Mothership TTRPG Review!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- Professor DM checks out a new sci-fi horror game. (Ep. #400)
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MOTHERSHIP PRE-ORDERS: www.kickstarte...
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In space no one can hear you roll 20s
As long as they can see it!
in space dice never stop rolling😂
Rolling a d100 anyway
That's beyond the point of the joke, smartie @@minimoose7890
If the original one is "in space, no one can hear you cry/scream"... screaming in terror or because you're dying... so the correct phrase would have been "no one can hear you roll 1s". There is no terror in roll 20s, quite the opposite.
"And if you hate me-there's a stat block-you can kill me." Love it!
Had me laughing hard
Farming the haters for content.
too bad is 70 USD... my budget as a family man with another child incoming is going lower
The rules are free! @@solouno2280
For what it's worth, I went through your backlog of videos for the last year and watched and liked all the ones that I didn't remember seeing. Hope that helps. Keep up the great work.
Wow, thank you!
I was fortunate to be invited to play a Mothership one-shot a few weeks ago. All the players went in cold without knowing the rules, but the system was super fun and easy to play! We mixed in a bit of comedy and my Teamster/Pilot, loosely based on The Dude, got it done with a cocktail in one hand and a putter in the other.
I've been loving a lot of the independent publisher games lately as a break from the super-hero fantasy. Thanks Professor for reviewing these types of games! And, yes, I will watch more Dungeon Craft
The Deathbringer outro mini-skits are a nice "Easter egg" for people who stick around to watch the video to the end. I'm guessing that must help with the Al Gore rhythm too.
I GMed Mothership just last weekend! The deluxe box set is gorgeous. It was a lot of fun! Everytime a character built up stress I couldn't help but grin mischievously. 🙃
Totally agree!
"I do not need the deluxe set" watches the unboxing.;.. DAMN IT!
This game is SO good! I've been running it for years now and it never fails to impress a new group of players! I absolutely love seeing the desperation of my players when they realize just how BRUTAL combat is in this game!
It is brutal.
Point crawls for maps are the best, quick and easy for prep. The high production value that the big companies put into map generation just isn't necessary for most homebrew sessions.
Except these guys are indy, and put production value into the games, AND its still a great value
It's so cool to see Prof. DM use this platform to showcase a couple of sci-fi type RPG's. Thanks!
Its a great game. Im lucky enough to be a one of 5 players in Mothership campaign. My character is a teamster. Background: As a homeless boy he was raised in the mean street of Prospero's Dream where he eeked out a living as a fixer and scavenger but had dreams of becoming a marine. Sadly he didnt make the cut (low stat scores) but found his way to the Teamsters Guild and his true calling as a teamster. On his first mission he lost his arm to a xenomorph predator hybrid. This was some great story fodder for his character arc. He now has a cybernetic arm that he wants to upgrade as soon as he earns enough credits. His current robotic arm is more Toy Soldier than Winter Soldier but if he survives another few missions who knows... plan ahead but dont plan too far ahead in this game ;)
Two SciFi RPGs in a row on your reviews, nice to see more genres of RPG! And a nice video again professor DM!
Glad you liked it.
Really cool to see a sheet that shows how to create the character!
YES!
I wouldn’t call Starship Troopers a horror movie but Aliens, Event Horizon, Pitch Black, and the video game Deadspace definitely are good inspiration for Mothership.
May not be horror in a strict manner, but it has some of the characteristics of Aliens in it definitely.
If you don't think Starship Troopers is a horror movie, you aren't really paying attention. Maybe try reading the book?
Yup. I mentioned those in one take but somehow ended up not using it.
@kiltedcripple Nice one, I did. Worst novel I’ve ever read. How about you read some PROPER military science fiction instead of that shit? I recommend Starfist, Hammer’s Slammers, or even Forever War. The only thing horrifying about Starship Troopers is that Heinlein thought it was a good idea to write it. It's dry, it's pretentious, it's preachy, he clearly did not consult any of his fellow veterans on what combat was actually like (despite being a veteran of the US Navy during WWII, he did not see combat.) Compared to literally anything written by the Vietnam vets that would come later, the only good thing Starship Troopers did was that it helped motivate later vets to take up writing as well. It motivated them for all the wrong reasons (Heinlein was about as popular with many Korean and Vietnam vets as he was with the war protesters) but it did motivate them.
