Stygian Marches Campaign Report
article, blog, play report, mothership, stygian marches
Hiatus
I was on hiatus from the blog for most of January. It was a tough month for personal reasons not to mention daily news that the Lords of Chaos are winning in the eternal struggle of Law vs Chaos.
During that off-time, I've been thinking about gaming, brainstorming on possible projects, and slowly working on the next worldbuilding post. I've also got the bug to run an old school dungeon crawl. Putting that aside for now (megadungeon picked and skimmed, starting thorp and NPCs created, campaign setting TBD).
The Stygian Marches
I do have an existing campaign that needs my attention. It's easy to get sidetracked into the Next Thing. The Mothership campaign, "The Stygian Marches", is on hold at the moment. A key player (they all are!) thought they may not be able to make several session so I paused things. Turns out they can but I think I need some more time to figure out what opportunities I can put in front of the crew of the Minor Inconvenience.
The campaign had been going well up to a point. I rolled up a small sector using Stars Without Number, rerolling anything that veered too far from the cassette-punk aesthetic that can be implied with Mothership. It was played as a sandbox with some adventures scattered around. The crew (well, some of them) then went through Bloom, A Pound of Flesh (RIP Prospero's Dream!), some Hull Breach, and community material before making their way to Gradient Descent.
Here's where things bogged down. The adventure is well-regarded, so I'm attributing this to my own skill issues at adapting things to my table, failure to prep, and lack of an imaginative hook (I went with the financial draw of artifacts). I read the book a few times and took notes, thinking that I was ready and could improvise the rest. I was wrong. Too many moments, from simple navigation or room explanations to PC life-or-death situations, had me scratching my head as the Warden. This must have been obvious or bled through into my GMing. After a well-liked character's brutal demise, the player group seemed to not have motivation for their PCs to put themselves through hell for... what? A few baubles? They aren't the type of crew with high-falutin' save-the-galaxy values.
We had plenty of sessions on the Deep (the "Trench" in this campaign) but the players and PC crew are ready for something new. We're going to skip ahead enough time to train some skills and move them to a new location in the sector. This will continue the sandbox but start in either:
- Lord Bukanin's High Garden - An exclusive resort station in a minor system in the dominate polity of the sector, Galados. Their military-type ship may not be welcome.
- The Lost Orbit - The campaign's "hive of scum & villainy", especially after the destruction of Prospero's Dream ("Gorgon's Cross" in this campaign). Loosely based on a local metal venue here in real life. The crew has been here before.
These are the hooks or events I need to prepare and modules I that could use a skim after initial reads months ago:
- Syndicate looking for a stolen ship the players own
- After-effects of ignoring Another Bug Hunt several months ago
- Vibechete from Hull Breach
- Nirvana On Fire
- Ooze Nun
Update: Just listened to the Between Two Cairns episode reviewing Ooze Nun. Updated the artist attribution in the above image based on what was said in the podcast.