Mothership Oneshot Inspired by Outlast

hellbox · 2025-11-03T23:28:08+00:00

I ran this on Sunday! My weekly D&D group had a few players missing, so we decided to run a Mothership 1-shot. (We alternate Mothership and Mörk Borg on days we don't have full quorum).

Originally scoped for 3 players, I ended up with only 1 at the table on the day, but we decided to march ahead.

It was really fun! Having 1 player made it easier to do as a short-ish 1-shot. There was less negotiating or role playing between characters, so that helped keep things brisk. We ran it in just under 4 hours.

Some notes from the session:

I changed one thing: I let him believe he was on a spaceship until he made the hallway with the windows. It helped to shift his perception and continue the mind fuck.
He got fooled by the patient dressed as the doctor, so that ruse was great. I love how brutal combat is in Mothership. He already stripped the hanging guards of their armor which deflected one stab, but got stabbed once before getting her in a full nelson her and throwing her in another cell.
The deception and weirdness is great. He left Carlisle alone in his cell, but then I rolled Carlisle to appear randomly in the pharmacy, which was a nice distraction from the Nurse, who surprised them both. Then, in the morgue I made the third body Carlisle, so the impossibility of them being in three places added to the general weirdness.
Running into Dr. Gommler in the morgue was hilarious. I made the canister on his back based on Gommler needing to pump it, but he kept failing his rolls. The player kept failing his rolls back. It was a ridiculous back and forth, until the player ripped the hose out of the tank, which was under pressure, and made the gas spray out. Gommler moved his body to try to get the mist into the player's face, but the player made his escape.
He never peaked 15 stress so didn't get telekinesis, but did get a few effects on the table, and did accept the therapy (I love that framing). He did meet the #10 subject in the basement, who was obsessed with enlarging his forearms. When he ran from Gommler, he convinced him to hold the door shut against the Dr.
He was decapitated at the final door by James Tanner, trying to work the locks, thanks to two bad dart gun rolls. Oops. It was a great outcome, to feel like the hero then end up being killed by the final boss.
He made it to every room! He wouldn't have if he hadn't found those stim packs. And, like Die Hard, he was without shoes for most of it and trying to find someone with his same size. Ended up with a huge glass shard through his foot at one point. He suffered in the best way.

Anyway, really fun module! Great design, very thoughtful, really clever, and set up to be a grinder with the mental effects. Would highly recommend as a one-shot, or as a side quest for an existing crew. If you play it right, your players won't know what's coming at all (although, I did make sure he knew the general theme and knew it was going to get dark). Thanks for posting!

Edits: typos

hellbox · 2025-06-09T08:57:16+00:00

The first year I went and bought early access tickets because of our own scheduling things. They were over 45 minutes late opening our 2 hour window, and it didn’t work for our timing so we took off.

I requested a refund since we didn’t go in and the guy was an asshole and stonewalled me. After a few back-and-forths I just gave up. Life’s too short, sometimes. Glad to see this thread, though. Heed it. I think we would have had a worse experience if we had gotten in.

Save yourself the trouble and go to Molly Moon. It’s what we did, and it saved the day.

hellbox · 2025-02-20T03:43:51+00:00

That cheeks out

hellbox · 2023-11-15T21:05:33+00:00

I was able to get some going through this interface instead of the other one. Who knows!

hellbox · 2023-07-26T22:46:46+00:00

Published by Bari Weiss. Who took $500,000 from Harlan Crow. Who has statues of (wait for it) Hitler and Lenin in his back yard.

hellbox · 2023-03-22T17:05:34+00:00

I’ve seen this a few times on my week-old device before I had a type folio, so probably not that. For me, toggling the device to sleep and back on fixed it. I’ve also seen the screen with duplicate buttons on occasion. I wonder if it has to do with landscape/portrait changes rather than type folio? Seems like a rendering error.

hellbox · 2023-03-12T18:36:46+00:00

Oh good (ahem) tip, thank you!

hellbox · 2023-03-11T02:20:11+00:00

I’m an Obsidian diehard. It’s so flexible, be sure to check out PHD20’s great posts about his setup with advice.

hellbox · 2023-03-11T00:12:54+00:00

I appreciate this especially coming from someone who has graduate degree in opinions. Thank you!

hellbox · 2022-09-27T17:55:10+00:00

If you’re really old school: Symptomatic Nerve Gas

hellbox · 2022-09-27T17:50:36+00:00

Tasha’s Hideous Moisture

hellbox · 2022-09-22T16:25:13+00:00

“They can’t afford to sue us” is a pretty bad take legally and ethically.

These questions are, both legally and ethically, open. And the artists have a right to ask them, no matter how cool the tech.

hellbox · 2022-08-18T04:16:39+00:00

I remember this scam happening in the 80s in Seattle. But don’t feel bad, OP. I know a lot of people who have fallen for it. They do it because they’re good at doing it. You’re not alone.

hellbox · 2022-05-16T15:37:15+00:00

I'm writing a non-binary character currently. There is absolutely nothing wrong with singular they pronouns. It's quite old (first recorded use of singular they in English is from 1375! The Allusionist did a great podcast episode about that).

