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.

Owe My Soul To The Company Store is a 28 page module for Mothership by Luther Gutekunst with illustrations by R Devlin and development and graphic design by Sam Sorensen. It’s a political, social sandbox, set in a crumbling space station. Tensions are at breaking point after 3 commsec rent-a-cops throw a dockworker out of an airlock. How will the PCs involve themselves? This was a complementary copy sent to me by the author. This is a Mothership-dense module, so I’ll review as I go.

The inside spread consists the two major areas mapped, and their encounters. I love referencing, and this spread is full of page references. You know where the next area is and which page it is on. 7 of 10 of the random encounters are references to specific characters in the module, with their page references. At the top of the page is a description of the areas, with a fair bit of really meaningful information for just two lines. The encounters are terse, and some of them require a little more improvisation that I’d like — for example, the “seditionist vandal” doesn’t appear in the text — but almost all of them are flavourful. This is really usable, and smartly positioned in the text. It’ll get a lot of use.

The second spread describes space station Isotelus and the major factions there. Isotelus is basically 1 explosion away from destruction, in the right place, although I’m not sure exactly how the players will find that out. The station descriptions need work. Either more useful highlighting is needed here — it’s preserved for items that are referenced — or it needed more judicious paragraphs or perhaps bullets. But, the factions are very cleverly thought through. Two corporate factions, at odds, and both at odds with the two activist factions, which are at odds with each other. Stirring the plot is a major criminal enterprise, which is most likely where the players will get their hands dirty initially. These factions couldn’t be better for the type of experience this module is promising, I just wish they were written in a more gameable way — the only specific character mentioned here is Adkins, even though other faction leaders appear throughout the book. Given the abundance of referencing, I wonder if this was cut due to space? This section could do a better job of briefing the referee in my opinion, but it’s a matter of a not-ideal vessel, rather than bad content. What I don’t have any criticisms of? The hooks for the PCs, which effectively hard-frame them into a response and a moral stance in the proceedings. It’s simple, clever, and brave to keep it this simple and prescriptive, but also, there’s also no value in beating around the bush: If you’re batting for social-political play, give the players politics ASAP.

The slave class here are the Labor Bodies, which get their own spread partially because they’re alien-like cybernetic clones of humans stolen off their rights, and partially because they drive almost all the drama in the city. They have a really, really striking appearance in all their art, too. The book does a great job of making them seem pitiful and worthy of fighting for, and making their creators irredeemable, but also making them very deadly foes that will almost certainly be ordered to fight the PCs, to ethically challenging results.

The next spread details the Flower and Bucket timelines next to each other — these being the corporate and labor portions of the station that are in conflict. These are two pages, visually linked across the spread, detailing connected actions across two locations. Each has between 10 and 12 events over 7 days. Now, to be clear these events snowball and really effectively communicate the escalation of multiple factions in response to each other. But, it’s a huge amount to process. I guess, if I planned on playing out each day as a session, I’d have a grasp of how to organise this practically as a referee. But, if I were playing it more organically, I think I’d struggle with coordinating it all. What may have helped, was if they’d been broken down a little more — perhaps into specific times, or AM and PM? I can, of course do this myself. But particularly as there seems to have been some attention paid to not overloading, this may have been a good thing to break down a little more. The other thing I’d love is if it was clear how these events escalating would be communicated to the players, at least when it’s meaningful, as while it’s useful for the referee to understand the context and escalation of events, it’s the impact on the station that really matters for the purpose of play.

To maximise the impact of the timeline, the next spread is a flowchart of 16 major NPCs. The intent of this relationship map is to scrawl all over it as things develop and change. At baseline, there are 4 peripheral NPCs with relationships with only one other character, and 5 central NPCs with 3 or more relationships. I like this a lot, but it’s starting to be a lot to juggle. Owe My Soul doesn’t come with any play aids, but I think if I were to run this, I’d really need to print this and the timeline off, I suspect, to keep my head in what’s going on.

Finally, the back end of the module is 16 locations. Notice the same number as NPCs? Each location has a starring role, and follows a similar format. A population, a two line description, and a node-based map that has the room description inside each node, is the primary location data. These nodes connect off-page, so you don’t have to flip back to the map in the inside cover all the time. That’s about half the page, and the other half is the NPC description, stat block, and a section titled “What can you do for them?”. This is an absolutely fire structure for this kind of social crawl. The locations themselves are very much sets for the inhabitants of the station to act in, and to reflect on them and provide information on them. Perfect for the intent here, but not a spatially focused crawl at all. That said, I like the spaces a lot, by ambience.

While we have the classic Mothership conflict between poetry and technicality that I spoke about in Resonant showing up here as well, Gutekunst manages to pepper in some absolute beauty lines where there’s capacity: “He dreams of a better world, of fork-lines and switch-bodies, of terraformed worlds, of the brotherhood beyond mankind.” or “Portable heaters sulk in every corner. Permeated with the oily scent of labor bodies’ blood.”. Evocative, creative, good writing. There’s something like this in most every location, but the amount of information that needed to be communicated on the other pages precluded it being right through the book, sadly. What it is though, is gorgeous when it needs to be, and cleverly designed most everywhere else.

Sam Sorensen is on graphic design and development here, and absolutely nails it, despite the challenges. It’s a complicated piece of writing, with a lot of moving pieces, and you can tell a load of thought went into making it as legible as possible. I don’t think, while reducing the complexity to its detriment, you could make it any more legible. And this is done in clever ways that don’t just rely on writing and theory, but visual design as well. At a basic level, layout is very solid, with clear headings, referencing and highlighting, and excellent use of colour, contrast and light for navigability. Spreads are visually distinct, for easy skimming, except in the key for good reasons. Areas are consistently computer coded throughout the book, white for the Flower and black for the Bucket, making for strong contrasting visual spaces that also communicate information. Art is both visually compelling and complementary of the layout, and do a good job of differentiating even the labor bodies from each other. The big gap here is the lack of play aids to assist the management of the complexity; what’s here is good, but in the process of running, I feel like something like what we saw in Witchburner to help both referee and players track movements and developments would be worthwhile.

Owe My Soul is a tour-de-force of a social-political module. It’s up there with Witchburner as one of my favourites. Clever, complex, with well sketched characters, great writing and clever design. The negative, though, is that in modelling such a complex system of relations, it becomes very challenging to run. I think it would be worth it, if you and your table enjoy a powderkeg social dynamic. But for me, I’d really need to study it to make sure I had everything straight. It’s a very intricate puzzle. It’s not your typical Mothership module, despite featuring familiar working class horror themes, and it stands out in the crowd. Keep an eye out for what Gutekunst does next, ya’ll: Owe My Soul To The Company Store is our first great module of the year.

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