I picked up mothership and having an entire game in zine format on 64 pages is incredible. The design is a delight, and the random tables is what I want from every game from now on.
I think my most interesting combat in this system had to do with a homebrewed item If you're familiar with dune shield generators, it functioned like those only slow moving things could pass through it. We get jumped in an alley by these guys, they're on both sides of the alley and we're stuck in the middle, fear saves, I'm an android it's under a 85 I get to act on the surprise round... I'm the only party member who gets to act on the surprise round. I shot at them with my revolver, shield gave them a beefy armor save, bullet bounced, second action to get into CQC get a lucky break they miss me with their weird cultist dagger. Our marine wasn't as lucky takes a bullet. Our marine throws a grenade at one, shrapnel bounces off the shield. Thing is fucking fierce. Top of the round speed checks, failure, as usual for me. (I have a in speed 41 by the way) The marine however crits his speed check, lobs another grenade, lays down some pulse rifle fire and moves to cover still nothing. Get stabbed this time, but you can't bleed steel so the bleed effect of the weapon doesn't kick in, barely a scratch, marine is fine this round he made it to cover. My turn I draw my Vibechete and with one solid swing,,, get parried by that cultist dagger. My character is pissed at this point and just tackles the guy that works, they don't have a good save against grapples. It was at this point I had an idea a devilishly evil idea. Top of the round speed check! Still nope, 93, not gonna cut it even remotely. Marine is still acting first though. More grenades this time he tried to aim it inside of the shield, land the grenade on the person, disadvantage first roll 33 second roll 21 it hits. Grenade does a hearty chunk of the guys health he has half of him blown off but he's still standing, everyone gains 1 stress from that. Marine uses second action to fire another grenade, misses. Cultist turn, my cultist cant break my grasp, cover is really nice, nothing more to say on the matter. My turn FINALLY first action I climb up the side of the alleyway and at this point everyone realized what I was doing. Second action introduce the cultist to my friend, gravity, via pile driver. "Roll to grapple?" 22 CRIT 3d10 x2 damage 58 points of damage, and he makes a morale test, he makes it and keeps fighting. Spend the rest of the encounter bodying this one cultist like I'm a pro wrestler fighting a toddler. Marine wraps up his cultist first, I wind up just slowly choking the other to death terrifying the crew. Moral of the story, idk man, when all else fails use gravity if you got it.
I’m currently making a character for my players who is using the same thing. A gunslinger who has a kinetic shield that blocks up to 20 dmg and then it burns out after 1 use. When he loses a life point it recharges and he gets 2 charges. Loses another life point and recharges with 3
Our d&d group has the next two weeks off, so one of the players asked to run this as a sort of one-shot. Only knowing d&d, I was nervous. This video was incredibly helpful. Thank you!
The nice thing about Mothership is that ships have similar abilities as player characters - speed, combat, damage. You approach ship combat in a similar fashion. :-)
About to run some gradient descent, thanks for the refresher! Ran a great combat in which the players turned a crashed ships auto cannon on a monster, killing it as well as a player who was caught in the crossfire
Coming back to this after running a Mothership oneshot, I massively underestimated how tricky it can be to run combat in this game. I need more practice
@@RPGSean I’m running Gradient Decent this Thursday. First time for all of us so I’ll be sure to keep you posted. Most of my group enjoys roll playing more than combat so I think it’s a good fit. :)
Great video, but still have a question that you might help, a creature has in its stats "hits: 6 (55)" this means it has to be hit 6 times before being killed, and it has 55 points oh health? Thanks.
@@blamp666 From what I can tell from the modules I have, their "politics" include being respectful of people's emotional comfort at the table by having warnings about the sort of content a given adventure contains, and that they have a pronouns section on their character sheet. Neither of which strike me as particularly political. People should be comfortable with the content they're playing and pronouns are just a thing people have.
@@wellyep790 But my native language doesn't have gendered pronouns. I guess I'd have to leave that section empty then. That's kind of annoying. Actually, is this even true? I don't see a section for pronouns when I'm googling Mothership character sheets.
@@lastburning The 1E edition sheets I have contain a section for pronouns. The sheets you're looking at may be 0 edition, or they may be modified to accommodate for the fact that your language is doesn't contain pronouns (if the sheets you're looking at are in your language anyways.)
@@wellyep790 I was looking at the 0 edition. People could put their pronouns in the personal notes box anyway. That's pretty annoying. I might edit out the pronouns box for my group.