Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG 1st Edition Boxed Set
Created by Alan Gerding
Everything you need to play Mothership® in one terrifying box.
Important Notes:
* Pre-orders will ship after the Kickstarter ships (eta Q2/Q3 2023)
* Pre-orders ship all together (we can't split up shipments and ship individual items)
* Shipping will be charged when the Pre-Order store closes (eta Q2/Q3 2023)
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Production Update for April
almost 2 years ago
– Sun, May 01, 2022 at 04:39:32 AM
Hey gang,
Getting a lot done this month at Mothership HQ. Here’s what we’ve been up to!
Production
Player’s Survival Guide has had a tune-up from the WIP feedback and some cool new art (see below).
Warden’s Operations Manual now has a draft of writing and layout done. It is being looked at by our editor and dev team over the next couple of weeks.
Unconfirmed Contact Reports has all its writing complete. We’re assigning art pieces out now and moving it into layout. We’re getting a plan in place to get the audio recordings of the snippets done now as well.
Shipbreaker’s Toolkit has had a good pass on all its ship art and is moving into writing and layout now.
Another Bug Hunt has just finished a writing draft and is now moving into layout. We’ve been playtesting it pretty heavily and early reports are great.
A Pound of Flesh 1e WIP PDF will be released in the next week.
Gradient Descent is getting edited next. We will confirm when the 1e WIP PDF will be released.
We’ll be ordering the t-shirts within the next couple of weeks. We'll be ordering plenty of extras, so don't worry if you haven't put your t-shirt add-on order into backerkit yet.
The Backerkit is still open and will remain so for a while. We’ll post another update before we run credit cards.
Speaking of BackerKit, we got a lot of confusion with the release of the Dead Planet WIP PDF I wanted to clear up.
First, a lot of you may have gotten double e-mails about the release. Setting up digital distribution for this big a project in BackerKit can be kinda wonky and I’ll admit I’m not an expert at it.
Backerkit digital distribution
You can see here that there’s a few different “distribution rules” about who gets the Dead Planet PDF. If you ordered a print or PDF copy of Dead Planet you got one and if you ordered a copy of the Deluxe Set (which is also included in the Megabundle) you got one. There’s some overlap there occasionally with how the items are set up in BackerKit, so you might get two e-mails. This is normal, the files aren’t different. Hopefully we’ll clear that up in the future, but if it happens again with A Pound of Flesh, just roll with it.
Second, some of you are confused as to why you didn’t get the Dead Planet PDF. Those are only going out to backers who backed at the Deluxe/Megabundle pledge tiers or added on Dead Planet in Backerkit. If you didn’t do either of those, you didn’t get the Dead Planet PDF.
Support
If you’re still confused, please email us. We continue to do our best to be responsive and active in the comments. Unfortunately, we can’t always get to them. We appreciate your patience and want to remind you; if you have a question you need an answer to, please email [email protected].
Last but not least, thanks again for being our backers and general fans of Mothership. We really appreciate your continued enthusiasm, patience, and support. If you’re itching for more Mothership content in a bite-sized bit, you can always check our YouTube channel. This last week Alan did a sweet video on designing violent encounters, I highly recommend you check it out!
WIP Screenshots
Here's a few screenshots from the work we've been doing for the Warden's Operations Manual and the Player's Survival Guide.
Player's Survival Guide - Medical Care & Skill Training
Warden's Operations Manual - Building Your Campaign
Warden's Operations Manual - Campaign Frames
Warden's Operations Manual - Setting the Stakes & Player Agency
Production Update - Work in Progress Ship Art
about 2 years ago
– Tue, Mar 15, 2022 at 05:30:19 AM
Hey gang,
It’s been an exciting month here at Mothership HQ. Here’s what’s going on in the motherverse!
Tl;dr
Writing and development are progressing on schedule.
We’ve got some cool new art for the Shipbreaker’s toolkit.
The 1e conversion of Dead Planet will release around April 1st with A Pound of Flesh releasing roughly a month later.
