Module Review: Another Bug Hunt

This review contains spoilers for the Mothership module Another Bug Hunt, published by Tuesday Knight Games (www.tuesdayknightgames.com).

"An Introductory Adventure"

Another Bug Hunt was the second module I ran for Mothership, after a Haunting of Ypsilon-14 one-shot. Why did I reach for this adventure when I have a bookshelf overflowing with exciting and novel sci-fi scenarios? Well, ABH is designed as an introductory adventure, and I'm the sort of GM that starts off running a system as-intended before I start making my modifications. And if Another Bug Hunt does one thing well, it's demonstrating how Mothership is meant to be run.

From the Warden's perspective, ABH is like a video game tutorial. The Warden Educational Support (WES) adds notes and cutouts throughout the booklet with advice, like when Fear Saves might be suitable or how events may unfold depending on player actions. I found this to be a huge help for dialing in the lethality of the system, as well as reminding me of all the moving parts in the module. It does have the downside of making this adventure a bit more linear than most Mothership modules, so the advice and assumptions provided by WES may become less reliable as you progress through the scenarios.

Four Scenarios, Four Styles

The module is separated into four sections, each treated as a discrete chunk of the plot that can be pulled out and run as a standalone mission, or strung together in a connected adventure. Each scenario also demonstrates to the Warden and players a different style of adventure in which Mothership excels; exploration, sandbox, dungeon-crawl, and escape sequences. Again, this is a fantastic tool for Wardens still trying to discover their personal style and preferences. Unfortunately, that's not me anymore; I found half the scenarios to be exactly my jam, and the other half were almost painful to run.

Before we jump into the adventure itself, we have a bit of starting information to digest. We're provided with a brief timeline of important events over the past ten years, neatly separating player knowledge from secrets for the Warden. This is a super useful practice for anyone creating mysteries, and almost essential for keeping the story and clues consistent.

We're also introduced to the core threats of the adventure: the crab-like carcinids and their infectious Shriek. As a nemesis, the carcinids are... fine. Their stats are sufficiently beefy to telegraph that the players won't be winning any head-on fights (vibechetes notwithstanding), although their physiology can be confusing at times. The Shriek is described as a form of propagation, so what is the purpose of the cocoons the players can find in the second scenario? Are these producing a different form of carcinid? They probably should, but that's left to the Warden to figure out. In the same vein, the carcinids are at least twice the size of a human, which doesn't quite click with the Stage 5 Shriek effect. These are nitpicks, to be sure, but it's the kind of oversight that leaves players distracted by unanswered questions. I'd recommend Wardens think through their own answers in advance, so you don't need to come up with an answer on-the-fly (or check my recommended tweaks at the end of the review).

Armed with all this information, we're ready to crack into the scenarios proper! Let's take a look at what worked at my table, and what fell short.

Scenario #1: Feeling Crabby?

The first scenario is quintessential Mothership. Players explore an abandoned outpost, trying to piece together what happened to the people they were sent to meet. The booklet provides a few NPCs from the very outset to get the players acquainted with their mission, but quickly drops the protagonists onto the planet by themselves. They won't be finding any intelligible survivors in Greta Base, so make the most of the social component while you have it.

Everything provided in this part of the module is top-notch. Just the right amount of clues scattered about, mounting tension that culminates in a great monster reveal, and opportunities for every player to do what they do best. Scientists get a med bay with samples to dissect, marines get a baddy to shoot at, teamsters have equipment and vehicles to tinker with, and androids can dispassionately succeed at the handful of Fear Saves scattered through the base. There are also a multitude of those tutorial pop-ups for the Warden, explaining everything from when to roll dice, to optional changes for a one-shot.

Justifications for the odd state of affairs are provided with the room descriptions, mostly. One that I had to ad-lib was the barricade between the Commissary and the Crew Habitat. The only trace of post-carc activity in the Crew Habitat is a scrawled warning, and there's a second entry that remained unlocked. So what was achieved by barricading it? There's no bodies or signs of a struggle on the other side, so who or what was the barricade keeping out? It might have been one of the compulsions inflicted by Stage 3 of The Shriek, but it seems like an out-of-place task compared to sorting MREs and digging holes.

