Mothership: Gradient Descent | Is It...Watching? Are You...You?

Creating your character

Mothership character creation is intentionally very fast—it's intended that if a player's character dies at the table, they roll up a new one and rejoin the action. As such, and in order to create compelling narrative connections between crewmembers, we will create characters together at the table. I'll be there to guide with any rules questions, and even with new players, character creation is unlikely to take any more than 30 minutes—we'll start playing immediately after! Players roll a character using the standard instructions from the official Mothership Player Survival Guide with the following exceptions: ✅ They may assign their randomly rolled stats to attributes of their choice ✅ They may roll twice on tables and take their preferred results ✅ Players who want to include third-party Mothership content in their character at creation can message me beforehand and we can discuss if it fits!

Preparing for the session

✅ Players will need to join either a Discord server or Discord group chat (if they would prefer not to join a new server) ✅ The game will be hosted via a Discord audio call ✅ Players will be polled on both their comfort and desire with inclusion of video—if everyone is comfortable and anyone desires it, we'll play with video on ✅ If some players are uncomfortable with video, but anyone would like me as GM to have my video on, I am also opening to being the only one on video! ✅ Google Sheets will be used for character sheets ✅ I'll show maps through Discord's chat or whiteboard features, or a simple free VTT like Owlbear Rodeo—happy to use whatever platform is easiest for a given table!

What Jess brings to the table

⭐️ Sandbox, open-world style play 🏝️ ⭐️ Dynamic NPC factions and relationships to create a living world that responds to players' choices 🫂 ⭐️ Heavily stylized and dramatic character voices 🗣️ ⭐️ Vivid descriptions of manmade horrors beyond comprehension 😱 ⭐️ Character backstories woven into new and existing module storylines 📚 ⭐️ Over 15 years of GM experience 📣 ⭐️ A professional educator's ability to teach new and unfamiliar systems 👩‍🏫 ⭐️ An award-winning game designer's ability to make flexible rulings on the fly 🎲

Homebrew rules

For those familiar with the Gradient Descent module, I make a small number of changes to the story of the A Pound of Flesh module for reasons of safety or making it easier to run as a one-shot: ⚠️ The "Hel" floor upon which (in the module as written) there are typically children androids being eternally tortured is instead shuttered, the floor having been lost to a fire well before Monarch's takeover. ⚠️ [SPOILERS] MONARCH itself is splintered into multiple versions, with different personalities and different domains within the station. Additionally, my Mothership one-shots use a small set of well-tested house rules, many of which come from the list of suggested potential house rules in the official Mothership Warden Operation's Manual (i.e. the GM's guide.) These include: 🎲 MODIFIED ARMOR DEGRADATION: Upon taking damage in excess of your armor’s AP, halve its AP, rounding down. At 0HP, it’s destroyed. 🎲 MODIFIED IMPENETRABLE WOUNDS: You cannot take 2 Wounds in one instance of damage; if you would do so, you remain at 1 HP.

How Jess creates a safe table

Given that Mothership is a horror game, the proper use of safety tools & safety discussions is particularly important. To that end: ✅ At the beginning of the session will have a discussion of 'how hard we want to go at' various common horror elements, and I will adjust my GMing and descriptions appropriately ✅ Topics that are triggering for any player (even those that appear in the official module) will be removed, and descriptions of elements like violence, gore, and more will always be adjusted to the comfort level of the player who is least comfortable with those depictions ✅ A Lines and Veils document will be sent out beforehand for players to add lines and veils, then reviewed at the beginning of each session ✅ Players may send X (stop), N (change direction), or Os in chat or by indicating them verbally—as I always tell my players, I used the X-card live on a stream demonstrating one of my own games, so believe me, it's totally okay to use the X-card! ✅ There is an Open Door policy, and players are welcome to leave or pause play at any time