I mentioned Mothership over in Daggerheart: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!
No doubt some of you have already played it but if not, here’s the Wikipedia description
Mothership is a science fiction horror tabletop role-playing game with Old School Revival style rules published by indie role-playing game publisher Tuesday Knight Games in 2018.
I only got around to playing it in a group around this time last year as I was getting into a bit of an OSR phase. Found a few Discord groups and played a few systems over voice chat with various VTTs. OSE, Shadowdark, Forbidden Lands, Alien, Mork/Cy/Pirate Borg (a system that deserves its own thread!) and eventually Mothership.
I found the aesthetic extremely appealing. If you take a look at the Player’s Survival Guide (The PDF is available for free from Tuesday Night Games) the art and layout have this clinical, corporate manual style while still being “cassette-futurism” and there are tons of incredible DIY-style zines (loads of amazing stuff available on itch.io too)
Setting wise, Wikipedia also describes it perfectly:
Mothership is set in the future when humanity has traveled to interstellar space. The horror takes notes of claustrophobia and isolation from the movies Alien (1979) and Event Horizon (1997).
I had a couple of sessions of the Alien RPG but I coudlnt’ get into it. The setting has too much ‘baggage’ for me as there’s IP and lore and everything that I felt like I was stepping on at times. Mothership still keeps that vibe but if you see acid burning a hole in some drive plates you’re still not exactly sure what it could be!
I know this is not exclusive to Mothership but the mechanic that really drives the horror home is the Stress and Panic system. The game actively encourages you to push your luck and voluntarily take on Stress when you feel that your character would do so. And that Stress builds up. Eventually, things go horribly wrong, and you are forced to make a Panic Roll and add your accumulated Stress to the result. It perfectly captures that movie-like feeling of holding it together right up until everything suddenly spirals out of control.
The VTT is great. it works really well and available for free on Desktop and Mobile Mothership Companion App – Tuesday Knight Games There’s a paid version but you definitely don’t need it as a player. The Warden (GM) gives you a code and you enter that into the app and you’re all synced up. It’s really nice and simple (I’m a big fan of FoundryVTT but that can get a bit much sometimes!)
I may have mentioned this once or twice but I’m not a fan of D&D’s combat 
. It just becomes a slog and your character is basically invincible which removes all risk. Mothership, like Call of Cthulhu, is the opposite. If you get into a firefight with a horrific eldritch monstrosity, you are probably going to die. It forces you to play smart, use the environment, or just run. Because it’s so lethal, it’s perfect for one-shots. Did I mention I’m not such a fan of campaigns either?
Anyway this post is getting too long. That’s all for now!
