus Armour Save opposed rolls. Weapons are as deadly as you would expect and include a mixture of military small arms as well as utility devices which in an emergency could be used as weapons, like rigging guns and hand welders. Where the rules for character creation, combat, stress, and panic are all relatively simple, those for starship creation are less so. Starships are treated basically like characters, but do require working through a step-by-step design process and a fair bit of arithmetic and balancing of numbers. The rules also cover starship travel as well as starship combat, which works mostly like personal combat.

In addition, there are rules for handling and hiring mercenaries and running them in combat. This includes multiple roles, so starship crew as well as soldiers. The Warden can also roll for their motivation and some sample Scum—cheap and barely competent—are given as quick and dirty examples.

And this is all that the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide covers. There is no advice for the Warden, no background, no threat or dangers defined, and no campaign set-ups. The sample mining ship lends itself to a certain type of campaign, working class and blue collar much like Alien, whilst the inclusion of the Mercenaries rules lends themselves to not only providing a military sci-fi campaign like Aliens, but also provides a ready source of NPCs. Yet what the rules do not allow is for characters to be created straight out of the book with the ability to command a ship. So a character is always going to be a member of the crew, not its captain, at least initially. This is despite the fact that the players are going to be running the ship anyway. Similarly, for all that Mothership is a horror roleplaying game, there is not a great deal beyond environmental dangers to be horrified about.

In terms of design and presentation, Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide could have been better. The design of the character with its flowchart for character creation is undeniably clever, but it is not as effectively carried out in other parts of the rules. There is one for combat on the Player’s Cheat Sheet on the book’s back cover, but not one for panic and stress. The one for starship design is too cramped to be of easy use. It needs an edit in places and the layout could have been better organised. That said, there are plenty of examples throughout that do show how the mechanics work as much as they hint at what the sort of threats the characters might face.

As rough as it is around the edges, there is a great to like about Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide. Its look and its mechanics effectively evoke the film sources it draws very heavily from, the blue collar Science Fiction movies of the seventies and eighties, but it leaves the Warden left wanting more—a lot more—when it comes to taking both characters and rules up against the type of horror it wants to portray. If the players have the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide, then the Warden deserves her own Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Warden’s Horror Guide. Although the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG is not the Alien or Aliens roleplaying game, it is a very good evocation of its genre and its aesthetic.