January 18, 2024 Environmental Horror Design - When it comes to encounter design in horror games I think about this image a lot. Horror games require really intentional environmental encounters...
October 7, 2022 Thinking about Safety Tools in RPGs - I wrote up a thread recently about safety tools in ttRPGs/mothership, but I wanted to archive it here for future reference and expand on it a little...
June 22, 2022 Getting Rid of Dogfights - I wrote about this a little on twitter the other day, but we’re changing the way we do ship combat in Mothership. In Mothership, ship encounters are...
July 8, 2020 Gradient Descent Dive 07: Anatomy of Bad Session - We had session 07 of our Gradient Descent Playtest a couple weeks ago and it didn’t go so great. Let’s get into it. Joining us tonight: Ian...
May 27, 2020 Gradient Descent Dive 06: Session Report [Mothership] - We had a two player game tonight for our sixth session of Gradient Descent. A lot of our players had to bow out from travel, work, and illness. But...
May 13, 2020 Gradient Descent Dive 05: Session Report [Mothership] - Five sessions into our Gradient Descent playtest as of yesterday, and the team is recovering from a near TPK last session with some fresh blood....
May 6, 2020 Gradient Descent Dive 04: Session Report [Mothership] - Had our fourth session of our Gradient Descent playtest last week, and this one nearly ended everything. Joining us we had: Slantio playing: Gunner...
April 14, 2020 Gradient Descent Dive 03: Session Report [Mothership] - Back in the Deep with my players for session 2 of our Gradient Descent playthrough. Joining us this time: Slantio playing: Gunner Markus Lilith,...
April 1, 2020 Gradient Descent Dive 02: Session Report [Mothership] - Back in the Deep with my players for session 2 of our Gradient Descent playthrough. Joining us this time: Slantio playing: Gunner Markus Lilith,...
March 17, 2020 Gradient Descent Dive 01: Session Report [Mothership] - I got a chance to playtest Gradient Descent tonight on the Mothership Discord with three of our playtesters: Slantio playing: Markus Lilith, Level...
January 27, 2019 Building Custom Backgrounds for Mothership - Saker Tarsos is crowd-sourcing some background skill packages for their amazing Mothership Character Generator. I absolutely love this. One of the...
December 17, 2018 Rey Burtnolds Debriefing Communicades: Session Archive [Mothership] - One of my favorite players, alias Odysseus Jones, real name [redacted] writes up these amazing AARs for his Mothership games (run by Jarrett...
December 7, 2018 Better Crits for Mothership - I spent a little time working on my previous crit table and formatted it for easier use, see below. There are a few terms, bolded on the left hand...
December 6, 2018 Carousing & Stress in Mothership - One of the big things we’re tooling around with in Mothership is adding Carousing as the primary way of gaining experience. Right now, you currently...
November 9, 2018 Critical Hit Tables for Mothership - A lot has been going on in the mothership world recently. First off, we got two major mentions: one was a small mention by Matt Colville on his...
August 14, 2018 Prisoners of Hecate Balaam: Session Report [Mothership] - I’m finally back from Gen Con. Dead Planet is being reprinted and packaged for sale on the website and it’s pdf is up-and-selling, so I finally got...
August 7, 2018 Notes from Gen Con 2018 - Just got back home from Gen Con, which is always a little like getting back from summer camp. Historically, my con scheduled used to slow down after...
July 29, 2018 How We Designed Dead Planet - At Gen Con we’re going to release the first module for Mothership, Dead Planet. Donn Stroud, Fiona Geist, and I wrote it and it’s got some beautiful...
July 10, 2018 Screaming on the Alexis: Session Report [Mothership] - It’s been a little bit since we got to play, but last night everyone mysteriously showed up ready to game - it just so happens that we’re trying to...
June 5, 2018 Fire in Hyperspace: Session Report [Mothership] - Today was one of those no prep needed days, which are always great. Everyone showed up ready to play and the sort of self-made hijinks just kicked...
May 15, 2018 Escape from Banquo IV: Session Report [Mothership] - Last night my home group had their second session of Mothership (my third playtest overall), they’re really starting to get into it, which has been...
May 1, 2018 Crash Landing on Banquo IV: Session Report [Mothership] - Last night I had my second playtest of Mothership, which is far too few for how long I’ve been working on it. This time I played with my regular D&D...
April 23, 2018 Can We Make This an Image? Designing Better Tables - I’ve been working more on Mothership in an attempt to get a limited run of the Player’s Handbook done in time for Gen Con this year. I talked to...
April 8, 2018 Mothership: Ship Creation Sheet - Continuing on my journey to re-work the graphic design in my RPGs, I’ve tried to fit all the rules for designing a ship in Mothership onto one...
March 27, 2018 Lessons I Learned Designing the Mothership Character Sheet - I’ve been revisiting a lot of my graphic design chops recently, as a result of cool things like Sam Mameli’s 5e character sheet that attempts to put...
August 22, 2017 The First Time We Played Mothership - At Gen Con this year, I finally got to run a one-shot session1 of my sci-fi horror RPG, Mothership. We had a good spread of players: two were really...
June 6, 2017 Survive, Solve, or Save: Pick Two - Last night, I was reviewing Mothership with some close friends while complaining about Alien:Covenant and my friend Nick said something that’s stuck...
May 19, 2017 Removing Agency in Horror Games - Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Saving Throws in RPGs. Essentially, they are the opposite mechanic from a lot of things we’re used to as...
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