Mothership: Another Bug Hunt
It's pretty rare that I run a published adventure straight, usually I make a ton of modifications/additions to them, and completely change their story. I just recently began running the Mothership RPG for my Saturday night game however, and wanted the first mission my players to do to be one straight from a book, so I could learn the system myself a bit better. For that reason, I chose 'Another Bug Hunt' by Tuesday Knight Games.
My players love Starship Troopers and Aliens, and so I figured running an adventure called 'Another Bug Hunt' would give me a good chance to subvert their expectations. Without too many spoilers for the book, the 'Bugs' in ABH aren't overly similar to something like Helldivers' bugs or Starship Troopers', and rather have a more body horror/bodysnatchers vibe (at first).
The adventure began on The Dream, a space station from the extremely good 'A Pound of Flesh' supplement, also by Tuesday Knight Games, which I have made extensive modifications to, since I want my players to be returning here often. I'll probably detail my version of the Dream in another post, but for the moment all you need to know is that the players have been given a unique opportunity: The leader of the Telmakar Merchant Corps, an 'independent merchant guilt' (read: space pirates) have offered to give them an old beater-ship in exchange for investigating a research team the merchants sent to Samsa VI, a nearby planet.
So begins the tale of the SS Significant Harassment. My players chose this ship, a modified salvage trawler (they want to make most of their money post-first gig from salvaging), from a lineup of seven pre-built ships I made.
The SS Significant Harassment, map made in Inkarnate.
(A little behind-the-scenes fun fact: The Significant Harassment is named after No Significant Harassment from Rain World! I like the idea of ships with weird names though, since it's a world where ships need to try to have vaguely unique names, and I love the long and dumb names from games like Delta-V or Ostranauts.)
The Significant Harassment is crewed by my four player characters:
- Carol Le'onne, a former narcotics cook-turned-Scientist for the Dream's owner gang. She is pretty even-keeled, a little bit of a bitch (by self-admission), and good at making logical decisions. No combat skills, nor any eagerness to engage in combat.
- Gerard Kristofferson, a Teamster who is trying to get away from static life aboard a resupply station to be a spacer. He's a bit hard on others under stress, but remarkably self-sacrificing when he needs to, and super intelligent -- he's the one keeping the ship together.
- Harper Briggs, a Marine from a neighboring system, who served as a 'Crusader' in a corporate crusade against an independent planet. He wants the quieter, easier life of frontier living, and has chosen the life of a spacer to get that.
- Lexie Rose, a suspiciously-non-sentient Android who is currently a pleasure robot, but is slowly developing sentience with the help of others. She's a supremely kind source of comedic relief, who wants to see the stars at the orders of her owner, Major Rose, who she has been told has gone off on a long journey and won't be back for some time.
Since none of them are particularly good at piloting or logistics, they also hired 2 Contractors from a bar in the Dream. These are NPC crewmates:
- Eiko, a pilot who has never actually piloted a ship, but has thousands of hours of simulator time. She has stars in her eyes, a flak jacket she inherited from her dad, and is eager to see the stars. She's hired on to fly both the Harassment and its DropShip.
- World Everafter, Rivers Overflowing -- or just WERO -- an Android who wears the nun-like habit of a Solarian Traveling Monk. She's a fully-sentient 'gardener bot', who wishes to spread the Solarian word through the stars. She's hired on to maintain the ship's computer, logs, and keep an eye on the ship while everyone else is away on missions.
I really love games that let you 'live' in a world. I'm a huge fan of Traveller and Cyberpunk RED for this reason, and my Saturday group enjoys the slice-of-life style of play inherent to that kind of thing. So I made a lot of homebrew systems for things the crew can do aboard their ship, and more granular rules for ship maintenance. The crew will spend most of their transit time in cryosleep (it takes nearly 3 months just to get to Samsa VI), but when they are awake they'll be busying themselves with training, exercise, chemistry, navicomputer touch-ups and lots and lots of maintenance.
I also created a system for random space encounters dependent on how good the ship's built-in AI is, and the quality of its scanners. After the crew went down for cryosleep, they spent most of that time just idly traveling, but were awoken when the ship detected a space wreck! This led to their first salvage op, in which Gerard and Lexie ventured out of the ship to retrieve some basic salvage. Not wanting to spend days here though, they only got what wasn't nailed down, rather than actually breaking out the laser cutters and taking metal scrap. They also found some intact cryopods, and managed to wake a Teamster named Callum, who was confused that he wasn't on Earth.
When they did arrive at Samsa VI after 56 days, it was down to the surface. The four PC's went down, leaving Eiko to pilot their escape DropShip, and WERO to watch the ship. They decided to leave Callum in cryosleep, and wait till they got back to the Dream to wake him.
If you're unfamiliar with Another Bug Hunt, it's an introductory adventure for the Mothership RPG. I chose to use the one-shot version of the adventure, but it can be significantly longer with campaign rules. The campaign version doesn't interest me however, as I am not a big fan of its deeper plot elements. I do however love the initial set-up: A scientist team was sent to work on terraforming a hostile alien world, inhabited by arachnid-like insectoids called Carcinids, and they, along with their Marine protectors, have failed to report in for several months.
When my players arrived at Greta Base, the main HQ of the lost expedition, they were initially rather eager to get inside and find out what happened. As one would hope for in a good horror story, this eagerness was replaced by terror and extreme caution when they entered the base's first room and found a headless corpse.
