Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

Hull Breach is a 230 page anthology of modules for Mothership, produced and edited by Ian Yusem, but with an ensemble set of authors and a flashy layout by Lone Archivist. It’s a unique and broad product, and one that hopefully will open the floodgates for similar ones that will further it’s innovations.

Hull Breach has multiple levels of organisation. Superficially, we have a series of Intels (advise for running specific challenging aspects of Mothership), then a series of directed Missions, then a series of Locations, and some Entities and Assets, and an Appendix. There are dense front and end papers, the front papers giving instructions on how to read this book. This structure for me, wasn’t successful. It starts very dense, and the front papers did not direct me successfully in how to approach the book. The Intel at the front made me feel as if I needed to wade through the entire chunk of advice before getting to the rest of the book, even though, to be clear, I don’t think this is the intended way to read the book. The front papers just don’t present a more straightforward approach with sufficient clarity, and so I bounced off Hull Breach a few times (hence the delayed review, I think I teased it in August?). For me, different structural approach might have have made this a less intimidating read.

But Hull Breach has a second, more innovative level of structure, which is how the articles are woven together, using the front papers, which connect campaign styles to matching articles, missions and locations, maps of systems that represent how the articles are connected spatially, maps of corporate relationships, and events that trigger when other events occur. This is a clever way to tie an anthology together, and I just wish it had been centralised and forefronted, because it’s not given enough breathing space in the front papers (I’d like just a little more guidance there), and a lot of important elements of running the campaign and relegated to appendixes (and hence easy to miss or dismiss). I think this would’ve been better as a first chapter, all put together and presented as campaign tools. This would place everything that came after in clearer context, and would have made for a less overwhelming read, especially for someone like me who isn’t going into this with “I want to run a rim space survival campaign”. It feels to me there was a tension here in the production team, between “these articles should be good enough to stand on their own” and “these articles should be interconnected”, and for me, what makes Hull Breach unique from other Mothership releases would’ve been better off leaning into the latter.

The “intel” section is mixed for me. There are two significant rules forks here: Manhunt and Wardenless. I’m unlikely to use the Manhunt or Wardenless rules, and they take up a considerable chunk of space. Wardenless is a solid referee-less (or referee-ful, as some style it) fork of Mothership using a standard card deck for randomisation; it provides mainly rules to arbitrate the wardens role in their absence. I haven’t playtested it but it reminds me of the best parts of other referee-less games like Ironsworn. I actually think a better approach to referee-less games are sharing roles more consistently (Galactic 2e provides a strong model here in my opinion), but this works, and to a degree fits the more traditional high lethality dungeon-crawl mode better. My main criticism is that I’d love more direct and specific prompts, and more of them, but that’s a personal preference, and the chosen prompt approach would be less likely to end up with strange contradictions; I understand the choice even if I don’t disagree with it. Manhunt on the other hand is plainly not the same game as Mothership; it’s not compatible with other modules, but comes with one of its own. I actually like it a lot on its own merits — it reminds me of the videogame Carrion, which I am a huge fan of — but where the strength of Mothership and of Hull Breach is the breadth of material and the worldbuilding, it feels wholly out of place.

The direct advice, on mysteries, hand-offs and describing terror, are excellent advice and provide concrete actions in the form of procedures, tables and generators. My favourite section though is the water piracy article, which provides a decent pirate crew and which feels modular in a way that I can see actively incorporating into a campaign or a series of encounters. In addition, it’s got some really fun writing: “Beanpole with boxy haircut and silver cybernetic eyes. Irritated by Lu’s constant mess in life support.” Juicy, fun stuff, just it really belongs in the Entities section.

The missions section is even moreso a mixed bag. Bones and Videotape is a pretty cool concept for an inter dimensional alien puzzle dungeon in the vein of Aberrant Reflections, but is hampered from an absolutely incoherent structure and layout. Helium Hysteria is a fun time-limited conspiracy crawl, with solid and clear layout and maps, and some excellent characters (“Apolitical ‘anarchist’ and self-proclaimed ‘rock star.’ Shaggy hair and custom patched uniform. Desperate to impress. Goes along with whatever the majority believes. Foam Gun.”, most of which are held in lists (the best use of a list in my opinion). Residue Processing is an evocative funnel with a dark humour that brings a lot to the horror scenario. Road Work is a fascinating experimental module that is an absolute organisational mess, but has the PCs exploring a small murder dungeon across multiple parallel universes. 1000 Jumps Too Far is a faction crawl upon a generation ship that best reflects the kind of play I’d like to see in a Mothership campaign, although its writing isn’t as punchy as some of the others (there’s still gold in them there hills, though: “Sabres sleep on bedding of crumpled reprimands and mission documentation.”). My favourite in isolation, though, Vibechete, is a slasher film homage with a spectacular point crawl; it winks at the referee flavourfully (“Exsanguinated, well dressed teenage corpses—all missing both hands— impaled upon scaffolding bars driven deep into hardwood. A (working!) bulky Flashlight bulges from one’s distended mouth.”) and leans into its pulpy inspirations, but also stands out considerably in vibe and aesthetic, and I don’t really see it fitting into the Corespace Intrigue campaign vibe it’s plugged into because of this. For all of these, though there are excellent modules in their own ways, but my main concern is that they’re mostly designed as slaughterhouses, which is contrary to the overall campaign goals of Hull Breach. I know absurdly deadly is Mothership’s modus operandi, but I think these missions needed to take an alternative approach to support the Hull Breach campaign.

