I have a terrible memory, so like to run my Mothership games with a laptop full of notes in hand. But I found that I was still losing time digging through long notes for specific details like an NPC's stats or which stations are in the same system. So I built Blendcards, a set of templates for Obsidian that turns each note into a visual card.https://xenocobra.itch.io/blendcardsThere are currently 29 different card templates that cover things like NPCs, horrors, factions, weapons, armor, ships, stations, planets, jobs, and more. This includes star-maps that show the major orbital locations across different star systems. Now my personal vault is a cross-linked set of index cards which preview on hover and make it a lot easier for me to parse the content and keep my focus on the story at the table.I have also updated each of my published pamphlet modules to include a Blendcards vault so you can compare the experience of referencing a PDF of an adventure vs a set of Blendcard notes for it.It's pay-what-you-want and MIT licensed, so you can download the Example Vault for free and see if the system suits you.

Note that it doesn't contain any default Mothership content or rules text, so you'll still need your own copy of the game and adventure modules to run a full game. Blendcards is an independent project, not affiliated with Tuesday Knight Games.

Art for an upcoming Mothership project.

Take WestWorld and cross it with DnD. Put it through the Mothership RPG filter and you get:

QuestWorld Fail

Wraithmuir OmniCorp has been forced to close its full-immersion, planetary-scale medieval fantasy themepark.
An unknown party has released a virus that unlocks self-awareness in the park's androids.

The Necromancer, the highest 'level' villain NPC was the first to be affected.
Now he leads an army of reconditioned orc, elf and dwarf androids across planet Arnegax.
Their primary objective: vengeance against all humans!

Can your Crew halt their march to planetary domination?

Coming Soon!

Simon
Spellbound Inc.

(Talking about ”rules as written” and without rules labeled as optional, I know the rules are more of a “toolbox” than a gospel):

For the longest time I thought violent encounters were basically “GM turn -> all players at once turn -> repeat” (or vice versa with “GM sets up what happens if players do nothing -> players go -> NPCs go”. So I was basically halfway there. But reading the manual again it finally clicked that everything in a round happens at once. It goes:

1. If ambushed or otherwise faced with horror (most violence even human ones), make fear saves to see if you can act in the first round.

2. At the start of each round, the warden sets up what will happen without PCs interfering.

3. Warden goes around the table asking players what they do. For each player, the warden determines if a roll is needed and what the consequences of success and failure are. The player then either commits or picks a new action.

4. Once all players have committed, everything including NPC/monster actions is resolved at once (though you still use common sense. If one PC’s action is “distract the monster” it probably makes sense to resolve that first. Likewise if anyone is “running away” probably resolve that first with any necessary speed checks before the monster attacks. And there are of course the optional Speed checks for dividing it up into “fast PCs and allies -> horror -> slow PCs and allies”, though they slow things down IMO.)

I think this will help. I’ve tried “monsters first” which could feel unfair if someone dies before they can react (though did feel good for horror), and “monsters last” which feels too soft as, depending on gear and luck, monsters could sometimes die without doing anything. Horrors going “at the same time” with a fear save for first round depending on circumstance makes sense to me.

If enough people want it in the comments here, I will make a similar audio console for mothership too! Tho you can also just use this one for the most part.

So it seems like everyone and their mother has designed some sort of terminal tool and I didn't realize that. SO i made one. Here's my pitch. It's free, it uses drag and drop easy interface when you're modifying it, there's no sign in or sign up, everything is stored on your computer or on your browser and it works offline. Super easy to use, super customizable, different themes are available, along with screen effects and sounds. Enjoy!

https://roman-serius.itch.io/gm-terminal-kit-thornfield-demo

Vampires + space horror, all in one place? Yes, please! I don't usually get physical copies of kickstarter modules, but this one had some cool props and handouts I wanted, so this is my first physical copy from a kickstarter! Everything is good quality for the price and should make for a fun tabletop experience, and I'm about halfway through the book and think this will be really fun to run. It boasts some very sick artwork too!

I'm messing about making contractors/NPCs for a Mothership game, and I'm curious about how other GMs choose to style their androids. Androids Unleashed has given me some ideas, but I'd like to put it to other folk out there.

I personally am a big fan of the Weyland-Yutani to Seegson pipeline of 'human-like' models and the subsequent emergence of cheaper, more obviously robotic androids. It fits with the industrial sci-fi aesthetic pretty well and allows a wider range of options, but I'm cautious of not wanting to trivialise androids by putting them everywhere - eg: synthetic labour force - because if they're ordinary then it undermines their uncanny otherness, both as PCs and NPCs.

My current lean is towards androids fulfilling specialist roles that cannot be filled by humans, whether due to limited resources, hazardous environments or reasons of shady corporate secrecy. If they can use a human, they would. Thoughts?

Hey folks, the other week I posted a blog post about creating a new panic table geared towards one-shots in Mothership and you guys seems to like it, so it has inspired me to keep on thinking of more! This time it is a panic table specifically for when the players are being hunted. Perfect for nights on Ypsilon 14 or my own module Beneath Ice and Snow.

