Hacking the Mothership
Troubleshoot: My hack, de-make, and rebuild for Mothership.
I got caught in Mothership's tractor beam almost immediately—a sci-fi horror game with cotton jumpsuits, iron hulls, and chumps working forklifts. However, after years of playing Mothership, I've gravitated towards three parts of the game:
The best part is solving problems. Open-ended puzzles, fun tools, and clever players puts Mothership in warpdrive. The best modules usually pair this potent combination with a heady sci-fi concept.
The worst part is the mechanical crunch. It's not bad or hard, but the least interesting parts of Mothership can be read off a calculator—stats, saves, counting credits, and making calculations. I love the stat tree, but I find the bonus awkward. I like that marines get a bonus to combat, but I don't like how regular combat is a stat you roll against. In short, my favorite parts of Mothership are qualitative, and my least favorite are quantitative.
When in doubt, pour on the gas. A friend described his design approach like this, "I don't worry about pacing. I just roll in the powder kegs." Fill rooms with things that explode then hand over the matches.
These three opinions grew like a red Martian weed. When Mothership's first edition finally landed at my table earlier this year, another alien system was there to greet it…
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