This week was an exciting mix of things that all gave me hope and interest in the future.
First Mothership Campaign
My biggest accomplishment this week was running my first successful game of Mothership! Mothership is a tabletop RPG based on science fiction media like Alien, Cyberpunk, and Blade Runner. I successfully organized a meet up with my friends and ran the free one-shot module called Alone in the Deep. The session went well and I think overall my friends enjoyed it and are excited to check out other scenarios! Things that I can do better as a Warden (Game Master) include:
- Giving some NPCs less plot armor. People did not like that I made one of the combatants too resilient.
- Avoiding trying to railroad the players into certain directions and taking away from their player agency.
- Thinking more deeply about the consequences of player actions. If the players decide to kill an NPC, what might the consequences of this be? How can I run the NPCs to make them more interesting and not just cannon fodder for the players to kill.
- How can I better incorporate player classes and skills into the game? What are some interesting things that I can have them do, given their roles?
Lonnie’s Fishtank
In addition to running mothership, I was able to better connect with my new game development team a bit more. Our team lead, Lost Beach Boy, had extensive experience with music and instruments (eg, old Roland synthesizers) and knows quite a bit about doing visual art and aesthetics for games too. The other team members also sound like they have interesting and valuable experience to bring to the team.
I am looking forward to continuing development on this somewhat chill gameplay concept. My goal for next week is to develop a mock-up in Figma, Mirror, or Milanote that shows the flow of the game between the different menus and game views. My intent is to setup a basis for describing the game loop so that development of it is clear and the team is on the same page about what it is working towards.
I am super excited to bring in the other skills I’ve developed while working on my previous team, as well as knowledge about all the tools that I’ve learned while working on my previous solo project: Primordial.