Convict Conscript Combat

It should be no surprise that the future is a corporate future despite our aspirations. So, governments and agencies might do all the scouting and exploration, but the corporations have the money to invest and they expect a return on that investment. In the Corealis System, the conglomerate known as the Corporate Echelon is attempting to squeeze as much profit from the system and that includes protecting their facilities, let alone the colonies. There are reports of bug infestations and scab pirates attacking ships and outposts. In response the Corporate Echelon has instructed its Military Foundation to find a cheap solution to the problem. The result is the Rehabilitation Incentive Program (R.I.P.), a programme of enforced conscription from the Corporate Echelon’s private prisons. Convicts are given basic training and sent off on relentless tours of duty. They will eradicate bug infestations, assault pirate bases and spaceships, conduct salvage missions, run supply missions, and more, but no matter the type and nature of the mission, the Convicts, known as ‘Dirtbags’, are expendable. However, if a Dirtbag survives long enough, there is the promise of freedom and reintegration.

This is the set-up for Dirtbags! A Sci-Fi Shooter RPG, published by The Dungeon’s Key following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Inspired by films such as Starship Troopers, Tank Girl, and Aliens, plus The Dirty Dozen and an unhealthy dose of the Borderlands video game franchise, it is a satire on corporate greed and capitalism and deals with a lot of mature themes. The dystopian satire starts with the look of the rulebook, which is heavily graffitied in a running commentary upon service in the Rehabilitation Incentive Program, the Convict Conscripts sticking two fingers up in punk attitude at the corporate commanders and masters.

To create a Convict Conscript, a player divides five points across three abilities—Bones, Cunning, and Nerves, rolls for his Convict Conscript’s Pardonable Offence and the Fallout, and then selects a role assignment, loadout, and trait. The Convict Conscript’s upbringing, personality trait, and appearance can all be rolled for. Each Convict Conscript also receives a fifty-credit signing bonus. The roles are Ape (Infantryman), Pill (Combat Medic), Tech (Combat Engineer), Hen (Reconnaissance), and Muscle Head (Support Gunner). Each provides three options in terms of Loadouts and Traits. Both the Pardonable Offence and the Fallout provide an extra bonus. In addition to his loadout, a Convict Conscript wears a Prisoner Identification Collar, which of course, is fitted with a small amount of explosives which can be detonated remotely, as a deterrent against escape attempts.

Name: Louise Kincy (MD)
Bones 1 Cunning 2 Nerves 2
Pardonable Offence: Medical Malpractice (75 years)
Fallout: High-Strung (No breathers in combat)
Role Assignment: Pill
Traits: Field Surgeon
Upbringing: Water Carrier in the circuit city sweatshops
Personality Trait: Petty
Appearance: Old World Prosthetic Hand
Loadout: 350-SI Service Pistol (three magazines), Surgery Kit, Juice Box Energisers (two), Tourniquet (one)

Mechanically, Dirtbags! uses a dice pool system. In fact, it uses three dice pools. These are Action, Ammunition, and Reserve. The Action pool is based on the Convict Conscript’s abilities. It is the number of dice that a player can assign to any one action. Using six-sided dice, any result of a four, five, or six is a success, although this range will increase or decrease depending upon if the Convict Conscript has Advantage, Disadvantage, or Severe Disadvantage. Any failed results go into the Convict Conscript’s Reserve where they cannot be used. Various traits will restore dice from the Reserve to the Action pool, but the primary means is to ‘Take a Breather’. Out of combat, this takes fifteen minutes, but in combat, it takes a whole turn in which the Convict Conscript can nothing else. A critical success, a roll of two sixes on an action will also restore a single die from the Reserve to the Action pool.

The number of actions that a Convict Conscript can undertake in a round is determined by his Ability values. For example, a Convict Conscript with a Bones of two has two physical actions in a round. So, his player might describe his actions in cleaning out a bug nest as first throwing a grenade at the hole out of which a bug swarm has erupted and then charging to its lip. Whilst a Convict Conscript with Cunning of two operating a drone might send it to hover over the hole and then scan for movement. In either case, the Convict Conscript’s player needs to roll a success for each action. Notably, none of the actions involve shooting or attacking. This is a free action. Nor does a player roll to hit. Instead, he rolls the Ammunition pool for his Convict Conscript’s weapon. The Convict Conscript can fire as many times as he wants. The only limits are the ammunition capacity of the weapon and its firing mode. Firing at targets beyond a weapon’s range reduces the number of Ammunition dice the player rolls. Every success is a hit, but if two ones are rolled, it means that the weapon has jammed. All dice rolled from Ammunition pool go into the Reserve pool and can only be refreshed when the Convict Conscript takes a turn to reload.

