There’s an old axiom, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Even in creative pursuits this still sometimes comes to pass, where the only way to press forward on multiple ideas is to combine them into a single much wilder idea. Such was my solution to a constraint presented by my gaming group’s annual “Beach Weekend”, our excursion to Delaware to play RPGs and drink beer for three days straight that’s been going on (mostly) uninterrupted since 2012. We are blessed with numerous members who want to GM, especially when it comes to the event that consistently produces some of our most memorable one-shot games. This year there were six interested GMs, meaning that our typical slots (one slot each day and night for each of the three gaming days) were going to one person apiece. I would get a single slot this year, whereas in previous years I could usually finagle two (and sometimes got as many as four, which may have been too many). This is not a problem, except that I always have more ideas for games than I have time to run them. As we were planning, I was trying to choose between games. Do I run a game with a neat module I’ve been wanting to try, like Mothership? Or do I go for a high-concept one-shot that we really wouldn’t be able to play online, like the Jenga-tower horror game Dread? And then, of course, I thought to myself “wait a minute…”

Dreadship is simple, it’s Mothership played with the Dread Jenga tower. It has not yet been playtested, which will be fairly obvious once you read what my current rules are. That said, I don’t think this’ll be rocket science. Dreadship can be interpreted one of two ways, both of which are (to my eyes at least) equally correct. Dreadship is a game of Dread, where the character questionnaire is replaced by the Mothership character creation process. Alternatively, Dreadship is Mothership, where most mechanics are adjudicated with pulls from a falling block tower. One of these arguably works better than the other, but both need to be at least addressed in order for Dreadship to reach its full potential. Everything past that, like how the numbers are adapted, is just a matter of tweaking things to keep the right tension level between the two games.

The rules of Dreadship

Dread is, at its core, a fairly simple game. There are players and a GM, and players create characters by answering a questionnaire developed by the GM. While the published version of Dread has a few ready-to-run scenarios, the questionnaire is adjusted to taste by the GM, not a firm set of mechanics. After creating these (mostly freeform) characters, the GM describes a scenario while the players describe their characters’ actions. When the course of play comes to a point where a character’s action has a potential for failure, the player, with one hand, pulls a block from the tower and places it into the top layer, just like a game of Jenga. This course of play continues until the tower collapses, at which point the character whose player caused the tower to collapse is removed from the game. After that, the tower is rebuilt and play continues. There are few rules beyond that; more complicated actions may require multiple pulls from the tower, and in the event of a character-character conflict the two players may pull blocks in turn until either one player concedes or the tower collapses. Beyond that, though, most adjudication is left in the hands of the GM.

Dreadship takes this basic state of play and adds some action currencies to it. For Mothership character creation, you roll four stats and three saves, and choose a class which both determines your skills (some you start with and a couple you can pick) and modifies those stats and saves. In Dreadship, you still do that, except for each stat and each save you record only the tens place of your final score. As far as skills are concerned, write down each skill you take, though the bonuses aren’t relevant. Health and wounds aren’t relevant either, but stress and trauma responses definitely are, be sure to write those down.

Here’s how play works for Dreadship. Much like Dread, play is mostly freeform; just like in Mothership describing what you’re doing should be at the forefront versus constantly rolling. When you come to a time where there is a chance for failure, figure out which stat is most relevant to the action and then make a decision. You can either pull from the tower, as normal, or you can opt not to pull, instead spending one of the points you have in the stat (derived from the tens place of the original stat roll). That will still be a success but it will give you one point of stress. Circumstances come into play here too: If the GM deems that there is Advantage on the task, you can spend the point without taking the stress. If the GM deems that there is Disadvantage on the roll, you must pull from the tower. Additionally, if you’ve maxed out your stress (i.e. 20 points of stress) you cannot spend any points in any circumstance and must pull from the tower.

There is another benefit to pulling from the tower instead of spending your point. In Dread, once you successfully pull a block you are indicating that your character is known to be capable at that task. The example given in the book is translating an ancient text from Latin; once you successfully do that once, it stands to reason the character could do that again. Similarly, in Dreadship one should record what sorts of actions their character has successfully been able to do in order to perhaps gain Advantage on them in the future…but only when they pull a block from the tower. Even though spending a stat point would still imply a success in the fiction, the circumstances would be a fluke or simply rare, and not repeatable as far as the game is concerned.

