It’s the final deep dive! There’s about five days left to fund, and it’s looking tight, so please help me out in my final-hours push over the course of the next few days! The campaign closes at 9:00 PM EST on Wednesday December 3rd.

In the meantime, the deep dive. I had whined several times that the last poll was tied, and while several of you did indeed add more votes to the poll, you annoyingly kept it tied lol. So, I am forced to choose between Combat and The One-Shot Module, and I choose the one-shot, because frankly it’s more interesting. 

Statistically, if you’re reading these, then you’ve played a TTRPG before, and probably Mothership. In short, it’s fast, deadly, OSR-adjacent combat. It’s good, it’s deeper than that, but more interesting than the rules of combat are the scenarios in which combat happens, one of which is the one-shot module that’ll appear in the back of the core rulebook, Malpractice. Take a peek, and then we’ll talk more.

For the sake of any players reading this, I’ve gone ahead and censored some of the information that only Wardens should know going in. There’s also a second page that lists out all the major NPCs, and describes their motives and behaviors. That page also has nicer looking version of this map, again with some info removed for players:

So, what’s the deal here? Basically, I wanted to satisfy a few points to make this the right kind of module to include in the book:

Let’s explore those points, starting with how to write small and get big results. For players of Mothership, this is nothing strange. That game is famous for its many one-shot modules that fit into a simple tri-fold pamphlet, so I figured condensing things down to a single spread in a zine shouldn’t be terribly difficult. Still, it’s easier said than done. I wrote it initially in a google doc, and then when I pasted it into InDesign it needed a lot of cutting to fit nicely. This is where genre tropes are very handy. I don’t need to spend a sentence describing the little details of the nightclub; I can just say “a nightclub” and because 99.99% of people who play this game will already be fans of other cyberpunk properties, they have a mental image of the inside of the club. It’ll be a slightly different image for everyone, but that’s part of the fun of TTRPGs.

On the second point, I wanted to make this an extremely open-ended module. In theory, this will be a lot of people’s first impression of the game, and if there were no use for a specific ability (say hacking or stealth), that would feel bad for players who picked certain options. So, the module presents the players with a variety of obstacles, and doesn’t give DMs single concrete solutions. The core question of “how do we get the target off of the balcony and out of the club” can be answered in many ways, and at the very least, you can certainly try just about anything.

Which brings me to my point about this being a sort of teaching tool. I want new players and new GMs to understand that this game is meant to encourage creativity. The mission is designed like a level from a Hitman video game, with a variety of NPCs moving around and doing their own thing until the players show up to interfere. The GM needs to understand all of the characters, and how they ought to react to the curveballs the players throw. With a confident and experienced group of gamers this little module could be knocked out in an hour, but the scenario is purposely short to allow newer players a chance to take their time and find their legs. I want people to take the lessons learned from this encounter and bring them forward as they play further campaigns with creative players and open-minded Wardens. Also, while BTH is a theater of the mind game, the included map will hopefully help wardens think about the way a space’s layout can make for interesting encounters.

On the thematic side, I think the writing speaks for itself on all those points. Not much more I can say in polite company. If you’d like to really get the full spoilers, you can watch/listen to an actual play of it here and here.

Happy to answer any further questions, but I think that about covers it! Time is running out here, so a reminder to share the game around the net, and consider upgrading your pledge to bump our numbers a bit.