The Most Inspiring Solo Adventure & Other Things

 

 Sleepdrifter's Newsletter #21📜Mothership Best Solo Module & A Unique Game

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Summary

1. 💡Thousand Empty Light For Mothership: The Most Inspiring Solo Adventure

2. 🧙🏼‍♂️What I’m Up To: Devlog, Lore & Flight Simulator

💡Thousand Empty Light For Mothership: The Most Inspiring Solo Adventure

My solo setup for Mothership and my home printed version of Thousand Empty Light

I love Mothership.
This Horror/Sci-Fi TTRPG, heavily inspired by movies like Alien and The Thing (among many others), is a game I always had a blast running as a GM. We played the “tutorial” adventure called Another Bug Hunt with my friends and it was fun, horrifying and stressful.
But there’s something missing for a player like me: a solo procedure. Even if some people played it alone, they usually rely on many books included in the Mothership Deluxe Edition, and I “only” got the Core Edition (which is already awesome with a lot of stuff).

And here comes Alfred Valley’s amazing Thousand Empty Light. Built like a solo story for Mothership, this adventure takes place in the only known artificial structure of the Unadopted Planetary Body 154 (UPB 154). This structure is called TEL 022, a Hazmos’ property, and it’s located underwater.
You are commissioned to enter the place, restore the light and power to all TEL 022’s sections.
You are a Lamplighter.

A Message From Hazmos’ Director - From Alfred Valley’s Thousand Empty Light

Your very first contact with this module will be the book itself. But this time, what you are reading isn’t for you, the player, it is for you, the character. Yes, this is an intra-diegetic zine, and it’s pretty awesome to put you directly into the whole vibe of the adventure.
First, you are presented with a text written by Hazmos director, Shale Luvay. A way to put you in the mood of a blue collar, mindlessly coming to work on a deadly facility for the sake of a big corporation.
As you can see at the end of the text, a huge “NO RECORDED FATALITIES” sticker is glued on a list of names. Another way to show that you are worth nothing for this company, and that there is a huge chance of dying in TEL 022.

Don’t worry, nobody will remember you for your hard work.

Then, the whole working procedure is written to make you understand what is your core mission in the facility, as a character, and also how to play the adventure as a player. A nice way to make everything work together and make you read rules, without killing the adventure’s vibes.
There’s also a small text at the end of the page, telling that “A High Value Asset is situated in TEL 022.” and to not interact with it. A way to put mystery and some thrills in the story.

The ORACLE System - From Alfred Valley’s Thousand Empty Light

And here comes the best solo procedure for Mothership: the ORACLE system.

Observe, Resolve, Act, Conclude and Leave Evidence.

It’s pretty simple actually, when you enter a zone, check the Combined Systems Semiotic Standard to get an idea of what is going on here (we’ll dive into it later). Then, decide what to do, act and conclude your whole action. If there was something happening, a skill check, a hazardous situation encountered, etc. record it as an incident.
To record the incident, give it an unused letter (A to J) and roll a d10 to give it a notation. If you already encountered an incident with the same notation, erase the relevant entry and make this a new situation, on the top of that, make a PANIC check.
This way, you’ll know what to do when entering a place.

The Combined Systems Semiotic Standard (CSSS) - From Alfred Valley’s Thousand Empty Light

The ORACLE system uses, as mentioned earlier, the Combined Systems Semiotic Standard (CSSS). This is a simple yet very effective tool inspired by Alien logos that you can see across the famous Nostromo spaceship and other facilities in the world of the whole franchise (I think of you Alien Isolation).
Roll a d50 (a d100 divided by two and rounded up), then compare your result with the CSSS table. You’ll get a logo and 2 types of texts. The first one is a whole idea that you can use. The second one consists of two words that you can use as sparks or hints when you ask something.
The CSSS table is also used as a “yes / yes, but / no, but / no” oracle.
As I’m deeply in love with those Alien logos, and as this tool is insanely well built, this is probably my favorite procedure to use for any Sci-Fi TTRPG.
Note that the CSSS is freely available, to be used with any game.

The zine comes with its own PANIC table. Mothership is a game where you can panic, and you got rules and tables for that in the core book, but here you got one that works with the setting of TEL 022.
Also, the PANIC rules came with a twist here. It is mandatory to make a PANIC check every time you leave one of TEL 022’s sections (there are 5 of them + 2 others). This way, as you progress, your character’s stress, tension, and fear increase in an organic way.

Letter Of Last Resort - From Alfred Valley’s Thousand Empty Light

Of course, the book doesn’t leave you with only procedures. It came with a “Clearance” section, to give you all the info to properly create your Mothership character, with adequate skills for this story and equipment.
Also, and this is truly a nice touch, it comes with 20 detailed hazards. Status complication, encounter, creatures, station’s problems, etc. Everything you need to put in your session while trying to repair the station.
If you come across something on the CSSS, well you can check on the “Hazards” section to see if anything might be accurate. This way, you never feel like “faking it” (something that is quite painful for me while playing solo TTRPG).
On the same idea, the zine came with a list of equipment to find on the facility.

