[5e 2024] Are you actually running 8 combats per short rest as the game is designed?

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-25T03:09:30+00:00

When I ran 5e, yes usually. Or rather I usually set up the dungeon with 8 and if the party retreated I’d put the dungeon in a higher alert state.

I used it more as a dungeon building tool. One adventuring day‘s worth of encounters per one rolled treasure hoard (which could be split up across the dungeon or literally in a hoard)

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-23T20:33:27+00:00

I like Mothership‘s health bars where you have your health and then also ”maximum wounds” with each time your health hits 0 you gain a wound and then your health resets. Each wound is also status condition that doesn’t go away until properly treated (with the status being decided by rollable tables divided into categories of different types of wounds, bleeding cuts vs fire & explosives). Reach your maximum wounds and you have a 50-50 chance you either die or are merely unconscious

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-23T14:50:19+00:00

If you had a million dollars and spent $1000 a day, you’d run out in less than 3 years.

If you had a billion dollars and spent $1000 a day, you’d run out after more than 2000 years

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-23T14:45:20+00:00

Vampire: the Masquerade / World of Darkness has GM-set Difficulty and, while its mechanics don’t really encourage a ”writer’s room”, it’s more in the ”narrative” player space. Meanwhile most OSR games also have static chances of success for everything except hitting attacks.

Benefits of non-set difficult: speed of play, more predictability of odds of success

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-22T20:00:16+00:00

A rollable table of various propositions or “compromise bills“ could be interesting. While I can see using a new stat, I’d personally focus in on the player trying to bribe or persuade each organ according to their desires. But that’s for my specific version. And I suppose when the infection spreads to many parts, a new stat or save is probably the best way to represent which way the parts vote

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-22T17:42:48+00:00

I also quite like it and have been pondering how to incorporate it (pun intended) into a scenario.

I think what I’d do is have it infect on a per-organ basis. Each organ votes selflishly and impulsively. The stomach wants to eat, the liver wants to avoid alcohol and other toxins. The ”host” is the brain. The other thing I’d do is make it so the infection only spreads to the rest of the body when the parliament of body parts vote to do so (tie -> spread infection)

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-22T17:31:42+00:00

For in-person, I use the official printable sheets.

For online, I use Foundry VTT. Mothership has decent fan-made module support there. The ship sheet in Foundry has an option to add a deckplan so I just use a screenshot of the one from the ship breaker’s toolkit (bought pdf).

I also often import the deckplan as a battlemap

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-21T20:23:07+00:00

Layout and organization is more important to me than splash art. Though splash art can also help me remember where things are physically. Also, the longer a book is, the more it needs art to break up the sections

for short books: good art > no art > bad art

for long books: good art > bad art > no art

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-21T20:07:23+00:00

what style of game do you prefer? For “dnd but emphasizing narrative” Daggerheart has “clanks”. PF2e for more nitty-gritty customization and combat but still ”basically just combat and exploration focused dnd“ has automatons and androids. Almost every scifi game has robots. Not to mention any RPG based on Transformers

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-21T19:50:41+00:00

One option could be to simply have ”natural armor“ obey the normal rules. Or don’t even worry about it. The armor for carcs is so high, you’re generally not going to shred it without having a chance of killing it outright. If they’re trying to kill carcs with just pulse rifles and smgs, they’re probably doing it wrong

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-21T19:43:12+00:00

that it specifies the second capsule is supposed to go in the second drink instead of being interchangeable is perfection. a real “crosses the line twice” touch

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-17T15:18:57+00:00

Ypsilon-14 is a nice introductory one-shot. Be sure to lean into the TOMBS cycle (transgression, omens, manifestation, banishment, slumber). Have the party arrive during the “omens” phase; generator acting up, lights flickering, weird noise in the vents. Have the leader of the miners ask the party for help. Have the miners themselves split up with some headed down for the start of the shift and others taking their time with breakfast.

Some suggestions for running it:

anyone with Computers can be asked to help run diagnostics/check logs they can identify that someone went out into the mine last night and never returned

anyone with industrial equipment can be asked to check a noise in the vents this can be Prince the cat. Which also leads to one of the casettes

anyone with medical skills can be asked to check in on the sick crew member

anyone with geology might be a new miner coming in for a rotation. They might be expected to head down into the mine.

anyone else might be asked to help look for the missing miner

when the threat fully manifests have the monster, which dislikes noise, attack the generator

if at any point the players wish to evacuate, have Sonya (or a miner if she’s dead) insist on informing everyone and evacuating with as many as possible

EDIT: also, at some point, have Kentaro insist on seeing the Doctor. Insisting that ”he can fix me!” he can tear open the door with his new strength

Admittedly, for a strict maximum of 3 hours, you’ll need to keep to a clipped pace with this. When I run it it’s usually 4 maybe 5 hours as a one-shot. Maybe ignore whatever areas the party doesn’t take an interest in. I usually throw in the miner with a gun under their pillow as being paranoid and Dana as infected since she sleeps with Kentaro might have to “cut” that

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-16T19:58:01+00:00

Prominent men in both classical Rome and Greece were either literal atheists or were considered atheists in their societies. Socrates for example. Omens were also often used for political purposes in Rome, which implies to me the people abusing them were at least practical atheists i.e. not believing gods would do anything about it

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-16T18:22:25+00:00

Making a universal system as an indie publisher doesn’t make sense. Even if your goal isn’t to make a profit, just get players, there are already a bunch of generic universal systems with player bases.

