Mothership Mission Log - Taking the Deimos – Session 7
This is an ongoing series - Check out the last session
The Deimos Image from Shipbreaker's Toolkit
ROSTER:
• Vegas Hemmings - Marine (Jack)
• Dr. Kirk Kawaguchi - Scientist (Jason)
• Anders Togurtson - Teamster (Matt)
Contractors Aboard the Ship:
• TANAKA - MARINE
• SOBOL- SCIENTIST/ENGINEER
• RENFIELD - TEAMSTER/PILOT
• GATHERS - MERCENARY
• HOLT – MERCENARY
• HANAZAWA – CAPTURED MERC
After about a six-week hiatus the crew of the Ghost got back together Saturday night to finish the fight against the Stratemeyer gunship Deimos. The first thing this reinforces, is why decent play reports are so essential to maintaining campaign play. After weeks away from the bleak universe on the edges of Publico Space we all could remember where the story is headed. Campaigns are tough to maintain through scheduling conflicts (which the holidays always bring) but a good report system helps get it back on track.
The Situation in the Tempest System
After about 30 minutes of chatting to catch up, the crew dived into the minutia of planning exactly how they were going to try to capture, destroy, or otherwise neutralize the Deimos. Winning a straight fight with the Deimos was likely impossible. The Ghost is essentially a private space yacht, and the Deimos a small warship, but the crew had the captured “Bucket” boarding skiff. The crew had already convinced their adversaries, by coercing a survivor, that the boarding operation launched by the Deimos was successful. Therefore, returning the “Bucket” was to be expected. The crew considered loading it with explosive (not sure where those were going to come from) and sending it back. However, since what they really needed was navigational data of the location of the Stratemeyer base in the Tempest System, this was quickly discarded. They also considered just making a run for it (the Ghost is faster than the Deimos) to complete the smuggling job. However, the drugs were stashed in the asteroid belt and the odds of returning to get their shuttle and make it back to the jump point while being hunted didn’t seem very appealing. Finally, everyone agreed the only reasonable course of action was to board the mercenary warship with a ragtag group of beat-up spacers. No problem…
The players spent about an hour and half devising their plan to do this. I have seen others complain that long planning sessions like this should be avoided as they take up play time. I disagree with this, like really disagree, this is definitely play. I think if you are playing in the “old school” playstyle, which Mothership definitely supports, you need to embrace planning sessions. These are critical thinking sessions in overdrive, essential to survival in a more lethal system, and honestly for me and my group, really enjoyable. Also, as a GM they are awesome, you don’t need to prep as much, and the players just sit there giving you great ideas about how they see the game. You just need to take notes, and you can refine and flesh out your prep while they talk. For instance, I knew the make-up of the crew on the Deimos, but based on their discussion, and realization of things that would come into play, I refined how they operated in shifts and where each crew member would likely be based on the schedule.
Planning Sessions aren’t metagaming (Alien)
The plan was to return the skiff to the Deimos with “injured.” In reality they were going to go in with two teams. One team, consisting of Kirk (Jason) and Vegas (Jack) with the hostage, Hanazawa, and two recently decanted mercs would pilot the skiff into the hanger. The other team, consisting of Anders (Matt) and Tanaka would spacewalk at the last minute before docking and make their way to the airlock adjacent to the command module. The intent was to as quickly as possible gain control of the major systems of the ship from the bridge. The second team in the hanger had a secondary mission to make their way to the reactor and secure it if necessary. This is a pretty solid plan, I was pleased, and excited to see how the dice weighed in.
The Expanse remains an important touchstone for the campaign
I ruled that the trip to the Deimos would take about two days in the “Bucket.” The crew staying behind on the Ghost would need to go into cryo to conserve O2 after the previous battle damaged their life support systems. The crew in the skiff would be fine, and it was already established that their trip through the void would be uncontested.
