Hacking the Mothership
Troubleshoot. My hack for Mothership.
I got caught in Mothership's tractor beam almost immediately—a sci-fi horror game with cotton jumpsuits, iron hulls, and chumps working forklifts. However, after years of playing Mothership, I've gravitated towards three parts of the game:
- The best part is solving problems. Open-ended puzzles, fun tools, and clever players puts Mothership in warpdrive. The best modules usually pair this potent combination with a heady sci-fi concept.
- The worst part is the mechanical crunch. It's not bad or hard, but the least interesting parts of Mothership can be read off a calculator—stats, saves, counting credits, and making calculations. I love the stat tree, but I find the bonus awkward. I like that marines get a bonus to combat, but I don't like how regular combat is a stat you roll against. In short, my favorite parts of Mothership are qualitative, and my least favorite are quantitative.
- When in doubt, pour on the gas. A friend described his design approach like this, "I don't worry about pacing. I just roll in the powder kegs." Fill rooms with things that explode then hand over the matches.
These three opinions grew like a red Martian weed. When Mothership's first edition finally landed at my table earlier this year, another alien system was there to greet it.
Edit (08/21/24): "Hack" might be a bit of a misnomer to most people. To me, the core of Mothership is everything but its system. It's the implied setting, the patches, the trinkets, the art direction, and the modules. Messing with its mechanical pieces, at my table, always felt like swapping out tertiary components. More accurately this is a "demake" or "drift" of Mothership.
The "Troubleshoot" Hack
Troubleshoot is the working title for my Mothership hack. It's similar to the original game's concept but is even more focused on high-concept situations and puzzles. The combat system (which I'm not covering here) is similar to the one in my other article, The 1 HP Dragon. This is where that combat system came from, which makes this article a kind of missing piece.
If you're interested in trying this hack, you can copy my Google Sheets character keeper, which I adapted from the awesome Mothership version made and hosted by the fine folks at the Gauntlet.
Defrosting your Troubleshooter.
Troubleshooters are comprised of three major parts: stats, data, and gear. Picture the mothership operator in your head, consolidate, and you're about 80% there.
Troubleshooter stats.
In Troubleshoot, characters are defined by three core stats. These stats indicate how capable and resilient they are. Each stat has a score between 3 and 18. Generate this score by rolling 3d6 down the line. When a character takes damage it accumulates in one of these three stats as "doom." More on that later.
Body. Flesh and blood. Hose and circuit. Every troubleshooter defies doom by having a body. A crude shackle of evolutionary daisy chains and proprietary features.
Body is physical. In play, it's strong, fast, durable, or the opposite. When the body is overwhelmed by doom, the character is destroyed. They bleed out, burn, melt, mutate, or get obliterated.
Mind. Skills, training, and subroutines. A troubleshooter's mind is a tool to the corpos, factions, and institutes. Lose your head, and they might just take it.
Mind is mental. It's for the tasks that require thinking, skill, or know-how. When doom consumes a mind, a character is corrupted. They betray their friends, hijack their skills for pain and suffering, or get "retired" before they pose a risk to the bottom line.
Heart. A personality, reflex, or faith grows in the character, like mold on a petri dish. To the corpos and factions, it's a defect—something to sterilize. But to the Troubleshooter, it can't be rented out. It's their rip cord and live wire.
Nerve is emotional. During play, it guides actions through style, taste, and belief. When doom drowns out a character's heart, it compromises them. They panic, break, give up, or die from fright.
Troubleshooter data.
Data is anything about a Troubleshooter that can't be quantified. Unlike the species, classes, and skills in Mothership, data doesn't modify stats or rolls. Instead, data is like a toolbox. Facts within the fiction. Generate data by picking from the picklists or rolling 1d6.
Alien. Mothership has two species (human and android). I've always wanted a system that could support endless types of aliens—with the assumption that humans were just as alien as the rest. But for now, here are three starter options:
1-2. Earthling. Billons died to become this. They're not glorious or fine-tuned. Humans are an evolutionary battering ram. When they survive, it hurts. Space and physics are the enemy. They've hurdled through the universe after trillions of false starts, patches, and reboots.
3-4. Martian. Sometimes called lab rats, belters, or grays. Martians are custom-made in test tubes for space. Their skin is pale. Their bodies small and spindly. Their fingers long. Their head's bulbous. Durability is not a design consideration. In space, organic bodies vaporize equally.
5-6. Android. Ceramic, steel, and rubber. The android is alien to all. Built in a factory and sold out of a catalog. They do not breathe, eat, or feel—but they live. That's their problem. Androids were meant to see beyond the dark, but all they saw was something darker.