Seriously, if I had a dollar for every pretentious moron that assumes I didn't read the book because I didn't like Starship Troopers, I'd have my house paid off by now. Even if we want to keep to the topic of horror, all three of those novels I named convey horror (especially the horror of war) better then Heinlein's book did. Starfist is horror in the randomness of war. Hammer's Slammers is horror in how ruthless and cruel war makes people and how often the people that declare war are often comically out of touch with those that fight it. Forever War is cosmic horror in belonging to an organization beyond your comprehension.
Deep Horizon for sure.
Love this minimal A5 format, and dossier-style presentation, reminiscent of Delta Green. It's going to be great fun to play/run! Thanks for the unboxing!
My friend designed a module for this system when it was still in early design back in 2020 called Bloom.
I'm glad Prof. DM reviewed the system. It's got style.
Bloom is a great module!
The mal screen and to smaller box looks great!
Great box.
One of the best sci-fi horror games ever made!
I concur.
Mothership 1e along with the anticipated Dolmenwood are really making my ttrpg year! I like to starting players off with the haunting of Ypsilon 14 it's like a mothership basic training. They ease them into dead planet or gradient descent. But now with 1e core set ...... my brain is on overdrive! Another great video professor dungeon master! Thank you😊
I ran a Halloween one shot using the mothership rules. My players loves so much they want to do another one this year.
Putting the youtubers as reference characters... is a very fun and exciting touch!
That stress mechanic looks awesome for space horror! Thank you for sharing this product Prof!
I think I'm tapped out on Kickstarters right now. But looking forward to the video. Love Dan's content. I'll watch anything from Dungeoncraft.
I did just get my knave 2 edition. It was from the first Kickstarter I had ever backed.
The wait time of nearly a year (at least that's what it felt like) did me in.
I don't think I will be backing another one in the future.
Thanks for your support.
My "Father's Day" Mothership 1e standard box set is in the mail.... very anxiously awaiting delivery!
Ive read the PDFs twice already since Sunday...lol
Sounds great!
Ok, I'm just going to pretend that the published author/English teacher meant to say "...that everyone is talkING about."😂 Love ya PDM, never change.
I fixed it. Thanks!
I've been eyeing this game for sooooo long. Super excited to play it for the first time this weekend at my FLGS for Free RPG Day!
Mothership has been in my game queue for a long time.
I'd guess most of your audience already knows about it, but for anyone who doesn't know, I'm glad you featured it.
Recently picked up the standard box. I need to bring it to the next game day to plant some alien viral seeds in their imaginations.
I think this thing is worth having just for the art. I started in TTRPGs before everything was high-resolution, painted classical art, when we'd go to the comic shop and pick up some stuff by Frank Miller or Moebius, or Steranko and love the diversity of the worlds they created, then play some RPG that may also have comic-y style art, or hardly any art at all.
The pages shown here are beautiful to me.
Always great to see the Professor's drop sci-fi content, complete with memes for the OG sci-fi cred! Incidentally, my personal favourite system, Eclipse Phase, is also an indie sci-fi horror game with a sanity mechanic.
Gotta love a game where you can have a heart attack! 🤣🤣 Plus, gold star for Prof. DM for letting people know there's a difference between Starship Troopers movie vs the book! I've found that many younger players don't even know about the original book.
Thank you for highlighting new game publications. Word of mouth is all I have for new indie offerings.
Nice review, I've heard that the gm support for the game is amazing
It is!
Thanks for the review. I picked up a digital version of the Mothership books last year, and I have a few friends wanting to get into a sci0fi game. I'll have to share your video with them.
