Session Report: The Haunting of Ypsilon-14

Yesterday, Feb 17^th, I ran a one-shot session of The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 for Mothership. I had six players in the session and, as usual, ran it over FoundryVTT. While FoundryVTT doesn’t have an official module or system set for Mothership, fortunately somebody put together MoSh - Unofficial Mothership—which works just as well.

Overall

Preparation

To prepare for the session, I referenced a write-up by Jason Alexander on how he preps modules. I used his adjusted hook for the session—I know my PCs, and if I said “you’re here to drop off cargo”, the PCs would drop off the cargo and say: “missing people? That sounds like a you problem.” Fortunately, this group had a great group dynamic: one of them was an android owned by The Company¹,

What really helped me out was Jason’s suggestion of using an adversary roster for all the characters. Basically, the idea is to make little lists of who’s where, so you have a vibrant scene. I know I would have felt rattled if I had to make it up on the spot, so having a simple little sticky note on my monitor was a great help.

FoundryVTT

My Hole in the Oak game has a pre-made module that I use for FoundryVTT. This time, however, there was no FoundryVTT support built-in, so I had to define things myself. It was remarkably easy to add the three sound files that come with the module. All I had to do was to define a playlist (I called it “Cassettes”), and upload the three files. A playlist in FoundryVTT has three possible settings: continuous play, shuffle, and soundboard. As I expected, the “soundboard” function meant I could play a single file to all players.

A specific mechanic in the module made me realize I needed a FoundryVTT solution to handle it. According to the Warden Notes, the monster picks off a crewmember of Ypsilon-14 every ten minutes. The suggested method is to roll a d10 for the list of characters to see which one gets eaten by the monster, which seemed okay at first glance. In practice, it would mean I had to roll a d10 in FoundrVTT, and double-check the list of characters. On top of that, I’d have to keep track of who’s already dead, and reroll if that character is picked. Fortunately, FoundryVTT has a rollable table feature, with the option to turn off replacement of entries. Now, with a simple table, I could keep my mind on the game and update the character list with just a click of a button.

What Went Well

Splitting attention

As I was running the module, there were a few moments where the PCs chose to split up. This was, of course, great for a horror game: the monster had some good opportunities to kill crewmembers off-screen but also ambush some PCs at times. We all were a little liberal with who could hear what, so that there were good moments of people running from one room to the other so that their PCs could know what was up. I took the opportunity here to have pauses with little cliffhangers. One PCs was tackled down by Dr Giovanni, who was ready to slice open their vaccsuit to drip yellow goo on them. Quick cut to characters on the other side of the station, in the mess hall, trying to get Ashraf to go to gather up with the rest of the crew. I felt it both created a little tension for the characters in the fight, as well as giving me a little time to figure out exactly what could happen next.

Running combat

Combat is surprisingly easy in Mothership. Attacking is as simple as rolling under your combat skill. Armor classes effectively work as damage reduction (though, confusingly, damage reduction itself is also a thing). It did keep combat going quite swiftly. Even though we were playing in FoundryVTT, we did not use any grid maps, which I think really helped. Thinking just loosely in terms of “adjacent” versus “close” meant we could just act quickly.

A wonderful moment happened when one of the crew members was discovered to be infected by the Yellow Goo. The PCs wanted everybody to move away from him, which made the crew member nervous and agitated. He lunged for a laser cutter in the work cubbies, and two PCs immediately declared “I shoot him!”. Because combat does not work in turns nor does it have initiative scores, everything just happens at the same time. Cue absolute excessive violence. The moment worked perfectly, and was very much in genre as well.

Lessons Learned

Introduce characters more quickly

Based on my prep, I had the characters spread out throughout the station. My assumption was that the PCs would get to know them in small chunks as they explored. However, because I’d set up the hook as the PCs needing to get the sample from Dr Giovanni, and they just immediately hacked the door to go in, there wasn’t really any need for them to go around and explore. Consequently, they’d only really half-met a few NPCs, and there wasn’t too much interaction yet. The next time around, it makes more sense to do a scene like the communal meal scene at the start of Alien: a quick introduction of people’s character before they split up to do their jobs.

Have the monster be aggressive

Because I wanted the PCs to meet all characters, I waited with introducing the monster. I chose to have the monster be in Dr Giovanni’s ship and it would sneak out when they entered it. However, that means there wasn’t much of a ramp up of missing characters. Next time around, I should keep to the 10-minute timeline of monster attacks right from the start. Or, at least, after the proposed communal meal scene.

Find a reason for the characters to go deep into the facility

Because I set the hook as needing to find a sample of the Yellow Goo, the PCs could be done in three rooms. From Docking Bay 2 to the Workspace, hack into Docking Bay 1 to get the sample, then back to Docking Bay 2 and leave. Okay, the module states that if the PCs leave without dealing with the monster, it follows them onto their sihp. That might be relevant if this was part of a longer campaign, because then you could have a cool adventure flushing the monster out of the ship. However, this is billed as a one-shot: I didn’t have a ship worked out for them! Just saying everybody died as an epilogue is also not satisfactory. Fortunately, my PCs did go ahead and try to solve the mystery and save the people onboard. Next time, however, I’d include Mike in the hook somehow—maybe they have to get the sample from him, or take him into custody, or have him report back. That way, the players are incentivized to go into the mines, which both isolates them a little more and gives them the opportunity to learn about the monster.

Scale consequences for failed rolls

Specifically, in this session I think I was too easy on the laser cutter. A few characters had laser cutters: a weapon that does 1d100 damage (versus 1d10 on your average gun). The few times it was used, I described things being damaged but when I think about it, I should have scaled the consequences to the damage rolled. In retrospect, I should have said that if the damage is over 50, they would have breached the hull. To me, that models what the laser cutter would be better: an incredible weapon but high-risk/high-reward.

Use saves a lot more

The core mechanic of this game is geared around the stress/panic system. PCs are supposed to build up stress during play, which will cause them to panic more frequently and more extremely. In this session, I forgot to call for saves a lot and just called for stress rolls when terrible things happened. That meant that the PCs stress levels didn’t go up too much, and we didn’t see the panic system come into play until about the end. If I’d have called for more saves and used (dis)advantage more, there would have been more interaction with that system. Next time around, I’ll have to keep a little reminder for myself on a sticky note, to help call for more saves more frequently.