When hit, a Convict Conscript can defend using his Action pool or his Ammunition pool and every success negates a hit. Armour negates hits and can be destroyed. Damage is inflicted per location and if a hit location suffers two more points of damage, it is bleeding and will suffer more damage loss. Limbs can be ruined and amputated; if the torso is reduced to zero Hit Points, the Convict Conscript cannot ‘Take a Breather’, but can talk and still take free actions like shooting; and if a Convict Conscript’s Hit Points in his head are reduced to zero, he is dead. In addition to possible access to a Pill or Combat Medic, every Convict Conscript carries at least one ‘Muscular Intravenous Liquid Koka’ (M.I.L.K.) Energiser in his Prisoner Identification Collar. This can be automatically injected to negate hits of damage, ignore Ability limits, gain advantage on the Convict Conscript’s next roll, reroll any number of dice with disadvantage, and spend a success to gain an extra action. However, consume too many Energisers and a Convict Conscript can suffer an emotional outburst, such as hyperventilating, suffering a nervous breakdown, fleeing, and so on. Similarly, witnessing another Convict Conscript’s death, suffering an amputated limb, and other dire situation may also result in an emotional outburst. An emotional outburst is resisted with a Nerves roll.

Mechanically, Dirtbags! is simple and it does give a player plenty of freedom in terms of how and what his Convict Conscript does. Primarily this is because it removes the need to declare an attack as action and have it happen automatically if the player declares it. All the player has to do is roll for the effect. It means that the player can focus on his Convict Conscript moving and taking other actions. The limits are his Ability values and the size of his Action pool and the flow of the play is going to be from action to rest and back again from running and gunning and hiding and ducking to needing to ‘Take a Breather’ and back again. The Action pool and the Ammunition pool are both resources that need relatively careful handling.

Dirtbags! A Sci-Fi Shooter RPG is played out as a series of tours of duty, each of which consists of several operations, the number randomly determined reflecting the difficulty of a campaign. Effectively, length of play determines the campaign difficulty. A completed operation reduces a Convict Conscript’s sentence by five years and for every twenty years his sentence is reduced, he can improve an ability, take a Retinal Curriculum Projector course which grants a trait, or take a trait from his role. Between tours of duty, a Convict Conscript can take Shore Leave, which may be a relaxing time or it may leave the Convict Conscript without an internal organ, which reduces his torso’s Hit Points. The Convict Conscripts also have access to a wide range of military surplus that they can purchase and in return they can sell their military surplus and salvage. A sample mission, ‘Occam’s Razor’, a training mission that goes to hell with a bug invasion!

Dirtbags! A Sci-Fi Shooter RPG does not feel quite complete. There is background to the setting, but no advice for the Game Marshal and it could have done with a random mission generator at the very least. There is content sufficient to inspire the Game Marshal, but such a table would have been useful. It also does not address what happens if a Convict Conscript manages to reduce his sentence to zero, which is possible, but difficult after ten to fifteen operations. Whomever has amended the training manual that is Dirtbags! A Sci-Fi Shooter RPG calls it a return to slavery. The Corporate Echelon states that the Rehabilitation Incentive Program has an eighty percent success rate. One option here might be to look at Gangs of Titan City, a roleplaying game of criminal gangs and life in a spire city, as to what happens next, but otherwise, the Game Marshal is left to decide what happens next.

Physically, Dirtbags! A Sci-Fi Shooter RPG is a scrawling mess of a book and intentionally so. It is all punk attitude verses corporate bullshit and sometimes that does get in the way of what is relatively simple, straightforward roleplaying game. The example of play is actually the easiest and quickest means of learning the roleplaying game’s rules. The artwork is decent though.

Dirtbags! A Sci-Fi Shooter RPG has the potential to be manically chaotic fun, throwing it as it does a disparate, desperate group of poorly trained conscripts into one dangerous mission after another, whilst the Game Marshal throws every military movie cliché into the mix. It would be interesting to see what happens if the Convict Conscripts are actually rehabilitated, but that will have to wait for a supplement or another roleplaying game. In the meantime, the Dirtbags have one last chance to prove they are not scum in a light, but surprisingly detailed military Science Fiction shooter.

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.

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.

