Mothership: Dead Planet

Mothership: Dead Planet by Donn Stroud
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A few years back, I raved about the ingenious and innovative design of the role-playing supplement Vornheim. With Dead Planet , Fiona Maeve Geist, Donn Stroud, and Sean McCoy have taken those innovations and built (with cybernetic implants and a dash of sorcery, no doubt) what might be the best RPG supplement I have seen in ages, surely the best Science Fiction RPG supplement I've seen in many, many years. The judges of the 2019 ENnie Awards agree with me (or, perhaps, I agree with them?), awarding the supplement the Silver award for Best Adventure, right behind Chaosium's amazing Masks of Nyarlathotep (let's face it, no one was going to beat Masks this year).

How do I characterize Dead Planet? Take part Pandorum, part Alien and part Event Horizon and map the tropes not only on a ship, but on an entire planet (the Dead Planet) which is surrounded by orbiting derelict ships.

The first section gives an example ship, The Alexis, and a mini-adventure/exploration that would make a great one-shot (at least I hope so - I'm running a Traveller hack of this for my weekly gaming group next week!) or introduction to a Dark Planet campaign. Following this is a derelict ship generator that allows the Game Master (or "Warden" if you are playing the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG - also an ENnie winner - for which Dead Planet was written) to create as small or as large as of a ship as desired by throwing dice and consulting easy-to-use tables (yes, this includes generating a map on the fly, randomly, as well). Then, find the Moon Colony Bloodbath section - a mini-campaign packed into a zine, essentially. But without the usual "quirkiness" of zines (I know, I know, I've made my own, I know . . .) - no, this supplement is eminently usable at the table. Everything you need is here or can be generated on the fly quickly and efficiently by the Warden: facilities, planetary maps, NPCs, competing factions, monsters (some human), and more random charts than you will know what to do with, but which will all become useful in a mini-campaign. Dead Planet has it all! So put on your vacsuit, charge up that vibrachete, and get ready for action. Just remember, as the old saying goes: "In space, no one can hear you scream!"

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