Imagine how much of a "Event Horizon"-like the ship with a Deathbringer-AI would become xD
Your character can get a heart attack from stress that's metal AF! 😎🤟 Astronauts battling bugs and aliens! Androids and robots! Fun RPG!
I always like to see new people’s updates on rules, but what I like the most, is to see which rules they keep from others.
PDM's recommendations are consuming my game budget!
Sorry LOL The smaller publishers appreciate it!
Very excited to see you review Mothership. I'd been interested in the game for a time, but hadn't found an excuse to put any time into in-depth research. I'm glad you're doing all of the explaining!
Awesome! I’m really excited about this one. It’s on the shelf but hasn’t hit the table yet.
"there's a stat block, you can kill me!" LMAO
I got my set a few weeks ago, and I am really looking forward to running this.
Just what I love about this channel: honest opinions about worthwhile products.
Thank you for watching. I gotta tell ya, this product mad me think seriously about how Deathbringer will be packaged.
Really upset that I have work right as this is debuting, but I'm excited to see what Dan thinks as I haven't had time to run a game of this myself.
Lot's of fun.
I'd like to thank the all-powerful Algorithm for feeding my need for every DungeonCraft video! It it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have learned about Mothership and many other independent TTRPGs that I now enjoy. Thanks, Professor.
i have a player in my group looking to buy this so may just fall into a game eventually, cool vid ty Prof DM
Thanks!
I can not stress loudly enough how grateful i am for the attention this channel gives to indy games/game creators. In the entirety of my life, it has been a joy to work with and patronize individual artists and try to help them grow the business, not just in gaming, but in every sector. I don't give 2 loose shits about corporate conglomerates getting theirs, I'm a people person.
And this looks AWESOME. That story starter about the factory where you discover you might be an android too, yeah, that sold me right there. Off to click some links!
Ha, like the "new" surprised face. But now it makes me think of those fashion mobile games. Will we get our own Professor DM we can dress up in various hats? :D
Soon.
Just got the Deluxe edition and looking forward to running it.
You have mastered the algorithms along with the dungeons. Worth praise for the title alone.
The warden book is great, full of useful advice
I think so too!
DEATHBRINGER is so bad ass he doesn't need a space suit
I started a MS campaign on mondays and the players really dig it. I run it online and my VTT allows me to play videos into the face of the players. So i made little jumpscare clips to play in certain situations. That was something they never have had in any rpg so far and by god i really have to hide my maniacal cackle on this one.
My group are in our second scenario and it’s been an absolute blast. Like a slightly campy CoC in space.
Great review thanks and we all gotta love that ending Dave !
I love all Dungeon Craft videos!!! (Still!!) I'm slowly, in my spare time, making my way through all your videos, and loving every single one!
How do you think it compares to the Call of Cthulhu as far as “your characters days are numbered” aspect where eventually most succumb to madness? Does it lend itself to campaigns or more to one off adventure modules?
It’s basically an extremely elegant and simplified version of the Percentile System, so it’s already very familiar to someone who’s played Chaosium games! Prof DM may have different thoughts, but I think your question is dependent on how lethal you set your situation up to be, and how cautious and forward-thinking your players are.
If you give the scenario lots of options to think through and outsmart the dangers and a few opportunities to rest and recover from the horrors they’ve seen, players can last for multiple adventures. If they only have a limited time to react and the dangers are sufficiently eldritch and mind-crushing, an entire group can die or fall to insanity before the end of the first session.
@@VanDavis thanks. My experience with Cthulu has always been a more lethal, darker setting so I default to that in my head but what you say makes a lot of sense. It could be run either way. I haven’t run Cthulhu, just played. But I run 5e and I’ve run low lethality and high lethality. But when I run high lethality 5e I’m usually homebrewing the death rules. (Limited rests, Death at 0 hp etc.)
I love Dungeon Craft videos. Always informative. Mothership Sci-fi Horror RPG looks interesting, I'll have to try it out.