Suffrage & Survival

It is two-hundred-and-fifty years since the nations and corporations of Earth and the solar system unified under the United Inner Systems Alliance. It is two-hundred-and-thirty-six years since I-Werks Solutions developed and demonstrated the Jump Drive which made interstellar travel possible. It is two-hundred-and-twenty-eight years since the first A.I. went rogue and the first uplifted animal was created. It is one-hundred-and-ninety-five years since the first interstellar jump was made between Jupiter and Proxima Centauri. It is seventy-seven years since the relaxation of the Cornelius Accords leading to the rapid development of Uplifted species as labourers and companions. It is fifty-six years since the Bugs, a previously unknown insectoid alien species attacked and overran human settlements. It is forty-six years since the United Inner Systems Alliance established the United Expeditionary Force, a paramilitary organisation to target threats to and protect the interests of humanity in the Untamed Worlds that lie at edge of—and beyond—the United Inner Systems Alliance. Bar a few Human officers, it is entirely staffed by Uplifts. Despite the dangers they encounter as members of the United Expeditionary Force, Uplifts are rarely recognised for their service or their bravery, especially in comparison to their Human officers and counterparts, and throughout the United Inner Systems Alliance, Uplifts are classified as ‘domestic dependent life forms’ and thus second class citizens with limited rather than full rights.

This is the set-up for Untamed Worlds, an anthropomorphic military Science Fiction roleplaying game published by Osprey Games. It is inspired by such things Band of Brothers and Babylon 5 on television, The Dirty Dozen and Starship Troopers on film, and Albedo and Justifiers in roleplaying. The Player Characters are Uplifts (or the rare Human) who are members of United Expeditionary Force. Theirs is not an entirely happy lot. They have a family in their brothers in arms, but they have limited rights, including the fact they have to seek permission to procreate, are seen as inferior, and ultimately, expendable. The roleplaying game can be played in one of two ways. First, as a straightforward, bullets and bravado military Science Fiction roleplaying game in a series of mission-based scenarios. Second, as a straightforward, bullets and bravado military Science Fiction roleplaying game in a series of mission-based scenarios, until such times as the Player Characters begin to chafe at the inequality of their situation and begin to seek a way out of it or a way to change it. In this it changes to objective-based scenarios with the aims of the Player Characters driving much of the play. However, Untamed Worlds does not support this objective-based play as much as it does the mission-based play, including as it does more detailed advice on creating and running missions and their consequences, as providing several example mission outlines. As a consequence, Untamed Worlds has a lopsided feel, emphasising one style of play over another, whilst leaving the other in the hands of the Game Master to develop in response to her players and their characters. In this way, the mission-based style of play is better suited to the less experienced Game Master than the more experienced Game Master. To be fair, the objective-based style of play is much less structured and open, so is harder to explore, but still, at just about a page in length, it is not up to the task. In the meantime, they will face marauders, pirates, dissidents, terrorists, the insectoid Bugs, and arachnoid Nids, as well as the poor regard of the United Inner Systems Alliance.

A Player Character or Uplift in Untamed Worlds has a Heritage, a Background, and two Specialities. The Heritage is the species from which he is uplifted and Untamed Worlds offers some twenty-four broad species types, from amphibians, bats, and birds to ungulates, ursines, and xenarthra. Within these broad categories, there is room for a player to be more specific. Thus, for the xenarthra, the Uplift could be a sloth, an armadillo, or an anteater. A Heritage provides skills , Tricks, and Permissions, whilst a Background grants more skills and a Trick, and the Specialities, just skills. The Backgrounds consist of ‘Fostered’, ‘Farm’ (an educational facility rather than an agricultural one), or ‘Feral’ for Uplifts, and ‘Troublemaker’, ‘Dissident’, and ‘Volunteer’ for Humans. The Specialities all consist of military training packages, such as ‘Communications’, ‘Infantry’, ‘Ranger’, ‘Sniper’, ‘Space Operations’, and Vehicle Operations’. There are thirteen skills, each rated between zero and eight, of which twelve are obvious. The less obvious one is ‘CQB’ or ‘Close Quarters Battle’, which covers close range combat using guns, and armed and unarmed combat, whilst ‘Marksmanship’ is for long range combat.