Like all good adventures, I found myself in several organic moments of tension provided by the players. For example, the marine started the mission with a set of infrared goggles, which they used while looking at the APC in the garage. Since we have Demar huddled in there, the marine was able to see a shapeless mass of heat barely moving, which had the players guessing at what it could be. Of course, situations like this are beyond the scope of what Another Bug Hunt can predict, but that reactive ad-libbing is a vital skill for Wardens. We'll see in the next scenario how the middle-ground ABH tries to straddle between linearity and sandbox starts to fall apart.

Scenario #2: Dam it All to Hell

The crew arrive at the Heron Terraforming Station, and we finally have a set of NPCs and factions to work with. The focus for the Warden is managing three factions and three objectives simultaneously, while constantly reminding the players of the alien threat. This feels like a lot to pile on a presumably new Warden, but this execution makes sense; each faction has their own priority, aligning with Mothership's three tenets of Survive (fix the comms array), Solve (retrieve data from the lab), and Save (rescue the team investigating the reactor).

This scenario is solid, with plenty of options for the players to follow whatever direction interests them most. Every path has interesting challenges, scares, and a few drips of information for ongoing mysteries. I would recommend reading and re-reading this sections for some hidden plotlines that aren't expounded on in the module, but could be spun out into new branches of the adventure, or become plot threads for a larger campaign (like the human-alien hybrid that only gets one sentence).

This was also the backdrop for a moment of player agency that derailed the module's expectations. One of my players took the explosives from the survivors' weapon stockpile and blew up the dam in a gambit to save the team going to the communications array. Maybe I say yes too easily, but the guy rolled a critical success and I had to honour that. By draining the dam, I had to do some research between sessions on what that meant for the flooded reactor room. It also gave the players a lot of headroom when Scenario #4 rolled around, without a lake to flood.

I think this is a great scenario for splitting the party. Especially if the players are new to this kind of system, the only feasible way to succeed at all the tasks set out for them is to tackle each simultaneously. The module does make note of this as an option, but it doesn't give any guidance on actually running separate groups.

Scenario #3: Titular

Okay, this is where Another Bug Hunt fell flat for me. I've not run many classic OSR-style dungeon crawls, they never clicked with my GM style or preferences. And likewise, my players haven't played in many dungeon crawls, either at my table or others. So as they were sneaking through rooms of alien technology, or avoiding human limbs and faces growing from weird organic walls, the style of play those rooms expect didn't gel with my players' interests or expectations.

I understand the difficulty of creating layouts for alien structures with a lot of verticality, but this scenario is in dire need of actual maps. We get a vague ship outline with some coloured blobs for each route, which is barely enough to keep track of the most location-dense section of the adventure. At least the three routes available to the players are separated, so once you know your players' entrypoint you only have a page or two to reference. The layout could do with a bit of improvement, I don't think we needed identical carcinid statblocks on facing pages.

To make this scenario even more awkward, the module clearly states that this is a deathtrap, and the Warden shouldn't expect the players to survive their encounter with the villain at the end of the dungeon. Now, this isn't some hidden bonus area, nor is it telegraphed as a place that should be avoided. The players are tasked at the beginning of the module with retrieving an item only found in this location, and can uncover a locator tracker leading them straight here. They also find marines in the second scenario who point them in this direction as well.

I know this is to teach the Warden and the players that sometimes the best idea is to just walk away, but that has always been a tenuous section of the TTRPG Social Contract. Especially in a horror-themed game, the players will inevitably grapple with the question "Why don't we just leave?". Indeed, horror media of all forms will be asked this at some point, because it's common sense. If Fight doesn't work, Flight is the obvious second choice. So we come up with convoluted excuses why the protagonists can't leave. In Aliens, as soon as the crew tries to leave LV-426, their pilot is killed and the dropship destroyed, because the plot is still on the planet and it's not satisfying to leave a plotline unresolved. In TTRPGs (especially module-heavy systems like Mothership), our players know that if they turn around and leave, it just means it's time to stop playing, because they left the prepared material. So when we have content where the answer is to walk away, what are we teaching the players? Or Wardens, for that matter? Should we be preparing paths in our adventures that will only result in failure? Mothership is a lethal enough system as it is, we don't need to add impossible scenarios on top of that.

