The Light of the Interstellar Way
Interview, AP, Freebie
If you’ve read this week's Outer Rim Uprising update you might find some duplicate content in here, and you probably could just read the paragraph below and then skip to the signal boosting area at the bottom.
The Uprising has begun
First, let’s celebrate, Outer Rim Uprising is over 1000% funded. This is pretty incredible! It’s happening only thanks to the overwhelming support of the community. Thank you folks. This will allow us to put out a kick-ass bundle, and probably speed up the production process.
If the campaign continues growing, this might have a series of positive ripple effects on The Lost Bay Studio:
Speed up The Lost Bay RPG development
More original content bundles
More support to first time designers
More diverse and inclusive publishing projects
There’s a little more than three weeks left before Outer Rim Uprising ends. We’ll keep doing our best to support it, and we’ve planned a series of super cool content creations/collaborations: APs, interviews, and more.
Speaking of which
The Light of the Interstellar Way
Check out this cool actual play on Plus One EXP. Our very own Josh Domanski runs an adventure built out of the ORU Campaign Handbook and other items of the bundle, notably the NPC card deck by Victor J. Merino. This AP will show you in a cool way the kind of lore/setting that can be generated with the ORU tools, and will take you in a cool espionage adventure. Josh is just a mesmerizing AP warden, go check it
Briefing: “You have a new mission. You’ve been contacted by the Light of the Interstellar Way. While the details were vague, they apparently have a vital piece of information swiped from the Dyson Initiative and are willing to hand it over. Their representative has agreed to meet you at Les Trois Copains on the mining station of Alexandria-17 for an information handoff.”
Interview with D. Kenny
David is a prolific designer, mostly active in the Mothership community, we owe him Nirvana on Fire or Dying Hard on Hardlight Station. He contributes to the Outer Rim Uprising bundle with two zines: The Hunger in Achernar, an adventure filled with harrowing space horrors, and with the supplement decrypted/the.book.of.ghosts, which is both a space ghost generator and a collection of mini-fictions.
The Hunger in Achernar is filled with space nightmares becoming real, almost physical. Where do they come from?
Nightmares derive from the need that my players and I uncovered during playtesting for more foreshadowing of the weirdness happening on the ship. Initially, there was great backstory and a good set up, but exploring the ship felt like just another derelict floating in space, with few opportunities to interact with the elements that made the horrors of The Hunger in Achernar unique. I created some nightmares to pair with the physical sensations of the star’s energy washing over the ship and the players loved it; they felt it added a dimension that had been otherwise missing from the opening scenes of the adventure. From there, I expanded my first nightmare visions into a table of ten and saw an opportunity to have the nightmares double as hallucinogenic, pseudo-prophetic visions of the past, present, and future of what was happening aboard the derelict ship, the CF Senespera.
How can wardens use The Hunger of Achernar in the scope of a wider campaign, integrating it with other bundle entries?
There are a lot of ways to incorporate The Hunger in Achernar into a larger ORU campaign. There are going to be some direct hooks in the main campaign booklet. But also the rumour table is a great way in. There’s also the promise of the experimental skipdrive itself - the ship is rumoured to have been testing a new kind of Hyperdrive that can make instantaneous jumps between distant skip points, precluding the need for weeks or months long travel times. This kind of tech would be universe altering if real, and worth a fortune to those with the means to recover it. What could be a better motivator in a horror movie than good old, transgressive, overwhelming greed?
Your second contribution to the bundle, decrypted/the.book.of.ghosts is ghost generator. What kind of abominations can be spawned with it?
My goal was to create a tool that would produce horrors that felt very much in the vein of the paranormal, while also being firmly rooted in sci-fi tropes. The idea was inspired originally by Zedeck Siew’s “Hantu!”, where he had a similar project. Except, for him, his goal was to produce ghosts that were uniquely South East Asian in flavour. One of the essays in the book talks about how he’s had people “recognize” the ghosts he’s generated for the book from stories they heard growing up and were then shocked to find out that they are randomly generated on his table. It is the combination of familiar tropes in new, interesting and horrific ways that makes this magic happen. I’m hoping that my ghost generator does the same thing for Mothership fans. My goal is to have the players explore some forgotten facility, feel the sudden chill in the air as dead screens spring to life with cryptic code, and know that something terrible approaches from just outside the airlock.
Like this table? Download it here!
You can get The Hunger in Achernar, decrypted/the.book.of.ghosts, and more adventures, supplements, NPCs, as part of Outer Rim Uprising, now live on Kickstarter
Signal boosting
There’s a lot happening this fall, here are a few cool projects I think you might like.
MÖRKTOBER
It’s MÖRKTOBER again, during one month MÖRK BORG enthusiasts create things inspired by our favorite grim dark rpg, and following a list of prompts put together by
.You can browse the unleashed creativity of the MB community on twitter following the #morktober hashtag.
You can also get a follow to Johan Nohr, one of the creators of MB, and the visual artist behind the amazing layout/art of the game, who has announced little ago transitioning to full time RPG design, and is on a streak of mind-blowing Mörktober art like this:
The budget bestiary
A unique zine by James Halloway, that is both a fantasy bestiary for Old-School Essentials and a cookbook on how to kitbash toys and minis to craft your own cute horrible monsters. Get it here https://james-holloway.itch.io/the-budget-bestiary
The Progeny - By Violet Ballard
A boardgame/wargame/ttrpg hybrid you can both use as a standalone game or as a module for Mothership. https://www.thegamecrafter.com/crowdsale/the-progeny
Afterwords, The Far Horizons Guide to Death
An anthology of games that deal with death not as just one possible outcome for your PCs, but as a core theme/mechanic, and that explore how death is used in myth, ritual, art, and even business. A unique book in the indie space. Check it out.
That’s all I got for you today. I’m about to edit a super cool AP soon to be released on TLB YT channel with Samantha Leigh, and Chris Airiau and featuring the Sentience Assessment Procedure, a 1V1 supplement for Mothership by Nyhur and myself!
Have a great Sunday
Iko