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Other Games, Development, & Campaigns => Design, Development, and Gameplay => Topic started by: Lynn on July 10, 2020, 03:12:27 PM

Title: Great Design: Tuesday Night Games' MotherShip and More
Post by: Lynn on July 10, 2020, 03:12:27 PM
This thread came about because of a request on the Ennies 2020 thread (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?42316-2020-Ennies-so-much-garbage&p=1138752&viewfull=1#post1138752), about innovative design.

Tuesday Night Game's Mothership and its additional products get a lot of praise for design. I don't have my print copies yet, but I find these books quite interesting in their use of space and what would be otherwise complex tables. Check it out. Mothership itself is free.



Some references (Questing Beast Reviews):

They also just ran a Kickstarter for Gradient Descent (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gerdling/gradient-descent-module-for-mothership-sci-fi-horror-rpg), another book in the series.
Title: Great Design: Tuesday Night Games' MotherShip and More
Post by: hedgehobbit on August 03, 2020, 01:50:16 PM
I've been reading this book since I saw the mention in the Aliens thread. The layout is pretty good although I wish the artist spend as much effort as the layout guy did.

As for the rules, it needs a bit of cleaning up. Firstly, the game doesn't need a critical hit system, especially one that occurs as often as this one does (19% of the time in opposed rolls). But my biggest beef is the continued use of the clunky Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic; made worse here by the fact that you're now rolling four dice in two pairs.

Also, I don't see the need for both a Sanity and Fear mechanic in the same game.