Oh Mother!

Moonbase Blues

New member of the Tables and Tales crew, and experienced GM, Joel, is going to be holding our hands and releasing them when we reach the airlock, only to lock the door and start the cycle sequence while we batter our fists raw on the glass. He will watch us, impassive and seemingly unaware of our distress. Is that a hint of reptilian hunger in his eyes?
If this is how Moonbase Blues actually goes down, I’d honestly be ok with that.

Mothership character creation

Any excuse for a character creation post, eh?

Mothership has a very handy method of guiding the prospective victim through the process. The third paragraph in the Player’s Survival Guide tells you to turn to the sheet in the back of the book as it leads you through character creation. And, guess what? It does! All the instructions are right there on pages 5 and 6 as well though.

Our thoughtful and wise GM has also provided us a lovely form-fillable character sheet. That’s what I will be using tonight.

We are five-by-five. Let’s go.

Step 1 – Roll Stats

We have four stats: strength, speed, intellect and combat. For each one we will roll 2d10 and add 25. Just watch me fuck this up:

Strength: 31
Speed: 28
Intellect: 32
Combat: 36

It’s not a total shit-show but it’s not great. I only got one roll above ten and that was eleven.

Moving swiftly on to leave this debacle behind!

Step 2 – Roll Saves

You have three types of saves in this game: sanity, fear and body. I think they pretty much speak for themselves, no?
For the saves I am rolling 2d10 and adding 10.

Sanity: 21
Fear: 14
Body: 25

I feel like having a low fear save score in a horror game is a distinct and unfortunate disadvantage. I just have to remember to milk it for role-playing opportunities, I suppose.

Step 3 – Choose Class

I like the choice of Class you have here. They are the classic Alien archetypes after all:

Marine
Android
Scientist
Teamster

I very much like the description each one gets in the intro.

I am leaning towards marine, mainly because my Fear save is so low and there is that crack about marines being a danger to everybody when they panic. Heh. This is why I like one-shots. No fucker is getting out alive.

Yeah, marine it is.

“How do I get outta this chicken-shit outfit?”

You actually do also get some mechanical effects through your choice of class, it’s not all planned panic and movie quotes.

A Marine gets:

• +10 Combat
• +10 Body Save
• +20 Fear Save
• +1 Max Wounds

Sounds good.
That makes my Combat now a more respectable 46, my Fear Save a 34 and my Body Save a 35.

Step 4 – Roll Health

Health is rolled with 1d10 and you add 10 to it. I’m sure this roll will go just fine.
It’s a 7! I genuinely expected so much worse.

Anyway, that makes it

Health: 17

So, the way it works is that, once you drop below zero health, you get a wound. Most people start with 2 max wounds before things start getting more permanent. Marines, as noted above, get 3 max wounds. Once you mark a wound, you reset your health to its max minus any damage that carried over.

Step 5 – Gain Stress

What? Already?
I start with 2 minimum.

Step 6 – Trauma Response

“They’re all around us, man…Jesus…They’re comin’ outta the goddamn walls!”

Yep, this is a fun bit of Mothership specific stuff here. The Marine’s trauma response is:

Whenever you panic, every close friendly player must make a Fear Save.

Just stay outta my way.

Step 7 – Note Class Skills and Choose Bonus Skills

So, my class skills as a marine are no big surprise. Military Training and Athletics.
My Bonus Skills, though, I get to choose one Expert Skill or two Trained Skills. There is a sort of skill tree that you can see in the screenshot of the character sheet above. To choose a skill you have to have at least one pre-requisite skill. In other words, if you don’t have an arrow coming out of your trained skill and into the skill you want, you can’t have that one.

I’m realising that Marines have a very narrow range of potential specialities here. But that’s ok, do you really need any more than Firearms and Hand-to-Hand Combat? Nope.
“Check it out. I am the ULTIMATE badass.”

Step 8 – Equipment, Loadout, Trinket and Patch

We have got some tables on page 7 of the Player’s Survival Guide. There is one for each class. I am going to roll on the Marine one with a d10 to see what shit I have.

I rolled a 3. So this is what that gives me:
Standard Battle Dress (AP7 (that’s short for Armour Points, yw,)) Pulse Rifle (3 mags (that’s short for magazines)) and Infrared Goggles.

I’m quite happy with that.

On page 8, we have a d100 table of trinkets. Let’s see what I get.

That’s a 005.
Ok, this guy is a total jarhead. That’s a necklace of shell casings. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

Page 9 has another d100 table, this time for your patch. And that is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a patch that is sewn into your clothes, somewhere.

I rolled a 72 which means I have a patch of a black widow spider. I’m beginning to feel a character coming on.

I am pretty sure this marine is super serious about the job, really does consider themself a badass and is weird about it. Collects spent bullet casings and makes jewellery out of them, has a patch of the black widow spider because they truly respect her ruthlessness. But they are faintly ridiculous to their fellow crew and anyone who meets them, probably.

I am going to roll up my starting Credits. It’s 2d10 multiplied by 10. Here we go:

I rolled a 3 so that’s 30 credits. Clearly this marine has spent too much money on bullet casing jewellery courses. Should not be in charge of their own finances.

Step 9 – Finishing touches

That means name and stuff.

She is Corporal Victoria Ibanez, she/her.

Despite all those Hudson quotes, I think this marine is more like Vasquez. She knows she is the greatest marine to grace the corps in all the years it has existed and she doesn’t mind letting people know.
She has two brothers and a girlfriend at home on Theseus IV. She keeps promising to send credits to them but she somehow never has any left at the end of the month.
Victoria is 28 years old. She has a shaved head but it shows ginger when it’s growing out. She is stocky and broad and sports a lot of scars that she tells everyone she got in combat.

Also, I have to mark a zero above High Score on my character sheet. That’s because this records the number of sessions your character has survived!

So there we go, Victoria Ibanez, Corporal in the Marine Corps, all ‘round badass and potential cautionary tale. Can’t wait to start playing this PC at the table tomorrow night!