Another Bug Hunt: review and tips
This post contains spoilers for the Mothership TTRPG module, Another Bug Hunt. Avoid this page if you want to keep the module a surprise - this includes images, so no cursory glance!
Like many others, the first Mothership module I ran was Another Bug Hunt (ABH). As this is a recommended starting adventure for Mothership, and comes with the core box, I suspect many others will also play ABH as their intro to Mothership. For those considering running this module, here's my review and a few tips that might help you. I've added headers for all of these parts so you can easily skim ahead if you're after the tips.
Over this post, I hope to show why I think ABH is an excellent module, where I think some changes would help your running of it and ultimately why even though I love it, I won't be running it again as a starter module for a new group (based on two playthroughs).
Content and context
Let's start with the actual printed content of the module because it deserves recognition. The module looks and feels amazing. I love the art style and there's something deeply satisfying about the smaller form factor, tight typesetting and graphic design throughout. It's the kind of content which you pull out to intrigue fellow nerds and see their eyebrows raise in anticipation from the moment they grasp the pages. Fantastic.
ABH starts with the players orbiting a stormy, O2 rich, jungle-filled planet, tasked by the shady megacorporation of 'The Syndicate' to find and extract a research team and their data. Planetary communications are down leaving little to go on and the harsh weather on the planet makes landing difficult so the Syndicate pickup won't be back for a while. Once planet side, it will be up to the characters to find a 'Dr Edem' and their research before either re-establishing communications to call for extraction, or maybe meeting with Syndicate pickup after a certain amount of time. It's a good hook and everyone I've played with has been keen to jump in.
Soon after arriving, the players realise someting has gone horribly awry when they discover evidence of a birthday bloodbath at the Greta landing based. A creepy and grim tour through this base will likely end with the players' first encounter with a carc - crab-like giant beasts that erupt from the bodies of infected individuals.
The carcs are tough. They have 30 armour which makes nearly every weapon that the new players joyfully gained in character creation practically useless. It's very easy for the any carc encounter to result in casualties if the players are too gung-ho.
But if the players aren't torn limb from limb by our massive space crabs, one sound of the carc's scream is enough to infect a human, putting them on a fairly rapid path to becoming a mindless husk which eventually pops open to another carc bursting forth. Bad day.
If the players escape the first carc, they'll progress further into the planet to find the remaining survivors in a sorry state in the Heron base, besides a dead comms tower, a failing nuclear reactor, and a science lab for good measure. From there, the players meet some compelling NPCs with different plans for to address their pressing concerns, leading to some difficult choices of who to help, how and when. These requests will have players digging deeper into the failing reactor to stabilise the power, investigating Dr Edem's lab and repairing the communications tower to call for extraction.
With the storm intensity rising, carcs popping up all over the place and power dwindling, it's a pressure cooker for the players to navigate but there are rewards for taking these paths, and some Warden roleplay can build these even further.
Should the players successfully address some / all of these challenges, they will soon face another major choice: try to escape with as much of the Syndicate's demands as possible, or head further into the hills to find the rogue android. There they find a strange alien ship of bizarre and unknowable technologies. There's more to this ship which is both deadly and a great horror finale but I'll leave that for here, if only to say it's extremely deadly in that ship. Good luck.
The good
There's lots I liked about this module. For instance:
The layout is very easy for prep and use during play.
Yes, the smaller form factor of the Mothership content does mean some things inevitably get left out. Some prep is required, but generally I found the layout and details very easy to jump between during the session. The warden advice throughout is a nice touch.
The hook is straightforward and the characters are great.
My players immediately understood the mission and this understanding developed nicely as they met Edem and learnt more about Hinton. The initial rail-road start at the Greta base felt natural and by the time the players reached Heron base they were rewarded with plausable and interesting paths. The hook, and their ticket home, remained a clear path through all of this. It also worked well that the players sensed their ride home was dependent on them securing the mission. If they wanted to get out, they had to push on.
The first and second acts are particularly strong.