Scenario #4: Saved for a Rainy Day

At this point, the module can't account for what your players have done up to now, so we're on our own. I'd be curious how this plays out for Wardens less experienced in improv, it seems like throwing them in the deep end for what should be the climax of the adventure. Depending on the pace of the previous scenarios, the 10 hour timeline provided by the booklet could eclipse the in-game time spent by the players up to this point, which clashes with both the climax and the "zoom out" recommended by WES.

The page set aside for what happens back on the ship feels a bit tacked-on. I'm a fan of Maas' transformation, used either to add another problem while the players are overwhelmed, or as a surprise just as they think they're safe and home free. Some of the impact was lost for my table because this module took us four 4-hour long sessions, so it had been a long time since they last heard mention of Maas by the time they got back into orbit. The very brief moment of ship combat also feels obligatory, purely there to say every Mothership mechanic was presented in the module.

Once More, With Feeling

I have a few tweaks I would make if I were to run this again, although admittedly it's right at the back of my queue for modules to get to the table. These may add a lot of complexity to the module, so they're not all recommended for first-time Wardens who already have enough to keep track of.

Carcinid Transformation: Timelines can be weird in horror scenarios that establish a constant threat (does anyone get time to sleep while giant crabs are banging on the walls?). So when one of my players was infected, they rolled 15 hours until they next needed to test against the infection. Well, that was right as the module was coming to a close and they were flying away from Samsa VI. If we want tension throughout the module from this mechanic, it needs to happen more often. I could see 1d5 hours until the next test instead of 2d10, but I would instead tie it to Panic: Once infected, a 5+ on a failed Panic Check progresses the infection to the next stage.

Hinton and the Core: Hinton's Logic Core is assumed to be a part of his body, necessitating bodily harm to retrieve it. I would more clearly communicate it as an external drive of some sort, so negotiating or stealth become more viable approaches to getting the Core without angering scores of alien crabs.

No More Scenario Four: I think the fourth scenario should play out in parallel to scenarios #2 and #3, forcing some tougher choices and bringing the adventure to a single climactic end. Escape sequences are a classic method for closing out a dungeon after the boss is defeated, but 10 hours is too long for it to feel dramatic. Condense the escape into 10 in-game minutes scrambling for the dropship and fending off the crabs while everyone gets aboard, and have Maas on the dropship rather than in orbit to really throw a spanner in the works and close all the threads in one fell swoop.

Limited Carc Count: The volume of crabs the players face just becomes ridiculous at a point. From the second scenario onwards, they face a constant onslaught of thickly carapaced monsters, which only cheapens the impact of any individual encounter. I would try a limited count of carcinids, one for each deceased colonist. This also makes it easier to use the "carcinid traits" table on the back of the booklet, attributing the unique aspects to the corresponding colonist the aliens burst from.

The Carcinid Lifecycle: This is my answer to the vagueness of carcinid physiology. It helps to take a page from Alien's playbook, with a small "Shrieker" capable only of spreading infection with The Shriek, and a proper carcinid that bursts from infected organisms. The cocoons found in the reactor chimney are for creating Shriekers, while carcs start with proportions like a Japanese Spider Crab before growing a larger body to match their limbs. The original proportions of the carcinids doesn't explain how they burst from a human host without tearing the body into an unrecognizable mess, so the new proportions account for a smaller larval stage which still gives that initial scare from Abara and Ziegler as long crab legs tear out from the neck to reach their prey. We can give the Shriekers a weaker statblock, something like: C:45 Swipe 1d10 DMG I:45 AP:3 W:1(10)

Final Thoughts

My time with Another Bug Hunt ended not with a bang, but a whimper. And sometimes, that's just how TTRPGs go. Most of my players came out of it with a positive impression of Mothership, and are raring to take another crack at it. But there were also some who didn't click with it, and I can't say for sure whether it was the system or the module that put them off. My suggestion for experienced GMs: read through the WES advice and internalize it, then run a one-shot using one of the first three scenarios.

For new Wardens looking to get their players interested in Mothership, Another Bug Hunt still has some utility for you. If your table has already bought in to Mothership, this module can still be a great tasting platter of content for you and your players to identify what they like most about the system, so next time the table can focus on what everyone knows they enjoy. Just give them a heads-up that future adventures can be more focused and consistent than this one, and to give Another Bug Hunt a bit of leeway to have its ebbs and flows.