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.

Dead Weight is an 11 page module for Mothership by Norgad. In it, you are technicians aboard the ship the Adamant Lapis, as it falls to ruin for reasons you don’t yet understand. Norgad writes small modules, and I actually have another in the queue for this month and one for a next year, but this one was just released a few days ago so I gave it a bump. I’m really interested in Norgad’s approach to small modules, and I’m very curious how it translates to Mothership, which is the first time I’ve seen Norgad tackle something meatier than Mausritter. I missed this on Kickstarter, but received a comp copy.

The immediately obvious difference between this and Norgad’s other work, is that this has Mothership textual density. Smaller fonts, less white space, it feels as claustrophobic and working class as the Adamant Lapis feels as you are slowly driven from area to area by the vacuum of space. Art is minimalist but feels vector-sketched rather than hand-drawn and isvery sparse, except on the cover which is really attractively minimalist; symbols are used to differentiate different text levels rather than deep indentation. Headings are clearly differentiated with bold black decorations and numbering that I really like, and cut-out mini-maps pepper the text for usability. There is a lot packed into this space, and it’s clever layout.

The density results in some really neat shortcuts. The crew manifest is summarised in a single sentence quote, most of which are pretty good at conjuring a personality: “Wanna see a cool trick?” “Can I bum a cig off ya? No? Hey, Fuck you.” Symbols are used to maximise density while keeping hierarchy, as seen below, rather than deeply nested bullets. There are no stat blocks, as there are no monsters here: All of the horrors here are environmental.

The fact that there are no enemies here, as well as saving a ton of space, means that it relies on a bunch of systems in Mothership 1e that otherwise often go by the wayside, like oxygen consumption and movement in vacuum. Breached hulls are central to the whole adventure. This is a pretty cool approach, taking advantage of these rules that I kind of considered ancillary and unnecessary, and making them core to the experience. The fact that there is a list of 5 incidents that effectively it is the players’ job to prevent occurring, and the fact that preventing those incidents for the most part involves saving lives rather than murdering people, makes this an utterly unique take on Mothership.

Now, whether that density is always for the best, is up for debate. From the start, the density and speed at which Dead Weight proceeds left me unsure exactly what was causing the breaches throughout the ship. The early indication that “every single person aboard the ship is a potential hull breach waiting to happen” made me think that either the Pearl — the cause of the danger — was moving around in relation to the crew, or that the infection was causing the crew to explode and cause the hull breaches. Eventually I realised that things from further and further around the ship were being drawn towards the Pearl, in a series of incidents detailed on page 4. It took me longer than it probably should have to figure this out, until the summary on the back cover, which I didn’t immediately recognise as a summary, again, because it’s damned dense and also includes a ship manifest and some example lab notes. I think that some important aspects of the module could have used more attention being given to them in terms of layout: White space and art do play an important role in drawing attention to important information, and when you pack your document densely, you pass up the use of an important tool.

Furthermore, while we have 4 events that are theoretically preventable, the imposed density means that it’s not clear from the outset how to identify that they’re going to happen, and how to prevent them. You’re looking for a few things: How to avoid collision with 98-Gobstopper, how to save Chief Officer Weaver, and how to prevent the ship from colliding with the ejected Dr Renato. You do have plenty of time — 8 hours in total — but to do so you need to figure out how that dead and bleeding bodies cause the hull breaches, and you need to figure out that the Pearl is causing the hull breaches. There are clues all over the place to this, but it’ll take time, and the answers aren’t actually flagged clearly in the text. In a text that’s usually well hyperlinked, I think this could use some suggestions as to solutions to these problems, and while I think you can make the case that we have an “OSR Challenge” that is open-ended, I think that it helps even in open-ended challenges to signpost potential ways to overcome them that are present, which this doesn’t do. And while I don’t in principle dislike the intersection of the alien Pearl and the unexpected virus, Carminosis, together being the cause of the unexpected disaster, I suspect that most players would be disappointed at the fact that they are unrelated, if they ever figure it out. And due to the lack of signposting and clear solutions, it feels at first blush that this cruise may be doomed from the start, and that you’re signing up to play your role in a tragedy. This might be worth signposting at your table, so they aren’t surprised.

It’s important to add, that time tracking isn’t included in this module. I was concerned about this initially — there’s a lot to track here, both as players and as the referee. But! It comes with player handouts for the deck plans, the cargo manifest and the crew manifest, and it comes with some incredibly useful time and character tracking handouts for the referee. These aren’t referenced in the text of the module, but they’re essential, I think, to running this smoothly; I’m the kind of person to overlook the extra stuff in the downloads section of a module, but in this case that does Dead Weight a significant disservice. There’s also a soundtrack, which provides tracks unique to all areas of the ship, and honestly, they’re very good ambient and tension-building tracks. This is quality support for a very small module of the kind that doesn’t usually get that kind of support.

Dead Weight is a damned impressive little module. There are so many innovations, and it achieves a lot in very little space. That density and incredible ambition causes it to fall short in a few places, namely that it doesn’t explain itself clearly and leans too hard into open-endedness, resulting in a module that’s hard to wrap your head around and that you kind of need to study to understand. But, that scenario is very compelling, and unique among Mothership modules in that it relies entirely on environmental and social horror rather than violence, cosmic or body horror. But the thing is, I have to write this review, so I have already studied this text. And, if you’ve studied it, this is a damned good Mothership module, one that I could pitch at a bunch of friends who wouldn’t otherwise be interested in the usual horrors offered by Mothership modules. So, for me, Dead Weight is an absolute win: This will make it to my table, I have no doubt at all. If you’re willing to put in that effort, or you’ve got players who you want to introduce to Mothership but they don’t vibe the usual horror themes in Mothership modules, this is something unlike anything else out there.

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