Tricks are one of two things. First, they are innate things that an Uplift might have because of his Heritage. For the xenarthra, these are ‘Armoured Hide’, ‘Hardy’, ‘Keen (Smell)’, ‘Resistant’, ‘Second Skin’, ‘Strong’, and ‘Smol’ (small). Second, they are special abilities that the Uplift is good at such as ‘Ace’, ‘Charmer’, and ‘Trauma Doc’. In some cases, Tricks are mandatory, but most are not. Then there are Permissions. These are simply things that the Uplift can do because of his Heritage. For example, the Hyena has the Permissions of “Sense of smell and hearing well outside human ranges. Excellent night vision. Natural Scavengers.” Permissions are not detailed in the roleplaying game any more than this and there is no mechanical benefit to them. The Uplift simply has them. Yet there is some crossover between Permissions and Tricks. For example, the Hyena Uplift could have ‘Keen (Smell and Hearing)’ Trick, which does provide a mechanical benefit, but definitely does have the “Sense of smell and hearing well outside human ranges.” Permission. The Trick provides an Advantage when used, but what does the Permission provide? Does it mean that the ‘Keen (Smell and Hearing)’ Trick is better than the Permission? Ultimately, it leaves it up to the Game Master to adjudicate when instead Tricks could have been categorised between those available to just the Uplifts from their Heritages and those available to both Humans and Uplifts rather being left in a muddle between what is a Trick and what is a Permission.

Uplift (or Human) Player Character creation is not difficult. It is simply a matter of making choices in terms of Heritage, a Background, and two Specialities, and then choose from the options they give. Lastly, a player picks some gear for his Uplift.

Name: ‘Baby’
Rank: Trooper 2nd Class
Heritage: Shark
Background: Feral
Specialities: Infantry, Special Operations
Tricks: (Aquatic) Adept, Hunter, Keen (Smell), Natural Weapons (Bite)
Permissions: Adapted to aquatic life (including cold and high pressure). Extremely acute sense of smell. Possesses electroreceptors capable of sensing electric impulses and magnetic field (enhanced by Tricks/modifiers that affect smell).
Skills: Athletics 5, CQB 7, Demolitions 1, Espionage 1, Marksmanship 4, Mechanics 1, Recon 4, Survival 4
Hits: 7
Defence: 6
Carrying Capacity: 9

Mechanically, Untamed Worlds uses what it calls the Lucky 7 System. Any time a player wants his Uplift to undertake an action, he rolls two six-sided dice. Any result of seven or more is a success, whilst a result of six or less is a failure. To this roll, the player adds the appropriate skill, whilst subtracting the difficulty modifier set by the Game Master. The levels of difficulty range from ‘1’ and ‘Easy’ to ‘9’ plus and ‘Hellish’, which means that even the easiest of tasks levies a penalty. Having an Advantage means that the player rolls three dice and keeps the best two, whilst having a Disadvantage means he rolls three dice and keeps the worst two. Having multiple incidences of Advantage adds a ‘+2’ bonus each extra incidence of Advantage, whilst having multiple incidences of Disadvantage adds a ‘-2’ penalty each time. Getting a result of above or below seven generate Effects for each point above or below. Good Effects include increasing damage inflicted on a target or another target, moving to a different zone, adding new information to a scene, shaking off a Hit, and so on. Bad Effects include suffering an extra Hit, running out of ammunition, being a bad spot and suffering a Disadvantage, having some bad information come to light, and so on.

Both players and the Game Master have access to their own pool of Momentum. A player can spend the players’ Momentum to add bonuses to his Uplift’s rolls, but levy them on the Game Master to inflict penalties on an NPC’s dice roll. Conversely, the Game Master can spend her own points of Momentum on improving her NPCs’ dice rolls and levying penalties on the players for their Uplifts’ rolls.

Combat in Untamed Worlds uses the same core mechanic. Initiative is handled narratively with the Game Master deciding who goes first—the NPCs or the Uplifts, and then after each combatant has acted, their player or the Game Master deciding who acts next. The rules also scale up to enable combat between vehicles and spaceships. Each combatant has a pool of Action Points to spend during his turn, typically two for a player Uplift. Actions costing one Action Point include ‘Aim’, ‘Assist’, ‘Attack’, ‘Evade’, ‘Reload’, and more, whilst ‘Full Evade’ is the only action which costs two Action Points. Optional rules enable a player to spend Momentum to seize initiative; costly success for more heroic style of play; critical rolls and fumbles; wounds; non-lethal attacks; and more.

Armour reduces damage, but most armour is ablative. Most NPCs die when their Hits are reduced to zero, but Uplifts and major NPCs suffer a Down status and subsequent Death task checks. It only takes one successful Death task check for an Uplift or major NPC to recover, but two failed ones or a Death task check failed by five or more and they are dead. An Uplift or major NPC who has suffered the Down status can take a Last Stand and take one more action, and as long they keep making the rolls to do so, they can continue making a Last Stand. However, it does get progressively more difficult to do this.

