Mothership is a fantastic tabletop RPG. If you are wondering whether or not to play it, you should. I recently ran a game for the first time (both as a Mothership warden and as a DM in general) and it was a blast. This post is intended as a guide for fellow first-time wardens who are considering running the first scenario “Distress Signals” from Another Bug Hunt as a one-shot.

Spoiler warning

If there is a chance that you want to experience Another Bug Hunt as a player rather than a warden, turn back now.

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Overall preparation

First of all, some praise for both the Warden’s Operations Manual and Another Bug Hunt as a module: Those two pieces of material are what convinced me could run a game after 10 years of only being a player. They contain fantastic advice that will give many folks all they need to know to run an awesome session. The art, writing, and information layout in this game make the prep work engaging. Distress Signals also has a lot going for it as a first-time warden experience: almost no NPCs to manage or role play, ample descriptions of the environment, and a linear objective.

That being said, as someone who wanted to be ultra-prepared for my first-ever session, I did take some steps to simplify things even more. You might find them helpful if even after reading the materials you still have some anxiety or unanswered questions.

Pre-scripted pieces

The very first thing I did was write out specific “scripted” pieces that I could read word for word when I wanted to get the details right. This let me 1) spend time in advance thinking about how to describe things well and 2) make sure I communicated clearly the really key bits of info for the narrative (the mission objectives). Here’s exactly what I had on a note behind by warden screen:

Initial Scene / Mission

The sound of the dropship’s engine fades away as it disappears into the dense clouds. You’ve just been dropped off near the Greta Base, part of the terraforming colony on Samsa 6. The colony has not been heard from in 6 months, and your crew has been hired by “The Company” to 1) rendezvous with 2nd Lt. Kaplan, and 2) re-establish communications. In addition to your starting items, you have been given a hazard suit, an SMG with 3 magazines, a first aid kit, and a stimpak.

As you were being dropped off, the pilot, Anders, said to radio if you need anything and that he was going to take the dropship back up to avoid getting stuck in the mud.

You find yourself in a dense tropical forest. It’s dark and there is a heavy downpour of rain, making it difficult to see and hear more than your immediate surroundings. What you can see in front of you is a muddy path, and whenever there is a flash of lightning you think you see the outline of greta base in the distance.

Carcinid Encounter

You see the soldier drop to his knees, and then his head jerks violently to one side. You see blood start to trickle down his neck, quickly followed by the tip of some bone-white appendage that most resembles the leg of a crab. It slowly shoots upwards, like a seedling from the earth. Once you can see about a foot of this alien limb, all at once seven more of these limbs burst forth. At this point, the body has started to split in half and you see these 10ft long limbs are connected to an insectoid torso. It looks like this (show the mini). Everyone make a panic check.

Changes and additional details

Next, here are the various mechanical and narrative things I tweaked.

Pre-meditated things

  • I ignored the module’s mapping of the vent system and instead had them all be connected. When I did eventually have the monster come through the vents, I just had it pop out wherever felt appropriate in the moment.
  • I ignored the alternate path through the woods that went to the garage. As much as it felt wrong to eliminate player choice, I don’t think “left or right” is all that interesting of a choice. I also felt that having the characters enter the garage and encounter what is happening there without seeing anything else in the base would be much worse narratively.
  • I tweaked the objective to not include gathering Dr. Edem’s samples or clearing the area of hostiles. I felt that made unraveling the mystery of what’s going on more interesting since the players didn’t have any expectations about enemies or science experiments. I also made “Re-establish communications” a goal. The players would need to do that anyway to get out, but it felt like a very realistic mission goal for the sake of immersion.
  • I decided that players would make a fear save when they see the decapitated head in the commissary as the module suggested, but tweaked it slightly. Instead of having the whole party check, I made just the player who first sees it make the save. On success, they would calmly tell the others, but on failure, they would freak out and others must make fear saves in reaction.
  • Clarifying communications: Some hand-wavy science here, but something that wasn’t quite clear to me from the module was what communications exactly were safe from the shriek. I didn’t want players to immediately encounter the shriek when they tried to talk to each other via the short-range comms in their suits, so I changed it so that the only time that was an issue was if they tried to radio the dropship. I also clarified that the communication instruments in the command center would allow them to have written communication with the dropship (which my players figured out would be safe), as an alternative to radio.
  • I added a bit about the dropship leaving because it didn’t want to get stuck in the mud to remove the temptation to go back to the ship too early.
  • If it hasn’t already, turning the power back on in the base wakes the carcinid.
  • I chose to follow the rule where failed saves resulted in 1d5 stress, which was about right for a one-shot to make panic a realistic possibility.
  • I didn’t know if androids should be impacted by the shriek. I think this could work either way, but for convenience, I decided that androids are partially organic and therefore susceptible.

In game details

There were also some details that I worked out during the game. I think some of this was intended by the module, but it didn’t click until I was playing the game.

  • The “comms off” graffiti was put there in a hurry as a warning, not a work of art.
  • On a similar note, the comms array in the command center looks like it was smashed by a human, not a carcinid. They wanted to prevent infection.
  • One challenge was that my players had bad luck with finding ways to deal with the monster. Nobody rolled a loadout with anything particularly useful, and they immediately fled the garage once it woke up. They also didn’t pick up the tumbler of hydrofluoric acid. One of them attempted to a combat check to “shoot it in the mouth” to bypass the armor, which I allowed if they 1) were directly facing the monster 2) rolled with disadvantage. This allowed them to get a wound on it and prevented it from completely overpowering them.
  • The “Escape Sequence” - Once my players successfully got power back and were trying to escape, I wanted to keep the action going by having the monster pursue. I decided to have it shriek as they were on the muddy path back to the landing zone, causing all players to need to make a sanity save. All but one failed. This led to a moral conundrum once onboard the dropship as the players knew they were infected. In a classic sci-fi moment, we ended up with just one survivor escaping as the infected players elected to do the noble thing and jump out of the ship to avoid spreading the infection.
  • When players failed their sanity save against the shriek, I described that the shriek suddenly transformed from almost-but-not-quite random static to whispers in a language you don’t understand.

Miscellaneous notes and tips

  • I told players to just skip over anything related to money
  • Music: I used this playlist for seriously spooky vibes.
  • When the power came back on, make it a truly chaotic moment by having something queued up to play from the commissary as “birthday party music”. I chose to blare Don’t Stop Believing by Journey.
  • It was fascinating to watch the players tiptoe around in fear, not knowing when the dam would break. As warden, I encourage you to have fun with this uncertainty. Asking things like “do you close the door behind you” and “do you have your weapon drawn” even in moments where the answers don’t matter is a lot of fun.

Conclusion

I can only speak to the experience at my table, but overall being a warden was both easier and more fun than I expected. During the whole session, there were only a couple of instances where my players asked a question where the answer couldn’t explicitly be found in the module. Once I fully focused on explaining the world to my players, the world came into focus for me.