A Pound of Flesh Episode 1: A rude awakening
Warning, this post has spoilers for both the Mothership RPG games Another Bug Hunt and A Pound of Flesh. Avoid if you don't want to learn of either!
This post is a report of the first session of my new Mothership campaign running A Pound of Flesh. I'll take the following structure:
- A brief set up: giving the players and starting context.
- The play report: Told as a narrative of the action.
- Warden reflections: What happened behind the scenes, what worked or not.
All players have just previously run Another Bug Hunt, dying horribly at the end trying to evacuate, so we're starting with fresh characters.
We end up with, Pvt. Stanley Nails, Pvt. Chen-Lu, Dr Steve McDycheal and Pvt. Oli Bread - yes, that's three marines. Their ABH experience means they're expecting combat. We go with the random load outs and Oli ends up with heavy armour - nice.
The characters start in an emergency craft escaping from a larger Syndicate carrier just off orbit from Samara VI (ABH). The craft has three main spaces: a deck area with equipment, supplies and hypersleep pods: a flight deck and; a cargo storage area with swing door. Since the craft is for emergency situations, it contains a modest amount of tools, environmental suits and a few weapons.
As we join the characters, they are being awoken up from hypersleep, and told that this feels like a more sudden wake up than normal.
Unbeknownst to the players at this point, what's happening here is that the hypersleep pods have been set to keep the occupants in sleep until a direct communications message is received. It is the last hope attempt for crew adrift in space to eek out reserves for as long as possible.
Let's start with the session.
Session start: A rude awakening
Red flashing light bathes walls of metal and instrument panels, dancing off the cold surfaces and never quite illuminating the the corners and corridors. The room is still, but the otherwise quiet hum of the engines are interrupted by another sound by a new sound - the low steady drone of an alarm. It goes on unanswered for four days.
On the the fifth day, the instrument panels light up as one, drowning out the red haze with a galaxy of tiny colours moving constantly across screens and interfaces that surround the small room. In the middle are six crystalline pods. A new chime plays and then a hiss from the pipes near the pods.
With the hissing sound, the the surface of the pod appears to move and then swirl, thinning, emptying, receding to leave dark embryonic shapes hanging from within. The shapes gain forms.
Upon waking, the crew's attention is drawn to a incessant beeping from the flight deck. As they begin emerging from the pods, they realise that two of the pods are not stirring.
Groggy from hypersleep, Steve pushes out of his pod and rushes to the flight deck to investigate the noise. As a scientist, he's unfamiliar with the controls but immediately spots a flashing button marked 'COMMS', which he strikes. A voice crackles through.
Teamster Flight Captain Kyrus's voice calls through asking for casualty status and more detail on the potential xenoinfection hazard. His voice is hard and demanding. Steve has no idea what to make of this but is cautious. He plans to get as much information from Kyrus as possible without giving too much away.
Meanwhile, the other crew members are emerging, with Oli quickly donning his heavy battle dress. Chen-Lu however is drawn to to the still pods where the remaining two crew members should be stirring. Inspecting Pvt. Cortez's pod, he notices some movement but pulls back in shock as a red form pushes against the inside of the pod glass. It begins to thud on the inside.
Memories of the carc chaos on the previous Syndicate ship come flooding back. The team begin shouting to each other as they rush to find some form of weapons. Oli spots an engineering supply cupboard, complete with magnetic boot for external hull repairs. A plan forms and he runs to the boots.
Back with Steve, as he continues to evade the Teamsters questions of xenoinfection, he notices a written journal. Scanning quickly through it, he realises it's Flight Captain Reid's and that it chronicles the first month after their escape.
Reid's note state that her wounds look like they're infected, despite her exhausting the last of the ship's medical supplies. That Cortez's vitals suggest some kind of xenoinfection but the hypersleep seems to be slowing it's growth. That her fevers are getting worse.
