GRADIENT DESCENT: Module for Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG
Created by Tuesday Knight Games
A brand new zine-sized module for the Mothership Sci-Fi horror RPG. Androids, AI, memory, and existential horror abound.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Shipping is complete! Stretch goals in progress
almost 4 years ago
– Fri, Feb 05, 2021 at 11:09:28 PM
Hey gang,
By now all of you should have received your physical and PDF copies of Gradient Descent. If you haven't, please reach out at [email protected] and we'll get you sorted out. Next up, we're working on the Wardens Screen stretch goal and also the extra pamphlet adventure (it's a pretty sweet one). So, we'll keep you updated as to how that's going.
Other than that, there's a lot going on in the Motherverse right now! As you're all probably aware, ZineQuest 3 is underway, and Mothership is very well represented with a whole host of third-party products. If you're interested, read on!
The Drain is a tense level-0 funnel adventure for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG set in a combat-ravaged farming habitat.
Each player runs 4-5 level-0 prisoner-soldiers through the hellish battlefield of the colony ship Within Wheels. Their mission: win freedom by acquiring a legendary religious relic at the behest of their corporate jailors, PrayCo.
The Wheel's hollow internal landscape of barren fields and rusting, bombed out structures swarm with monstrous bioengineered animals and lethal corporate relic hunters. Trenches, minefields, hull punctures and a stalemated battle bar passage from the high-gravity docking bays to the blasphemous prize waiting at the funnel's tip.
44 Pages of Mech Bustin' Gang warfare set on a dying planet... Sounds fun... Right?!? Gordinaak is a (mostly) stand alone RPG using Tuesday Knight Game's PANIC ENGINE. Character creation features 4 playable classes, 5 playable species, Equipment, Drones, Exo Armor, and Mech Creation. Inside these pages you'll also find location tables, Named NPCs, a Bestiary, NPC mech Generators, some tables to fill in some gaps and an adventure to get you started. Jam packed with art from Anto Artunian (@seriously_ugly), Ricardo Alves and Ink_Party
The Burning of Carbex is a ~100-page three-act campaign compatible with the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. A malevolent alien parasite has been freed and seeks to spread its corrupting influence far and wide.
These three campaigns are beautiful and awesome in their own right, but there's more coming down the pipeline this month. That's right, these three campaigns are waiting in the wings and they all look GORGEOUS. Click on the images below to sign up to be notified when they launch.
That's right there are SIX third-party Mothership modules coming to Zinequest this year.
Collectively, these projects have raised over $20,000. That's money that's going directly to fan-creators and indie publishers, the people who keep Mothership alive. I know Zinequest is a hard hit on people's wallets, but check these creators out, many of them have free products for you to demo. And even if you can't spend any money, tell a friend! Anything to get the word out for these awesome designers.
Run out of tv shows to binge watch? Check out Eclipse on Twitch tonight!
If you haven't seen it already, Eclipse is a Mothership RPG actual play with an incredibly talented cast (and crew) experience life on the fringe of the galaxy about The Destiny. They stream every Friday night at 7 PM Pacific. And every week they've been giving away prizes in the form of Mothership books and swag. So definitely check them out, and if you're behind, not to worry, they've got a Season 1 Recap right here.
That's all for now. We'll be back to work on the Gradient Descent stretch goals. If you liked what you read and you're able, we'd love a review on DriveThruRPG. This is gonna be an exciting year for Mothership. Hopefully, we'll be back with news of our next big project: The Mothership Boxed Set, soon.
Stay safe out there!
Shipping Has Commenced!
almost 4 years ago
– Thu, Dec 03, 2020 at 02:00:20 PM
Hey everyone,
Hope you're all doing well going into the holidays. We have started to fulfill your kickstarter pledges! Quartermaster has already shipped US packages and international shipments are on their way to their regional distribution centers. As usual, COVID plays a huge part in this, but I'm getting word that some people in the Eastern US are already receiving their pledges.
I just want to take a quick moment to mention to everyone how amazing you've been and how much we appreciate your patience during this sort of unprecedented time. It's been a long road to get here, but hopefully it's been worth it! I can't wait to hear about all your stories playing and running Gradient Descent. Send any pictures to @mothershiprpg on twitter. If you're a pre-order customers know that your packages are going out shortly as well!
Other than that, good luck out there!
Off to Print
about 4 years ago
– Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 12:12:59 AM
Woo-hoo!
I've just sent Gradient Descent off to print after two weeks of proofreading and final checking everything to make this as perfect as can possibly be. Mixam should have the printing done largely sometime late next week and then it'll be shipped to Quartermaster our fulfillment company to start packing and shipping, the end is in sight!
T-Shirts have arrived at our warehouse, so we're good there.
Patches have arrive at our warehouse as well, which is great.
Hacker's Handbook is done and ready for digital fulfillment.
Second pamphlet is in layout.
Warden's screen is in layout.
We're at the finish line, we're so excited for you to see what's next.
Address Changes
We're sorry if you've sent an e-mail about an address change and we haven't gotten back to you. Things have been crazy at TKG HQ as you can probably imagine.
If you need your address changed, or have sent us an e-mail requesting an address change but have not heard back from us, please fill out this form. You have about two weeks to do that before we lock in final orders for shipment.
If you pre-ordered Gradient Descent on Backerkit (not through the Kickstarter or Shopify), we're running your cards this week. Heads up! If you need to change your payment visit your backerkit account and do that now!