The Greta base is a fantastic level for new players and it has a wonderfully creepy atmosphere which culminates brilliantly with the carc in the garage. Heron base then builds on this, bringing nuance and providing a nice mix of carc settings. I'm a big fan of the NPC groups in Heron base, the setting is wonderfully dynamic and has the potential to change quite a bit depending how to players approach it. In one run, the players returned from the lab to find the holed-up marines had caught on about the 'paper cut' marks and were demanding to check the player characters (two of whom were infected), making for some great roleplay.
Across both these acts, the pressure is constantly mounting and the combination of the successive missions in Heron based, the power cutting out and the storms getting worse really builds towards the crescendo. The third act is still good but the ship is so confusing and deadly that I'm surprised if most players don't just call it a day and leave. Setting up the extraction was however extremely satisfying and really felt like an 80s film finale.
The carcs on the whole are a fun, if slightly silly enemy.
The carcs seem to come in different flavours over the course of the campaign, discussed in the next section, but on the whole, they were a great foe for the players. I'm not totally sure if they're meant to be slightly comedic as time goes by (maybe those tiny claws in the illustrations). Personally, I think the concept of carcinisation has been slightly bounded around the internet enough now to be cliché (both groups moaned at this hook) but then Mothership is perhaps best when it's embracing tropes.
The questionable
There are however a few challenges I ran into with ABH. Many of these are easily overcome with preparation, and I cover some of these in the next section. Still, these were thing that stood out to me.
The timeline, as written, makes no sense.
Sometimes it seems like the outbreak started months ago with Hinton's schemes, other times it's seems like it just happened. The infection rules make this even more confusing, given that it seems most infected marines would turn in a couple of days. A quick Google will show many others noticed the same. It's strange that these inconsistencies made it through testing. I'd recommend playing the story as if everything started (and comms off-world) went down about two weeks before the players arrived.
The radio tower bit was weird where the carcs subside after the players stop the scream.
I mean, I get it. The distress call ends... but... why would the carcs just stop and go back to whatever else carc do? The ship section suggests the carcs are intelligent. Why would they be breaking a door down one moment and just shrug and leave the next. The players both times were too relieved to question it. I felt less convinced. If I play it again, I'll have the comms tower coming on meaning the marines radio in and offer to make a distraction to draw the carcs away.
I don't like the infection rules.
It's just not that fun as written. The carcs scream, the players unknowingly get infected. There was nothing they could have known to do to avoid it and there's nothing they can really do to stop it. In fact, I think the first players were infected from listening to the comms in the Greta base, which feels even more unfair - 'gotcha'.
Following the infection guide as written, characters soon become useless. My first set of players had this happen and it wasn't satisfying for anyone. The scream mechanic did however make a nice story with the Comms towers and the rigged radio station.
As for curing the infection, we talked about there potentially being a cure back with the syndicate if they got the research data, but hope seemed slim given how quckly the infection was developing. I'll talk about potential alternatives ways to run this in the next section.
Carc play style and toughness feels inconsistent.
I liked the idea of a beast the players struggle to kill. It worked perfectly in the first act where the beast felt more like an Alien / Thing creature - especially if wounding it has it disappear into the vents to plague the characters throughout the Greta base. It was creepy and the players felt overwhelmed in a good way - they had to think outside the box.
Where it gets odd was with the hydrofluoric acid. Both groups guessed immediately from the holed up marine that the acid might have a role.... and there's actually quite a lot of acid about once they reach the science lab. Then they get hydrofluoric acid rounds through helping the scientist so they basically had more rounds each time they returned to the Heron base. As written, this acid destroys carc armour. So our tough foes became pretty easy in the face of four armed crew with grenades and plasma rifles. The strategy in both groups was, 1) spray with acid shots to break armour 2) change to a different weapons to save acid shots and 3) unload everything. Playing it again, I'll either make the acid ignore carc armour (but leave the armour for other weapons) or I'll remove it entirely, leaving the players to rely on grenades, the GPMG and anti-mater rifle (all restricted for when and where they can work).
I know some feel the carcs are too tough. I'd say they're more interesting and memorable at this toughness. The obvious GM way to counteract the players getting better at handling the carcs is just to throw more at them, but this is a sippery slope to making a more combat heavy game - which leads me to my next point.
Mothership Starship Troopers:
My biggest problem with running ABH as a first Mothership module however was the lasting effect it had on how the players understood the game.