Glad to see you reciew this. I'm excited to pick this up for my birthday 🎂
The stress mechanic for Alien Rpg and Mothership are frighteningly similar.
Ah. Someone who knows that there is a Starship Troopers book and movie. Good man
Looks like an awesome game, I may need to start painting up some figures to give this a try. Thanks for the review
I am looking forward to getting this in the mail on Friday!
Happy to see more non-fantasy games getting attention! Book looks great, many cool illustrations. And the outro was hilarious as always
I always like this game, happy it came out with a deluxe edition 🎉! Great video Dungeon Craft.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Wow I actually get the video near top of feed!
Thanks for watching!
This looks great! Thanks so much for sharing, feels like Call of Cthulhu for space.
Awesome video! Always happy to see more Mothership coverage
OMG! Deathbringer said "I'm sorry"! Does this mean that he's turned over a new leaf? That he's softening? But, then when the context is taken into consideration, maybe not.
Maybe Deathbringer is just Canadian.
In the game, The Tomb Of Gyzaengaxx, can the Professor DM character cast a blessing of wisdom spell?
Gamers mostly come out at night. Mostly.
I love the "I have stats, you can kill me" line. All DM's should put themselves in their game like that. Just to give their players options.
Impressive review. Looks like a LOT is packed into those A5? sized rulebooks, and even more goodies in that Deluxe Set.
😳😳😳😳👍👍👍👍😎😎😎😎
Great Review as always DungeonCraft!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great to see independent gamers being promoted. Love it!
Also, I cracked when Deathbringer did the Hal quote. It seems in character for him 😄
You get bonus XP for liking cool movies.
Looking forward to your thoughts on the game. This has been on my radar for quite sometime. Don't know this is the version that gets me to buy in, but cool to see it.
Enjoy it!
Hope the video will reach a large audi2nce. The game seems very interesting and the explanations are clear and on point.
I’ve had Mothership and a few of the other module books for awhile, would be cool to run it! Love the video!
I’ve run this in several one-shots. It is extremely well done.
I Love ALL Dungeon Craft videos! Especially any that reference 2001: A space odyssey.
I played an Aliens themed RPG many years ago. The most fun I've had that ended in a TPK.
Very comprehensive, great review. I am sold. I'll grab the deluxe version when I will have some money to burn, got other porjects on hand atm. Super video Prof, as always.
I enjoy all of Dungeon Craft videos
ROFL! "And if you hate me there is a stat block, you can kill me."
Thanks for watching!
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 No problem! Thank you for making great informative videos. I like how you get to the point and don't spend a lot of time babbling. Very professional!
The first 20% of this video is advertisements and preamble.
Great review, will keep an eye out for it
I love this game. My buddies and I have been having a blast with it over the past little while. We mix it in between D&D sessions, and have fun rolling up new characters, because usually one survives.
I don't like crunchy rpgs but the graphic design and vibe of this game is superb
It's really not crunchy. Less so than Call of Cthulhu.
The Deluxe boxed set is beautiful, despite the wait.
Thank you for this review, looking forward to playing it in the future
As much as I prefer the d% method of outcome determination because we just already think in percentages and it's much easier to work with and improvise in compared to d20 or success counts, the stress system in Alien RPG is really damn clever in the way it handles risk/reward. Being stressed can actually increases your chances of succeeding because it keeps you hyper-focused on your priorities. It's still risky and can blow up in your face, but it keeps the ebb and flow of the drama a lot circular, with moments of tension and release, instead of just a constant death spiral where you can never recover.
On the other hand, as a licensed game, it's only built to handle specifically Aliens™ material, so while it's a fantastic space horror game, anything you want to do that isn't xenos, you gotta homebrew it. Which isn't that big of a deal, really, that's easily done, but these dudes really poured their heart and soul into gamefying the licensed xenos and with so many options available to you it does feel a little weird... plus I know from experience that asking people to play a game of Alien RPG that "may or may not have capital A aliens in it" is a little awkward.
