First Impressions - Desert Moon of Karth - Mothership RPG (ZineQuest3)

Welcome to the new frontier...

Desert Moon of Karth (hereafter DMK) was one of several ZineQuest Kickstarters for Mothership. It's fair to say that it breaks the mould somewhat, and gives a hint of what Mothership can be if it steps away from the bug hunt and horror genre.

DMK is a black and white staple-bound zine, with 52-pages of content. It has a full-colour cover and the pallet is such that I only realised that the interior was monochrome when I picked it up to write this. It is packed with information, extremely well laid out and well-edited.

Karth is a small moon orbiting the blue gas giant Tabernas, passing into an eclipse phase every 21 days. It is unusually dense, has a breathable atmosphere and shows evidence of both previous human and alien settlements. The moon is a frontier world, mined by the Manian Expeditionary Force (MEF) for the coral-like fossilised remains of an alien species which can be chemically processed for longevity drugs. So not unlike some of the hooks around the planet Poseidon in the Blue Planet RPG. Except that's wet. And much more heavily settled.

The longevity drugs are extremely valuable, and the main settlement, Larstown, has a frontier feel. It's a company town, with the MEF taxing prospectors and buying up their product. They control access to the world, via a small space elevator. You can't land a ship on Karth because there is an automated planetary defence system that shoots down anything between low orbit and 600m altitude. Indeed, this is used as a feature by local law enforcement who shoot people into the air on crude rockets to execute them. The MEF don't control this as it's an Oldtech remnant.

There are two groups surviving from the original human civilisation; the Dawnseekers, a cult that harvests organs to give their leaders extended lives, and their enemies, the Valley Rangers. Naturally, they are rivals and have no love lost. The Dawnseekers are neutral towards the MEF, whereas the Valley Rangers want to prevent damage to the ecology by the newcomers.

So DMK has a great set-up with rival factions that all want something done. Naturally, succeeding at one of these is inevitably going to start to upset the apple cart. There is a fourth faction, in effect, but it would be a spoiler to reveal it; potentially, it will present an ethical dilemma, or the route to a small fortune if you were to survive long enough.

The world is set up as a point-crawl, with random encounter tables. The locations are all interesting and illustrated to a good standard. NPCs are well developed. There are rules for duelling if you fancy a 'High Noon' Western-style gunfight.

There are useful tables (Oldtech artefacts, 'I search the body') to use and inspire. The NPCs and locations have plenty of hooks. There's some guidance on setting up as a one-shot or a more extended mini-campaign.

Overall, this is great. It wouldn't be out of place using Traveller, or even a cyberpunk style RPG. It's a well developed, nicely laid out and evocatively illustrated mini-campaign packed with ideas and potential. Excellent stuff!

30 November 2021