ABH clearly has a Starship Troopers vibe which everyone enjoyed, but in a game which largely encourages players to avoid combat, the module had a funny way of rewarding combat. Marines did well, Teamsters felt useless, Scientists had a few moments and androids were somewhere in the middle.
The result of this Startship Troopers view of the game was evident in three out of the four players making marine characers in the next campaign.
For an intro module, it would have been nice to have a few more settings, puzzles and predicaments that encouraged a diverse set of in-game skills and classes. Classes are of course less of a feature in Mothership compared to other TTRPGs, but I want chances where those roles can shine - the scientist understands something the others can't, the teamster is the only one possible who could pilot this ship out in one piece. These are moments that let those charcters shine in the fiction and stay in players' memories. Sure, players should come up with these ways of using these skills but a starter module could have helped nudge new players with opportunities where different classes suceed.
This last point is why I'll definitly run ABH again, but I'll find someting with a bit more diversity for the next introductory session to the game.
Tips
Ok, now for some quick tips based on my experience.
- Have the players parachute / similar onto the planet. I can't remember where I read this but doing so means you can immediately start by foregrounding the growing storm and the difficulty for crews to land (something that set the stage nicely for the Syndicate team later struggling to pick the players up as the storm bears down on them and the carcs are flooding in). I had players describe which skills they were using to help land. Those who had to roll and failed ended up in a tree, requiring some roleplay to get them out. This provided a nice opening 'practice' to flex the players' TTRPG muscles and leaves everyone clear: the storm makes landing and extract hard.
- Print out the list of squad members - but not the one in the module outline. There are lots of crew names and the players are looking for some who might be dead. A visual aide helps a great deal here. The organogram in the cover however already tells the players which marines are dead. Useless. Make a version the players can have (say Maas gave it to them).
- There are great maps online you can use. Here's Greta Base. Here's the reactor. Sadly I couldn't find a map for the ship at the end, which is arguably where I most needed a map.
- Slow down, remove or change the infection mechanic. Firstly, I'd make the comms in Greta indicate shutdown from intense levels so players know something is happening on comms but don't just listen and immediately get infected. Second, I'd telegraph the risk of the screams (graffiti / notes / etc.) so the players can take action (e.g. jamming their ears, but that coming with risks). If they do get infected, have them initially get stronger / tougher and telegraph this as tinged with a bad feeling things will get worse. Doing so will be something that encourages players to throw their strength at potentially getting out, not immediately losing player agency.
- Personal preference but consider removing or changing the acid mechanic of destroying armour. It turns the carcs into much less scary / memorable bullet sponges. Having acid rounds as armour piercing rather than armour destroying could work as the acid rounds are limited. Alternatively, maybe the acid slows them, confuses them, blinds them or is just more limited in quantity. Having to avoid combat or cause major explosions felt more exciting than magic flasks / bullets that suddenly made everything easy.
- Have the carc scream make late infection marines burst into carcs. Easy to do and gloriously horrifying when a carc screams and suddenly one the friendly marines bursts into a juvenile carc.
- Have Maas be on the extract ship and burst into a carc when he hears the carc screams below. Having two players make it to the ship to then have Mass burst into a carc before them and come flying towards them was a great 'The Thing' like feel to the end. The remaining characters, wounded and stumbling, ended up drawing carc-Mass to the back of the escape ship to lure it off the edge. The roll went against them and they ended up tumbling off the back of the ship with the carc, down towards the swarming carcs below.
Summary and score
I had a great time with ABH and will definitely run it again. With a few tweaks, I think it could be an amazing module. We had two fantastic ends, one I just mentioned, the other, predictably, with the players being torn to shreds in one of the opening rooms of the alien space craft. I'd score it.
Visual design: 4.5 / 5 Looks and feels amazing.
Setting: 4 / 5 Good story and nice hooks.
Ease of use: 3.5 / 5 Clear and easy to use but some prep required, including some of the suggestions above
Overall: 4 / 5 Very good, a definitely must play for Mothership, although there might be better modules to introduce the mindset of Mothership.
ABH is a great way to learn the ropes of being a warden and have an excellent time in the process. Recommended!