Module Review: Warped Beyond Recognition

This review contains spoilers for the Mothership module Warped Beyond Recognition, written by Quadra (https://www.paradiso.zone).

First Things First

Prepping for the Mothership module Warped Beyond Recognition was a bit daunting. The booklet is split into four sections: the context of the scenario, the location itself, six detailed NPCs, and an entire mechanic around creating psychic player characters. After reading the module several times over, I felt I was prepared to run this lauded scenario. I ran two sessions with a group playing Mothership for the first time, although they had plenty of TTRPG experience. This can be a tenuous situation, especially if this is a player's first experience with a horror game. It wasn't helped by the fact that this was the first time we had all met, so safety tools were a priority for me.

Unfortunately, Warped Beyond Recognition doesn't have a content warning section anywhere in the booklet, so I had to thoroughly vet the contents myself. It also treads into the treacherous territory of child abuse. While no ages are assigned to the Test Subjects, they are referred to by the scientists as "kids", the Warp Test that was conducted on them is explicitly more effective the younger the test subject is (with 20 being the age of diminishing returns), and the Subjects' backstories refer to acquisition from schools and slave markets. This isn't usually a hard line at tables with people I'm familiar with, but I felt I was treading a dangerous line with a table of, essentially, strangers.

In this case, I depicted the Test Subjects as ages 18-22, which was sufficient to make sure everyone was comfortable and having fun.

Why Are We Here? Just to Suffer?

First, the context. The book provides 5 pages of background, outcomes, and potential situations to help Wardens anticipate how their players will encounter the adventure (or how to introduce it as a standalone adventure). I used the first suggestion of Tannhäuser strong-arming employees into recovering data on risk of losing their careers, and I put a fail-safe in the ship's navigation to discourage the inevitable "Guys, what if we just call it a day and leave?" discussion. I ran the adventure as a 2-shot standalone for my players, so I was able to set aside the Aftermath possibilities, although there's a lot of great potential and advice for turning the Tannhäuser corporation into a campaign-spanning villain. Most of this section will not need to be revisited while running the module, unless your players start digging into the history of the ship.

However, there is a bright orange cutout in this section that became a pain point for me: Sanity for the Test Subjects. I'll put a pin in this topic for now and circle back to it when we talk about the module's NPCs. Also of note, the ship manifest lists two Rafaels; one is the captain, and one is a research assistant. This isn't relevant to any mysteries or twists, but might be indicative of some last-minute changes to the module that create minor inconsistencies elsewhere in the booklet, which I'll refer to as the Late Captain when it comes up (it's really inconsequential, and more an interesting artifact of iterative module design).

Worth a Thousand Words

Next, we have three 2-page spreads mapping the RSV Fidanza. These maps are exceptional, and will be all you need for the majority of your referencing at the table. Not only is the room layout clear and logical, the maps also capture vital details of the rooms without relying on the text descriptions. Terminals, bodies, datapads, vents, and room contents are all communicated at a moment's glance, with the text descriptions clearly linked for your players' scavenging needs. The encounter table is also succinct and has a clear path of progression to make sure tension is always mounting.

I appreciate the location of the Medbay within sight of the entrance to the Fidanza. With a body partially visible as soon as the players enter the ship, they are immediately led to an important room which sets the stakes (and risk of a hefty 1d10 Stress). This is where we see the second hint of the Late Captain, as the map only denotes the bodies of the three teamsters in the room, while the ship manifest notes that the captain is located here as well.

People as Puzzles

And now we have the core of the Warped Beyond Recognition scenario: the Test Subjects. Six young adults awakened to psychic powers of varying flavor, these NPCs are the biggest obstacles the player characters will face. Understandably, they're also the heftiest mental burden the Warden will be tasked with. Each NPC has a 2-page spread of their own, detailing their history, personality, psychic powers and stats, and how their behavior differs by sanity level. This makes for a stellar example of NPCs as a puzzle box, rather than a big bad to run away from or kill. The Warden is provided a comprehensive toolkit to flesh out these characters, and encouraged to portray them in three dimensions. I personally found difficulty, however, with doing this six times over. Yeah, let's go ahead and unpin that orange cutout from the pages about context.

So, each Test Subject has six levels of Sanity, ranging from amiable to psychotic. And they slide up and down this scale in accordance to the players' actions, whether they're approached with violence or diplomacy. This is a great concept, which gives the players the freedom to struggle for a peaceful resolution, or fall back on good old-fashioned murder (in self-defense). However, when this is spread across six targets, it becomes a juggling act for both the players and the Warden; do befriended Test Subjects tag along and help win over their fellows? Do they care enough about each other that killing one rules out friendship with the others? What exactly do they want?

