Mothership

Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game

Welcome to Mothership®, the award-winning sci-fi horror RPG where you and your crew try to survive in the most inhospitable environment in the universe: outer space! 

Mothership Core Set

Everything you need to play in one horrifying box. It's complete with all the 1e (First Edition) core rulebooks, an introductory module, and a set of dice. When we first started designing Mothership®, this was the set we envisioned.

Buy Core Set

Mothership Deluxe Set

The fastest way to build your collection. All the 1e (First Edition) core rulebooks in addition to four official modules. If you've just heard of Mothership®, or you want to make sure your collection is complete, look no further than the Deluxe Set.

Buy Deluxe Set

Survive. Solve. Save.

Pick One.

Easy to Play. Hard to Survive.

Mothership® is designed from the ground up to be intuitive to run and easy to play, no system-mastery required. For players, our simple d100 Panic Engine ensures that you always know how likely you are to succeed at any given task.

Never Miss a Beat

For Wardens (GMs), we’ve made rules easy to reference, and designed everything to fit into clean “control panel” style spreads. That means if you’re looking at the combat rules, everything you need to know fits on the two pages open in front of you, no more flipping around to find all the edge cases for a simple question.

Jump Right In

Even the character sheet makes things easier: all the rules for character creation are printed on the sheet itself, meaning veteran players can zoom through creating a new character when their old character gets shredded by a deadly mutant xeno, and new players can get up and running without having to read through an entire player’s guide. All this with minimal supervision from the Warden who is probably busy last-minute prepping tonight’s session/ordering pizza.

Survival Horror

in Outer Space

You’ll excavate dangerous derelict spacecraft, explore strange unknown worlds, encounter hostile alien life and examine the horrors encroaching upon your every move.

What's in the box?

Mothership Core Set

Buy Core Set

Mothership Deluxe Set

Buy Deluxe Set

Award-Winning

Sci-Fi Horror

2019 Best Game

Mothership: Player’s Survival Guide

2019 Best Adventure

Mothership: Dead Planet

"Mothership is a D&D Killer."

There Will Be Games

"A master class in presenting RPG rules and settings in a very graphical, readable, and gameable way. And it just looks gorgeous."

Boing Boing

“Frankly this is a fantastic game. You cannot go wrong with this."

Game Geeks

"Thematically so tight and so fun. Really cool system. Definitely worth checking out!"

Shut Up & Sit Down

“Such a great example of design in RPGs... If I was gonna run a sci-fi horror game this is the only game I’d use.... Strongly recommended.”

Questing Beast

"This might be my favorite role playing game other than D&D.”

The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast

“Mothership is an eye catching shiny gold indie darling.”

Collabs Without Permission

“What a great game. What an impressive achievement for a single designer/writer/layout artist/illustrator! I cannot say enough great things about Mothership. I want you to go buy it right now.”

Dungeons & Possums

"Mothership is made of iron."

The Explorer's Co.
Free Download

Companion App

Whether online or in-person, people the world over have been playing Mothership®, the award-winning scfi-fi horror RPG, for over five years. Join in the fun with the official Companion App.

ARKYVR Monkey's Paw SIS/TR: A Rare Geometry SIS/TR Dice Box & Mothership Bundle This Ship is a Tomb

Mothership Modules

Venture into the Void

With our library of over 100 campaigns, rules supplements, and in-universe texts. Vaccsuit not included.

Shop Modules

Warden Educational System

Basic Training Course

What's New in First Edition?

Mothership® has been in development since 2017 and has won numerous awards since its release. We've spent the last few years playtesting and refining and playtesting again, and now we've got the most complete, easy to understand, terror-inducing rules on this planet—or any other. A quick summary of the changes in 1e (First Edition):

Combat and violence have been greatly clarified and simplified, replacing the old opposed roll system with a more intuitive "roll to hit then roll damage" system. Many edge cases have been smoothed out, and the whole thing overall is much better.

Health has now moved to a Wounds system, which is faster, more visceral, and much more evocative. Taking damage isn't just about losing abstract points, it's about suffering specific injuries that tell a story and prioritize quick thinking and difficult choices.

Armor is no longer a save, but rather destructible Armor Points. Ignore any damage less than your AP, but if you take more damage than your AP, your armor is destroyed. Time to raid the nearby crew-lockers...

We've removed levels all together, and characters start off a little stronger and can increase their Saves through Shore Leave, spending time training, resting, and gaining new skills.

All the classes have been rebalanced and skill selection has become much more specialized. If you're the person who is good at First Aid, you kick ass at it.

The Stress & Panic system has been rebalanced (no more Heart Attacks after taking a couple points of Stress... those were the days). Additionally, we've added the brand new d20 Panic Die. This is a die you only roll when making Panic Checks, which speeds things up greatly and makes Panic Checks a lot easier for new players to understand.

We removed a lot of weird edge cases to the rules and streamlined how combat and violent encounters work, removing a ton of rolls and vestigial nonsense.

A lot of quality-of-life changes have been made to the text, mostly in how it's explained and presented, to make it easier to understand for beginners.

Overall, we think it is absolutely the best version of Mothership® to date, and if you want to read more about the awesome changes we've made, check out the Player's Survival Guide.

Actual Play

Videos & Podcasts