GM: Artem Yatsunov
Players: Kimi Hughes, Dave Hoover, Sean Nittner
System: Mothership
Content warning: body horror bits masked (like this)
Artem offered Mothership in the morning pitch and I was sad that I was already offering games and couldn’t play in it. So after lunch I asked if he’d be up for running it and we quickly put together an impromptu game on the patio, which was lovely.
I was glad to get some fresh air (the basement was starting to get ripe) and it was also nice to finish the con playing a game as my brain needed a break from GMing.
Artem is such and encouraging GM, I love it. Especially considering the terrible, gruesome things he put our characters through. They celebrated all our choices and literally cheered for us as we introduced our characters. He didn’t tell us much about what was going on, but that was for a very particular reason that I’ll get to in a bit.
Doomed Souls, aka Characters
Artem handed out several premade characters that were all a delight.
Kimi picked Irwin, a teamster (mechanic) just hired on at the CLOUDBANK Synthetics Production Facility and had all the hope in the world. They were helpful, kind, and optimist. I’m so sorry.
Dave played Jana, a teamster who had been at CLOUDBANK for enough time to make friends they would miss. A student of mysticism and theology, Dave asked when those skills would be used…and we found a way.
I played Eden Burd, an AI Scientist in her late 70s. Burd had a missing tooth, a voice box, and an abysmal outlook, which made her a PR disaster, but since she was part of the team that worked on the self-actualizing, self-replicating, that had to keep her around. Her work was a mistake!
Disassembly Yard
Artem told us they like to run things weird, which felt just right for Mothership.
You wake in a pile of bodies. There is a terrible sound of rending metal above you. As your eyes focus describe your character as they watch another body that look identical to them be picked up by large robotic arms and be ripped apart. You are in the Disassembly Yard. What do you do?
Look, if I’m going to write up a full version of this game, it would be largely redacted, so I’ll summarize like this:
- Irwin was sweet, risked their lives to help people, and in the end, knew nothing mattered as they died destroying the entirety of CLOUDBANK.
- Mother was the AI that Eden Burd helped create and was activated far to early. She indicated that Human 2.0 did not require Human 1.0 Oversight. Terrifying! In the final moments Eden shot herself and bled white, but she wanted to live.
- Human 2.0 launched by the way, so if we ever wanted a sequel, we’ve got one!
- Jana lost many on the ship, including D’amon a close friend, but in the end they brought Knux, who had an arm coming from his neck instead of a head along, so that’s saving someone, right?
- The rooms were called things like Nerve Threading, Milk Injection, Flesh Sleeve Insertion, and Organ Implementation. Nothing good was going to come of this.
- Human 2.0 was a mistake. The jury is still out on Human 1.0.
- A panic roll of 1 (dead calm) was the final moment of the game. Nihilism wins.
Thoughts on the game
This was such a lovely way to end the con. Full of body horror and ontological questions (see, we knew Mysticism would be a good skill).
I adored watching Irwin’s hope die. They seemed like they should have been the one to be saved, but it was not in the cards.
I made it a personal goal to use every item on my equipment list and I ended up using all of the except radiation pills. If you’re curious, the gear I had (and used) was: first aid kit, foldable stretcher, jetpack, vaccsuit, patch: soviet hammer and sickle, trench shovel, foam gun, and revolver.
Towards the end of the game, when we were not sure if we were actually human or not, I shot myself to find out and Artem handled it in the best way I could imagine: make a sanity save. If you succeed tell me the results that Eden hopes for the most. If you fail, tell me what she fears the most. *chef’s kiss*
Artem also had a cool time looping mechanic represented by a little duck token. I’m 100% stealing that for my Blades ’68 game, but I’ve got another prop in mind.