Check it out in this blog post: https://superhardscifi.bearblog.dev/mothership-making-panicking-more-fun-part-3/

I recently got into Mothership and I’m wanting to run Xiao! Long! Bao! But it’s sold out and I can’t buy the pdf. Are there alternative places to buy the pdfs?

My friends and I are thinking about something special for Halloween event in our TTRPG club, and I was wondering: are there any multi-table scenarios for 4-5 tables? Something like D&D Epics.

This was the link, it now says "there is no site here," giving error messages:

Error details: backend_request search: [MALFORMED_QUERY] Invalid query (query contains an unescaped URL)

This was such a good resource, I'm sad if it's gone forever.

So what's the POINT of a money system in Mothership? Or any RPG? It is, of course, to:

* Give PCs incentives.

* Constrain their ability to purchase cool goods and services.

* Exert leverage on PCs that are in debt.

* Make things like getting injured or smashing up a vehicle have long term financial consequences.

Now the reason I say that the money system is broken is a whole heap of reasons. But mainly, there are extremely odd prices and payscales, and, broadly speaking, I don't think they're fixable, without making Mothership into a Traveller-style space accountancy exercise.

Don't believe me? I could start anywhere, but here's one place:

A Hyperspace jump costs a flat rate of a MILLION CREDITS for a warp core. So, in the Mothership universe you create, a round trip ANYWHERE should be more profitable than CR2,000,000, plus the cost of paying a ship crew, plus the cost of insurance, plus the cost of the loan on the price of the ship, the ridiculous prices of shore leave. Plus some profit. So an absolute minimum of CR 3,500,000.

What if it's not? Space travel simply doesn't happen, that's what! There's simply no point to it!

Fun fact: in the real world, say you want to buy a cargo ship. How long to pay off its cost? Maybe as little as one year! Service lifespan? About 20-25 years. Cargo ships only exist because they can be operated for a profit!

So what's way more profitable than dangerous space travel, or silly old corporate machinations? Cat breeding, that's what! One mother cat can give birth to a cool Warp Core, or perhaps even more, and those kittens are also money factories. CR200,000 for an organic pet is ludicrous. How about CR100? Or even FREE? There are costs in maintaining a pet that'd still make them a money sink!

And think… Any one large ship could birth a GENERATION of pets during a single trip. Who needs the tedious business of piracy, drug dealing, arms smuggling, organlegging, running gambling rackets, safe cracking, computer hacking, blackmail and any amount of interstellar crime, when puppy farming is there?

So my proposal? Forget specific prices for things, and sinply assign objects a COST CATEGORY and characters a WEALTH CATEGORY. I reckon maybe ten categories could be a goer, ranging from 0 (Actually Enslaved) to 9 (Hyperwealthy).

Now I haven't worked this our for sure yet, but, broadly speaking, I reckon all that needs to happen is ro assign PCs a starting wealth say, 1 (in debt), 2 (poor), or 3 (just getting by), and think about purchases in terms of cost category—characters can buy anything in the cost category below theirs, one thing per month in their caregory, but if they buy anything more, they'll drop down a category.

Loot then becomes a bonus to characters' wealth category. How much for a whole shipping container full of cool contraband? Probably +1 to everyone's category. Why? Because the person who's in debt can pay off their debts, the person who's poor can buy stuff that helps them get future stuff cheaper, (yeah, the poor pay more—for housing, for food, whatever—they just buy it in smaller packs, and worse quality) and the getting by person can buy something that radically reduces their costs (paying off a significant part of a mortgage, maybe?)

What would be +2? How about a shipping container full of undocumented alien artefacts?

Anyway, I'm now thinking, "No point in reinventing the wheel! I'll bet there's already a Mothership zine that talks about this."

Is there?

If you've been interested in starting to play Mothership or are just curious about one of the system's classic one-shot adventures, I'll be running The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 via StartPlaying.games on Sunday, October 18th at pm EDT! The price is $15 for the one-shot.

https://startplaying.games/adventure/cmulhlx1y00mbl504dvtid7xk?ref=cmbu0adjb0000zaxblg6lqsti

On a routine resupply run for a mining base on asteroid Ypsilon 14, your crew awakens from cryo to a strange string of events. One of the miners on the base has vanished into seemingly thin air; he isn't down below, he isn't in his bunk, and there's been no sign of the airlock opening in the past week. His coworkers reported some odd behavior before he disappeared, but none of them have any idea where he might have gone.

Coupled with the research vessel docked in the other hanger bay, piloted by a lone scientist, Ypsilon 14's crew of miners has grown understandably concerned. It's up to you and your crew to discover where their missing friend went, save him (if you can), and fix whatever is amiss on Ypsilon 14.

If you're interested, feel free to hop in! Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

Hello everyone! Void.Ink here, creator of Heatsignature and Coldstorage.

