Investigating & running from radioactive monsters (Group Play Report)

Mothership 1e & Aurora with Internet Fam

Since I typed it up anyway for the Mothership Discord (need that sweet “Ran 1e” Role, a summary of the Mothership game tonight:

Ran Aurora using 1e rules! Ignore the tense changes, it’s late and idgaf anymore

Dr. Perry (he/him) - Scientist Jean Jortsdottir (she/her) - Teamster Sierra Cameron (aka Cam) (she/her) - Marine

• 3 NPCs ready-to-go but staying in the cargo hold, too cryosick to help the PCs, left there just incase we needed another character later.

The stowaways were wrenched out of cryosleep, disoriented and hungover-feeling from cryosickness. (Had them roll body saves… with disadvantage. They all failed.) +1 stress from the emergency wakeup and unbearable heat. Dr. Perry checked out the console next to the cargo bay doors, saw the blue giant star that they are definitely going towards. In the cargo bay and thru the console, the players saw evidence of all the supplies meant for the colonies ransacked for food, tools, etc. and that the trip has obviously been going for decades longer than originally planned. They find some random tools lying around that they grab as weapons.

As they continued to fail and fail their disadvantaged rolls (from the cryosickness), I felt incredibly bad that I enforced cryosickness on them, but after the game, the players said they were completely fine and they thought failing so often lent itself very well to the space horror genre.

I foreshadowed the jump drive malfunctions here (duplicate Carpathia super imposed on different parts of the ship), along with the NISIPs (decided to have them leave metallic slime trails and bits of metal on the walls, doors “nibbled”). As they entered Life Support they discovered 5 NISIPs nibbling away and I started the 2hr clock! They peaced out and investigated the Engine Room and Jump Drive rooms first, and realizing the only way up was the lift they saw in Life Support with all the NISIPs. Resignedly they go back where they rush towards the lift, and all take damage as fail their speed checks to get there.

Aaaaaaand then they were surprised by 5 NISIPs when they exited the lift at the crew deck. Cam crit succeeded swinging with her found rebar. NISIP in question got stunned and flattened for a round. Two fucked off while the other 2 stayed to fight a bit longer.

They investigated officer’s and crew rooms before they heard the sounds of groaning, shuffling, stomping coming closer down the hall. Jeane pokes her head out to see the Varcolac. (Everybody but the marine Cam failed their Fear Saves.) Having just found flash grenades, Dr. Perry throws one towards it, but Failing his Strength check (I wasn’t gonna ask for one but he insisted haha), it didn’t get far enough away to stun JUST the monster, so it actually stunned all of them. However, Cam came to fastest and ran across the hall to shoot at it, succeeding (woo!) and giving the other two time to also run across. They tried to barricade the Med Bay door.

At this point I realized the timer was at 15 minutes remaining, so I made a ship announcement, which lit a fire under ALL our asses as they scurried forward through the Galley and onwards. As they reached the ladder, BULA faked an attack in the cargo hold, asking for help because the monster was after them! (I’d been foreshadowing the digital/corrupted/glitchy voice over the communication system screaming at various times.) Dr. Perry was like “nawwwwwwwwwww maybe later” and they kept going.

They entered the computer room to klaxon alarms and BULA the AI. Dr. Perry tries to program it to get it to stop its course. It tells them that it could not follow their request, and starts muttering about Not Being Able to Take It Anymore, and Please Just Let Us Die, etc. As they entered the Command room where they can pilot the ship, BULA desperately said that they couldn’t do that because it was boobytrapped–the crew had gone crazy, don’t you see? that’s why they boobytrapped it. Believing it’s lies, the players all take turns trying to find the booby trap as I kept describing how easy it was to just put your hand on the handprint-console-thingy. BULA started shrieking, attracting 10 NISIPs into the room. Jeane finally just stuck her hand onto the console with TWO SECONDS LEFT ON THE CLOCK and finally pilots the ship away.

BULA goes silent. The NISIPs disperse. The ship starts to cool.

<3

1e combat makes so much more sense to me. It flowed a lot better and easier than when I ran 0e combat (once). It took a bit for the players and me to get into an initiative-less combat but I think it went well!

Aurora module notes: I kept forgetting to +1 stress to everybody as they entered a room as the heat of the sun increases. I also kept forgetting to roll on the encounter table, and the times I did I often re-rolled because it didn’t make sense for the big bad monster to show up where they were. Next time I don’t think I’m going to bother and just plan for where they’ll meet the monsters. I had to decide how the NISIPs interacted–I made them pretty fearful and run away once they got hit. The Varcolac was very slow as it came down the Crew Deck corridor towards them, pinning them in place but allowing them to run into another room to make it into a lift. I imagined it was just doing a slow slog towards them. (I watched It Follows recently and was imagining that.) Probably don’t need NPCs/Contractors next time.