A friend asked me to GM for his birthday shindig and he’s a huge Alien(s) fan, so I picked up Mothership’s stuff.

I’m thinking about having the players being a part of a repo operation, breaking into ships and taking them back to one of the bank’s docks. I’m thinking about some tables for myself.

This blog post is expanded from a thread I started on the OSR subreddit.

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The Crew of the ship they are repoing are:

1. Refugees from a planet ravaged by war

2. cannibals

3. religious folk who worship an AI

4. Shape-shifting aliens who took the original crew’s place

5. Pirates who airlocked the original crew are on their way to their HQ

6. Runaway androids who stole the ship and are headed to a orbital base with strong androids’ rights laws

7. Digital ghosts still running the ship but unable to reach out without spreading their digital disease

8. Veterans from a Psychic War

9. Scavengers who just brought in a huge score that could pay off their debt if given time

10. Combine two by either rolling twice or picking your favorite and rolling once

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The Bank you work for is:

1. Terran Vault: old fashioned bank with ties to Olde Earth

2. Orbital Cooperative Community: small, scrappy bank made by spacers for spacers

3. Holy Order of the Hand: religious economists who worship the Invisible Hand of the Open Market

4. Mercantile Guild: hairless psychic clones bio engineered to make money

5. Binary Savings: run by a heavily regulated AI designed to help stimulate economic growth in the void of space

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What non-traditional security measures has this ship taken while at dock?

1. Hired local void mercs to squat on the hull

2. Malicious and VERY illegal nanotech cloud that will cause more and more intense tech failures

3. Paid off local law enforcement

4. Psychic ship-watcher on board

5. AI’s brakes set to come off when the ship is boarded – illegal and irresponsible

6. Pain engine running

7. Nightmare symbiote as guard dog

8. Time cube resets time to before you entered the ship.

9. Any ideas?
10. Any more ideas?

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Space Station Factions:

1. Legit Law Enforcement

2. Dock Workers’ Union

3. Black Marketeers

4. Terran Spiritual Conglomerate Shrine-keepers

5. Science Co-op

6. Corporate Branch

7. Scavenger Clan

8. Mercenary Company H.R.

9. Android Haven

10. Planetary Government Embassy (if none, replace with Alien-worshipping Cult)

Factions are in the process of (pick 2 factions or roll randomly):

1. Feuding

2. Merging into one org

3. Conspiring against a third (roll or choose)

4. Taking over the space station

5. One is supporting the other in their exodus

6. Supporting one another through an internal crisis

7. Teaming up to look deeper into a mystery

8. Pooling resources to welcome a soon-to-arrive visitor

9. Competing in a local election

10. Gathering their strength against an attack from powerful outsiders

I need another inspirational detail about this faction:

1. Nicest group of people you could imagine, seriously, just really nice. At worst they are good people operating under a bad system.
2. Add a pinch of alien cult to taste
3. Corrupt, really corrupt, rotten to the core (but also quite buyable for the right price)
4. Add a pinch of AI worship to taste
5. Add a pinch of bullshit Olde Earth mysticism
6. Sitting on coordinates to what they think is a priceless stash of minerals/space salvage but will really be a xeno-ambush charnel-house
7. Infected with a xeno-virus that will spread
8. Veterans of a vicious space war, ptsd abounds, faction fiercely loyal and unusually combat capable
9. Recovering from an internal tragedy
10. Dinosaurs? (I ran out of ideas)

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