The Core Books
Player’s Survival Guide: We’ve gotten great feedback on the WIP PSG and have a clear idea what changes we’ll be making. We’ll circle back to this book closer to print time once all the other books are almost
Warden’s Operations Manual: Writing and layout continues on this one (I tend to write directly into InDesign, so I’m usually laying out a book as I write it).
Unconfirmed Contact Reports: We have the descriptions of all the monsters written and the writers are now working on creating the “snippets.” Snippets are the in-world first person accounts from non-player characters.This includes first hand documentation, notes, rumors, etc. that you can plug directly into your game.
Shipbreaker’s Toolkit: Our ship designer and illustrator has started pumping out the designs for this and we couldn’t be more stoked. The Mothership ships in this book walk a fine line between hard/soft sci-fi, really making them stand out. They also tend to look more fragile than we’re used to seeing ships look in most sci fi media, which will combine nicely with the very dangerous ship to ship combat rules we’ve been playtesting.
Another Bug Hunt
Another Bug Hunt will contain somewhere between 4-5 one shot adventures that string together to create a nice short campaign. Three of these adventures (by Luke Gearing, Alan Gerding, and DG Chapman) have had their first drafts completed and are in playtesting now. Layout development has started as well and we’re excited to show you some example spreads in the next update.
1e Conversions
Dead Planet (DP): This one is being worked on now and should be ready for PDF release around April 1st.
A Pound of Flesh (APOF): This will come after DP and should release around May 1.
Gradient Descent (GD): This one is on hold until DP finishes up and then we’ll put it on the calendar.
Everything else
Samples of the t-shirt have come in and they look/feel great. Patches are designed. Everything else is either waiting on another product to be designed, or is in development. Currently, we’re feeling great about our progress!
The Backerkit is still open and will remain so for awhile. We’ll post another update before we run credit cards.
We continue to do our best to be responsive and active in the comments. Unfortunately, we can’t always get to them. We appreciate your patience and want to remind you; if you have a question you need an answer to, please email [email protected].
Otherwise, good luck out there in the void!
Backerkit Incoming + Tons of New 3pp Mothership Releases!
about 2 years ago
– Fri, Feb 04, 2022 at 02:14:42 AM
Hey gang!
Hope everyone had a good holiday. We’ve gotten some great feedback on the WIP PSG, which is here if you missed it. Some great play reports on our discord, we love hearing that the updates have resonated so well with so many of you. A big thing we’re hearing over and over is that the game (and violence in particular) is much, much more streamlined and easy to play than 0e. This is great news. We’ve also found some spots that are a little sticky for some players (Shore Leave, the terminology around Wounds) so we’ve been able to look into that as well. We love to see it.
We’ll be releasing the Backerkit to everyone shortly (in 1-2 days, just waiting on final approval), so check your e-mail inbox for an e-mail from Backerkit later this week. What is Backerkit exactly? Basically it’s a service that allows you to upgrade your pledge or add “add-ons'' for some extra money. A few things you need to know:
The Backerkit will be open for a while, we don’t even know when we’ll close it yet. We’ll be closing it around when we’re ready to go to print. So there’s no rush to fill it out and we’ll send out a massive update (probably a couple) to remind you guys when it’s going to end.
We’re part of a beta program Backerkit has put together where we only charge shipping at the very end. So for now, you’ll be charged for any add-ons and then later when we’re closer to shipping, you’ll be charged for shipping.
Let’s break that last one down a bit because it’s important:
You’ll be charged twice. First for add-ons, then later, for shipping.
If you don’t want to be charged twice, then wait to fill out the backerkit until we tell you “Hey, it’s time for final orders and we’re ready to charge shipping.” Then you can do everything at once.
We have estimates on shipping on the main KS page, but these will likely change as we get closer to the actual deadline.
We will notify you before we charge shipping, likely through a Kickstarter update and maybe through a Backerkit e-mail as well.
If you have an issue, the best thing to do is e-mail Backerkit first, and then [email protected] second. Messages and comments are a little less sticky, as are DMs on social media. We have a dedicated customer support representative that answers customer service questions daily.