As expected for a military roleplaying game there is an extensive list of arms and armour as well as gear and vehicles, with most modern weapons being electromagnetic slugthrowers, though there are laser weapons available as support weapons. Vehicles include land, air, and watercraft, plus spaceships of various kinds. For the Game Master, there is a wealth of background details that detail the United Inner Systems Alliance, its culture, corporations, enemies (such as Moreau’s Children, the New Reich Conglomerate, and the Blue Skull Brotherhood pirate gang), and more. Worlds both in United Inner Systems Alliance and in the ‘Untamed Worlds’ beyond are described and several secrets of the setting are given ready for discovery by the Uplifts, likely furthering their disillusionment with the United Inner Systems Alliance when they do find out. The duties and structure of the United Expeditionary Force are also covered, and there is not only advice on running the roleplaying game, but also several missions ready for the Game Master to develop.

There is much to like in Untamed Worlds. Both the setting and the military Science Fiction genre are accessible, there are a lot of options in terms what species types that the players can roleplay, and the Game Master is provided everything she needs in terms of a set-up. The rules for the Lucky 7 System are surprisingly uncomplex for what is a military Science Fiction roleplaying game and they are also fast playing. Yet Untamed Worlds hampers this with mundane presentation and annoyingly poor organisation. The rules are simple enough, but they are not organised in a wholly coherent fashion, with the general rules being mixed with the combat rules. The rules also come immediately after the setting explanation and before the character creation rules, so they are talking about elements before they are explained.

Physically, Untamed Worlds is uninspired. It is text heavy and there is not a lot of art to either break up the text or help bring the setting to life. The majority of the art, all done in a cartoony style that really is quite good, consists of depictions of Uplifts in the United Expeditionary Force service, and that makes sense. Yet that also means that very little of the arms, armour, and other gear is illustrated and certainly none of the vehicles or spaceships are illustrated. Lacking such illustrations means it is difficult to get a feel for what the future of Untamed Worlds looks like.

Untamed Worlds takes a cartoonish concept, that of anthropomorphic military Science Fiction, and pushes it towards an intriguing consequence, essentially that of indentured soldiery coming to the realisation as to the inequalities of their situation and aspiring to do something about it. Unfortunately, the roleplaying game does not explore this consequence in as much depth as it should, especially in comparison to its focus on the anthropomorphic military Science Fiction. Couple this with a dreary layout and confusing rules, and Untamed Worlds is simply not as well realised as it could have been.

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.

The Other OSR: Player’s Survival 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 Player’s Survival Guide is the core rulebook for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, detailing as it does the the rules for character creation, Stress and Panic, and combat. The book also comes with a content warning giving that Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG is a horror game and best suited for mature players. Plus, there is advice on being a great player, waning them that their characters can die, that the game is stacked against them, that they will be faced with difficult choices, that they should pay attention, and finally, to accompany the content warning, to create a safe play environment. Of course, it is obvious, but is short and to the point, readying the player for his first experience of play in the Mothership universe.

A Player Character in Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG has four Stats—Strength, Speed, Intellect, and Combat—together indicate how well he might perform under trying conditions. He also has three Saves—Sanity, Fear, and Body—which are his capacity to withstand the effects of different kinds of trauma. There are four Classes, which determine what skills he begins play and how he reacts to Stress and Panic. These are Marines, Androids, Scientists, and Teamsters, essentially modelling the type of characters that appear in Alien and Aliens. When a Marine fails a Panic Check, all nearby Player Character must make a Fear Save; Fear Saves made by Player Characters close to an Android at made at a Disadvantage; when a Scientist fails a Sanity Save, all nearby Player Character gain one Stress; and once per session, a Teamster can make a Panic Check at a Disadvantage. Skills are rated as Trained, Expert, or Master, or ‘+10%’, ‘+15%’, or ‘+20%’ respectively. Penultimately, he has a Loadout, Trinket, and Patch, the Loadout being his equipment, the Trinket something that might give him good fortune, and the Patch is the slogan or saying, which may or may not have some meaning, he has sewn onto his clothes or equipment. Lastly, he has a value for ‘High Score’, which starts at zero and may not actually change since it represents the number of missions or assignments or sessions completed (or survived). It has no mechanical effect, being something that the player and Warden can track. The rules suggest that the average High Score is four, so that and better is something for both player and character to aim for.