My players took a very logical approach to the adventure, which was that they wanted to get in, get what they needed and get out as quickly as possible. I made a couple minor changes to Greta's logistics:
- By default, all the rooms (I believe) are unlocked, except medical. I unlocked medical, but locked the command center, as well as some loot areas, with locks that require keycard access. I placed the keycards in two locations, only one of which my players actually found, i.e. the crew quarters.
- I placed the dead body of a notable NPC from the campaign version in the base where she ordinarily isn't, so as to remove one reason to explore further, since I wanted the players to leave the planet after Greta Base was cleared.
- I added some extra loot, notably a Pulse Rifle, to the Barracks. This is because our Marine, Harper, only had an SMG, and I like when my players at least have a chance.
When the crew entered the garage, they (wisely?) decided to ignore the rhythmic thudding they heard coming from a large dirt pit in one corner of the room, and neither looked into it nor interacted with it. They fueled but did not activate the emergency generator, worried about making too much noise (wise!).
They found a strange man mumbling to himself in the back of an APC, but decided to leave him there, since the man had a grenade and they were averse to being blown up by grenades. I was a really big fan of the group playing it safe, though not investigating the thudding in the pit means they didn't activate the Horror earlier, and as such had a little extra time to look, and find that Pulse Rifle I added to the Barracks, plus the keycards.
I also made a meta note to tell the crew that Mothership adventures allow them to either do the bare minimum and leave when things get rough, or stay and investigate. I said that investigating will yield far better rewards, but will make an already dangerous system even more deadly. They seemingly took this to heart, and played it very cautiously.
About when they found the notable NPC's body is when they heard the thudding from the garage abruptly stop, and the sound of something collapsing. Shortly thereafter, as the crew was searching the scientists' quarters, Harper stood guard in the corridor outside. He saw a Marine, covered head-to-toe in mud, stagger out of the garage.
Harper chose not to shoot the Marine instantly, which a sensible person might've done. I'm not sure why, but I think it's likely because:
A; The player assumed this was a zombie, not a bug.
B; Harper in-character would be hesitant to shoot a fellow Marine.
Regardless, the unknown Mud Marine staggered down the hall and when he got within short range of Harper, a 2-and-a-half-meter-long crab claw burst from his neck and lashed out into Harper. The Carcinid had made itself known, and it was pissed!
Harper fired a shot from his Pulse Rifle and missed, but passed his Fear Save. The Carc struck Harper, burrowing through his battle dress and inflicting a harsh wound. The other three emerged from the scientists' barracks: Carol fired her dart gun, which hit Harper in the back on accident, but failed to penetrate his armor. Gerard put a first of SMG fire into the Carcinid, staggering it back. Lexie, with a revolver but poor aim, chose not to fire, not wanting to shoot Harper on accident.
Round two. The Carc swings at Harper, and takes another horrible bite out of his side. These hits would've killed any other party member twice over, but Harper has his battle dress, plus some Marine durability! Harper finally gets his pulse rifle up, and puts a round into the carc's chest cavity. The bug disengages, tearing itself from its human cocoon, and scuttling down the hall back toward the garage.
The dead Mud Marine has a bandolier of grenades, which Gerard takes and names the Grenadolier. Harper is severely injured -- he's bleeding out, and will die shortly. Carol estimates he won't be able to make it back to the APC, and she's right, he'll black out and probably bleed out well before then. So they haul ass to the medical center.
There's a MedPod there! By default it takes weeks to heal, but I decide it's an advanced model that can restore Harper's wounds rapidly (but very painfully, inflicting a lot of stress on him) in just a few minutes! But it has no power... They never turned on the generator!
Harper passes out from blood loss. Carol fails her medical test to heal with a first aid kit, so she manages to staunch the bleeding but can't actually revive him. He's rapidly approaching a comatose state. Gerard tells Lexie to guard the room, picks up the Grenadolier, and rushes to the garage!
Lexie follows, because she's protective. Gerard switches on the generator, and all sorts of sounds blare: Birthday music from the main room, the command center's alarms as the doors unseal. The base rumbles, as something moves below it. Gerard, not happy about that, primes the grenades and tosses the Grenadolier into the big dirt pit. Explosion, bug guts, and decidedly non-human screaming.
Carol powers up the medpod and jams Harper into it. He passes briefly into a comatose state, but is resuscitated with stimulants in the pod. He wakes up strapped down in a pod full of needle-arms and saws, which are rapidly bio-printing new flesh for him. Terrifying!
On the way back, Lexie and Gerard loot the command room, snatching the base's logs and AI computer core. Lexie tries to talk to it, but it won't engage with them. Fair enough.
When Harper is good enough to at least walk, Carol disengages the medpod, and forces him to carry the bio-printer, since she wants to take it with them. The medpod itself is sadly too large to take, despite its usefulness. There's something moving in the vents near the medical bay.
They make the wise choice to ditch. Dashing as fast as they can (not very fast in Harper's stimulant-powered barely-together body) out of Greta Base, through the rain, and back to their APC. They drive back to their LZ, and Eiko picks them up. Mission accomplished.
All in all, they have no real idea what the Carcinid actually was, why it was there, or how it got there. But that's fine -- They got the data they came for, and most importantly, they didn't die!
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