thanks!
Matt Umland
Creator of
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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.
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!
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.
Yo! It looks like print copies are up on the TKG store. https://shop.tuesdayknightgames.com/products/echoes-in-the-graveyard
Hey PoB,
It looks like Spear Witch still has some physical copies. Let me know if that doesn't work out. I few hard copies left.
https://spearwitch.com/products/echoes-in-the-graveyard?_pos=1&_sid=48b1b863c&_s...