> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.strangeplaces.site/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Hacking Mothership into a 2000's TV Show - URL: https://www.strangeplaces.site/hacking-mothership-into-a-2000s-tv-show/ - Published: 2026-09-08T01:20:07.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-08T02:10:07.000Z - Author: Nicholas Cameron With the Nimble game I've been running going on hiatus while a few players move cross country, I've been pondering what I should run in the meantime. Over the last year or two, my shelf has really filled up with Mothership modules I haven't had a chance to run, so jumping back into the void of space sounds perfect. However with so many short scenarios, it's hard to resist the urge to brush the cobwebs off the Mothership hack I was testing at the end of 2025\. There were a lot of ideas in it. It basically a grab bag ranging from adjustments I'd personally add to Mothership to some genre shifting stuff like adding non-human species with unique perks to character creation. Looking back through it with fresh eyes, there seems to be one idea that binds it all together which makes me excited to work on again: what if you ran Mothership modules like a serialized TV show from the 2000's? # But why? An obvious question in response to that premise would be, why? After all, Mothership is at its core a space horror game. Characters are fragile, monsters are deadly, and modules frequently have severe or world shattering consequences. It's not really made for long-term play, even though it is officially supported in a number of ways. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fc/37/fc375fdb-cc1d-4360-886f-0e84cf7b27ae/content/images/2026/09/image.png) At the end of the day, Mothership was designed for stuff like this beautiful monster here to hunt you down and rip you apart. My motivations are three-fold: (1) Mothership has an incredible scene of creators making tons of awesome modules, most of which don't really have connection tissue between them and don't feel really intuitive to run as part of a campaign. Two major reasons for this are that there is not really a definitive Mothership "setting" to tie adventures together and that running campaigns for such fragile characters doesn't really make a lot of sense. By the end of the second adventure all of the original characters are probably dead and that's if you're lucky. What exactly is tying the new group of people together? (2) While flash in the pan one-shots or 2-3 session modules are fun, I personally absolutely adore running them, there is a desire in the RPG space (and in myself) for campaigns. Specifically campaigns where you grow attached to characters over time, even if that attachment ultimately ends in tragedy. (3) There's yet to be a TTRPG I have looked at that that captures the feeling of a traveling in a spaceship with your pals and going on misadventures that has really grabbed me. Or, when something has gotten close, I'm left having to design every mission completely from scratch for my players as the game lacks third-party support. I think there has been a bit of a recognition in the scene about the value of number #1\. It didn't take long for campaign settings with multiple adventures inside them to emerge from the third-party space, such as [Hull Breach](https://www.hullbreachrpg.com/?ref=strangeplaces.site), and [Mothership Month 2025](https://www.backerkit.com/c/events/mothership-month-2025?ref=strangeplaces.site) grounded all of the adventures in Prospero's Dream. This made the Warden's job of tying multiple modules together much easier, but doesn't really deal with the "but no character will last more than a few modules at maximum" issue. Now you may ask, why 2000's television specifically? I could try to give some answer about how that era of television had a very specific structure I want to evoke for some game design reason, but ultimately a good deal of this is personal nostalgia. The 2000's really felt like the last hurrah for genre television that didn't take it too seriously, occasionally took big swings, and kept you invested for too many seasons. That's sort of what I'm looking for. The goal of the hack is to add something compelling that connects all the modules you want to run together, but not something that is going to end in some sort of grand prestige television conclusion. ## Sign up for Strange Places A blog about tabletop roleplaying games and other things from Nicholas Cameron. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. # The Touchstones ![The stone from The Fifth Element.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fc/37/fc375fdb-cc1d-4360-886f-0e84cf7b27ae/content/images/2026/09/image-1.png) With that goal in mind, the hack will have four touchstones: - The dynamics of the player characters and their crew should evoke **Farscape**. Interpersonal relationships are important, characters have messy backstories and motivations, and the entire crew and ship are constantly living on the edge. - Members of the crew should feel larger than life. They should make bad decisions and cause trouble, but never be villains or truly unlikable. Though not TV shows, two films come to mind: **The Fifth Element** and **Hellboy (2004).** - The ship the characters travel on should be key to the campaign and a character in and of itself, such as in **Farscape**, **Star Trek**, or all manner of other sci-fi TV and film. - Playing through a module should feel like the **X-Files**.\* The stakes of the situation are real, the horror is present, but mostly the main characters avoid death. The horrors they witness primarily impact others or the world around them. Now the asterisk on the last point is that there's really only so much I can do on the hack side of things. Mothership modules oftentimes feature mechanics under the assumption characters are expendable (such as horrific incurable mutations or infections) or lean so deeply into things like body horror it could be difficult to really lighten the tone even a smidge. However, I think there is enough wiggle room in the majority of modules out there to make this feasible, and I don't think fully avoiding the death of PCs should really be the goal anyway. When player characters die, those are great moments and not something to fully remove from Mothership. Instead I think I'll just be aiming to extend the average lifespan a good bit. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fc/37/fc375fdb-cc1d-4360-886f-0e84cf7b27ae/content/images/2026/09/image-2.png) After all the cover of Mothership is a disemboweled astronaut, death is kind of core to the game. Achieving the first two points will actually be my more difficult lift. I'm a strong believer that a TTRPG should have mechanics that support its vision, especially if that vision involves a specific narrative. You don't want to be too prescriptive, but you need to provide the scaffolding. While Mothership has *incredible* advice on how to run a horror game, interpersonal drama isn't really its bread and butter. As I anticipate that I'll be standing up new mechanics to support the narrative goals of the hack, I'd like to do what I can to make the hack easy to run, either for experienced Wardens or for brand new ones. I don't want the hack to just make the game more complicated. This certainly won't be the focus, but I'll be keeping an eye out for where to simplify and maybe even where to cut. # What I'm Working on Next The last version I have of the hack mostly has the bones of what I need, including adjustments that reduce the lethality of the game and simplify Stress. My next step will be cutting out what I don't think the hack needs anymore and focusing in on what moves it toward the touchstones. After that I'll be thinking about mechanics to deliver on the narrative goals of the hack, in particular how to deliver on larger than life characters and interesting relationships between player characters and other crew members on the ship. I'm planning to do some research into TTRPGs that I know feature character relationships outside of the adventuring loop, like [Stonetop](https://www.lampblackandbrimstone.com/?ref=strangeplaces.site) and [Delta Green](https://www.delta-green.com/?ref=strangeplaces.site). Once I've got a messy first version, I'll move into running a campaign with the hack. I want to run it early and often as ultimately there's no way I'm going to know how well this whole thing works unless I've got a campaign using it. I'm currently having to help sort through a family member's affairs so working on this will likely be slow, but when I am I'll post about it here! All that being said, I'd also love to hear what people think about this! Does it sound interesting? Is it just too much of a shift from what Mothership is? Let me know!