The OSRchivist

Rediscovering the magic of old school roleplaying.

MoSh: Moonbase Blues Session 4 After Action Report

This is the fourth and final after action report for the Moonbase Blues playthrough. In this session, the PCs escaped from the Mech Bay, explored the drop pod, and made a crucial decision on whether or not to save some survivors.

Roster

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

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

NPCs

No new NPCs were introduced this session.

What Happened

Karen was using the facilities at the Mech Bay to repair Wheeler’s damaged memory circuits. While Wheeler couldn’t be perfectly repaired, Karen managed to defrag his neural pathways enough to compile some memory fragments. Together, the memory vignettes told the story of the pilot being fully exposed to the meteor light flying towards the moonbase. The pilot immediately succumbed to the meteor madness, and steered the shuttle to crash into the meteor. To prevent this, Wheeler broke open the door to the cockpit, and wrestled with the pilot. Next, Wheeler remembered dragging the crew from the crashed dropship towards the dome installation. Lastly, he remembered the sensation of time and memory flowing away, and resetting to just before the crash–making a cup of coffee for Karen.

Knowing that the dropship should be in good condition, the crew decided to trek out to there to explore. They found the dropship buried in the moon soil, containing all their gear. In the cockpit, Camilla found the bashed-in body of the pilot splattered over the controls. They decided to head back to the Mech Bay to get the rover to dig out the dropship, and get out of there. Time, however, was running short, with the meteor moving to crest once more over the horizon.

Back at the Mech Bay, the situation with the survivors had worsened. Gozu, the infected engineer, was getting worked-up over the next rotation of the meteor, and the others had to hold him down. The PCs came to a tense holdout and hostilities flared, particularly when Aguirre refused to relinquish the explosives he was carrying. Karen decided to repair the Tin Can, the survivor android, given that out of all of them, they had the clearest and most honest motivation: they just didn’t want to die.

The PCs then welded shut the inside of the rover garage within the Mech Bay, to the terror of the other survivors. A quick A-Team-like montage followed as they welded down plates on the rover windows and attached a camera to steer by. Outside, the Meteor-Mad Colonists were gathering ominously, and eventually starting trying to laser-cut through the Mech Bay doors. Camilla set targeted explosives on the door as a two-in-one solution: blow open the door to race out while getting rid of MMCs outside. After a difficult discussion about whether or not to abandon the colonists to their fate, the PCs decided to blow the explosives and get out without them.

Driving off from the Mech Bay as the meteor crested over the horizon, the PCs saw mayhem unfold all over the moonbase. Back in the Mech Bay, Aguirre decided to choose his own way out, blowing the explosives and setting off a small nuclear explosion from the generator. As the PCs passed the dome, they witnessed it being breached as air exploded outwards. They reached the dropship, taking off from the base. As the team passed the satellite in orbit, they reprogrammed its flight path to crash into the meteor, altering its trajectory to land on the opposite side of the moon.

With the worst insurance inspection of their careers over with, the PCs flew off into the inky black to enjoy their survival. They solved and they survived, they chose not to save. More than one.

What Worked

  • Having the MMCs start to use a laser cutter to try and get through the door was great. It kicked up the action, and caused some good pressure on the last scenes.
  • I think the vignette of what happened to the base at the end worked well as a close to the module.

What Didn’t?

  • I hadn’t figured out how far the buildings were away from each other. Essentially, I wanted things to take as long as needed for the end to occur during 0hr mayhem. Camilla’s player seemed thrown off by that, as they had envisioned a different map in their head.
  • I realized after the fact it would have been good to ask each player to describe a small vignette of what their PC would do after. How they would relax, or how they imagined their report back to the company would work.

Lessons from running Moonbase Blues for Mothership

Since this was the last session of this module, there’s nothing to prepare for the next time. I want to bring along some lessons for the future, though.

  • Prepping some random tables in advance to help with MMC generation on-the-fly helped tremendously. This is good habit to keep.
  • I liked having a map but without a grid. It helped to ground the action a little, but didn’t encourage a board game feel in combat.
  • I should experiment with having actions take more time. It may not be that relevant in every module, but in Moonbase Blues it helps to get the comet coming around again.
  • When adjudicating rolls and outcomes, having a negotiation with players really helps: it aligns both the Warden and player understanding of the fiction.

Your comments are welcome!

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