The Danse Macabre

Session Notes (05/08/22)

Game: Mothership

Module: The Danse Macabre (Homebrew)

Players: 3

After some discussion about how we want to play mothership, we settled on an “anthology” style though it might dip in and out of narrative depending on how we feel.

Characters:

Lee, Engineer, “Biohazard” patch, and flint hatchet trinket, high score 1

Marli, Planetologist, “SUCK IT UP” patch, and DNR beacon trinket, high score 0

Antheridium 420 (Anthony), Android, “Plays well with others” patch, and calendar of military battles trinket, high score 0

Session:

Lee’s new crew picked up the following mission:

The moon Katje V was set up by the Paxton-Vibe Corporation to grow grain products (rye, bread, whiskey, etc.) and cattle inside an agricultural station (Callsign “Control 13”).  The latest cargo ship did not return, and there are no responses via long range comms.  It is suspected that a disaster of some kind has occurred, ceasing production.  You must go to the station, and find out what has happened.  The station’s “black box” will contain its metadata.  Find the computer core and retrieve this black box.

We roleplayed some short notes on waking up from cryosleep and one little ritual before getting suited up (everyone chose a communal cup of coffee).

They gathered on the bridge and observed out their viewport while their AI read them scans and comms data:

• Visuals: dry dock open; station structurally intact.

• Scans: signs of life scattered throughout the station.  Order of magnitude around 500 persons, lots of livestock noted as well.

• Comms: no response

Their mission report also told them the station should normally have a population of about 1000 persons, along with its animal populations.  They viewed the map of the station:

(image created by kludging an image from A Pound of Flesh in microsoft paint)

And the AI noted that most of the human lifeforms from the long range scanners were clustered in areas C, D, and E (training facility, slaughterhouse, and prayer gardens).  B is the agricultural facility, and A is the drydock.

They could dock at A, or they could land their shuttle on the moon’s surface and do a short EVA in hard vacuum to any of the many access doors at B, C, D, or E.  They elected to go the safe route in through A, fearful of what they would find with the human population.

As they docked, they observed the massive cargo ship, (The Padzhitnoff) in the neighboring bay.  They fully geared up in hazard suits, and disembarked through their airlock.

Immediately, they were confronted with a large mass of cattle that had wandered here and were blocking their path!

About 3 dozen cattle were packed into the space, preventing them from going anywhere.  They decided to give one of them a light shove, which successfully got the herd moving.  Once past, they boarded a people mover and went to “B” which the station map called the “Agricultural Facility”.

And upon disembarking there, they were confronted by a large bull who was rooting around in the waiting area.  After a moment of hesitation, the android decided to distract it while the scientists ran to the washroom and barricaded themselves.  With some extremely lucky rolls, the bull ran past the android, who dodged just in time.  The bull ran into the people mover and the doors closed and it was taken away.

Inside the agricultural hub they found that the wheat was covered in red dust, and there was a large amount of dust all over the floors.  Bees were buzzing throughout, but they avoided them.  Marli approached and took a sample, and with LASER FOCUS analyzed the dust, determining that they were spores from a fungus.  They also noted bare-footprints in the dust all throughout.

They moved towards module C on foot, taking the long walk through the corridor they stumbled upon a dead body, hands and feet exposed.  There were red welts on the hands and feet, and the same red spores had burst out around them.  Unsettled, they continued to the training facility.

Inside, they saw the large space was occupied with around 100 people, all barefoot and stripped down to coveralls, dancing.  They were dancing uncontrollably and moving erratically throughout the space.  All had red welts on hands and feet.  The crew wasted no time in accessing the nearest computer terminal and locating the black box.  While uninstalling it, a dancer moved towards them.  Emaciated, the dancer collapsed, died, and their hands and feet “popped” releasing more spores.  They all failed their body saves and retched (inside their hazard suits) at the sight.

A small debate then happened: Lee wanted to get the hell out, and Marli wanted to stay to find out more and maybe research a cure.  Anthony deferred to the scientists, and they ultimately made for a quick and uneventful exit from the station, resigning the 500 or so souls on it to their fate.

Warden Notes:

I wasn’t sure how “space cattle” was going to play out, but each encounter ended up being suitably tense and interesting.  I think normal animals in space are something we don’t see too much, but players always love it (Prince the Cat from Ypsilon-14, for example.  In the three times I’ve run it, the players have always decided they need to save the cat!).

I didn’t give myself a lot of tension levers in this module.  I wanted it to be (a) an ecological disaster, and (b) rooted in a simple mystery.  Together this would result in the “survive” being relatively easy (so long as those hazard suits stayed intact) and the “save” aspect being something that could be achieved at the risk of overstaying.  As far as “solve” goes, I felt having the origin of the disease be obscure/very hard to discern would make it truly difficult to do.  I used an encounter table as my sole source of tension… with no ticking clock.

I also baked in lots of animals that could puncture the suits: bees, if angered, could sting through, and the bull would gore people (certainly puncturing suits).  There were cats (with claws!) on the station, but never encountered.

I also wrote a note to myself that a “failed save” anywhere or at any time could indicate a minor tear or puncture (like we see in every single contagion/outbreak/etc. movie).  But this was frustrated by the fact that every single dice roll the players made was either a success or a critical success!!!  The android crit succeeded with a speed of 16 to avoid a charging bull!  I should note actually, that there was exactly one die failure, and I used it to invoke a PANIC check, but the player rolled “1” which indicated LASER FOCUS.  So the only failed dice roll ended up awarding them the only good PANIC result, hah!  So they had an incredible amount of luck.  It was wild, and honestly kind of fun.  I’ve never run a mothership scenario with so much success on the part of the players.  I am not sure if the new 1e character creation rules led to this, or if it was simply a fluke of the dice (again, the android’s speed was 16, so…).  My scenario also did not call for any SANITY or FEAR saves, but that was mostly by design anyway.

(Perhaps I could have ruled that seeing a dead body always invokes a FEAR save… maybe in the future.  I rule that “being alone” always invokes a FEAR save, so this would be another easy rule of thumb for FEAR.)

After the session, I was happy to hear that the players really dug the atmosphere, and the slow creepy weird horror of the “something’s wrong on the space farm”.  The Dancing to death/spore cycle reveal left them suitably upset for a horror game, which was great.

After the game, Marli’s player and I had a long talk about feeling unsatisfied, and it was a really great discussion about expectations and play and group dynamics.  We talked through how unsatisfying it was to simply “survive” and not even try to “solve” or “save”.  That final debate (in character) about whether to stick around and do something, or to just leave and “finish the mission” really hinged on Lee and Anthony sticking to their character’s roles.  Lee had survived exactly one mission (my earlier “Co-Location” module) and was really keen on keeping her new crewmates alive, and pushed for escaping as quickly as possible.  Anthony played the differential role of android and insisted on following orders from the two scientists.  Marli’s player felt that she should have been more assertive in playing her character, who she imagined as being a lot more headstrong, but felt that out of character that since this was only the second session with this group that she didn’t want to push too hard.  In retrospect she wished she did.

I do think in Mothership, the reward of “solving” or “saving” is itself a reward: finding out the unknowable, or saving innocents is a worthy goal, and may cost your character’s life.  Absent of “XP” and leveling up, it creates an interesting and exciting atmosphere of play that really centers on a “what do you do?” mentality.  But the flipside is that if players just keep their heads down and try to survive they may have sessions like this where they get out and everything is fine… for them.  And they ask themselves “was it worth it?”  Now they have the deaths of almost 500 people on their minds… that they did nothing to try to help.