Running Mothership (for the first time)

Following my descent into games very different from D&D 5e, I ran my first game of Mothership recently. Mothership is this, the rules are free and the starting module Dead Planet is chock full of cool dm facing content. In short, it's a sci-fi horror ttrpg that plays off classic sci-fi horror movie tropes.

The crew consisted of 4 players filling each role that the game provides. They were Lilith (a stressed out shovel-wielding teamster), Jack (the sweet country boy marine), Wesley (a young scientist, definitely not Wesley Crusher), and Coru (an android with memory problems who has the quirk of taking written notes). They were the final survivors on an archeological ship named The Alexis.

Please check it out at http://www.tuesdayknightgames.com/mothership

The Session

They woke up in the cryopod room to a confused and memory wiped Coru and began to slowly piece things together. They scavenging for supplies, killed alien bugs, tried to get to the command center, and figure out a means of escape.

The ship alternated between a base state (43 minutes) and a spookyfied eldrich interference state (13 minutes where corpses twitch, tentacles drift out of the vents, and androids shut down and reset).
While in the normal version of the ship this played and while in the spooky version of the ship this played. There was also a tall lanky telekinetic monster chasing the party during the spooky interference. It screamed an awful scream like this.

The end result was a tense race to solve a couple mysteries:
What happened to the crew?
Why is the ship going spooky?
Where tf are we?
How do we escape the Alexis?

They managed through aggressively decompressing the cargo hold to escape and jump onto a passing abandoned ship near their own (they were stranded, unable to make a jump to faster than light travel). While the other ship was being prepared to evac the last remaining members, the party members that remained behind fought off the telekinetic monster. The end result was everyone hurt, the scientist and marine were left panicking but just barely managed to make it onto the other ship.

The session ended with the party trying to take the other ship to the dead planet's moon and hopefully fix the jump drive dead zone in the process.

There's really evocative art for aliens like this by Stephen Wilson & Sean Mccoy inside DEAD PLANET

The Feedback

My players really enjoyed how quickly things could spiral out of control and how easy it was to play into their class tropes. There was initial resistance to switching to a roll under system but once I walked them through the character creation they began to enjoy the new system. Combat ran smoothly and they managed to repel the big monster pretty effectively. The setting of suspense and the descriptions of monsters were of particular praise. I personally loved the spooky tone and the sci-fi setting and can't wait to run more one-shots of Mothership in the future. Give it a chance if you have the time!