Adding to the complexity, each Test Subject's statblock is built more like a D&D monster than anything I've seen in Mothership. Even Miriam's Psychic Arm minions have more abilities than anything in the Unconfirmed Contact Reports book. Fun fact: Miriam's arm count is the third hint to the Late Captain. She's described as having 10 human arms, which only accounts for five dead crew members if we assume her own two arms aren't part of that count.

Get Psyched

Finally, we have the Warp Test system. If the players are getting jealous of these twisted psychic beings, they can be one too! Once they recover enough research data, they'll have the knowledge they need to start experimenting with their own psionic awakening. The guidelines provided in this section are excellent, providing just the right ratio of mechanical guidance and malleable player-to-player discussion.

Now, none of my players actually underwent the Warp Test to become psychic, so I can't speak to this mechanic from a place of experience. It's tricky to fit a player-initiated Warp Test into a standalone adventure, so I'll outline some other ways to let the players explore this mechanic in the next section.

Lessons for Next Time

I am hoping to run this module again, because the concepts are so solid and the situation could play out in so many ways I'm excited to see. It also comes with a fantastic soundtrack, and even a desktop application for mapping audio soundscapes as the players traverse the map (which Quadra is developing for broader use: tat). But, my first playthrough has produced a few ideas for modifying future games.

Involuntary Psychic Awakenings: As mentioned previously, the psychic player mechanics are difficult to fit into this module when you run it as a standalone adventure. Given how psionics have traumatised the Test Subjects, I think the Warp Test should be weaponised by Sonia, especially if the players (or another Test Subject) fix the Jump Drive on the Fidanza. Alternatively, you can start the players on the RSV Fidanza already, as the latest Test Subjects just returning to consciousness after a successful test.

Fewer Test Subjects: As excellent as each Test Subject is, there are just too many for me to juggle without one detracting from the others. They each represent different horror archetypes that should really be given the spotlight for an entire scenario:

Evander's action hero delusions could be played as a lampshaded Predator (or an inverted Die Hard), as a proficient killing machine hunting down the player characters. Miriam is the quintessential vent-crawling monstrosity, perfect for haunting the players and striking when they least expect it. Billy is ideally played in a socially-driven scenario, which is just asking for secret player objectives to pit everyone against each other. Jonesy Babbitt could do real damage in a Sanity-based mind-bender of a scenario, leaving the players guessing at what's real and what's not. Sonia is only one step from the classic HAL 9000, a spaceship out to kill its own inhabitants.

Yu Yin is the odd one out here, as she's the least malicious of the Test Subjects. While she could be run as an unwilling, misunderstood threat who unconsciously destroys all she touches, I would prefer to have her act as a foil to whichever other Subject is the focus of the scenario. A sympathetic victim who wants to help the players, and in turn the players want to help her, while thematically highlighting the cruelty of an indifferent corporation willing to do anything for the bottom line.

Condensed Subject Sanity: By simplifying their Sanity, I preserve my own. Six stages of sanity offers a lot of granularity, but as far as players are concerned, only three matter: are they friend, foe, or indifferent? We can play with that spectrum within each tier, but having six stages is like changing gears in a manual transmission: It's great if I have a spare hand, but boy is that hard when I'm also keeping all these plates spinning. Why am I spinning plates in a car? To keep mixing this metaphor.

Remixed Locations: The default layout of the ship has players starting right next door to Evander, the Test Subject with the least ambiguity or creepiness. His starting Sanity Level of "crazed action hero" also sets a strange standard for a Mothership module right out of the gate: face-to-face combat with a normal-looking dude (albeit with a big mech next to him) can influence the players' expectations for what kind of module this is.

Instead, I would start with Jonesy being the nearest Subject, as his reality-altering power will keep the players guessing about what's happening on this ship. Billy would be down in the Lab with Yu Yin as his "captive audience", while adding an extra variable to each others' encounters. I'm imagining Billy gaslighting the players while the monstrous-looking Yu Yin tries to convince them she's friendly. Miriam can be hinted at throughout the scenario with missing arms and moving limbs, along with noises in the vents, until revealing herself near the end when most of the normal-looking Test Subjects have been met. Sophia is already almost omniscient and omnipresent, though I would consider her starting as a ghost in the machine who begins by communicating with players using the ship terminals, and slowly growing in power and taking over more and more systems. Let the players think it's the ship AI helping them, until more creepy and threatening responses come through without prompting.

Final Thoughts

Warped Beyond Recognition is an adventure packed with possibility. I would even think of it as a modular toolkit, to be remixed and customised by a Warden running the scenario repeatedly for different groups. This is a must-have for any Game Master's collection, even just as a lesson in module design.