Mothership — Alien-style sci-fi horror RPG

"Sci-fi horror where your ship is your coffin."

Diced100 (d%)

Players3–5

Prep~15 min

Foundry VTTCommunity

Complexity

What is this system

Sci-fi horror on percentile dice. You are workers, scientists, and marines on spaceships where everything goes wrong. The stress and panic system makes every situation unpredictable. Modular structure: dozens of brilliant community scenarios. Character creation — 10 minutes.

Setting

The far future. Corporations send crews to abandoned stations, asteroid mines, and dead ships. Something waits in the dark: alien parasites, malfunctioning AIs, existential anomalies. The aesthetic — Alien meets Event Horizon.

What it looks like at the table

Stress check. You're a Scientist, stress: 3. You need to open an airlock on a dead station. Mechanics roll — d100 vs 35. Rolled 42, failure. Stress +1. Now 4. Panic check: d20 + stress. Rolled 18 — total 22. 'Paralysis: you can't move for one round.' The Marine screams: 'Move!' But you stand frozen, staring into the darkness beyond the airlock.

Playstyle

Horror Survival Exploration Space

Key mechanics

Panic and stress

Stress accumulates. Overflow triggers the panic table. From stuttering to 'you shoot the nearest ally.'

4 classes

Teamster, Scientist, Android, Marine. Each changes group dynamics and approach to problems.

One-page sheet

Creation takes 10 minutes. Perfect for one-shots, conventions, and mini-campaigns.

Modules

'A Pound of Flesh', 'Gradient Descent', 'Hull Breach' — every community module is a masterpiece.

What people say

Mothership's panic table created the most cinematic moment I've ever seen in an RPG. One player panicked, shot another player, which caused THAT player to panic. Chain reaction of horror. We were dying laughing and terrified simultaneously.— u/hull_breach, r/mothershiprpg

Gradient Descent is the best dungeon crawl module ever written for any system. I will die on this hill.— u/deep_scanner, r/osr

Art & materials