Page 8 "Beginning the loop" includes direction on this topic. After you establish the PCs Starting Positions, their ship collides with the Time Loop. Once this happens, everything on their ship is stuck in Temporal Stasis and outside of the ship is the Void, which means they can't really do anything to escape without leaving their ship. When they eventually leave their ship, either through an airlock or some other means, they are immediately transported onto the Graveyard at a random hour. When I have run the adventure, I have encourage the PCs to leave by making it clear that they aren't able to effectively do anything on their own ship. If you are concerned they may never leave their ship, you could say their ship is docked with...something...but the scanners aren't working due to the temporal stasis and the only way to find out what's there is to exit the ship.
However you get them off the ship, they immediately appear on the Graveyard at a random hour, then return to their own ship at Starting Positions after 1 hour in game time, 15 minutes of real time or if all the PCs die. Then the loop begins again:
They appear at starting positions
Exit their ship
Appear on the Graveyard
Explore the Graveyard until the loop repeats
They appear at starting positions....
There are some more details on page 8 regarding how PCs can return to specific hours within the time loop.
Good luck and have fun. Feel free to ping me again if you have more questions.
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Hey, thanks for the reply! This is my group's first time playing Mothership, so I want it to be special and I appreciate your help.
I'm not sure I got my question across clearly the first time. I understand most of what you're saying. But my question is more along the lines of: when they exit their ship's airlock, how do they get from there to The Graveyard? You say, "they are immediately transported onto the Graveyard," and what I'm asking is...what does that look like? Is it like...one moment they're on their ship...they open their airlock... and then they're just all of a sudden on The Graveyard? I don't want to say teleported per se...but is it just instantaneous like teleportation? Like "wait, how the hell did I get here?"
One other question while I've got you: How long does this take to run on average?
Thanks again! This was such a cool adventure to read, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the many fun ways the characters inevitably end up dying lol
Happy to help and honored that Echoes will be y’all’s first foray into MoSH.
Each Hour has a specific location on the Graveyard where the PCs begin. These locations are all over the ship, which means they’ll be suddenly changing locations upon exiting their ship. This is supposed to be abrupt and confusing. Definitely should be like “how the hell did I get here?!”
When I’ve run it I make it very sudden. You exit your airlock and you are immediately in a different place. It should be strange, disorienting and hard to understand. It doesn’t need to make sense. The fact that it doesn’t make sense should clue the PCs into realizing that something very strange is happening.
I do the same thing when the loop repeats and the PCs return to Starting Positions. Bang, regardless of what was happening they are back in the exact spot they started, doing the same thing, holding the same stuff, etc. This is intentionally playing on time loop tropes (like in Groundhogs Day where the day always starts with the same song). These hard cuts to repeated elements are there to hopefully clue players in to the fact they are trapped in a time loop.
Regarding the duration, I’ve ran it twice and both times we played for 2 sessions with each session between 3 - 4 hours long. I’ve heard of groups taking longer and shorter to escape. Because this is a mystery and a puzzle, it will vary based on how quickly players realize their in a loop and how quickly they understand the events of the loop. Don’t be afraid to reveal that they are trapped in a loop if they are having trouble realizing it. That isn’t the important part. The real challenge is figuring out why the loop is happening and altering the events in the loop to change the outcome.
Yes!!! Be super brutal and kill the PCs often. Once they realize they come back when the loop repeats, they’ll get really crazy and try stupid stuff, which is another key element of a good time loop story. Kill them and then watch kill themselves doing wild schemes. 😈
Wow, again so stoked this will be your first Mothership adventure. I’d love to hear how it goes!
You've answered my questions perfectly, and now I feel fully prepared to run the game! The "doesn't make sense" part is what needed to click for me. It doesn't NEED to make sense.
You've also given me the idea to repeat the same real-life song at the beginning of the first few loops, to bake in the repetition even more.
I was hoping to play 2-4 sessions, so that's perfect. I'll definitely let you know how it goes!
I can already tell you though...your module got me more excited for GMing, not just Mothership, but in general, than I've been in two decades. Here's a little backstory...
I just finished running a level 1-10 PF2E campaign, (Gatewalkers) and had requested a break from GMing anything crunchy for 6 months while I rest my brain and prepare for the 11-20 campaign (Fists of the Ruby Phoenix). So for the last couple of months, my friends have been GMing shorter games. We've played some World of Darkness stuff and a GM-less game called The Zone (which was out-of-this-world good).
But after reading your module, I immediately bought several other modules, devoured them, and realized that I'd probably consumed enough content to last our group a year of gaming. So I asked them if I could just GM a giant Mothership campaign, starting with your module...and they said yes! So Pathfinder has to go on the backburner for a while, but oh well. Worth it
I am thrilled to hear that my module helped you get jazzed about GMing again. I too got pretty burned out on crunch, which is what got me interested in MoSH in the first place.
Hell yes, use a song at starting positions. That is a great idea.
There are a ton of great modules for Mothership, definitely enough for a long campaign. If you ever need a random planet, here’s a planet generator I made a couple years ago. The content is by Ian Yusem so you know it’s good.
It went so well! I feel like the group fell just short of clapping when it was over lol. They just riddled me with praise for a great game session. It made me a little emotional haha
The time loop came as a huge surprise - they didn't see it coming at all! And the playlist below worked as a perfect timer (20 min instead of 15, since it was their first MoSh game). They started to truly dread The Carpenters, because they knew they were running out of time...then it would loop back to the fast tempo of Beethoven which would make them anxious!
None of the PCs died in the first session, but they witnessed the NPCs die repeatedly. The biggest WTF moment for them came when they found a double of the party's Android character, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, carrying a note that detailed the party's movement over the past hour.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7tlvtbtSNw3AILOTiC9x6b?si=N6jOy6ATT2KK5sWx7Kxa...