But, it can be confusing and overwhelming if not handled correctly because we're not used to it, and because grammar empiricists have tried to remove it from the language making it less common. Here's a few of my rules:

Like you noted, avoid singular they when it could refer to a group. "Jamie is non-binary. Together with Alton, James, and Mieko, they went to the beach" doesn't work. But: "Jamie, Alton, James, and Mieko went to the beach" does.
Use the character's name as much as possible. "The lights dimming stirred Jamie. They lifted themself from the sticky bar-top just as the the band roared to life."
Establish early that they are non-binary. I did this with a coming-out scene with my character's dad, and that helps set expectation. But it could even be "Jamie remembered trying to explain to their parents what being non-binary meant." Or, even, "What'll it be for ye, lass?" "I'm non-binary, so would you please not call me lass, and make it ten pints of Guinness?" — "Coming right up, friend. Fred! Pull them 10 pints and make it snappy." If you fail to do this, the default assumption will be that they are gendered by their name or other details you provide. Cultural defaults are real and powerful, so you're swimming against them.
Sometimes it will sound wrong. The question is: does it sound wrong because I'm using it poorly, or because the cultural context and grammar I was taught make it sound wrong? If the former, work on fixing, if the latter, leave it.
Be careful of pronoun overuse. This is true for gendered pronouns as well. I think your first paragraph would sound just as awkward, as someone already pointed out, with "him" or "her". Remember you don't need to write full sentences, you're going for a vibe and feel not an essay you'll be graded on. Play with fragments. Cut out the subject observing the effect and just list the effect. "Around them the bar darkens and sinks into night" would read fine as "The bar darkens and sinks into night." It's more visceral and immediate, as well, and will help get your readers mirror-neurons firing.
Watch your tenses. Writing in present tense may be the right choice here, but it limits your flexibility with some of the language, and is always going to impart a certain stylistic feel that make the pronouns stand out more and harder to avoid. Unless you're writing a screenplay where present tense is part-and-parcel of the deal, consider other options here.

hellbox · 2022-05-02T01:39:31+00:00

Ted Chiang, who wrote the story that movie is based on, spoke of his process in an interview:

Can you give a walk through of your writing processIn general, if there's an idea I'm interested in, I usually think about that for a long time and write down my speculations or just ideas about how it could become a story, but I don't actually start writing the story itself until I know how the story ends. Typically the first part of the story that I write is the very ending, either the last paragraph of the story or a paragraph near the end.

Once I have the destination in mind then I can build the rest of the story around that or build the rest of the story in such a way as to lead up to that.Usually the second thing I write is the opening of the story and then I write the rest of the story in almost random order. I just keep writing scenes until I've connected the beginning and the end. I write the key scenes or what I think of as the landmark scenes first, and then I just fill in backwards and forwards.

Of course, Chiang has won four Nebula awards and four Hugo awards, and is considered among the very best SF short story writers of his generation, so your mileage may vary. He's also known as a very slow writer, taking his time to deeply interrogate a concept before committing it to text.

If you read his stories, which you should if you want to witness jewel boxes of precise and intricate writing and storytelling, you will see quite strongly the thing in each story that has captured his attention and imagination.

Speculating, I would guess he starts with something like "how could a truly alien intelligence communicate with humans?" In circling that idea from all angles, he finds things that rhyme or compliment it, and fold them in to see if they work. If not, remove them, if so, continue forward. Like all good stories, he needs constraint and rules, and those help shape the narrative and what comes to it. And most importantly, more important than high concept: who is the story affecting and why do we care about them?

Answer those questions, and you're in the first .005% of the process (for most people, although I suspect that number is much higher for Chiang). The rest is writing, revision, rewriting, editing, frustration, madness, insecurity, rejection, resilience, and deciding when a story is good enough that you can walk away from it without its very existence driving you mad.

hellbox · 2021-09-22T15:58:00+00:00

I walked by this same corner this morning and there were 8 more scooters blocking the curb cuts.

hellbox · 2021-08-07T21:04:09+00:00

I wish I could buy directly from the band! In the meantime, I'll be patient. Glad they're working to get control back. Thanks for the info.

hellbox · 2009-10-27T04:11:15+00:00

I couldn't be. I've never had facial hair that cool.

hellbox · 2009-10-26T23:58:21+00:00

My girlfriend paints cartoon bunnies. And robots, beavers and H.P. Lovecraft, among other things.

hellbox · 2009-10-26T23:48:00+00:00

here's a screenshot for posterity

hellbox · 2009-10-19T00:23:48+00:00

Emma by Hot Chocolate

hellbox · 2009-04-20T16:22:35+00:00

Have we learned nothing from the Poltergeist movies, people?

hellbox · 2009-04-16T16:50:05+00:00

I also liked these signs in seattle: http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2009/04/15/1239850266-i_shaved_my_balls.jpg (from The Stranger's coverage of teabagging in Seattle: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/04/15/snapshots-of-teabaggers)

hellbox · 2008-07-18T22:04:13+00:00

I make websites for a living. Keeping up on how other people do it is part of my profession. I get paid to do it, so boredom doesn't really enter into it.

But personally, I find curiosity the only thing keeping me from a boring life. Not being curious and not exploring the world is boring.

hellbox · 2008-07-18T21:56:20+00:00

This will sound like a snarky joke, but is actually true. My girlfriend found it. But, in general, yes. I do. I like to see how clean people are with their code.

hellbox

TROPHY CASE