Another Bug Hunt Review, Part 3: The Jungle, the Mothership, and Takeaways
See the rest of the review and some of my prep here.
Once you leave Heron Station, you’re met with the text, “It takes a half-day’s hard scrabble through the foothills to get to the ship” and no other details. This is a hard contrast with the trip from Greta to Heron, which had light scaffolding to support you.
Flux through the Jungle
I decided I didn’t want to skip over the travel. Getting through an alien jungle didn’t feel trivial.
The solution I arrived at was a shallow flux space (5 random points of interest, and 6th “deep” location), with the intention of giving more insight into what the carcs are doing while they aren’t assaulting the colony. I enjoyed coming up with these spots, but I know my friends felt like they weren’t sure what they need to do. Of the five I wrote:
- Four gave clues about the carcs’ intelligence and/or intentions
- Two had avoidable violent encounters
- One gave the opportunity to learn how to solve a later puzzle
- None presented obstacles for proceeding
I then re-worked the ones they hadn’t visited for the trip back, with the complication of warring carcs.
I didn’t design in enough player agency. These areas were exhausted once you learned what you could and engaged with or avoided the violent encounter, but with no clear indication that you were ready to move on. They needed problems to solve. In contrast, the deep location–a carc path to the ship–did feel pretty good, because it has a clear conclusion. I think I would keep this flux space for a replay, but I would have to do significant work making it more game-able.
Starting from the blank canvas of, “I don’t want to just skip over this travel,” to researching options for handling it, to writing the points, was a ton of prep time for not a lot of play time, and was enjoyable, but took away from other prep I could’ve done. It didn’t feel like it was worth it for the group, but it did feel like an investment in my own skills.
Prepping the Ship
I like the room designs in the ship, but the three linear paths felt designed to invalidate prep. I’m going to try to internalize a bunch of puzzles, and I know that once the party picks an entrance, there’s a minuscule chance that they’ll encounter two-thirds of them. My friends figured out how to open the airlock and took the extremely short [B1], [B2], [B5], [D] route. I know there’s always going to be stuff players miss, but this makes the feel-bad explicit.
The strength of the linear design is that it turns gameplay into a series of puzzles to solve, which in some ways was a really nice change of pace. What it failed to do was make the ship feel like a real, labyrinthine, alien location, and my players commented that it felt a little anti-climactic. If I were to run this again, I would seriously consider re-working the layout of the ship, but that did not feel like a realistic option for me as a new Warden running a published adventure, and I wanted to try it as written rather than assume I knew better. There would also need to be some kind of mechanic to guide players in the right direction, in case they lost or didn’t find have the tracker for Hinton.
Hinton and the Nobles
When I initially read the module, the Court sounded very under-explained, but at least for me, this ended up one of the spots where I had the most fun thinking through how it ought to play, and how to tie all the threads together, without feeling like it was a burden. No notes.
Make up your own Scenario IV mechanics
The ask for the final act is weird. It’s true that it would be difficult to pre-write, depending on the specifics of how your adventure has played out, but with the zooming out, simplifying big actions, the way the timeline works, you’re being asked to make something up that you haven’t done before. There’s not really any way to take what you’ve been taught so far and apply it. This involves changing the mechanics of the game to portray kinds of conflict that aren’t well-covered in the Player’s Survival Guide.
My work-around was to create a set-piece at Heron Station, with the survivors holed up in the hangar, fighting off a wave of carcs, and the drop ship incoming. I did about half an hour of work creating and balancing a slightly simplified combat system for the carcs attacking and the colonists defending, and that paid off. The party burnt some time on tactics that put them in good position, but likely cost them the lives of most of the colonist inside.
Ship combat for some reason
Mothership: Shipbreaker’s Toolkit
Once you’re on the ship, I followed rules as written for damage from the attack (it caused a fire, which led to a few rounds of damage before the sprinkler system took care of it), they dealt with Maas, and all the infected got into hypersleep.
I didn’t bother with teaching ship mechanics, because there’s really no payoff. The ship attacks once, then evades. It moves at a speed like they’ve never seen. So, what is the battle supposed to be? I don’t think there’s anything meaningful the players can do, except maybe get a lucky hit in… except that as described in the Shipbreakers’ Toolkit the executive transport has no weapons.
It’s not a problem – I think a terrifying ship that outclasses you hitting you once provides lots of drama – there’s just no benefit to participating in player-facing combat, except to check the box of the adventure including it.
What is Mothership trying to do as it teaches you how to run the game?
Mothership: Warden’s Operations Manual
I really admire Sean McCoy’s work in trying to create an onboarding point for running TTRPGs that doesn’t rely on Wizards of the Coast, and I think he’s doing a great job. The Warden’s Operations Manual offers incredible, practical advice that demystifies and tears down barriers to entry, but with both the manual and Another Bug Hunt, Tuesday Knight Games is pulling off some sleight of hand.
Arguably, Mothership’s killer app is the huge library of high-quality zines and pamphlets, both first- and third-party. I love the mechanics, and I initially picked it up because I want to use it as the system for my own zine, but I’ve seen a lot of people talk about the adventures as the real selling point.
The fact is, the Warden’s Operation Manual doesn’t give much advice to help you run published modules, and the later portions of Another Bug Hunt don’t do a very good job of prepping you for running published modules. They are both much more focused on getting you comfortable with the idea of making your own adventure.
I would call it insidious, except look at the outcomes: I suspect that trick is a big reason why there is such a virtuous cycle of people enthusiastic and confident enough to make stuff for people to play. Is Mothership built on a lie? Maybe, kind of! Am I going to hold it against them? No, I will not.
The early sections of Another Bug Hunt gave me exactly what I was expecting. The later sections provide something else, something that makes Wardens stronger, makes the community stronger, but doesn’t necessarily lead to the best experience for players, and doesn’t always feel like you’re getting what you signed up for. I’m really glad I ran it all the way through, but this is an adventure that is purposely incomplete, and as the introductory adventure, I don’t think that’s what everyone comes in expecting. As you get farther in, it stops being a fun, pre-written adventure to share with your friends, and starts being creative exercise.
That sounds like a dour note to end on, but there was so much in Another Bug Hunt that I loved, memories with my friends that I will cherish, and I think it made me better at running games, and especially writing my own stuff. I think it’s unlikely I’ll ever run a longer play-through again, but this provides great fodder for one-shots, and I’d easily recommend this, with the caveat that it’s going to make you do work.
Break a leg saving, solving, and surviving!