Thanks a lot! The genre discussion is an interesting one that I kinda wanted to make a boxout for and might go in an expanded version of Shen-Yi, but it's a bit like that question of "can modern D&D run horror?" And the answer is "kinda" but also no, because the mechanics will always pull you back to heroic fantasy. In the same way, IMO no amount of action-hero paint can pull Mothership away from it's horror core... but that's actually what I like. Shen-Yi nods at Star Wars, but I really want it to play more like ALIENS: an action movie, but always with the threat of absolutely horrific consequences and sudden death. It's just that the latter part is mainly handled by the engine. That's why for personal taste I WOULDN'T want this to be, like, a Starfinder AP or whatever.
As an example, I've playtested Shen-Yi twice now, and although it's action-packed we've also had:
- A character take a massive knock on the head and go into a coma from sudden gravity reversal
- A character get executed and sliced limb from limb in the main hall as a punishment for mutiny
- A character take a spacewalk, save everyone from the doomsday device, but in doing so imbibe a lethal amount of solar radiation and die puking their guts out 3 days later
Now to ME those are features, but granted if you want a more straightforward heroic experience, they're bugs. All that's to say I'm not trying to make MoSh into Star Wars (and I couldn't), I'm trying to exert brutal violence on Star Wars style characters lol