Also the cinematic campaigns - the real meat of the game - require you to basically play scriptwriter for everything and the players don't really get to do anything. There's ways around this but they're kind of band aids, the truth is that a good space horror RPG game - and really any horror RPG game - is pretty dependent on having a good script and letting the players inhabit characters and actually be scared. CoC manages this but the cost is having fully written scripts where the player characters don't really figure into it at all and are just kinda along for the ride. In fact you really need to know the material because I've never read a CoC scenario where they don't sprinkle in suggestions for how to make your player characters feel like they're actually a part of the story. They usually at least like to give you a chance to through in a connection between a character and an NPC. I guess it kinda works since the characters are basically detectives anywas, but it's still kinda weird.
Anwyas, the fact that Mothership is d% based and has a fleshed out monster manual with multiple scenarios in the deluxe box and just seems more flexible in general is really appealing to me. But the notion of all games becoming a death spiral where the stress mechanic is just CoC's Sanity with a different name... idunno aboot that, eh? It seems like to really get the worth out of it you'd want the deluxe set with all the scenarios and things, that maximizes the flexibility and gives you the most stuff written down to work with. As in, if you're not getting that, then you're just re-buying Alien RPG but in a different dialect. You want the new ideas, you want the stuff Alien doesn't have.
So I guess, all things considered, my real question is: would it be better to use the Mothership set as a base and house rule in Alien's stress system and convert the licensed xenos over? Or use Alien RPG as the base and convert the Mothership stuff over to it? I know Alien is great and I've only heard great things about Mothership too, and they seem so similar... what should I do to smoosh together the best aspects of each of them to really run the best space horror RPG I can?
Great video. I do love the character sheet. Having all the information you need for character creation right there makes things faster at the table. This will give you a short session 0 and get the real game started. I am a fan of d100 games, this one takes those rules and makes them more digestible.
Mothership seems really interesting to me but short form survival horror makes me worry about consequences…if they are high and a character dies it adds to the tension…if the player just rolls a new character to keep playing then the tension would seem to lessen. In long form campaigns this isn’t so bad since the character was an investment but the story is long enough that multiple pc’s across the campaign doesn’t really break the game.
I love call of Cthulhu. One of my favorite things about playing it are keeping the characters scared and weak in a setting where anything bad can and will happen. Lots of tension. Dead pcs allow for different role playing styles across even one story.
Even my DnD style games…I prefer grittier campaigns instead of superhero fantasies with swords. My players all have backup character sheets but dead pcs tend to lose some/all gear and new pcs are found in compromised situations: low hp prisoners in cells, defeated npc as part of another combat scenario, wandering a dungeon low on supplies/resources. All of it keeps the players playing while the stakes are high for death.
How long are the mothership scenarios? Is player death a serious consequence to the scenario? Would using the types of strategies I have used before work well for bringing players back with new characters or is there a new adjustment to make?
Great review Can’t wait to pick this up.
_Daisy, Daisy..._
Deathbringer strikes again 😅
You get 100xp for knowing what he was talking about.
That game looks really fun!
Thanks for the review PDM
Mothership IS the 'mother' of all SCIFI-Horror RPGs. I didn't buy the deluxe version, but I am glad I bought it. If you like Alien, the Thing, or the Deadspace series, this is the game! The cover of the rules book says it all!
I so disparately need that deluxe box set.
Fantastic overview! Sold!
I've run a few games of mothership. Favorite one so far was loosely based of the movie black-hole. One PC died early and his replacement went full white whale and piloted the doomed exploration ship straight into the event horizon while the other player characters escaped.
I bought Mothership instead of Alien. I tend to like more malleable, toolbox type games than static setting, off-the-shelf licensed ones.
Me too.
Same! And, having read through Alien since then, I have to say I’m happy with my choice! 😀
It's simple: I see Dungeon Craft, I hit the funny button.
I prefer this sort of review-type content, in case anyone is training machines to tailor content to my tastes. Good job, Dan. Keep 'em comin'!
I need friends! looks like a great RPG. really like that you went through the entire box of both!