ManaMattRamp’s Barrow Delver modified by June Owatari to play a solo game or campaign of Mothership.
This doc assumes you have Barrow Delver and Mothership (or perhaps any other RPG that tracks a character’s stress). This mod does not include the full text of Barrow Delver, just the portions that I’ve modified: the explanation of the Pressure Point, an addition of character stress-related chaos, and the yes/no oracle table.
The main mod specifically for Mothership is that the Pressure Point rises as the story becomes more chaotic; the original Barrow Delver lowers the pressure point. I adjusted the Outcome Table accordingly by swapping “more than” and “less than”.
Pressure Point is a number, X, and represents the amount of chaos or stressfulness at any given moment. An adventure begins at a base level of 10. This number will get higher as the chaotic and dire nature of the plot thickens. As the story progresses, if things are getting intense, raise the Pressure Point to 11. If it keeps getting more intense, at the beginning of each session, the Pressure Point should rise again. Pressure Points shouldn’t be adjusted more than twice a session. If things are less for the Adventurer, consider lowering the number to 9 or even 8. X will always equal 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12. (Note from June: I actually haven’t tested the latter sentence with Mothership yet.)
Adds some stress-related chaos.
Begin the adventure with a base pressure level of 8. This shouldn’t be adjusted more than twice a session. For current Pressure Point (X), add character’s Stress to the base pressure level.
Base level + Character Stress = Pressure Point (X)
Example: We start Radiant session 1 with a base pressure of 8. Since we’re starting with a new character, we’re starting with the minimum stress of 2. Pressure Point = 10
(Note from June: I don’t think this mod is necessary at all, but could add more Mothershippy deadliness to the oracle. However, as starting a Mothership campaign at Pressure Point 12 would be… very Mothership, I changed the base pressure level to 8 instead of 10 so that each campaign started at PP 10, like in original Barrow Delver. At some point, your stress can get so high that the oracle will always come up at a no. Like, damn. Harsh. IDK, you do you.)
| Relation to X | Answer |
|---|---|
| 6+ more than X | Yes, and… |
| 3-5 more than X | Yes |
| 1-2 more than X | Yes, but… |
| Exactly X | Complication |
| 1-2 less than X | No, but… |
| 3-5 less than X | No |
| 6+ less than X | No, and… |
Barrow Delver is by Matthew Morris and is released under CC-BY-SA 4.0. License.
Mothership returned me back to tabletop RPGs after maybe a decade or so? And got me to participate in my first Kickstarter in about just as long. Of course, the flood of buying and reading and playing games hasn’t stopped since.
This is also released under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 License. Peace.