Some other questions that we got from the smoke screen test:
The way backerkit lists certain items is kind of weird. For example, The Deluxe Set description lists everything it includes, but the SKU section only lists SKUs for the Deluxe Set, Landing Crew Patch, and the Conversion Kit (Print+PDF). This is because it’s only listing physical items that will be shipped as individual items. For example, Dead Planet isn’t listed because it’s inside the Deluxe Set box. This is the best way to list items for our fulfillment company. TL;DR if an add on says it comes with something in the description, that’s what it comes with. Don’t worry, we are not short-changing you.
If you’re only getting digital items you should not be charged shipping or asked for an address. If you see this come up let us know as we probably forgot to mark an item as “non-shippable” somewhere (there are a lot of items!).
If you want to switch your pledge level there’s a small button on the survey screen.
Third Party Extravaganza!
If we haven’t made it clear before, Mothership is supported by the best third-party publishers in the world. Seriously. We’ve got such an amazing fan base of independent creators making such amazing books. Right now there are some amazing Mothership third-party books on Kickstarter you should check out if you have the chance.
This one is insane, they’ve raised over $400k and they have a little less than 24 hours to go. It’s hardcover, it’s over 200 pages, it’s got insane stretch goals and a huge host of some of our best third party creators contributing to this fantastic anthology. Check it out before it’s too late!
It’s also Zine Month around here and the Mothership community always hits it hard. I’d highly recommend looking at these seven incredible modules:
The House Always Wins. (This one is funding on itch.io). Over 35 pages of a satirical & deadly competition. Die several times thanks to cloning technology! Compatible with Mothership 1e! https://timmy1990may.itch.io/thaw
That’s all for now! We’re working on the 1e updated version of Dead Planet now and progress is going great on all the writing, art, and layout for the other books. We’ll check back in soon with another update going over progress for each piece of the puzzle.
If you have a Mothership 3pp hitting kickstarter (or any other funding platform) this month, reach out to us and let us know so we can tell people about you!
[Download Link] WIP PSG & Conversion Kit
over 2 years ago
– Sun, Jan 02, 2022 at 02:37:16 AM
Hey gang,
Quick update today. First and foremost, here’s the link to the Work-In-Progress Player’s Survival Guide, Character Sheet, and Conversion Kit:
We will be distributing these files again through Backerkit, but not until early January. Why? Well Backerkit’s customer support team is on holiday until then. But we didn’t want you to wait, so y’all have the link now.
Additionally, surveys (for most people) won’t be going out for another couple of weeks. We’re going to wait until Backerkit customer support is back online in case there are a lot of questions or any issues.
We’ll send out a bigger update in January (when Backerkit is available). This bigger update will address questions/concerns we’ve seen with the few surveys that have already gone out. In the meantime, please enjoy the above link! We never distributed a link like this to fifteen thousand people before and we are pretty excited for you to get your hands on it. If there are any issues, we will continue to do our best to address them as soon as we can.
We really appreciate your enthusiasm and patience. Until next time, we hope you enjoy!
[Important] Backerkit Screen Test / Surveys
over 2 years ago
– Thu, Dec 23, 2021 at 08:04:34 PM
Hey crew,
Kickstarter recently distributed our funds. This means, if there are no issues, surveys will start going out through Backerkit over the next few days. First, there will be a screen test, which has already been sent, to about 900 of you. This is to catch any errors in wording and functionality before we send it to the other 14k backers. This has gone out, we've heard of some issues and we're working on getting those fixed.
Once the surveys have gone out we will be distributing a Work-In-Progress PDF of the Player’s Survival Guide and the Conversion Kit through Backerkit.
We want to talk about the WIP PSG, but first a little housekeeping:
If you have a customer service issue, please do not message us on Kickstarter. Instead, please e-mail us at [email protected]. With the amount of backers we have it is significantly easier to deal with communications via email rather than through Kickstarter’s (sadly lacking) messaging feature.
When you get your survey you’ll also be able to upgrade your pledge and add any add-ons you want. You will be charged for the add-ons now, but shipping will not be charged until we are closer to our ship date. This is because of the volatility of shipping prices. We would change this if we could, but it is simply the nature of the shipping beast.