Filled with dread, Reid pointed the ship towards a last chance of help, a sector inhabited with outlaw colonies. She records a repeating communications message warning of the potential xenoinfection aboard. She sets the ship to wake the sleepers when an external call is received and with that, she leaves the flight controls to climb weakly into a hypersleep pod, unsure if she will ever wake. The last entry was 6 months ago.
Back on the main deck, the hypersleep glass smashes, sending a spray of viscera a juvenile carc launches onto the ceiling. Oli shouts to the others to buy him time as he wrestles on the magnetic boots. Stanley responds by grabbing a flashlight and waves it frantically in the beast's direction to distract it. He's successful in getting its attention - too successful. The carc launches at him and tears into his shoulder.
Back on the flight deck, Kyrus and the Teamsters hear screams in the background of the comms connection and despite Steve's attempts to allay their concerns, confirm that they through that they will be forcing entry in 10 minutes. Uncertain and fearing what this could mean, Steve shouts this news back to the others.
They're not listening, focused instead on breaking Stanley from the carc's clutches. With Oli still pulling on the last of the the boots, Chen-Lu rushes forward with a crowbar, slamming the carc in the the back and deftly dodging out the way as it lunges for him.
Oli slams the last latch home on the magnetic boots and shouts to Steve to open the cargo bay door. Steve wordlessly begins tapping at the flight controls as Chen-Lu dives through the door into the flight deck, locking it behind him.
Sealing his helmet as he leaps, Oli grabs Stanley's injured form and shoves him into the hypersleep pod, slamming the lid shut. With that Oli turns, otherwise unarmed in his heavy battle dress to face the carc, activating the magnetised boots in the process. The carc begins to move towards Oli, as he screams into his suit comms for Steve to open door. Steve pounds the keyboard to bypass all warnings and fail sales.
The beast crouches to leap, as an alarm breaks out and mechanical whirring draws it's attention. It begins to scream but it is cut short in a sharp hiss and then strange buffeting silence as the empty vacuum of space rips at the innards of the ship pulling anything not bolted down flying into the darkness.
The carc grips frantically but in silent awkward moments it bulges and flies back out of the ship. Oli's screams echo in his helmet as the enormous force drags upon his form, but the boots remain locked in as he braces himself against the strange pull of the universe.
Stanley watches the whole thing through his glass cocoon as he clutches his bleeding shoulder. His hyperventilating is confirmation that the pod is holding pressure but his heart beats heavily in his ears.
Oli looks out in the silence, watching the carc spin uselessly into nothing. He feels like he is suddenly looking into a great depth that he will never know the bottom of. Endless silence, darkness and cold.
The window of darkness narrows and then, with a reverberation, the door closes to a numb thud and a sudden hissing of the repressurisation. Oli slumps as the hiss of the flight deck door opens behind him. Steve and Chen-Lu rush out to check on the others. Steve is bleeding but alive. Oli breathes heavily.
Chen-Lu checks the remaining pod to find Flight Captain Reid grey and still, the veins across her neck and face dark against her pale skin.
After a few minutes, the crew hear the thudding attachment of the Teamster vessel. The door hiss open and four masked crew burst in, plasma rifles raised and humming. They scan the room from the entrance. Between them walks a man with short cropped hair, blue eyes and a grim smirk. He seems cautious but in good spirits.
"Well you're not the crew I was expecting", Kyrus says as the crew attempt to cover up all stories of a xenoinfection. They do a poor job of it but it's clear that they're genuinely a flight team in distress, and not the Syndicate spies Kyrus feared. The experienced flight captain is cautious, but also sees an opportunity to profit from this chance encounter.
Kyrus offers to give the crew a lift to The Dream, a nearby space city, in exchange for their ship and help with a favour once landed - after all, they'll owe him for the rescue. He knows that the players have little choice without his help, and that these ship parts should fetch a tidy sum back on The Dream. Faced with little other option, the crew accept to the offer, even if it means a week of containment during travel.