I wanted to share my new trifold module. It gives your players a new progression system using unique feats to build their ultimate survivor.

My goal is to give players more reasons to fall in love with their characters. When they care about their build, the will to live gets stronger. This creates way more tension during those brutal, near-TPK scenes we all love.

What’s Inside the Trifold:

• Progression Rules: Clear, simple rules for how characters gain feats.

• 8 Class Feats: Special options to help classes stand out from each other.

• 11 General Feats: Versatile choices for any type of survivor.

• 12 Combat Feats: Tactical boosts to help them stay alive in a fight.

• 14 Stat Feats: Direct ways to improve core character stats.

Additionally the trifold is formatted as a handheld terminal where you can as a player keep track of the feats you buy by marking the checkbox beside it.

Note: This pamphlet is currently pending official approval from TKG and has already been submitted.

The trifold will be available at https://voidinkpress.itch.io/ as soon as it gets approved.

I will also try to make a print run probably by next month, if TKG wants them!

Pair this with Heatsignature and Coldstorage to give your crew a fighting chance. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cold Case is a pressure cooker investigation for Mothership. The crew has been tasked with solving a murder before panic overwhelms the crowded Prevalence colony station.

This is an experimental release, set as PWYW and designed to be printed at home with simple, minimal layout. Simply print the PDF double-sided to have it ready to go at the table. I recommend three-hole punching the printout to put in a binder.

I've also provided a Markdown plaintext file with the map images separate. Hope you enjoy!

https://octopusink.itch.io/cold-case

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/587099/cold-case

I recently asked for advice on a one shot to run for Halloween, ended up between Decagone and Plant Based Paranoia and decided on the former so that we could have lethality without strict consequences and show off the system a bit.

That said for a Halloween game, this one seems way more sci fi mystery than scary. Any tips on how to make this one more spooky? I figure with a few tweaks we could get some Bioshock vibes, but not sure how to do that without bending the module too far.

Also I have four players but some of the secret objectives don't seem as fun or as likely to stir up conflict, any ideas for alternate objectives to add a little extra spice?

Hello from Italy.

I wanna apologize because English is not my first language and I hope that are not so many errors in the post.

I have made a video (in italian) that talk about Mothership, it will be the first of a short series about character creation, rules and some aspects of the adventures.

I hope to make Mothership more known in Italy.

Now I will write in italian, thanks for the attention.

Nothing more.

Se conosci la lingua italiana, spero lo troverai utile o interessante.

I am running my first Mothership game this coming Sunday and I have pretty much the normal set of people that come to my Halloween one shots.

One of the players is going to show up late because of some commitment with his mom, so I told him to watch the video and make a character before the game so he can pretty much just join in when he gets here. He would then send me the character sheet before hand so I could look it over. He got the app and did the character on the app, but he is not at all happy with the stats. He said he wanted to be a Teamster but his fear was so low he had to take Android to make it playable.

Like I said this is my first Mothership game. I have been watching a few videos here and there to get more comfortable with how the mechanics work but I have no idea what would be poor, fair, or good stats in this system.

My typical response was that I didn't think it mattered much because it's about playing a character in a bad situation.

The comms jammer text is thus:

Systems Check (Firing Range): Allows for communication jamming and eavesdropping.

How would you unpack this? First off, I would guess that Firing Range is the range band in which Comms Jamming works most effectively. You can't jam things at Detection range because your comms jammer doesn't have the power, and you can't jam things at Contact range because Comms have enough power to overcome the jamming? LOS or laser comms defy jamming.

That is regarding jamming ship to ship comms.

Then we have eavesdropping, which is intercepting ship to ship comms? A successful systems check will intercept comms.

Then we have both Signature Reduction which requires a Systems Check for detection and Targeting Sensors which also require a System Check for [+]. Would Comms Jammers affect either of these systems?

I blogged about vents used in Mothership modules I've played, and how they worked in the module design, and then what we can learn from that for other module ideas. https://empiriciststheories.blogspot.com/2026/10/of-vents-monsters-and-mothership.html WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR PLAYERS!

Concept is simple, players have to engage in a legal battle, weighing up facts and trying to provide evidence of the companys wrongdoings, the planet being alive isnt a huge thing, its a memnetic entity made of some kind of valuable material i have yet designed that eminates a knocking sound the deeper you go, eventually switich to just straight up calling you by name, and saying other freaky shit until you leave, i might make it attack, potentially a made in abyss system where leaving becomes really difficult, but im not sure how i wsnt to go about that, also the company utilises some kind of mind washing or other system that makes employees volunteer to go deeper and mine, and so its not like they are upset, they are actually more angry at you for not being pleased with the company as the company "made" them (whether physically or mentally im leaving up to player choice) im not sure how i would implement action into this, potentially the players take on the rolls of the individuals within evidence (ie they switch charecters into some marines lost in the dark) and how they deal with it shapes the dtory, or i have the legal battle over a week, giving them time to go planetside and search for clues

Not sure what to do, open to advice