Locations are consistently excellent, and use other risks than death as leverage: Escape Clause threatens servitude (and features some evocative word choice , “A lime green antiseptic pit. A jaundiced but energetic Prosecutor, Jaimye Novak sits behind a desk cluttered with pneumatic canisters and paperwork.”), for example. The Interstellar Mega Mart leaves interesting questions (like is it alive?). Procession is a procedurally generated megadungeon, built by repair robots gone awry, that falls flat due to the focus on procedure, and I really like the framing of the dungeon as completely unplanned. Terrifying Terraforms is a horrible planet generator that falls a little flat to me (I’d always prefer a module to give me a list of bespoke planets than a way to generate them). Wonderland is a resort cruise come living nightmare, which comes inadequately mapped in my opinion, and would be difficult to run even though it’s full of flavour. My favourite is a pirate station, Siesta-3, which is packed with hooks and interesting, self-interested factions, and well written descriptions (“Melancholic offworld musician. All-black fashion. Seeks spiritual experiences. Cannot keep a secret.”). I could base a campaign out of this location, it’s basically a lite version of A Pound of Flesh (which makes it doubly disappointing that the mystery Intel refers to A Pound of Flesh rather than this).

It’s fascinating reading an anthology of Mothership horror. It’s five times the Mothership content I’d usually read in a sitting, and it reveals that the number of angles taken on horror scenarios here are far broader than those taken in fantasy horror scenarios. Recently, on Between Two Cairns, Yochai Gal raised the idea that science fiction modules requires more thorough detail than fantasy modules, because we don’t have as clear a genre framework for sci-fi to improvise on. I wonder if this works the other way, here: The lack of a clear genre framework makes for more potential scenarios to envision, because the conventions are less restrictive. Certainly, everything here is horrifying in a different way, humorous in another, in a way that I suspect wouldn’t come across as compelling in a fantasy version of this anthology. If you’re looking for imagination, here is a good place to find it.

The Entities and Assets sections truly feel like accessories, but they’re excellent, especially the NPC lists. They probably deserve more pride of place, because some (advice on dealing with explosives, and teleportation rules, for example) feel like they belong in Intel. Appendices similarly are excellent, but I’ve discussed most of them already; they deserved more centrality as well.

Hull Breach comes in a beautiful A5 hardcover, fully illustrated and in colour, with a bookmark. If I were going to run a campaign, I’d want it in hand. The layout is not as flashy as Lone Archivist’ work on Another Bug Hunt, but is less consistent, with some sections needing a lot more coordination between writer and layout. Maps range from exceptional to empty connected boxes, which leaves me disappointed in the weaker links. I recognise the desire to make everything visually unique, but I don’t think it helps keep everything usable in an already complex piece of writing. [Edit: It’s been drawn to my attention that I misunderstood the credits, Lone Archivist didn’t do all the layout, just some of it. Potentially this is contributing to the variety of approaches I clashed with here].

Overall, there’s a whole lot of excellent words and modules in Hull Breach. Taken individually, there isn’t anything here that isn’t worth reading, and little I wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend to bring to table. Taken as a campaign, I think many of the modules miss the mark with regards to lethality and a lack of imagination regarding consequences of failure. On the other hand, if I wanted to run Mothership regularly, I could build a world out of Hull Breach, and that brings something to Mothership we haven’t really seen before: a campaign setting. And when taken as the Forgotten Realms of Mothership, while I’d have made some different decisions had that been my goal, this is an excellent resource. I also think that, while there’s a lot to be learnt from the flaws in Hull Breach, there’s much more to learn from its structural successes and how it ties disparate articles together into a cohesive working class horror setting. A volume 2 of Hull Breach that leant harder into interconnectivity and collaboration would be a must buy for me.

For you, there are a lot of reasons you might find this worth looking at: You want a Mothership setting? This is excellent fodder. Want advice on being a better referee? There’s some great advice here that supplements the new Warden’s guide. Want more Mothership modules, but sick of your zine pile always falling down? Consider Hull Breach, this will give you a years worth of content if not more. Hull Breach is a hell of an anthology, and only flawed in that it doesn’t lean harder into its conceits and innovations.

22nd September, 2023

Idle Cartulary