Kyrus releases the crew from containment day or two before reaching The Dream, confident from the vitals scanners that the team seem safe. He explains to them the arrangements on The Dream for storage, oxygen and basic rules. He also provides a map to The Dream.
Then the Flight Commander looks at the crew with a piercing stare and requests that they find a man for him, Kleyman. He knows little else about the man beyond his name and a basic description, requesting that the crew find him immediately if they sight Kleyman.
"Remember, you owe me", Kyrus says with a grin that never reaches his eyes.
With that, the team prepare to land and place their first steps on The Dream.
Warden reflections
The above text was about half of the first session, but this feels like a good place to stop for now to prevent this post getting much longer.
I was reasonably happy with how this first session turned out. The players immediately understood the setting as the hook to bring them in and the appearance of the juvenile carc was just the right level of concern and eye-rolling from the players - that part in the film when a vanquished enemy surfaces again. "Argh, I thought we were rid of these guys!".
With that said, it wasn't a carc in the true sense. I didn't give it the high armour and made the attack damage lower to give just enough risk but not enough to likely wipe out the players in the first 20 minutes of play. It worked to build an adrenaline-fuelled start to a new campaign, whilst maintaining that sense that the players are never totally out of the woods.
The best part this session was Steve finding Reid's journal notes while the chaos was starting to unfold in the background. Steve was rushing at the time and so I gave a bullet-pointed version to give the gist while feeling frenetic amongst the incoming comms questions and carc ruckus. It worked nicely in setting the context as part of the escalating terror.
There was also a lot of handwaving details that I didn't want to bog down this 'intro scene' ('how does the scientist know how to use the ship controls?' or any form of gravity...). The most egregious of this handwaving however was the situation with Kyrus of the players swearing to the last breath there was no xenoinfection onboard whilst covered in blood and sweating.
I don't blame them. They felt they had no choice as they worries the Teamsters might have attacked them, or abandoned them, but it made for a slightly silly narrative that the Teamsters were willing to invite the crew aboard when they were clearly lying about the whole situation. It roughly made sense, as Kyrus is generally a good guy, the players turned out to not be the Syndicate spies he feared and he will profit from selling their ship, but the role play here felt unlikely. None of this was the players fault. I should have GM'd it better, but I was willing to allow it to help us move on with the actual game.
But I did notice a deeper problem that I'm trying to work out how address - one that is a side effect of both Another Bug Hunt, and starting the game with a carc.
Towards the end of ABH, things did start to feel too much like Starship Troopers, and hence also why three of the players decided to play marines for this campaign. My concern here is the players have misinterpreted the game as more combat heavy than it is, which isn't only a likely path to a quick end in many of the modules I have planned, it's also just not as fun.
Further, and perhaps more importantly with the way Mothership works, having a team of mainly marines also risks railroading us into a narrower game. In Mothership, the 'roll under' mechanic means that rolling is particularly risky and so the best option is for the players to plan approaches that avoid needing to roll. 'Not rolling' is based on actions that your character could plausibly do as part of their background and training - provided the action is not made under other pressures (time pressure, threat, strange environment, etc.). For instance, a teamster can fly a ship without a roll, and might need a roll to fly in difficult situations but a marine behind the controls is likely rolling for most manoeuvres.
Put another way, our party of mainly marines are likely to be rolling more often given the range of challenges they will face that require expertise beyond combat training - and the odds of these rolls means that things will likely start going badly quite soon. This wouldn't concern me quite so much if the players think smartly, but they're still in Starship Trooper mode at the moment. I expect some fatalities fairly soon. I could just tell them this (and will if things keep going badly) but first I want to try and help them come to this decision themselves. We'll see.
Oh and last thing to note is that I really liked the development of the hook with Kleyman from this fantastic blog. Kleyman will also feature in my campaign trying to find scabs for the Teamster protests, but we'll lead the players to Kleyman from the Teamsters's side, trying to track him down and put a stop to his strikebreaking. We'll see how that goes.
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