NAME: Boyd Tófa

CLASS: Teamster

STATS

Strength 42 Speed 45 Intellect 41 Combat 44

SAVES

Sanity 35 Fear 29 Body 24

Health: 5

Stress: 2

SKILLS

Trained (+10%): Zero-G, Industrial Equipment, Rimwise

Expert (+15%): Piloting

Master (+20%):

Credits: 100cr

Trinket: Pamphlet: Android Overlords

Patch: “Powered By Coffee”

Loadout: Standard Crew Attire (AP 1), Nail Gun (32 rounds), Head Lamp, Toolbelt with Assorted Tools, Lunch Box

Player Character creation is an easy process, just as it always was with the Zero Edition of the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. This was because the character sheet was marked with a flow chart that led the player through the process. Here in the new edition of Player’s Survival Guide it not only been retained, but slimmed down and streamlined for ease of use.

Mechanically, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG is percentile game. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls percentile dice, aiming to roll equal to or under the appropriate Stat. To avoid dangers, a player can make a similar roll against a Save. A Save is rolled against Sanity to withstand the illogical nature of the universe and to deal with Stress; Fear for fear itself, isolation, and emotional distress; and Body to resist physical effects such as hunger, disease, and invasion organisms. Rolls can be made with Advantage and Disadvantage, meaning that a player rolls the dice twice, taking the best result if at an Advantage and the worst result if at a Disadvantage. A roll of a double counts as a critical success if the roll is equal to, or under the Stat or Save, a critical failure if over. A critical failure also triggers a Panic Check. If appropriate, a player can add one of his character’s Skills to the roll, whether a Stat Roll or a Save.

However, there is a further penalty to failed rolls. The Player Character gains a point of Stress, up to maximum of twenty. Under certain situations, such as seeing another crewmember die, multiple crewmembers failing a Panic Check at the same time, when encountering something horrific and unearthly for the first time, a Player Character must roll a Panic Check. This is a roll of a twenty-sided die, the aim being to roll above the Player Character’s current Stress. A failure requires a roll on the Panic Table. The result is a random effect such as a ‘Loss of Confidence’, ‘Haunted’, ‘Deathwish’, or ‘Heart Attack/Short Circuit (Android)’.

Combat is designed to be fast and deadly. During each round, a Player Character can move and undertake a single action. Attacks are handled by a Combat Check and armour protects up to a certain limit, but above that is destroyed. Some Armour can have Damage Reduction. Damage is subtracted from the defendant’s Health. When Health is reduced to zero, a roll is made on the Wounds Table. The Wounds Table has options for Blunt Force, Bleeding, Gunshot, Fire & Explosives, and Gore & Massive damage.

In terms of further support, there are options for Player Character training skills, although it will actually take years to do so and apart from military training, has to be paid for. The rules cover the effects of different atmospheres, cryosickness from time spent in the cryopods used for long space journeys or hyperspace jumps, starvation, radiation, and more. When not on a mission or assignment, there are ports that the Player Characters’ ship can dock, where they can engage in rest and recreation, and mechanically, each make a Rest Save to reduce their Stress. This can be made at Advantage if a Player Character participates in consensual sex, recreational drug use, heavy drinking, prayer, or other suitable leisure activity. (This is another why the Player’s Survival Guide makes that consent is required.) Contractors can also be hired at ports and once hired, become NPCs defined by a simple format, but potentially upgradable to full Player Character should one of the existing ones somehow die…

If there is anything missing from the Player’s Survival Guide, it is the omission of the stealth skill. This seems odd given that the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG is a horror roleplaying game and such situations often require the Player Characters to sneak around to avoid alerting whatever threat they are facing. That said, one of the several examples of play does show a Player Character attempting to sneak. Instead of making a Stat Check with a Stealth skill added on as a bonus, the player instead rolls a Stat Check with the outcome being that a successful check indicates that it has been done quietly. So instead of the absence of a Stealth skill, the attempt is rolled into whatever it is that the Player Character is attempting to achieve. This could have been made clearer in the rules rather than an example of play.

Physically, the Player’s Survival Guide is very well presented. The layout is clean and tidy, and the book is easy to read. Learning the rules is eased by the numerous examples of play. The artwork is also good throughout.

The ‘Zero Edition’ of the Player’s Survival Guide has proved to be a Science Fiction workhouse, supporting the creation of numerous scenarios and supplements and fanzines within the Blue Collar Science Fiction, Military Science Fiction, Science Fiction Horror genres. The Player’s Survival Guide for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, First Edition does and will do the same thing. The new edition of the Player’s Survival Guide is really accessible and everything in its pages are easy to learn—helped by the reference guide on the back—and it lays the foundation of the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG.

