I’ve been running Blades in the Dark with some success, and one thing I really like is that the abstracted wealth and gear system removes boring and time consuming inventory management and provisioning aspects from the game. I don’t know if I’d want to replicate it fully in a game like Mothership, but I think there are ways to elide lengthy shopping trips and fussy bean counting using BitD as an inspiration
Your Gear consists of possessions you own and have steady access to. If you lose or expend an item on your Gear list, you don’t have to buy it again–once you get some downtime at camp, you reacquire more. However, you only have enough resources for the quantities listed–you may have “Travel Kit” on your Gear list, but you can’t take more than one with you on an expedition or sell them at quantity. This is an abstraction of time and wealth.
You start with everything in the Standard Gear list, which represents the equipment a ne’er-do-well like you can buy, steal, and bargain for. Your background provides some Special Gear, which represents what you and only you can get from your family, contacts, downtime spent tinkering and repairing, etc.
Other Equipment
Everything else, you have to buy to acquire (and buy again to replace). If you pay 50 times the list price for an item on the list in the book, you can add it to the Gear of the whole party.
Encumbrance
Just because you have all of this stuff doesn’t mean you can take it will you all the time. You have inventory slots equal to STR/5, rounded up. Your mount has inventory slots equal to its Instinct/5, rounded up.
Up to three days’ worth of food, coffee, and tolerable liquor. Each day is 1 ENC.
Water calabash
1/2/3
Up to three day’s worth of water. Each day is 1 ENC.
Extra ammo
1/2/3
Each 1 ENC of ammo is enough to fully reload one of your firearms once.
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Weapon List
All firearms are ritual tech. Reloading a single shot requires a significant action. Each manufacturing company confers a different advantage on a critical hit:
Lilit & Sons: wounds a hit location. Use the system on page 10 of the Mothership Player’s Survival Guide to determine the location. Wounded hit locations confer disadvantage on relevant checks until healed.
Baruch Manufacturing Company: knockdown
Ptolemy Arms and Design: ×3 damage
Sidearm
DMG
RNG
Shots
Lilit Model 13
1d10
20/50/100 m
6
Baruch Visitation
3d10
2/10/50 m
3
Ptolemy Cavalier
2d10
10/25/75 m
8
Melee Weapon
DMG
RNG
Special
Hardwood Knife
1d10
CQC
Can be used while grappling
Ceramic Machete
2d10
CQC
Good for hacking through vegetation
Ceramic Bayonet
1d10
CQC
Can affix to any longarm
Ceramic Glaive
2d10
2 m
Requires two hand
Longarm
DMG
RNG
Shots
Special
Lilit Helminth
2d10
50/100/300
5
Until receiving medical treatment, struck target suffers disadvantage on Body saves to recover HP or overcome infection.
Lilit Nightingale
2d10
100/500/1000
1
Makes almost no noise.
Baruch Seraph
4d10
10/25/75 m
3
½ damage to occult enemies normally immune to physical harm
Baruch Testament
4d10
10/25/75 m
3
On a critical hit, target suffers disadvantage on their Fear save
Ptolemy Emissary
3d10
20/50/100 m
8
On a critical hit, target suffers 1d10 bleeding damage/round until bandaged
Ptolemy Chariot
3d10
20/50/100 m
8
Can reload 1 shot per round without taking a significant action.
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Mounts
Mount
Combat
Speed
Instinct
ENC
Hit
Horse
15
45
45
9
2
Draft Hound
20
35
50
10
3
Mantid Nymph
25
75
15
3
1
Ritual Marionette
20
45
40
8
1
Ritual Augmentation
Metal pigment tattoos forming esoteric circuits for cranial and neurological stimulation, providing uncanny powers of perception and influence. Each ritual augmentation description lists the location of the tattoo, the permanent complication that results if the recipient fails a Body save during the administration of the augmention, and the effect of the augmentation when used.
Paying for higher quality materials and more competent surgeon-artists provides advantage on the Body save. Augmented characters may apply their Mysticism skill if they have it to any stat roll pertaining to use of the augmentation. Most augmentations except Water Sense will get you shunned, exiled, or executed, depending on the jurisdiction.
Suasion
Location
Back of head
Complication
Sanity save in presence of esoteric phenomena or suffer visual hallucinations
Effect
Requires eye contact to actuate. The target must make a Sanity save against the user’s Intellect or view user as friendly and appealing until they part company. Using Suasive augmentations successively on the same person makes it less effective; after the first successful Sanity save, a target becomes immune to this augmention from the same user, while failed saves confer advantage on subsequent saves.
Alethiometry
Location
Above and behind both ears
Complication
Sanity save in presence of esoteric phenomena or suffer total aphasia
Effect
The user can detect lies spoken in their presence at will. Written lies, lies transmitted electronically, or lies made in other languages and then translated into the speaker’s are not detectable. Very talented or esoterically gifted liars may be able to make a Sanity save to resist being caught.
Ignition
Location
Around the neck, centered on the throat
Complication
Can’t speak above a hoarse whisper
Effect
The user can subvocalize to ignite a human-sized or smaller creature or object within a 10 m cone in front of them. Creatures can make a Sanity save against the user’s Intellect to resist. Ignition deals 1d10 damage per round until extinguished.