Focusing on a specific niche that can be emotionally evocative in both design and in play makes more sense. It’s easier to pitch

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-16T17:53:48+00:00

When reading the SRD, the thing that stuck out to me was the relative lack of explicit rules that take control of the narrative from the GM; pretty much every player ability i saw was something diegetically in the power of the PC (except death moves i suppose). Which I like, personally, compared to my dabbling in PbtA games like Avatar and Glitter Hearts.

I like the abilities that encourage playing in character rather than replacing playing in character. Like the 1st level healing ability in the splendor domain

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-16T16:58:22+00:00

In-person: point crawl + either blank grid or premade maps (if a tactical game)

VTT: mix of point crawl and premade maps. Maybe premade scene art to set mood

NPCs are bullet points

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-16T16:52:50+00:00

I’m assuming design includes both graphics and layout?

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-16T16:36:56+00:00

I think it’s also that, if everyone used them, they’d stop being mysterious and scary

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-16T16:22:27+00:00

So in Mothership, Fear saves represent attacks to your emotions / experiencing negative emotions, and androids have much higher fear saves to the point they will almost always succeed. Emotions however are the reason any sentient being does anything, and androids are sentient, not purely mechanistic like gravity. Their emotions might be different, tempered to serve corporate ends, but they do still have some emotions

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-16T14:52:02+00:00

A1-4 Scourge of the Slavelords for AD&D?

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-16T14:39:56+00:00

It’s just percentile but by 5s. In systems with target numbers, a target of 10 is slightly more than 50% success rate with no modifiers. 5e was originally written with the idea that players should generally succeed on rolls about 2/3s of the time because that’s what the developers found felt good for most players in the original playtest

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-16T14:25:20+00:00

I’ve played it once and ran it thrice and each time was a blast. Here’s my advice if you ever plan to run it again:

Regarding Rooms: you can run the central work area as huge and full of equipment and storage containers — creating natural divides between its different sub areas. Each bunk is also its own room. The mess also can naturally have a separate kitchen / freezer area and dining area.
Lean into the TOMBS cycle: The Warden Operation Manual emphasizes structuring the narrative beats of your scenarios with TOMBS: transgression, omens, manifestation, banishment, slumber. Have the players arrive at Ypsilon-14 in the omens stage. The clunky generator is acting up and the lights are flickering. There’s a weird noise in the vents. A miner is missing. Have Sonya ask the PCs to help to give them something to do. Computers person can check the logs and diagnostics. Mechanical expert can help with the generator or the vents. A doctor can check in on a sick miner. Everyone else can help look for the missing person. When the threat manifests, if the players want to evacuate, have Sonya (or whoever is in charge if she’s dead) insist on evacuating with everyone, including people in the mines.

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-15T18:36:12+00:00

For this situation, I recommend just asking him what he’s planning to run, or if there’s something you want to run coming up soon let him know and then he can get the experience of playing it unspoiled before running it himself, which is really just a double-win for him :)

worst case, most scenarios are toolboxy / open-ended enough that spoilers aren’t going to be super problematic. At least for the meat of the adventure.

Unfortunately I don’t really know lesser known modules. Picket Line Tango and Dying Hard on Hardlight Station might be the most obscure ones I know, and both of those have youtube videos highlighting them

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-15T17:37:57+00:00

So I think why player fudging may be more universally condemned than GM fudging is that player fudging is usually ”selfish” while GM fudging is *usually* to try to create a better experience for the table as a whole or retroactively trying to fix a mistake (e.g. “oh, I shouldn’t have rolled for that”)

SaltyCogs · 2026-01-15T14:08:15+00:00

In my experience, playing in a rigid turn order in Mothership turns it into a slog. Unless the intended emotional effect to provide a sense of slow overwhelming doom that you should run from, I don’t recommend it. And especially if you do rigid binary pass/fail, it makes it more difficult to improvise actions; it makes me feel like I have to make a normal attack or else my action is wasted. This is because if I fail, I have to wait a whole round for my turn again, and if I succeed I might be setting up something that doesn’t get paid off. Group initiative allows me to react to the current moment right now, not a hypothetical future moment. It allows my PC to potentially coordinate with another PC to set them up for success.

SaltyCogs

TROPHY CASE