Things are moving fast now, so I'll have more updates for you as fulfillment begins. This has been an amazing project and we're so grateful for all of your help and patience in making this happen. We've got a lot of great news to share about what's coming out next, so stay tuned!
Pre-Press Checklist and Other Updates
about 4 years ago
– Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 12:43:06 AM
Hey gang,
We finished up our first round of proofreading and boy was it a big one. The biggest hassle in proofreading a Megadungeon is all the room references. Each minimap has to correspond to both the key and the overworld map, as well as any other room that references it through the module. Jarrett Crader and David Wilkie went through each map with a fine tooth comb and looked for inaccuracies in them, of which there were a couple dozen.
Additionally, they looked for issues in verticality. That is, they made sure that if you descended down stairs from Room A to Room B, you couldn't make it back to Room A through, say, Room C, without at some point ascending stairs again. You would think that would be a minor thing, but if can really affect players' orientation during a game, which can break their immersion.
After I got the list of notes back, I finished up all the corrections, and now it's back in Jarrett's hands for a final pre-press proofread. This is more like a spelling and final errors check before I send it off to the printers. We're pumped. This book has seen a handful or proofs, dozens of playtests, and at least 5 editing passes. We can't wait to show it to you.
T-Shirts Have Arrived
Our lovely, silky smooth t-shirts have arrived at our warehouse and they look great. I'll get some pictures soon to send you on our next update. But they're ready to fulfill right now, so that's one less thing I have to worry about.
Patches Are Being Made
Right now our patches are being manufactured and should ship out to our warehouse shortly (probably while the module is being printed). These are pretty cool. They're about 4" wide and they're, just like our Tempest Co. patches, fully "in the fiction" of the module so to speak, and they're kind of a cool reveal for your players. I can't wait to slap one on.
Pamphlet number one is finished!
The Hacker's Handbook is complete! This one is the brainchild of myself, Luke Gearing, and Mothership newcomer, Kevin Whitlock. This tiny pamphlet contains some simple tools to create beefy Networks for your intrusion inclined players to hack. It's also got a new loadout as well as a list of new equipment: decks, gear, and single-use software.
Hacking is a huge problem in most RPGs. Besides generally being wildly unrealistic, they often create a scenario where only one player can hack, or the hacker player ends up playing some sort of solo mission while the rest of the party sits around waiting. Even further, a lot of times they dump a bunch of new rules on you, which just adds to the overall clutter.
The Hacker's Handbook solves all of that. Essentially, Hacking checks work just as they always have, but now if you want, you can build out your Network with a little bit more info so that whoever is doing the hacking can make some interesting decisions.
More than that though, we've included some guidelines about using "User Accounts." That means any player that "acquires" the password credentials of someone now has access to their information as well.
As a lifelong thief/rogue/hacker player in RPGs, this is one of my favorite things we've put together for Mothership, and I hope you all dig it. Here's a preview of what we're sending out, and I'll send out a PDF shortly so you all have something to munch on while we get to print!
What's left?
We've still got another pamphlet tie in to Gradient Descent coming your way, and Dan D of Throne of Salt has been hard at work on it. We've changed tactics a couple of times because some of his content was so good we ended up just putting it straight into the module. I'm pretty excited about what we're working out for the final version though. It should greatly improve the sandbox like nature of Gradient Descent.
Additionally, I've been working on the Warden's Screen for GD and I'm having a blast. Rather than just duplicating all the info that's already in the easily referenceable (is that a word?) book, we're putting in new helpful content that Wardens often don't think about until they get into trouble. I'll share a mockup as soon as I'm comfortable with one.
Other than that, I hope you're all staying safe, thanks again for your patience. The end is in sight!
Layout, Editing, Art complete -- moving into final Proofreading
about 4 years ago
– Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 02:40:16 PM
Hey gang,
As some of you may have seen in the comments, a little over a week ago I finished up the final layout for Gradient Descent and sent it over to Jarrett for editing. Jarrett did an amazing job and finished editing last week, I've spent this past week making his final changes, and now we're ready to move into final proofreading! We'll be starting that this weekend and then we'll be sending it off to print!
I'm incredibly proud of the work we've done here and I can't wait to share it all with you. Here's the last final spreads I'll share before the book comes out. We added an extra four pages in here, this thing is by far our biggest Mothership book to date.
This book has a really specific way that we key rooms, as well as different scale rooms (Human sized and industrial sized). You can see here just from the images the difference in size we're talking about. One of my favorite things, that I'm glad we were able to make work, is that every room's number also has the page number embedded into it. So room 45a is on page 45. This makes cross-referencing and flipping around super easy.
One of the brand new spreads we added. The Bell, a tiny little campsite/station for you to rest at between dives. Our rumor table serves as a way to point players in a direction or give them more info about topics they find interesting while exploring. Each NPC has different rumors and interpretation on events.
Gradient Descent deals with androids, obviously, but there are many different kinds you'll encounter in the Deep. Some, like the Infiltrator Androids, are completely indistinguishable from humans. Others, like the Security Androids, are more like walking, faceless terrors without a voice, sent to destroy you. And finally, the Forgotten Androids, are defective builds fleeing from being hunted down or reclaimed and sent to the dreaded "Reject Bin" for annihilation. Other than the Security Androids, however, all of them have things they care about, things they want to talk about. And if you're careful, you can make it through the entire Deep without once using a weapon.
What's Next?
I have a proof of the t-shirt arriving today as well as a proof for the patch getting made. We're finishing up the pamphlets as well. All of that should be printed at about the same time as the book. So we're not too far off now! Hope you're all staying safe and I'll catch you next time!
