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when I wrote it I intended it as a vibes check basically and the warden could deduce who’d to sedate. Ad Astra was a big influence on the performance review and you see Brad Pitt mentally break while giving a psych evaluation but the robot is like you passed. When Brad gives a concise, well worded responses they ground him. In the movie it’s all about control and I thought the warden could pick the players who most defied the company that day regardless of the answers. 

My pillar of design is to provide as many fun toys for wardens to play with and to break and ignore whatever doesn’t fit their flavor. Plus I feel Mothership is more fun when it’s narratively rich as opposed to mechanically rich. That’s why I added the mod section as it’s loose ideas I thought could be implemented but didn’t necessarily think it needed to be a core feature and if a warden thought it sounded fun or not they could run with it. 

I have not actually play tested this and I do hope I get the chance this month as I work on a polished version. I think a playtest to see how the performance reviews play at the table will help me find the right balance but I really appreciate your input. I think I might end up splitting the difference but I do agree if I ran it I would just go off vibes and sedate players that I think would make the most paranoia. I just want players to point fingers and trust no one, they can’t trust the company, the crew, the mines, and most of all each other :) 

thanks so much for the comment! I’m happy you liked it, I’m going to rework the performance review part so I give the wardens a more definitive version to pass/fail. The Doppel cards and taking players to a room one on one are just some random ideas I had late in the process that I thought could dial up the paranoia as everything is trying to make the players as distrustful as possible. 

I’m not really sure what the outcome is if a Doppel escapes with humans. I’m thinking something like the ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Doppel tries to convert humans in the rest of the Galaxy. It could lead to a bigger narrative arc of the nearby system being infected and turning. Or you could take it in a blade runner way and have the company develop some test that can distinguish doppels and want some bounty hunters to find them and bring them in for experiments. 

I am planning on further developing the mining events to make them more cohesive to the narrative threads and turn up the tension. 

thanks so much for the feedback and I’ll hit you up on discord. 

You have some really fun and clever encounters as some of them give me a real vivid picture. There’s a lot of really fun ideas here and most of my feedback would be what others have already commented so I’ll spare the repeating. My original idea for this jam was to have a watery ghost figure and lean into the supernatural so I’m happy someone took up that idea as it’s a really fun one. Really I think the trifold just needs to dial into its themes and make everything cohesive. From reading it the two main pillars are the conspiracy about earth and the ghost on the ship. Connecting everything to that and expending on it can really make this adventure pop since you already have all the fun and crazy cool encounter ideas. I hope you keep at it as there’s definitely something really creative here if you keep pushing some of the core ideas. 

thanks so much for your feedback! I love a good giant monster to fight as much as the next person (I’m currently prepping an adventure for my table in which they are going to square off against a giant space jellyfish with an eyeball that makes people go mad), but I always thought mothership lends itself really well to a slow burn style of horror. When I prep for myself I like to do a sandbox style as I find the narrative thread at the table if I crafted fun pieces to play with. A big learning curve for me is trying to find the balance of what information I need to provide for other wardens and what’s just my personal preference. I do want to revamp this trifold post jam and adding a cascading events section so wardens can make it as slow burn or face paced as they want. As well as fleshing out the mining section and creating a daily routine schedule so hopefully everything starts to feed in to each other and narratively becomes more cohesive. I appreciate you taking the time to offer feedback and it’ll help me in polishing up my first trifold :) 

thanks so much for taking the time to read and give me feedback. I’m really happy you liked the mod section, most of that was stuff I just didn’t get time to play test and some different ideas for flavor I had. I know wardens all like to run their games differently and I want to provide as much as I can for that. I’m planning on a revamp of the trifold, cutting back a lot of the big blocks of text, fleshing out the mining chart to give more variety, and creating a cleaner better layout.  

Cheers and thanks for hosting a killer game jam!

Thanks for the feedback it’ll really help me improve the trifold. I plan on reworking it and my first thought was to give a proper map key. I think it’ll really help the players go from the mundanity of the job to the horrors they’ll face. Also, What Reflects From Inside caught my eye and I have it in my queue of trifolds I’m going to read. The art and vibes are great just at first glance I can’t wait to check it out!

Thanks so much for the comment and taking the time to read my trifold. I am trying to improve both this trifold and my skills in general so I would really appreciate more feedback if you have some :) 

the map design is incredible and gives a great picture of where the adventure unfolds. While reading the key for the map I was confused by the abbreviations such as (E) and (G) and found the answer near the end of the trifold. Personally, it might make for less confusion if the description about the key cards comes before or attached to the map key.  The art, aesthetics, and layout are all pristine with my only critique is I don’t like when blocks of text or how one of the tables spill over to another side of the trifold. I’m not sure if there is a way to finagle it so it’s all together. Reading this I really saw the vision that was put into it and I was already thinking of what I would do if I was to run it. I would like if there was some art of the  mega cattle as both a normal or a demented would be add lots of vibes. Overall, I think you did an incredible job and you provided so much fun ideas I feel as if I could take the trifold and with minimum effort be able to run this adventure. Keep up the great work and I would love to see future projects!

yes I’ll comb over it and point out what spots I notice for grammar. Just give me some time and I’ll send it over. Scanning a printed version of it is so analog that’s real fun. I got the screen name from a punk song haha it’s called Operation pt. 2 by the uranium club I just always thought the line was so funny 

I love the aesthetic, both the character portraits and map design give atmosphere and I am a sucker for retro/analog aesthetics for horror. A TALKING DOLPHIN? such a fun idea and reminds me of Johnny Mnemonic which is always a plus. There are some grammatical errors throughout and could use a quick editing polish. I was confused by the exact size of the crew as I assumed at first it was only the four NPCs on the ship but then on the room key it talks about extra crew. Not every character needs a portrait (I do think one of the alien ambassador would be really cool though) but it might help to list out the full crew even if its just a list of names and roles. I feel as if the NPCs could be fleshed out more, outside of the dolphin most of them don't give me much. Lots of really great ideas for blending of alien cultures, animal rights, and preserving/pillaging nature and I'm a sucker for anything set in a submarine. I feel like you could take the ideas further and elaborate on some of the bigger theme ideas, what's the morals of the crew? do they all think of Doris as a pet? You could use their relationship with Doris to indict what they think of nature and maybe what they would do with the talking pearl. Overall, there are the bones and threads of something really intriguing and I am interesting in bringing A TALKING DOLPHIN?!?!?! to my table. I do think I would have to do some prep work and further some of the ideas and threads you have here but overall vibes, aesthetic, and themes are headed in the right direction. I would like some alien and sea monster art as it'll look so great in the aesthetic that you crafted. I think you can get weird with some of the ideas as the central premise is a talking dolphin so some crazy sea monsters would feel at home.

Side note I am not sure if it was just a problem with my computer and how I displayed the file after downloading it but the text was unreadable when a page would fit on the screen and I would have to zoom in to be able to read. Again I am not sure if its my end or something with the file but at least something to look into.