Storytelling through Violence in Mothership RPG

We recently completed a short campaign of Mothership - Another Bug Hunt - the published adventure module that comes with the Mothership box set. It was my first time running Mothership and I was excited to see the mechanics in action. 

At first blush, Mothership looks like a game in the OSR vein. Characters have few skills, the world is incredibly deadly and dangerous, rulings are prioritized rules, and player ingenuity is rewarded over character ability. And for much of the game, Mothership does play with those principles front and center. Stress is rising and, given the lack of special powers, players have to seek creative solutions to the challenges they find themselves in.

It was during violent encounters that I noticed something surprising - in combat, Mothership operates more like a story game. 

The rules for violent encounters as listed in the Player Survival Guide are dirt simple. So simple, in fact, that they weren't really clear to me when I first read them. Here are the salient points:

• In a violent confrontation, time is split into 10-second intervals called rounds. Everything in a round happens basically at the same time.
• The Warden describes the situation and what is likely to happen if no one responds.
• Go around the table and each player describes how their characters react. Once they understand the stakes and what they want to do, players commit to action.
• The Warden resolves all actions at once, calling for stat checks or saves as needed. After stat checks or saves are rolled, damage and wounds are rolled.
• Finally, the Warden describes the new situation and the next round starts.

There are some suggestions for things you can do in a violent encounter, and how attack rolls, damage, armor, and cover work, but the core procedure for violent encounters is basically as it is described there. It's not even called combat. It's called a violent encounter. The language in the game doesn't presume that the default action when confronted with danger is to fight. It could be just as wise to run away. 

The rules don't even specify whether the Warden rolls dice when monsters try to harm the PCs. The rules are never explicit about this, but based on some guidance in the Warden's Operations Manual, my interpretation was that the Warden may roll dice if they think the outcome of a monster's attack is uncertain. 

Let's go through the procedure a little more closely, because there are some interesting tidbits in there. First off, 10 second rounds. No problem. But immediately after this, we get this idea that "everything in the round happens basically at the same time." You don't go around the table or have individual initiative, as in a game like D&D. (Individual initiative is offered as an optional rule. I did not use it at my table.) 

Mothership is extremely intentional, even in violent encounters, about the situation-question-decision-stakes-commit-action cycle, or what Prismatic Wasteland calls The Basic Procedure of the OSR. In a violent encounter, the GM describes the situation and what is likely to happen if no one responds. The last part of this sentence is interesting, because it foreshadows an outcome. Then, just like in the basic procedure, the players ask questions to get clarification before committing to action.

The Warden then resolves all actions at once, calling for stat checks and saves as needed. After stat checks and saves are rolled, damage and wounds are rolled.

In practice, you can't resolve different actions like this in a truly simultaneous fashion, but what this flexibility offers to GMs in the ability to direct the combat encounter like a story. The GM has set the stakes and the ultimate outcome of inaction when they describe the situation. The players then state their intents, and the GM interprets how it all plays out, either in flashes of individual actions or in one chaotic mess. 

The way I ran this was often starting something like--the massive, carcinid is skittering towards Jones, its claws ripping up chunks of earth with its passage. If it reaches Jones, it will try to rip them limb from limb. What do you do?

One PC (Raven) might try to shoot at the carcinid to distract it. Another (Big Mike) might be trying to rig up some explosive to disable the carcinid. Jones' player might decide that Jones is going to try to pry up a floor panel and hide in the subfloor. 

As a GM, I have liberty to narrate the flow of the scene and ask for checks as needed. I typically try to narrate the action in the order of least-dramatic to most-dramatic. The carcinid will act last, since if it successfully reaches Jones, it's likely to kill him--the ultimate stakes for that PC. I might decide that, given the situation, the explosives are going to take a few rounds to rig, so that's a lower drama action (unless they're doing something incredibly dangerous with the explosives!). As for Raven firing at the monster and Jones attempts to escape, it's a bit of a coin-toss. 

Here's how I would narrate this:

Big Mike is working to assemble the bomb. It's going to take (d6 roll) 3 rounds to complete. Raven, you're firing at the carcinid. Roll a Combat Check. (Player rolls, fails.) Okay, you aim your combat shotgun, squeeze the trigger, and the weapon jams. Take a point of stress. The monster is hurtling towards Jones. Jones, give me a Speed test to see if you can pry up the floor panel and escape before the carcinid reaches you. (Player rolls, succeeds.) You pry up the plasteel floor panel and dive through into the shadowy darkness below. A half-second later, a razor-sharp span of the carcinid's front claw punches through the floor panel above you. 

One benefit about running combat like this is that it forces the players to commit to action before they know how the events of the round are going to play out. It keeps things moving quickly. In games with individual initiative, players are continually reacting and adjusting to the actions that proceeded their turn, which takes time as players hem and haw about the optimum decision. 

The Player's Guide offers rules for how much damage weapons deal, range bands, armor, all the standard stuff you might expect in trad or OSR games, but it also describes how using stats other than combat aren't the only way to be effective in a fight. This guidance, along with the flexibility afforded the GM in interpreting the outcome, tend to lean towards making violent encounters play out more like it might in a story game like Blades in the Dark. For me, that was a surprising and delightful discovery, and once I figured it out, violent encounters became extremely fun. 

What experiences have you had running violent encounters in Mothership? Did you find the rules leaned towards creating a narrative? Is this how you run combat in other games? Let me know in the comments.