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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?

We have liftoff.
over 2 years ago – Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 05:38:26 AM

We've had a phenomenal start to this campaign. There's so much to say and so much to do, but I think now would be a great time to talk about one of our latest stretch goals, and new line-up to the core book squad...

Let’s talk about the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit!

Spacecraft are obviously a fundamental part of any sci-fi game, however, one thing came up over and over again during 0e, and that was that the overwhelming majority of people weren’t using the shipbuilding rules provided. Why? They were way too fiddly and complicated. It was a neat idea for sure, being able to modularly build your ship from scratch, and if you are one of the few that love that old system, congrats! You have a fully functional rulebook already. For everyone else, let’s talk about what we changed.

First off, we have a brand new ship sheet called the Ship’s Manifest. This is basically a Character Sheet for your ship and it’s designed to be like a control panel you’d see from the Captain’s Chair.

The first thing you’ll probably notice is that we’ve gotten rid of all the ship-building rules and descriptions of rooms, etc. This is a sheet that’s meant to be used during play. How? We’re glad you asked.

Similar to how the Wounds system has changed to make violence more interesting and decisive, we’ve done a similar thing with ships. Ships have “Frame” which is basically the same as Wounds but for ships. Whenever your ship loses a point of Frame they’ll have to roll on this nasty ship’s critical hit table (oh this will be on the back of the Warden’s Screen by the way).

You’ll see that a lot of systems can go Offline, or be disabled, damaged, or destroyed. This creates a situation where your ship might have a lot of specific maintenance to undergo. Do you want to get your Scanners back up and running or replace your comms? Re-route power from the Jump Drive to the Life Support system? You can now do all that easily and intuitively.

How are ships built?

Well now the game comes with 10 pre-built ships which can be customized to your liking.

•  Raider: A cheap vessel, barely more than a Heavy Lander strapped to an orbital habitation unit. Heavily modded and favored by pirates.
•  Courier: Jump Couriers travel fast and light, built to be small but perfect for long distance scouting and recon.
•  Cargo Freighter: The backbone of the galaxy. Whether hauling cargo, scrap, or contraband, space truckers make do with what they've got out there on the rim.
•  Salvage Cutter: Space is big and it's largely filled with junk. The cutters scrap derelicts and debris down to the bone. Occasionally though, they find something a little... stranger.
•  Patrol Vessel: Whether it's the Colonial Authority, or worse, Corporate Inspectors, a Patrol Vessel is never a blip you want to see on your radar, unless of course, you're sending out a distress signal.
•  Research Vessel: Taking samples, running planetary surveys, and tracking down strange deep space signals, research vessels have seen it all. And not everything they've seen has been kind.
•  Passenger Liner: From interplanetary to interstellar, the gargantuan passenger liners will get you there, mostly in one piece too if you've got the credits.
•  Corvette: The perfect balance between speed and armament, that's what the brochure says at least. Heavily favored by pirates, because they're the only vehicles weak enough to be stolen, but strong enough to be used as a weapon.
•  Mining Rig: A behemoth of energy and industry. The rig houses dozes of miners on their off-world tours mining asteroids and moons. Big enough to protect itself if it has to, just pray it doesn't have to.
•  Light Frigate: The smallest of the big ships, equipped to be totally self sufficient in long range, long term missions.

The designs above are our internal rough drafts designed by the incredible Sam Wildman who has an amazing vision for spacecraft in Mothership. Functional, utilitarian, and built by ruthless penny-pinching corporations for max profit and min safety.

What about Ship combat though?

Well, there’s a few things to note here. This is a sci-fi horror game, not a dog-fighting X-wing style pew pew game. So we’ve taken a more hardlined approach to space combat. We’re moving things to range bands, and those ranges exist across incredible distances. Combat is handled in real world terms as you move into “Hailing Range” or “Firing Range.” There’s no disconnect when talking about the game world or the mechanics. We want ship combat to be fast, brutal, and immersive.

We’ve done a lot of playtesting here, but the idea is to treat ship combat more like a social encounter, with enemies who want things from you, who want to talk things through. And if it comes to violence, it’ll be over in 2-3 rounds.

Like this image? Well, tell your friends, because if we can, this will be a full fledged poster map stretch goal, perfect for laying out on your gaming table so you can yell “TAKE EVASIVE MANEUVERS AND MOVE OUT OF FIRING RANGE!”

There’s a lot more to say, but for now we’ll leave you all with this question:

We’ve only put 10 ships in the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit so far, but we're thinking of adding five more.

If you could add just one new ship to the Shipbreaker's Toolkit, what would you want to see? Tell us in the comments!

Go for launch.
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 04, 2021 at 01:54:22 AM

Folks.

We can’t believe it. You all saw it. What are we doing here? Are we crazy? Are you feeling what we feel?

Here’s what you made happen: You took a game that three years ago could fit into your pocket and you’ve raised almost half a million dollars in turning that early release into a full fledged grown up First Edition. You and 5,000 other people have shown that an indie game with a great team and a strong community can build something truly beautiful. That you can start small and grow with time. We can’t say thank you enough.

But we’re going to try.

Our first thank you is the LAUNCH CREW patch, which we’re giving out free to all of you who backed today. We’re keeping this deal open for the next 24 hours, so if you’re on the fence, get a pledge in at the Core Set or higher level and snag this kickstarter exclusive before the end of day two.

Our second thank you is tonight at 8:30 pm EST (two hours from when I’m posting this). We’re doing a Live Stream Q&A session on our YouTube Channel TKtv. There, Alan and I are going to be taking all your questions and doing our best to answer all of them. And that’s not all: every Tuesday at 8:30 pm EST we’re going to be releasing some exclusive Mothership content on that channel, so be sure to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications.

Our third thank you is coming up: we have 10+ more stretch goals coming up across all the pledge levels. We’ve unlocked some awesome ones already: A Warden’s Screen for the Deluxe and Core Sets, rules for Faction Play, printable loadouts, and more. We’ve got great digital content and we’ve got some amazing new physical accessories. If you thought the Core Set was a great deal to begin with, just wait until we’re done. And if you didn’t think the Core Set was a deal, well, stay tuned.

The rest of our thank you’s go to our team and our families. Nobody makes a game alone and if there’s one thing we’ve learned making Mothership it’s that the game doesn’t orbit around the designer, the designer orbits around the game. Jarrett, Fiona, Nick, Donn, Tyler, Luke, all of our playtesters and friends who have bounced ideas around and lent an encouraging word (or two, or three), thank you so much. We couldn’t have done this without you. To Lindsay, Crystol, Langston (and Juniper) thank you for creating the space for Alan and I to do what we do.

It’s the best job ever. We’ve been doing it for almost ten years now.

And we’re just getting started.

-- Sean (and Alan)