Job. Mothership has three jobs (scientist, teamster, and marine). I like these jobs. Troubleshooter would expand on this list by subdividing these classes into more specialized jobs with toy-like tools for the players to solve problems. For now, these jobs cover the three major categories.
1-2. Scientist. Search for knowledge. Make it usable. Every scientist from xeno-biologists to quantum chemists are mapping the unknown in their own way, cell by cell, atom by atom.
3-4. Teamster. Keep everything running. Life support systems, warp drives, blast doors, escape pods—everything. The teamster is the blue-collar, the fixer, the working stiff with the experience to get the job done.
5-6. Soldier. Take on danger. Become dangerous if necessary. Standard issue on most Troubleshooter vessels—soldiers are on a collision course with death. They hurdle forward burning their grit on a finite supply.
History. No one grows up to be a Troubleshooter. Before they risked life and limb taking odd jobs, they were someone else. For some, it haunts them. For others, it hurtles them forward. The player decides.
1-2. Ex-Corpo. Nearly everyone is owned by a corporation. But not you. Not anymore. Something happened to the company that held you hostage in its payroll. Bankrupted, merged, sold for parts, or worse.
3-4. True Believers. Communists, artists, academics, freedom fighters, naturalists—if you thought the world was worth fighting for, your cell, cult, or order was destroyed for it. You're the ember following the fire.
5-6. Forgotten nobody. The world is nothing but random chance, yet you are a statistical anomaly. You have managed to exist without being absorbed into a social order. You're a refugee, a traveler, or survivor.
Troubleshooting Gear.
Every troubleshooter has a jumpsuit, vacsuit, and radio hanging in their locker. Everything else depends on what kind of alien they are and their job. In a more polished prototype, I'd expand this list to more resemble Into the Odd.
Resolving conflict.
If a Troubleshooter does something that poses an immediate risk to their body, mind, or heart, the player rolls a twenty-sided die against the threatened stat.
Success. If the player rolls under their stat score, they succeed. Success can be imperfect, unexpected, or create new problems but won't build up doom.
Failure. If the player rolls at or above their stat score, they fail. Bad things happen, danger mounts, and doom in the stat grows.
Doom, death, and recovery.
Troubleshooters have three "health" bars built into their stats. As they're hurt, physically, mentally, or emotionally—they build up doom. When the doom score of a stat matches the stat itself, the character perishes. Small hazards usually dole out one point of doom. Hostile life forms, traps, and dangerous machines usually deal 1d6 or more doom in addition to a narrative "condition."
Conditions don't have a numerical impact on the game. Instead, they often rear their ugly head in the fiction—like when a bleeding arm leaves a blood trail. Sometimes, the worst thing about a condition is that it simply "blocks" any recovery until an appropriate fix has been found. Radiation sickness, for example, means your doom isn't going anywhere until you find apprpriate medicine.
Here's a breakdown of doom in troubleshooter's stats:
Doom to the body. This is your classic health damage. Burns, cuts, and more. When doom overtakes the body, the troubleshooter is killed. Until then, they're banged up, singed, or bleeding—but alive.
Automatic sources of doom:
+1 for every day without rest/food/water (this compounds for each one)
+1 for every round/turn without air (unless you're an android)
Doom to the mind. The spooky, mind-bending, mental corruption nightmares, forbidden knowledge, and evil ideas create. When doom overwhelms the mind, it turns it sour. Makes them villainous, unpredictable, or a different person entirely. The player is no longer in control. The GM takes over.
Automatic sources of doom:
+1 for every day without rest/food/water (this compounds for each one)
+1 for every destabilizing encounter (nightmares, paradoxes, etc.)
Doom to one's heart. Fear, panic, and stress. When doom floods one's heart, they die from a heart attack, self-harm, or go catatonic. This is Mothership's classic stress and panic system in one stat. (Though, admittedly, it does lack the panic table which, in my opinion, is the star of the show for Mothership.)
Automatic sources of doom:
+1 for every day without rest/food/water (this compounds for each one)
+1 for every horrifying encounter (death, mutilation, etc.)
Recovery
Between episodes, when Troubleshooter's have sufficient resources and downtime, players can roll 1d20 for each of their stats that have doom scores above 1. The results determine how much they recover:
Under the stat. Remove all but one doom.
Above the stat. Halve doom. Round up.
Under Doom. Remove all but one doom. Increase stat by one (max 18).
Additional Reading
This engine swap and love letter to Mothership is far from the only one out there. If you want to see other (more articulate) voices lend their thoughts, you can find some of my favorites below.
Dwiz
This review gives an in-depth look at Mothership's system.
Sean McCoy
Sean McCoy is the creator of Mothership. Everything in here is gold.
If reading isn't your thing. Quinns Quest's review of Mothership is stellar.
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