The OSRchivist

Rediscovering the magic of old school roleplaying.

Moonbase Blues Session 1 After Action Report

On Wednesday, July 8th, I ran Session 1 of Moonbase Blues for Mothership. Session 0, which includes PC descriptions can be found here. I’ll be organizing this report per the “Taking Good Notes” section from the Warden’s Operations Manual, p. 27, but then worked out a little more.

Roster

I’ll be referring to the human beings present by their PC names, which means the following people were present:

  • BeiBei, Teamster;
  • Karen Whiteford, Scientist;
  • Wheeler, Android;
  • Camilla “Wakeup Call” Garcia, Marine.

NPCs

In this session, players identified two Meteor-Mad Colonists (MMCs), by cross-referencing their appearance with a staff listing on the Security Room computers:

  • Xu Gonzalez
    • research coordinator working on the lunar soil biocompatibility testing project.
    • Locked in foam on the surface on the moon, eating his way out.
  • Miguel Kowalski
    • life support systems technician.
    • Floating in 0G while giggling (silently).
    • Was reported in the medical logs to have started suffering minor memory problems about a week ago.

What Happened

The PCs woke up in the Security Room, one by one. I used the suggestion from Campaign At Length (explained in this video) where they have the players each roll a d100, waking up in ascending order of their results but it was the last PC that actually had their gear still. I gave them very little heads-up, which made it great that the first player to wake assumed they were on their ship. That gave me space to make their PC also be confused when they groggily tried to orient themselves to their ship but found a different room. What threw me for a loop was that we had an android PC, and I hadn’t thought of the fact that usually in the Alien franchise, the androids stay awake. I ad-libbed that they had a strangely corrupted patch of memory, so for them it was like they were getting coffee one moment and still holding a cup of coffee the next. That doesn’t really work with them grabbing the other PCs, but hey, it was spur-of-the-moment.

The PCs then spent some time analysing the android, establishing that his log timestamps show a few hours of missing time. Further hacking of the Security Station computer revealed the floor plans, and some basic information about the number of people present. Karen wanted to have full video access of the station, but I improvised that this Security Station was air-gapped for safety, and the station was small enough that they relied purely on patrols.

When the PCs were satisfied the Security Station was safe, and they figured to explore a bit, BeiBei was suited up to go out on the lunar surface. Immediately, they spotted two MMCs out without suits: one foam gunned to a lunar rock, eating their way out, and the other tumbling around joyously in the low gravity. Sanity saves were rolled, and failed by all but BeiBei, causing stress to rise slowly. BeiBei being absolutely unfazed, like Tech Sergeant Chen from Galaxy Quest, became a bit of a running gag this session. BeiBei rounded the done, clambering over the next tunnel to inspect it for leaks or damage. After being satisfied it would be safe to proceed, she went back in and the whole gang proceeded to the Greenhouse.

At this point, the PCs started picking up on the theme of the meteor, and the blue light starting to crest on the horizon. Although they don’t know yet exactly what it does, they were getting suspicious enough to want to hunker down and wait out the meteor flying over soon. They had only two hours left, so figured to first check everybody out. While Wheeler was sent to close all the porthole covers, Camilla went to check the doors to the rest of the facility. That left Karen in the Medbay to check BeiBei using the Autodoc.

As Camilla encountered a new MMC with an open chest wound, poorly stuffed with blue android parts, Karen discovered the Autodoc was sabotaged. Fortunately, Karen’s razor-fast reflexes allowed her to quickly hack the Autodoc and abort the sequence before BeiBei got injected with blue industrial lubricant. With the cliffhanger of Camilla standing face-to-face with an MMC, who simply said, “Oh, hi there! Haven’t seen you around before”, we brought the session to an end.

What Worked?

  • The macro I made to quickly generate a MMC on the fly saved my bacon. It was a breeze to quickly generate who an NPC was, and that helped me stay in the flow.
  • I had the MMC in the hallway stand with their back to Camilla, so I could do a slow turn and reveal of a gaping chest wound stuffed with blue android parts. That seemed to work well as a creepy moment!
  • I gradually kept mentioning the color blue, and dropped hints about the comet coming along about a week ago. It seemed to work to make the players uneasy while keeping them in the dark of what’s happening exactly. (Though they absolutely pegged it as a zombie theme).

What Didn’t?

  • The distinction between fear and sanity saves is a little confusing. Wheeler mentioned it seemed a little off that his PC jas a sanity save of 25 but a fear save of abour 85. To him, it felt like all the sanity saves I had them roll seemed to negate the advantage of being an android.
  • I wasn’t that clear in my description of what the computer in Security could and could not do, which led to the PCs spending more time on it than I had in mind was possible on the station.

Prep For Next Time

  • I need to prepare better on the difference between fear and sanity saves. Having read up on it, fear seems to be about immediate emotional responses, and sanity seems more about questioning reality. The MMCs tumbling around on the lunar surface is definitely sanity (e.g. “How is this even possible?”) whereas the MMC in the hallway with a chestwound should be fear (e.g. “Woah! That guy has a huge wound!”)
  • I need to prepare the conversation with the MMC. I want the PCs to be able to have a conversation with somebody before hr. 0 rolls around and they all go nuts.