Water Sense
Location
Back of tongue
Complication
Presence of large amounts of water causes migraines and visual auras
Effect
User can sense bodies of water within [Intellect] meters. Sensing water-based life forms or heavily adulterated bodies of water is possible, but requires an Intellect check with disadvantage. If given time to concentrate, the user can make Crisis Checks to extend the range (cumulative ×10 per Crisis Number). Using this ability attracts the attention of all esoterically sensitive entities within range.
Graviturgy
Location
Extending from temples to palms of hands
Complication
Failed Panic Checks cause local gravitational disturbances
Effect
User can crudely move and manipulate objects within [Intellect] meters (strength of a full grown person, dexterity and coordination as if one handed). Requires an Intellect check if there is some question as to whether or not an attempted feat is beyond the user’s ability. If given time to concentrate, the user can make Crisis Checks to increase the effective strength of this ability (cumulative ×2 per Crisis Number), but failure causes a catastrophic gravitational event. If used offensively, target can make an Armor save vs the user’s Intellect roll to resist, taking 1d10 damage on a failed save
I’ve been reading through Mothership, and want to use it to run a game modeled on Dune, Caves of Qud, and Moebius. Salvage-based scarcity culture endlessly recycling barely understood machinery, alien deep science reverse engineered into volatile and unreliable ritual technology, enormous draft insects hauling precious water across the desert. I spent a lot of time trying and failing to write a concise setting summary, so here’s an encounter table with some item and NPC descriptions instead.
by Moebius
by Moebius
Encounters
1
Moon Court bounty hunter in clean tech Janissary Frame
60 HP, 60 Combat, 30 Instinct, 40 Armor, Military Training, double move rate while in Frame.
2
Water Bearer carrying 50 days of water in a ritual tech cucurbit golem.
Water Bearer: 40 HP, 15 Combat, 35 Instinct, Creed, Geology, Rites Cucurbit Golem: 75 HP, 50 Combat, 15 Instinct, knockdown on a hit
3
Dog sledge trade caravan with 5000 credits worth of ritual tech
Surrounding dust storm limits visibility to 10m 5 (30) Hits, 65 Combat, 35 Instinct Make a Sanity save on first sight or become a lesser gul upon death
Vicious, but susceptible to taming (4): 45 HP, 45 Combat, 35 Instinct
9
Wandering Devil Merchant riding cucurbit golem
Knows how to implant any of its augments, requires 1000 credits Merchant: 50 HP, 35 Combat, 65 Instinct,Creed, Cybernetics, Rites, 3 random augments Cucurbit Golem: 3 Hits, 50 Combat, 15 Instinct, knockdown on a hit
10
Holy Ghost Brigade Sortie
Scout (4): 40 HP, 40 Combat, 30 Instinct, Military Training, Rimwise Sergeant: 50 HP, 45 Combat, 55 Instinct, Military Training, Creed, random ritual augment
cucurbit golem: a creaking ritual tech automaton with a head and torso formed from an enormous calabash, canine hind legs and humanlike forelimbs. Engraved with esoteric circuitry and typically painted with a fierce face. The automaton only obeys spoken commands from its owner; ownership can only be transferred verbally and in the automaton’s presence.
elder gul: an esoteric being, transfigured by death and time and the influence of some deep science mechanism. It is horse-sized, bone pale, shrouded by mirage shimmer, moving in a way that suggests a deer or maybe a wolf, commanding hot desert wind and bleaching the distinction between life and death just with its presence
Janissary Frame: +10% Armor and double move rate. A clean tech battle dress used exclusively by the Moon Court. Genetically keyed to its operator. Someone with knowledge in hacking or jury-rigging could trick it into working for an illicit user for a time with a sample of the real owner’s biological material, but it would take real cybernetics expertise to truly jailbreak it.
Rites and Creed: Rites is a skill, representing knowledge of protocol for greetings, farewells, insults, haggling, marriages, funerals, alliances, and the like. If you want to convince someone of something, knowledge of Rites helps. Creed is a replacement for Theology, representing a general knowledge of all the various religions and esoteric beings that proliferate in the desert. It probably specializes based on major religion or religion type, but I’m not that far yet.
ritual tech: Modern technology has been adulterated with superstition and supplemented with reverse-engineered alien deep science, yielding an unpredictable but strangely efficacious “ritual tech”. As there is little infrastructure for modern material science and resources are scarce, most structures, vehicles, and devices are made from ceramics, plastics, and engineered wood. Metal goods and strictly conventional technology, known as “clean tech”, are expensive and reserved for space-faring vessels, heavy manufacturing, and high quality weapons, all monopolized by the Moon Court. Anyone attempting to repair, modify, jury rig, hack, or otherwise work with a ritual tech device suffers disadvantage on checks, unless they constructed or designed the device themselves–ritual tech is groaty fake science interwoven with reality-warping alien principles, and requires a mix of intellect, luck, and trial and error. Clean tech confers no such disadvantage.
ritual augmentation: Metal pigment tattoos forming esoteric circuits for cranial and neurological stimulation, providing uncanny powers of perception and influence: ignition, suasion, water-sense, alethiometry, telekinesis, etc.
Water Bearers: traveling aesthetic members of a reputable dowsing cult. Dig wells using sanctified ritual drills and sell water to those far away from water sources. Deny rumors of deep science, but people who show too much interest in the topic tend to disappear.
