This is Rumor Control, Here Are The Facts
over 2 years ago – Fri, Dec 03, 2021 at 11:22:39 PM

First of all, thank you all so much for all your support.

We are now the 8th most funded RPG on kickstarter and the most funded non-licensed RPG of all time. This is a big, big, big deal for us. Bare minimum it helps ensure that we have an opportunity to make Mothership books and games for years to come. But beyond that it's just incredibly validating as creators to see so many people so enthusiastically support our little game. So from the vast and empty void of space: thank you all.

Now, a little housekeeping:

When do I add funds? How do I do add-ons?

For one, do NOT click “late pledge,” on our kickstarter page. That’s for people who missed the campaign and want to get in on pre-orders. Instead, just wait. We’ll send out a Backerkit survey in time and that will take you to the add-on store where you can add money, upgrade your pledge, etc. We don’t have a timeline for when this is coming out yet, but we’re working on it.

An important note: We will not be charging shipping until we are ready to ship. This means if you pledge for add-ons, you’ll be charged for the add-ons now, and then you’ll be charged later for shipping.

When is everything coming out? I heard something about PDFs? Where are they? I want them. Why are you keeping them from us??

Check the FAQ and keep an eye out for our Help Center which we’ll hopefully be launching shortly. We’ve brought on someone to help with Customer Service and we’re onboarding them now.

The short answer is, the work-in-progress draft of the PSG should be out in a couple of weeks. The Conversion Kit work-in-progress draft will be released at the same time. We’ll send out an update when they’re ready with instructions about how to access the files.

Until then, thank you all for such an amazing campaign. Thank you for the comments and kind words. Thank you for the support and sharing the kickstarter with your friends. But most important, thank you for playing. 

But before we go, we have a quick question for you. We shared our influences on our Bingo card on the kickstarter page. But what about you? 

If you were to pick one movie/book/comic/podcast/whatever to represent Mothership best, what would you choose?

The Last Day
over 2 years ago – Thu, Dec 02, 2021 at 10:27:28 PM

I hope you suckers enjoyed giving us all of your money, because now we are going to run with it. And by run with it, we mean… totally fulfill every single one of our promises.

In all seriousness, this is a huge deal for us. This means years of more Mothership books, adventures, pamphlets, and well… we’ve got a few surprises we think you’ll all love (anyone here read comics?).

We’ve got a little over 24 hours left, so what does that mean? Tell your friends! We’ve unlocked all of our stretch goals and can truly say that this little boxed set is just packed with so many goodies, it’s unreal.

What’s next? Well, once the campaign ends we’ll be waiting for funds to clear while we polish up the work-in-progress draft of the Player’s Survival Guide and The Conversion Kit. Once those are out, we’ll outline what kind of feedback we’re looking for and the best way to get it to us.

Tonight’s a special night though, because in just a few moments at 8:30 PM EST, we’re going LIVE on TKtv to do a final wrap-up Q&A for the Kickstarter campaign. Any and all questions are welcome and we’ll try and get through as many as we can. You can join us right here.

Now that the campaign is ending, let’s talk about our comms.

We’ll be updating no more than once a week (when things are busy) and no less than once a month (when we’re just working as per normal). We’ll give timelines when we think they’re appropriate and we’ll do our best to stay on top of comments. We’ll be launching a help base to keep all of our Frequently Asked Questions in one place. This way we can keep our energy focused on getting the books finished.

Speaking of finishing the books, we’ve got a couple of pieces of art left to commission: 

Who is an artist you’d love to see team up with Mothership?

Is this gonna be a stand up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?
over 2 years ago – Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 11:16:09 PM

Well, folks, we did it.

We’ve unlocked all nineteen stretch goals. We’re truly blown away. You’ve helped us create our dream boxed set and we couldn’t be more grateful. I’m sure you’re all wondering, though, what is Another Bug Hunt?

Another Bug Hunt is an introductory starter adventure for Mothership. We’ve always thought the perfect boxed set would come with a pre-written adventure so that you can start playing just about as soon as you open the box. That’s our goal with Another Bug Hunt.

We’ve teamed up with Luke Gearing (Gradient Descent), D G Chapman (The Haunting of Ypsilon-14), Alan Gerding (Vontrey Colony 17), and of course Jarrett Crader (all the things) to put together five simple one-shot adventures that string together to create a starter mini-campaign.