As they pull up alongside the Deimos, I ruled that Kirk would need to make a check to pilot into the hanger while setting up the space walkers for a jump to the hull. Failure would mean the spacewalk would be detected by the Deimos’ external cameras. Kirk makes his check and Anders and Tanaka are safely away. As they pull into the hanger Vegas makes a speed check to discreetly hop out of the skiff and set up an ambush before the hanger doors close and atmosphere is pumped back into the chamber. At the same time Anders is floating to the command module airlock, making a successful zero g check to avoid the noise that might alert the crew to boarders. At this point we had an unusual run of success; I was sure the other shoe was about to drop…
Nothing can go wrong during a spacewalk...(Image from The Atlantic)
Anders used his mechanical lock picking set to quietly open the outer airlock doors, and success again! By now everyone is sure this is about to go very bad, very fast, but luck seems to be holding. In the hanger a team comes through the hatch to assist the expected wounded. A merc marine, spacer, and the ship’s doctor come through just as Kirk busts out of the skiff, revolver to Hanazawa’s head, demanding something (I forget, it was late and it’s not important). The spacer and marine are both armed with foam guns which they raise and point at Kirk. This gets a laugh from everyone because Vegas’ foam gun is a favorite weapon, and surprisingly great against all sorts of monsters when you are running away. The situation here is the result of a random roll on the “tactical considerations” table for one side to have to use non-lethal weapons. It’s an interesting touch and honestly worried the crew a bit. Getting stuck with foam is no joke.
This is probably a good time to describe how I run combat in Mothership, as it seems to be a major criticism of the system. Simply, I run it as completely symmetrically as possible and follow a basic combat loop that’s not that different from D&D or any other RPG. Mothership describes different ways that work with other playstyles, but I want the added structure so players can anticipate and plan for combat better. I use side-based initiative with players making speed checks (modified by a relevant skill) to see if they go before the monsters/NPCs in the first turn. After that everyone on one side goes before the other and so on. I also let the players roll a d10 on the wound table when they deal a wound to an NPC or monster. This is definitely not RAW, but its gritty and cinematic (think of all the exploding acid filled heads in Aliens) and gives the players a better chance of killing an enemy on a successful hit. Mothership combat is pretty “wiffy” so this is satisfying since getting a hit is not easy. It also bumps up survivability a bit, which is in my opinion pretty critical for campaign play. Lots of character death is fun for a horror one-shot, but we want to keep it down a bit for the longer haul. I run space combat as is from the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit. It’s simple, evocative, extremely risky, and gets the feel of what you see in The Expanse (amazing visual reference for all things Mothership IMO). Anyway, back to the action…
Cut back to Anders and the breaching team. After discreetly getting past the outer airlock door, there was a brief, “What do we do now?” moment, until someone said, “wait, can we just open the inner door now and depressurize the compartment?” I ruled that yes, that was a possibility, since it’s a good way to deal with a fire, its reasonable that such an override exists. Anders makes the intel check to open the inner door, surprising the bridge crew who either fail their body saves or make it, but not long enough to get to emergency O2 (remember the Deimos crew is not prepared for combat and completely complacent).
At the same time in the hanger, Kirk takes a shot with his revolver and gets a hit on the merc, but not enough to bypass standard battle dress. However, Vegas gets a hit with his shotgun and the wound table result is “head explodes.” It should be noted that all three PCs dosed themselves with stim packs just before things kicked off. This is a great move as in addition to restoring HP, a stim pack gives advantage to all rolls for 1d10 minutes (I used timers on my phone to keep the pressure on – pausing it during shifts between the two teams). Advantage on attack rolls is pretty awesome. The cumulative risk of overdose keeps it a consequential tactical choice (everyone remembers Leafy Portman dying in session one…).
Anders team gets control of the bridge and convinces the engineer in the reactor room to stand down. He gives an ultimatum to the crewmembers in the habitat decks to make their way to the escape pods or he would vent those decks too. This wasn’t part of the original plan, but a good tactical improvisation. Mercenaries being well, mercenary, decided the better part of valor was to live to collect a paycheck, and complied. This accounted for all but three Deimos crew members who couldn’t make it to escape pods. Our crew offered them double their current pay to stay on and help manage the ship. They accepted, though on reflection the PCs decided that initial offer may need to be “renegotiated.”
So now the crew has a real warship. We had a long discussion about what this means, and the crew decided to complete the smuggling job in the next session and pass their intel on to Angus and Reidmar on the Dream, getting a good payout. The nav data on the Deimos confirms a likely refueling station in the asteroid belt and possible location of the missing teamster fleet.
As the de facto crew accountant, Anders (Matt) has a new problem in how to manage the budget for two ships. The crew as a whole need to prepare for the blowback from stealing a ship from a powerful, and incredibly well funded, crime syndicate. Should be exciting…