You have some time to add on add-ons as we will not be closing the survey until closer to our print deadline. The holidays are financially stressful for a lot of people, you do not have to purchase anything yet. Please feel free to wait.
We need a few days to a couple of weeks in order to get everything sent out. Our team is stretched very thin with the holidays, so please bear with us if it takes a second to get the WIP PDFs out.
Backerkit Support, who handles a lot of our customer service, will be offline until January 3rd. If you have issues with accessing the PDF, they’ll get back to you then. I know this may be frustrating, but that’s unfortunately how the timing worked out this time.
Now, onto the Player’s Survival Guide!
We’re pretty excited about this and we hope you enjoy it. There’s a lot that goes into a Work-In-Progress (WIP) draft, so we thought we’d answer some of your questions now.
What’s Work-In-Progress About It? What’s going to change?
This is a complete draft, meaning that we have no plans to add content or rules. If you don’t see them, we don’t currently have plans to add them in at this time (though that may change). A few things we know are going to change:
Art. We’re still commissioning art and finding the right spot for all of our pieces. Some of these pieces are very likely to stay where they are (like the range diagram), others will change based on the final pieces and text of all the other books.
Layout. We’ll be tweaking layout as time goes on and adjusting things here and there.
Numbers. We feel pretty good about the numbers, but admittedly, we haven’t shown this to fifteen thousand people before. We expect some of the numbers to change as playtesting comes in.
Example text. We currently really like our example text. However, we are still deciding on exactly which mechanics we cover in these examples. Some of the fictional situations may change as well.
Page/item order. Some items (like the equipment list) aren’t in their final order. And we play with the order of what sections and pages go where a fairly decent amount.
Final text. While this has been through several rounds of editing, it has not been through final proofreading. We expect and anticipate that there are typos and errors in this document.
I saw a typo that I'd like to bring your attention to.
No, thank you. We have the most award-winning editing team in the industry (literally). While we appreciate your enthusiasm, having to track 10,000 emails telling us there’s a spelling error on page 3 is not a great use of our resources and will clog our customer service team.
I have feedback about a rule I don't like.
No, thank you. While we appreciate that some of you will like some rules and dislike others, this draft is not an open focus group, meaning, we’re not testing the waters to see what players do and don’t like.
I have feedback about art I don't like.
No, thank you. Art and taste is highly subjective, and we suspect that some of you will like some pieces and hate some others. It’s not something we’re taking a vote on.
Well, what feedback are you interested in?
Great question! There is a lot you can do to actually help us and we really need it! First, and most importantly, play with the new rules. We are very, very interested in what happens at your table when you play with these rules. So while we may not be looking for feedback on specific rules, arts, or grammar, we would love to hear about your stories and experiences.
We will be releasing a feedback form early in 2022 to ask you about your experience playing and running with the new PSG. We’ll ask about player death, how fast and easy it was to make characters, and rules that were difficult to explain. Please keep an eye out for this.
Wewant actual results from play. We find that we get much, much better feedback when it’s based on the games as they run at the table, as opposed to reading from the book. A lot of ideas seem great on paper but don’t run well at the table. Contrarily, a lot of things seem weird when you read them in a book but actually work out great in real life. We’re interested in real ground-level intel rather than theory.
I have questions about the new rules!
No problem! We suggest you join our discord where we have some excellent Wardens and other players who are very proficient with the WIP ruleset and can answer any and all of your questions.
Noproblem! We will do our best to answer questions in the comments of the Kickstarter, but we are still a very small team and our time is limited. You’ll get a much quicker answer on the discord.
We under that the kind of feedback we're looking for is very specific and we really do appreciate all the enthusiasm and passion Mothership brings you. We want to stoke those flames of excitement! This is why we really want to ensure that everyone’s time and energy is used in the best possible way.
The entire Tuesday Knight Games team is really excited for you all to try this. We think it’s the best, most streamlined version of Mothership to date and we can’t wait for you to try it out. But, before you go, one quick question:
We want to know: what’s your favorite patch on the patch table? No reason ;-)
