[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:

https://mega.nz/file/frYlCKqQ#aDjxbNaLwMM72EwPdNtAsOnL13WJpdZp1bABcCmbymo

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:

1.  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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4.  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.
5.  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.
•  We want 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. 
•  No problem! 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 ;-)

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?