Words Between the War

Between the quotas and the quanta, there is time for questions. Between the propaganda and proselytism there is time for pondering. Between the machinations and murders there is time for messages. Between the intrigues and insurgencies there is time for infatuation. Between the assassinations and alterations there is time for assignations. Between these moments, there is time for love. These are not moments that matter to great empires that believe that the only way to survive is to make the past, present, and future theirs, to adjust every version of themselves so that it survives and every version of their rival so that it does not. To wage wars violent in word and deed, but also subtle and imperceptible. There is a war up and down the timeline and sideways across the multiverse fought by armies and agents and two of those agents—one on either side—are beginning to question if the war will ever end? If either side will win? If there is more than the futility of fighting and thwarting each other’s efforts? If the other feels like they do? And if they do, can they shape reality so they are no longer foils for and reflections of each other, but together? After all, as elite agents in the war for time and reality, only they know what the other has experienced.

This is the set-up for The Words We Leave Behind, an epistolary roleplaying game for two players inspired by the multi-award-winning Science Fiction LGBT novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War. It is published by Lunar Shadow Designs and uses the same mechanics and format as the publisher’s interstellar epistolary roleplaying game of increasingly challenging communication and saying goodbye, Signal to Noise. In Signal to Noise, the players, as friends, relatives, or lovers, beamed letters to each other back and forth across vast distances of space, between the Earth and a gigantic colony ship. In The Words We Leave Behind, the players take the roles of Proxies on opposite sides of a massive time war, one that has the capacity to spread to other worlds and dimensions. Each is their Faction’s ultimate warrior and agent because they perfectly embody the emotional profile which their Faction views as the ultimate driver behind the rise and fall of civilisations. In The Words We Leave Behind, each player will take the role of a Proxy, each guided by three emotions, which can be opposed to, or in direct competition with, the other Proxy. Over the course of play, the players will not exchange letters as in other epistolary roleplaying games, but draw cards to create points in the future and the past of a Timeline, each an Incursion which their Proxy will enter and alter details. As they play, they may visit previously visited Incursions, adding and changing other details, even to Incursions created by their rival Proxy. These changes can cascade down the Timeline to alter further points in the future. This is all played out on a shared document, meaning that The Words We Leave Behind is intended to be played online.

Besides the shared online document and a means to send each other messages, each player in The Words We Leave Behind requires a standard deck of playing cards. These have their jokers removed, separated into their four suites and shuffled in four decks. A card is drawn from each suit to form the starting hand and there is always a card from each suit in the suit. (An extra Hearts card can be added to simulate the themes of This Is How You Lose the Time War.)

A Proxy is first defined by the three emotions that also define the Faction they serve. The player is free to develop their Proxy’s Faction as much or as little as they want, including its objectives, and will also ask the other player what their Proxy’s Faction thinks of theirs and what their Proxy’s Faction calls their Proxy whom it regards as the enemy. A Proxy also has a preferred form, worn between missions, and three anchors or possessions, which helps maintain the association with their roots, one of which is a trinket, an actual physical object that the player owns. Lastly, each Proxy decides how they perceive themselves and their rival.

Verdigris
I am CALCULATING and you are RECKLESS
Prime Emotion: Hope
Secondary Emotions: Shame, Anger
Anchors: The skull of bird whose species was made extinct by dangerous technology (it reminds me of what we lost); a blade grass from my home farm (it is what we work to preserve and I leave behind on every mission to show what we are working to save); trinket: a single-sided die (from the game we played as children)

Play consists of several turns, typically four to five, in which each player will take control of the narrative and send a message as their Proxy to the other player and their Proxy. In subsequent turns after the first, a player will have their Proxy read the message from their rival, be assigned by their Faction to make an Incursion—roughly between five and thirty sentences long—and manipulate events there, before leaving a message behind for their rival to find. The Incursions are recorded on the Timestream document as are their effects on downstream Incursions. If a Proxy returns to an existing Incursion, their player can edit it by adding text at the beginning or end of the current Incursion, effectively changing the lead into the Incursion or the outcome. These changes can cascade down the Timestream, the current player examining subsequent Incursions and if necessary, adding, deleting, or altering a single sentence in the Incursion description. (Whilst the changes are made directly to the Timestream document, the prior state is tracked via the messages between the players. One of the potential issues with the play of The Words We Leave Behind is losing track of earlier incarnations of the Timestream.)

Cards are played randomly from the hand and provide two important details. First, the number determines the Incursion, whilst the suit advances the emotion which it matches. Once played, the cards represent a Proxy’s emotional state, the more cards a Proxy has in a suite, up to a maximum of three, the more intense the state. Roughly, Hearts equate to the emotion of love, Clubs to anger, Spades to uncertainty, and Diamonds to understanding. The emotional state will influence how the player describes their Proxy’s actions in an Incursion and their Proxy’s reactions to their rival’s actions.

