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Running Mothership for an After-School Club

 "This is a bad idea," I think after one of the students grabs the Mothership box set from the pile I've laid out at the first RPG club meeting of the year. 

Last year I ran a campaign of Knave 2e for a group of mostly 9th-grade students and had a great time with it, but for this second year I expected the club to expand and needed more games to accommodate new students. More than twenty signed up and I figured having a bunch of games running in rotation would fit the bill.

One of the first games they went for was Mothership, decidedly not what I would think of for fun with my mostly 9th- and 10th-graders. Nevertheless, there must have been some reason I set it out on the table to begin with... 

Maybe I just wanted to play it and this is my group?

I went with Another Bug Hunt for the starter scenario, planning on three 1.5 hour sessions. I gave students materials to create characters, but came prepared with a lot of pregenerated PCs for students who were new to RPGs or who just wanted to show up and play. These would be useful in case of PC death as well.

Eleven students played in the first session, where I followed the ABH scenario's suggestion for one-shots - dropping them at the door of the base. The party immediately split in two, with one group following the tracks around to the back of the facility and the other breaking in through the front door. This was one of the best things about running this game with this group: in the huge space of the library, which we have to ourselves, I could put each group on a different side, running back and forth to check in on their actions while the other group schemed and plotted. It really drove the action forward and created a lot of energy and suspense.

Combat went well, too, with the PCs appropriately terrified of the creature but also getting some lucky rolls. It scurried off into the vents. 

We're now three sessions in (still with eleven PCs) and not entirely through the scenario. We left it at a cliffhanger, and I'll have to add another session to the schedule. What did I learn? This game/scenario plays well with a younger group. They immediately grasped the genre elements and the mechanics were a snap to pick up. This also works with a surprisingly large group on a tight schedule. Running combat as recommended and avoiding getting bogged down by too many rolls made this possible. As soon as students grasped how hard it was to pass rolled checks, they began looking for ways to avoid them. 

I don't think this would be appropriate for every after-school group. Make sure you check in with students about their comfort level with this genre and keep providing supports and check-ins with appropriate safety tools at the table. Will I do this again? Yes.

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