The premise is simple: you’ve been hired by the Company to find out why the terraforming colony on Surmsa 6 has stopped responding. When you arrive at the colony, however, you find signs of a battle and the main base completely deserted. Where did the colonists go? We cover this in five simple one-shots, tentatively titled: Crash Course, Hive Mind, Bug Out, Distress Signals, and… Mothership. We’ve got a lot opinions about how starter adventures should be written, so buckle up.

If you want to see a little more, we’ve just uploaded a video to TKtv where we run a couple early encounters from Another Bug Hunt. You can check it out here.

But before you go, help us out: what’s the most important thing you’d want a starter adventure to teach you?

1mcr
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 07:10:49 PM

Well, look at that.

We have enough credits to buy 1/10th of a point of hull under 0e rules!

Now that we’ve gotten that extremely niche joke out of the way let’s get to the good stuff.

We’ve unlocked the TKtv Actual Play!

This is huge. Alan and I have strong opinions about actual play and we’ve really enjoyed playing around with the format. Cutting out the boring stuff, throwing in summaries to catch people up to keep the content manageable. We’re really excited to get to devote more time and resources to this series. Thank you all for that!

Character Pawns Incoming

This is one of my absolute favorite stretch goals. I’ve been wanting to do this for years, you guys. YEARS. These are going to be sleek, monochrome, punchboard standees with plastic bases. All of which will be illustrated by Alec Sorensen. We’re even reserved some space for a large token for an alien creature (illustrations below are WIP).

Whether you play “theater of the mind” style or “tactical grid map” style, we’ve got you covered. Check up the line-up below.

We’re only halfway through this campaign and we’ve only got a few more stretch goals left, including Another Bug Hunt, our starter module. This has been an amazing ride so far, and thank you all for making it happen.

New episode of TKtv tonight at 8:30pm EST

Tonight we’re launching a flip through of the current draft of the new Player’s Survival Guide on TKtv. Check it out on our YouTube Channel at 8:30pm EST.

Join Alan and I along with Jarrett Crader as we go page by page through the new rules, talk about what’s different, what we were thinking (what WERE we thinking?), and why we’ve made the changes we’ve made. This is a killer episode, you don’t want to miss it.

Oh and one last thing before you go: If you could pick one module, one storyline, one pamphlet, or booklet for us to do an Actual Play about what would you pick?

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY (This isn't actually an emergency, just a cool title for this update)
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 10:53:58 PM

Alright crew, it's week two of the campaign and we've unlocked some incredible stretch goals over the weekend, so let's talk about them!

The Settlement Rumors are an awesome bit of content we'll be adding to the Warden's Operations Manual. They're d100 unique rumors of things that are a little off at your local port, colony, station, or outpost. What's great about rumors is that they can offer a hook for your players to explore or investigate, or just be local color to give context to what's going on. For a Warden though, they make prep a lot easier as you can build an entire session around one, or throw out one every 3-4 sessions to keep things lively. We're excited to see what you folks do with them.

Distress Signals.

Oh boy. This one is awesome. We've teamed up with a long time friend and incredible director and game designer Donald Shults to record 25 awesome Distress Signals for use at your table. Written by Tyler Kimball and performed by some just incredible voice actors, you'll be able to drop these audio files on your players in game as prompts or props and see them go wild. Check out this one we've just done with Michelle Rojas.

Third Party Publishing

A lot of you have heard us talk about 3pp and the 3pp community. Well what does that mean? 3pp stands for Third Party Publisher or Third Party Product, and basically it means that it's officially licensed books and modules written for Mothership by other indie-creators. Mothership's 3pp community is MASSIVE, Ian Yusem (The Drain, Moonbase Blues, Hull Breach) keeps a running list of all the cool 3pp stuff here.

Mothership 3pp was a huge force to be reckoned with at Zine Quest last year, and I expect it will be again. Even right now there's an awesome campaign by Joel Hines (Desert Moon of Karth) that we think ya'll should check out. It's in the final 24 hours and they've unlocked all of their stretch goals.

There's also a cool new anthology of Mothership content coming out after our campaign called Hull Breach. Again, highly recommended you give that a follow for when it goes live.

What's next?

We're coming up on some awesome new stretch goals: a few new ships to add to the Shipbreaker's Toolkit and a Poster Map for the Core and Deluxe set! Stay tuned for mother information on those as they're a game changer (literally).

We had a lot of fun hearing your suggestions for new ships, and I think a lot of your are going to be VERY happy with the ones we picked.

Let’s give some love to our 3pp crew this week and help inspire them: What’s a third-party product you’d love to see?