Finally, each TEL 022’s section came with a map, a description and the past communication of the last Lamplighter. This is the best way to introduce you to all the mechanics and the story of the adventure, along with the whole mood.
The cherry on the top of that, there is audio recordings of those past communications. Beautifully recorded with the voice of the amazing Man Alone, and filled with top-notch sound design, those tracks help a lot to immerse yourself into the game.

A fun addition is what happens when you enter TEL 022. You are asked to fill a form called “Letter of last resort”. Once again, it’s cold, corporate and makes you feel like another disposable technician that can die working. It won’t be so bad.

Isn’t it enough? No, there’s also a full soundtrack for this adventure, composed by Gus BC. Along that, there is another soundtrack for a bonus module that I haven’t checked (still).
If you are into Ambient / Synth music you’ll love it (as I am).
You can listen to it here on Bandcamp, or find it on itch.io.

A special page from the zine - From Alfred Valley’s Thousand Empty Light

Something I love about this module is how Alfred Valley crafted it. There’s gorgeous artwork, nice intradiegetic texts, and most of all: hidden stuff. Yes, there is stuff to unlock.
As you can see in the previous picture, there’s hidden binary code scattered across the book.
You’ll find them, decode them and get more information about the lore.
It’s simply a genius idea! I spent hours trying to understand all the hidden elements, to get 3 pieces of info and a hidden musical track.
I know that there’s something hidden in that track. I tried things like spectrogram analysis but I didn’t find the answer.
I won’t spoil more than that, as I think this is something you have to experience while playing, but know that it exists.

On the itch.io page, you’ll find other stuff to download, like the example of play, which is a good addition to grasp the mechanics of Thousand Empty Light.
It also came with a “dust cover” full of important stuff to find (winky winky) and a nice creature generator for all of your Mothership sessions.

Artwork by Alfred Valley - From Alfred Valley’s Thousand Empty Light

As you’ve probably understood now, I am truly amazed by Thousand Empty Light. Not only as a module for Mothership but also as a truly inspiring piece of art and creation. There is everything you need to play, lots of artwork, texts, description and features to make you dive into the setting and the ambiance of the game.

I think any game designer who envision creating a solo adventure should read and try this module.

Playing TEL was a unique experience and it makes me wonder about how to solo play Mothership without the need for a pre-written adventure.
That’s why I started to work on it, using all the tools the core game gives, along with the procedure Thousand Empty Light offered.
I think there is something to create here but it won’t be so easy.
I would probably speak about it longer in a future newsletter!

You can find Thousand Empty Light module here, and Mothership here.

🧙🏼‍♂️What I’m Up To: Devlog, Lore & Flight Simulator

As I’m still very busy at work, I haven’t progressed a lot in coding my own video game. I tend to go back home, the mind full of stuff and pretty tired and game development is exhausting.
But I managed to properly finish the “placement system”. This is the system I use to put anything in the world of the game, like mines, barricades, turrets etc. This way, the player can construct what they want in any free place.
This is a pretty standard system, used in a lot of games, but I’m happy it was so simple to make. I was expecting it to be way more time consuming and mind-tearing.

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I love to write. I mean, you are reading a whole newsletter written by me here, so you probably already know that.
I almost never finished any short story though, even if I got a lot of written stuff on my computer (in French). And recently, I dove into what I’ve written, and I’ve seen a pattern. Almost all of my ideas scattered across notes and Google Docs are in fact lore pieces. Things like places, weird tribes, creatures and natural landscapes.
So I decided to put them all into one world, with the whole story of why the world is like that (also extracted from another idea I got).
It was nice and fun to make and kind of relieving to get all of my thoughts into one place. Now I have somewhere to put any idea I can get.
I don’t know if I ever released something with this, but I can use it to create stories or any TTRPG setting in the future.

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There’s another thing I love: maps. It’s a family thing.
I rarely spend a day without going to Google Maps to check on location, I got several map apps to get a lot of various information, and I love diving into Google Street View to walk around places I have never been to.
So, when Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 came, with a realistic mapped Earth and the possibility to fly anywhere in the world, I was hyped. Back then, I didn’t have a proper PC or console to try the game, so I waited.
And this Sunday, the wait was over. I bought the Xbox Game Pass, installed the 2024 edition, and started flying across my hometown to see how the game built its Earth version.
I was impressed. Buildings were easily recognizable, small woods and lakes were there and roads with cars were in their proper place.

Of course there are some mistakes, the buildings are not identical to real life, trees can be randomly put in the wrong places and a lot of things are missing (like people roaming, fences and bushes around the houses etc). But nonetheless, it is impressive!

Something else that makes my mind go crazy is the ability to walk anywhere, from the top of Everest, to the center of any lake and sea (yeah you can walk on water, like any other famous guy).
It’s also a good way to destress, and bring my mind at peace, so it’s truly a win.

That’s it for the week!

Let me know if you enjoyed this article, if you played/read/watch any of the stuff I mentioned here 😀
See you!
Cheers !
Sleepdrifter

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