Announcing Advanced Rules for use With the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG
July Newsletter - Defining the RV Games House Style
Before I start pontificating, this newsletter is actually another product announcement. This one is for Advanced Rules for use With the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. It will be launching on BackerKit Crowdfunding once Mothership 1e is fully released. It contains house rules written by myself and other Mothership creators and will have edited versions of my Substack essays in addition to new essays. Crowdfunding will allow me to hire an Roz Leahy as an editor to polish these essays into a book.
Design Principles
For my day job, I am a college professor, I teach doctoral students. I recently got a teaching evaluation with the strangest feedback: students who wanted more lecture and passive learning. This threw me for a loop because I consider myself a failure if I’m doing direct instruction. I set up an environment with resources, and then students pretty much do everything, I ask a few questions and give lots of wait time. If I do provide materials using direct instruction, they are pre-recorded. I get nothing out of direct instruction or verbal instructions, I need things written down, and I need to do something with them.
I realized that I approach running and designing games the same way. Wardenless play is my ideal method. If someone is doing prep work, it’s just to get things ready, so the whole group has the materials they need (maps, creatures, tables, etc.) and sets up the physical environment (literal tables, food, etc.). I had a late night design conversation with River once that illuminated how this takes a huge mental load on players. She asked “don’t you ever just want to have a GM describe an environment to you, so you can react to it? Does everything need to be collaborative?” And ofc, my answer was yes. It made me think, and it made me realize that I needed to build out rules to facilitate Wardenless play, and that I need to build modules that work more like immersive sims: very defined objectives and environment with a multitude of options. The setting needs to be able to stand on its own, so it can be run cooperatively with light facilitation support from whoever knows the system best.
These realizations and discussion are what lead to this current announcement for Advanced Rules for use With The Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. I was originally going to build Orgy of the Blood Leeches around wardenless play, but after discussion with my editor, Christian Sorrell, I realized that these rules needed to be pulled out of the adventure to not alienate the traditional Mothership audience. Mothership is very player-centered, but it still follows a traditional gm model, and that is how people are used to playing. They are my students who want more direct instruction.
This led me to developing Advanced Rules as a book 2 like with all of the GDW games including Traveller and Striker. It essentially will act as a set of house rules that define an RV Games house style that assumes that wardenless play is the advanced way to play if you know what you are doing. Everyone has to own the game just like everyone has to own their learning in my classroom.
This takes an entirely different perspective, though. Secret information from the Warden doesn’t work, everyone knows everything, and you need to lean on proceduralism for surprising circumstances. It’s about providing the information and environment and then letting the players work through it with all of the information available to them, the equivalent of all quizzes coming with the right answers. You have to understand the process really well. You have to be fully thinking and involved the whole time, there isn’t any opportunity to look at your phone between turns, you are IN IT the whole time (I say this as I’m writing this while playing in a 5e game on Roll20). It’s tiring and can be overwhelming, and that’s when real challenge and learning happens.
I understand now that I have an orientation very predisposed to player skill and active participation and how that can make my materials and my games intimidating with a high barrier to entry, and I don’t really care, you need to bring it at my table and in my classroom, there’s no space for passivity. Things are challenging and not cozy, supportive and facilitated, but super tough. That is why I am going to publish the collection of rules, helping people to find the way to fully own their games by having the right structures in place to allow folks to play co-operatively, eliminating hierarchy at the table.
And ultimately, if I can help people learn how to eliminate hierarchy at the most personal level, it can help people learn how to be more egalitarian, co-operative, and justice centered in their entire life. I’m always a radical teacher at heart, hoping to assist in making equitable social change all the down to the personal. The personal is political.
Free Stuff for Paid Subscribers
We have some new free stuff for anyone who is a paid subscriber. This is in addition to the Micro Sub Microgame access. We have the pamphlet Mitosis: Escape From STAR Station, and we have the ashcan for a manuscript by Richard Kelly of Sprinting Owl Designs, Cinderella Smile. This is a courtly romance horror game that is a very unique PbtA that I will then be developing and editing further into a product. I’m generally not a PbtA person, but this game has its hooks in me.
Thrust! Crowd Sale
Our first Microgame, Thrust! is up for a crowd sale on The Game Crafter starting July 11. It is a space combat game inspired by The Mothership Shipbreakers’ Toolkit, Very Bad Chess, and Battleship. We’re very excited for our first Microgame to be available as a boxed edition in addition to the the free rules and the print & play/VTT version available to subscribers and the counters only box that is already available for sale.
The Progeny
The Progeny is our next Microgame after Thrust! It will be have a full release with design notes here next month after the Thrust! Crowd Sale. However, it will be available publicly via Drive Thru RPGs PocketQuest for the month of July, so we want to make sure that paid subscribers have access now without needing to purchase it from DriveThruRPG
One Year in Business
This month marks one year in business for RV Games. I will have a bigger post reflecting on this at the middle of the month. It’s been a whirlwind with a lot of growth and learning.
I genuinely hope that is the actual cover. I love those books.