A player can spend his Proxy’s Anchors for various effects. The first two anchors can be used to either let the player choose a card to play, alter three sentences in an Incursion when the changes cascade down the Timestream, or even to reverse the cascade, so back up the Timestream and into the past rather down into the future. The third anchor, a trinket, can be used to revert an Incursion to its original state, place an Incursion under a Temporal Lock so it is immune to the cascading effect, or to take a second turn.

The interaction between the proxies and thus the play of The Words We Leave Behind comes to climax when a player plays the third card from a suit and so acts on the emotional prompt it triggers. As in This Is How You Lose the Time War, this is the point when the Proxies decide to meet, and as in the novel, in The Words We Leave Behind it is not via the messages going back and forth between the Proxies, but in person, face to face (or alternatively, via a video call). Based on the current state of the Timestream, the messages exchanged, and their respective emotional states, the Proxies have a simple choice to make. Will they place their trust in each other or attempt to take advantage of the other. If they both place their trust in each other, their feelings transcend the conflict and they leave both it and their Factions behind together. If they attempt to take advantage of the other, the war continues to a calamitous end. Lastly, if one Proxy attempts to take advantage of the other and one Proxy places their trust in the other, the Proxy who attempted to take advantage prevails and their Faction gains greater control of reality. In all three cases, the outcome is then narrated.

Love and trust are not common themes in roleplaying games, with trust being a more common theme than love because it is easier to deal with via humour or politics or espionage rather than feelings. This is not to say that love cannot play a part in a roleplaying game, but in general, love is not a core theme of most roleplaying games. When it is, it has tended to come out of the storytelling and narrative style of design, such as Emily Care Boss’ The Romance Trilogy, consisting of Breaking the Ice, Shooting the Moon, and Under the Skin. Nor does this mean that more mainstream publishers have not ignored the subject, such as Thirsty Sword Lesbians from Evil Hat Productions and Blue Rose: The AGE RPG of Romantic Fantasy from Green Ronin Publishing. This, though, does not escape the fact that ‘love’ as a theme in roleplaying games is challenging to handle for the players because it requires trust between the participants and it requires them to roleplay feelings that are normally kept private. Lastly, The Words We Leave Behind has the possibility of the most devastating response to both love and trust—betrayal. As with those other roleplaying games, The Words We Leave Behind is best played by mature players.

The Words We Leave Behind can be played from start to finish in a matter of a few hours, but its epistolary format means that it can be played at a more leisurely pace over the course of a few days or weeks. It can also be played on an Earthly, Galactic, or Dimensional scale, but really this only adds to flavour and scope of the setting rather than the themes. Those themes are explored in the messages between the Proxies and in the changes made to the timestream, pushed and prodded by the suits of the cards played and then escalated. Each player and their Proxy is aware of how the other feels as the card details are exchanged in the messages and whilst for the most part the cards themselves are played randomly from their hands, each player has the choice to change how their Proxy feels by playing an anchor and being able to select a card instead of drawing it randomly.

Apart from the aforementioned issue with keeping track of the timestream, The Words We Leave Behind is more challenging to play if the participants have not read This Is How You Lose the Time War to understand the themes and structure of the roleplaying game. The roleplaying game is also part of the publisher’s Dyson Eclipse future setting, the same as Rock Hoppers, Signal to Noise, and The Kandhara Contraband: A System Agnostic Sci-Fi Adventure, but it is not clear how. Lastly, as an epistolary roleplaying game, The Words We Leave Behind feels that it should have more emotional prompts for longer play rather than the three for each suit which befit a game played in one go.

Physically, The Words We Leave Behind is neat and tidy and includes a lot of helpful advice and prompts on handling its themes, which undeniably are all needed give the nature of those themes.

Fans of This Is How You Lose the Time War will doubtless be intrigued by The Words We Leave Behind, but will find it a daunting prospect if they have not played a roleplaying game before or their roleplaying experience is with more mainstream roleplaying games. The Words We Leave Behind is a personally demanding game, asking us to explore themes and feelings that not every roleplaying game does, but the epistolary format means that this exploration does not have to be immediate and it can be more considered, which ameliorates some of the challenge to The Words We Leave Behind. Nevertheless, for mature players willing to do so, The Words We Leave Behind presents the demanding means to explore the growth of love and trust—and potentially betrayal—in considered fashion in an age of a time war.

—oOo—

This review is of the ‘Ashcan’ edition of The Words We Leave Behind. The full version is currently being funded via Kickstarter.