When something is inflicted upon a character, be it a poison or a gunshot wound or the vision of a horrifying monster, they use one of their Saves. Here the player has the same choice: either pull from the tower or spend a Save point and gain a point of stress. The saves, though, represent a bit of a deviation from the rules of Dread. The Body Save is much as you’d expect: The Tower collapses, the character dies or is otherwise rendered unplayable. For Fear and Sanity Saves, though, there is a chance at redemption. Instead of immediate death, if the tower collapses on a Fear or Sanity Save, the character takes the result on a failed panic check and is removed from the scene. Typically, a panic check involves rolling a d20 and seeing if you’re able to roll greater than the character’s current Stress. Since we’re not using dice here, a collapsed tower is a failed Panic check with the resultant Panic Effect being equal to the character’s current Stress rating. So if the character has 12 Stress, a collapsed tower would cause them to be Haunted and leave the scene. Oh, and of course, a collapsed tower (assuming you live) also means you gain an additional stress.

While Dread really wants to be binary about the tower collapsing causing a character to be removed from the game, fact is that having the Panic Check release valve allows for an alternative consequence when the failed skill check is, well, rather silly. The example in the book, also using translating from Latin as the action, has the excuse for removing a character from the game being a phone call with bad news about a relative. Frankly, the spectre of having to actually use that on a player is way worse than the possibility of dampening the impact of the tower with a less-than-absolute consequence.

Considerations for play

My main concern for this hack is pacing. Ignoring the bonuses from class selection, each character will have an average of three points per stat and two per save, equalling an aggregate 18 points of tower-pull avoidance. I can’t help but note that actually spending all of those points will max out a character’s stress, which puts them teetering close to a ‘remove from game’ situation that eagle-eyed players may actually try to avoid. And that ends up being the key question: Will drawing out the tower collapse phase and potentially removing the fatality from it reduce the tension in the game? I’m hoping not but I’m also hoping ‘slightly yes’ because, as much as this is a hack about being a little goofy, I do want to actually try and run a Mothership module in this. Making it so that the only real way to avoid pulls is to take stress is a decent replacement for the Mothership rules, which give you a point of stress every time you fail a roll. There’s also the fun side effect that the trauma responses are brutal. The Marine’s is such that if the tower collapses due to their panic, as soon as it’s rebuilt every other player needs to pull a block immediately. That’s kind of awesome, and incredibly visceral to boot.

Another thought about the broader viability of this sort of hack is how stress management ends up working. For better or worse, I intend to run a scenario with few exits and few chances to relieve stress. That’s one less balance issue, but it opens the question up for what it would take to use Dreadship over multiple sessions. Does stress relief equate to refilling your point totals? Is there a more nuanced version where stress relief works with saves but healing works with stats? How nuanced would we actually want to go? Clearly the combat system is mostly dispensed with (save descriptive details and maybe advantage or disadvantage granted by armor or weapons), but given how violent and dangerous combat can be, will that really materially change the results?

In case it wasn’t obvious, the entire premise of this hack is predicated on the fact that Mothership, like many OSR games in its immediate orbit, places significantly more weight on its modules and world fiction than it does its mechanics. Many procedures (infamously stealth) come with no rules at all, and in basically all cases you’re encouraged to dispense with the rules if what you come up with makes more sense to everyone at the table. Given that, pushing most of the rules aside and replacing them with Dread not only could work, it wouldn’t even alter the interactions with the module that much, barring some fiat about how to translate the ‘combat’ and ‘instinct’ ratings into in-game behaviors. What’s fun about this is that the mechanics of Dread impose a sort of rising tension which is both much more narrative and overt than the Mothership designers would have ever built intentionally and yet fits perfectly into a lot of Mothership games, especially with more ‘meatgrinder’ groups which liberally use the High Score attribute as a yardstick for their game’s success (or lack thereof).

All of this said, while I think this is a fun way both to run a game and to think about the design of both Mothership and Dread, I don’t think Dreadship will replace the as-written Mothership anytime soon. I’m actually interested in running Mothership longer-term in the future; so far I’ve only run a few one-shots. What could make it a good long-term game will require interfacing with the totality of the rules, and once you’re running something a bit more complicated than a dungeon crawl (that may give a hint about the module I intend to use) you’re going to want those space combat and extended healing rules. Coming at the hack from the perspective of Dread, though, everything slots in very well. Even if I’m bending the rules a bit, Mothership is actually a great game to dock into Dread.

There is of course an implied follow-up to this article, after I actually run Dreadship in October. I’m not sure if it’ll be a full article itself or just a comment on this one, but I will be sure to come back and let everyone know how the game went. If I have more complex thoughts about the whole thing, I’ll share those, but if it was just a great splatterpunk time, I’ll share that too. Let this be a reminder, though, to all of you. Try your crazy ideas. Even if you’re just smushing two games together to make them kiss, you’re still engaging with game design, and there’s no better way to figure out what inspires you and what sort of gaming you truly want. So with that in mind, hack on, friends, and I’ll see you later this year with another System Hack!

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