5MW Rokaner Report #6, Sci-Fi One-Shot Jam
RR#6, Valus-Sys: Sanctuary & Perseverance, June 2024
Howdy-hey travelers of the Void,
Do I start every newsletter by saying how busy I am? Some things never change I suppose! The biggest highlight of the month for me was that 5MW RPG was #3 on itch.io’s Top Popular Physical Games for two days!
Other highlights from this month include:
Digital launch of Outer Rim: Uprising.
Fulfillment starting for Bio-Drones & Cryo-Clones at long last.
Twisting Unseen playtesting.
Writing for a collaborative 3pp space pirate project for the upcoming Mothership Crime Month in support of the next TKG project, Wages of Sin.
And of course:
alt: Mothership Deluxe Box Set: zines, standees, GM Screen, Map, etc.
cap: This box set is glorious.
Mothership RPG 1E full release!
It’s out! It’s beautiful! It’s Mothership RPG!
Full-on retail is on for the US, and you can order outside North America if you’re prepared for those shipping costs! I’m looking forward to showing off these box sets at my FLGS and running in-person games this summer (in addition to the many, many online games).
To celebrate this, the Outer Rim: Uprising Crew is putting a modest sale out for the pieces you can grab in digital version. I wrote the Android Strike If you were holding out for pdfs, now’s the time!
5MW RPG & Mothership
Over the past couple months, I have been musing over questions about 5MW’s role within the larger Mothership audience. These thoughts were provoked by a couple of fronts.
First, creator of Mothership Sean McCoy responded to an AMA on the NSR Cauldron, and one Q&A hit me unexpectedly.
Q: “Some popular third-party material for Mothership seems to de-emphasize the horror in favor of the lo-fi sci-fi that the system also models. What are your thoughts on how Mothership fits into the overall universe of sci-fi TTRPG systems if it’s not just horror?”
I saw this question a few days before Sean came in to answer, and to be honest, I thought I knew the answer. Mothership is sci-fi horror, and I assumed Sean would evoke his blog post on “Environmental Horror Design”. But instead, Sean replied:
A: “Great question. I think Mothership aims to be a great sci-fi game as well as a great horror game, but there’s some give and take there. This is part of what I like about having a healthy 3pp scene is that you can serve more niches more effectively. But my hope is that over the life of the line, you’ll be able to put together a compelling Mothership campaign without much horror if that’s what your table wants”
Since the beginning, the goal of 5 Million Worlds was to live somewhere beyond the point where Mothership and Stars Without Number intersect. A high concept space adventure setting to clash with lil cog PCs who will not stand for injustice. I want to design this game so PCs can push at lil gears to make big things happen. While horror inhabits the 5MW, this is not a horror game. It’s a Panic Engine game.
The Panic Engine
The Panic Engine is the upcoming SRD for Mothership hacks. It’s named after the Stress + Panic system that drives narrative consequence in Mothership. Examples of Panic Engine games include Cloud Empress, Dive, Anomalous Investigations, and the upcoming TKG games Father Fog and null.hack.
Some might recall Cloud Empress was originally a “campaign setting” for Mothership RPG. The shift over comes down to “Are the PCs blue collar space workers?” Well, no. And the same goes for 5MW RPG. While I do think (and plan on running) watt’s game as a pieces of Mothership worldbuilding, it’s purely my table canon.
The thing is, I had started to rethink of 5MW as a space adventure setting, an echo of Cloud Empress’s “campaign setting” to fulfill the Mothership 3pp niche for low horror space games.
Second, this “great sci-fi game [that] your table wants” bit Sean said hit particularly true for my ongoing Mothership Outer Rim Marches (westmarches) campaign. I mean, we’re playing loads of 3pp modules so there is horror aplenty! The players’ quick wit has driven up survivability, and their humor & heart has given our game more of an adventurous edge.
5MW Setting packages?
So what’s the decision? I think it comes down to splitting hairs: writing adventures for Mothership and setting modules for 5 Million Worlds. My intention with 5MW from the start was to play Mothership adventures with more resourceful, far-future PCs, so I’ll be putting that theory to the test. The sandbox worlds and sectors, however, tie into the 5 Million Worlds setting, so I think I’ll start with a “setting package.”
The most basic package would be something akin to “humanoids everywhere” Culture novels and Star Trek series, where factions play a bigger role than Forms.
But haha, as evidenced by the last six months of Rokaner Reports, I’m obviously invested in creating a transhuman and posthuman sci-fi playground. I just think it’s fun to write gameplay features that allow players to interact with the worlds in more novel ways than if they were simple Trad hoominz.
“Distant Authority”
This brings me to a final point, another NSR Cauldron interview with a TKG rep, Luke Gearing:
I think for a big sandboxy setting (sci-fi or not) you need Distant Authority. You want at least one huge, centralised power and then you set your game on the fringes of its power. This does a lot of cool stuff for you. It means the players can do cool adventure stuff BUT they have to keep in mind that they shouldn’t break too many laws or else risk the wrath of the Empire (or Company or whatever).
Gotta say, it feels pretty validating to see Luke say the shit I’m thinking. So who is the Distant Authority in the 5 Million Worlds? Going back to when the 5 Million Worlds was my homebrew Stars Without Number setting, I have always held a pair of powers in the can for PCs who leave disaster in their wake. The first, and the only ones my players ever met, is a group type rather than one singular power. They’re the sector’s authoritarian shitheads.
Look. I hate fascists, I hate empire, I hate colonizers, I hate capitalists. They’re always gonna be the baddies. These short-lived powers always lose in the end, but give PCs lots of grief as long as they’re allowed to kick about. Following the Warden Operation Manual’s guide on Faction creation, I’m writing up some generators so folk can roll up some baddies (as well as other powers).
That second Distant Authority power is the Serpent Swords. But you’ll have to wait to hear more about the Serpents.
The Star’s Lash
This month’s lil freebie is a single spread, inspired by my ongoing #galaxy24 progress, reading the manga Planetes, Robotic Topologist’s incredible Minimalist Solar System Generator, and Sci-Fi One-Shot Jam 2024’s theme: Stellar Phenomena.
Side note: Violet Ballard submitted a free module, Return to STAR Station, a spiritual sequel to my adventure Escape from STAR Station.
In The Star’s Lash, Avatars investigate curious Ansible reports to discover Valus-Sys. The society is on the brink of collapse due to their star’s frequent and debilitating solar flare storms. The crisis is coming to a head, what can the Avatars do in the limited time they have?
Click here to download The Star’s Lash! The zip contains a pdf and plaintext copy. This one’s also going live on itch tomorrow. Check out the 5MW RPG itch page for the pocketzine rules and character sheets.
I had a ton of fun writing this, I hope you enjoy it! Happy Post-Solstice season, folks!
Signing off,
Chris Airiau