Gradient Descent is a sprawling sci-fi megadungeon for the ENnie award winning Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG set in an abandoned android production factory run by a powerful AI.
The factory, known as the Cloudbank Synthetics Production Facility, may be abandoned, but it’s far from uninhabited. Its cramped corridors and dark chambers are populated with androids designed by ASAMM to be so advanced that they are often indistinguishable from humans. Because of this, the factory has been blockaded by a fleet of volunteer corporate vessels who have instructions to kill anything that enters or leaves Cloudbank, otherwise known as: The Deep.
The Cloudbank was coined The Deep by a community of scavengers who camp on the outskirts of the blockade. They call themselves Divers, and their fascination with the strange androids and creations found inside The Deep keeps them coming back. Sometimes to their own detriment. More than one diver has fallen prey to the Bends, a terrible condition where due to the continuous exposure to The Deep’s mysteries the Diver forgets whether they are human or not and abandons their friends and loved ones to live in The Deep for the rest of their lives as the android they truly believe they are. That’s why the Divers have a saying, “No matter what they say, you never leave anyone behind in The Deep.”
In a lot of ways, Gradient Descent is a love letter to the classic megadungeon from fantasy rpgs, movies like Blade Runner, and comics like Blame!. We’ve done everything we can to make this massive, sprawling facility with all its nooks and crannies a fun place to explore for players, and an easy game to run for Wardens.
Gradient Descent packs a ton of content into its humble zine-sized pages, including:
We’ve spent a ton of time working this module to be the most usable, well written, edited, illustrated, and designed module it possibly can be, and we can’t wait to show you the finished product.
Every spread is bullet pointed out so that Wardens don’t have to read huge blocks of text to know what’s in a given area. They can simply read the bullet points and bolded entries, and if players want more information, further details are in nested lists beneath each bullet point.
Dangers (like traps or enemies) are highlighted in red and with a unique icon (!) so that you’re not five minutes into exploring a room before you find out there was a gun-toting maniac in there the whole time. Additionally, the bottom of the page has icons for whether there’s artificial gravity on the page, Oxygen, or light — with icons then used on individual rooms when they differ from the area at large.
Mothership is an ENnie award-winning (Best Game, Gen Con 2019) sci-fi horror roleplaying game that places a huge emphasis on being easy to run but difficult to beat. It uses a simple d100 roll-under system similar to Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and the Basic Role Playing system. It’s incredibly easy to hack, so you can meet your table’s needs (increasing or decreasing the difficulty as necessary to create a fun and challenging time) without a lot of effort.
You play as one of four classes: Teamster, Android, Scientist, or Marine, and then customize that class to your liking with a branching skill tree.
We wanted building characters to be easy so we put all the rules for character creation right there on the character sheet. With a game this deadly it’s important that players are able to get right back into the action if their character dies. And why is it so deadly? Well, aside from just taking damage (from, you know, like, a scalpel wielding void raider) your characters also accumulate Stress which builds up until something terrible happens (like oh, you know, seeing your crew mate get ripped in half by the thing that just crawled its way out of the airlock), after which you’ll make a Panic Check. If you roll poorly your character could be inflicted with awful conditions ranging from chronic night terrors to permanent phobias to full on psychopathic rampages!
If you want to check out the system the PDF of the Player’s Survival Guide is Pay What You Want on itch.io or DriveThruRPG. Take a look and let us know what you think. We’ve also got a great Discord server with an awesome community full of people ready to answer questions and help out with anything you need.
Gradient Descent is written, edited, and produced by an incredible award winning team:
We’ve got some awesome stretch goals coming up — so keep an eye out!
“…A master class in presenting RPG rules and settings in a very graphical, readable, and gameable way. And it just looks gorgeous.” — Gareth Branwyn, Boing Boing
“This might be my favorite role playing game other than D&D” — The Secret Cabal Podcast
“This thing walks to the line of usability/performance art, looks down at it, and does a jig on it with its tongue hanging out waggling, while flipping the world off with both hands. It gets about as close as you can to the usability/art line.” — Bryce Lynch, Ten Foot Pole
“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.” — Ben Milton, Questing Beast
“It was thematically so tight and so fun. …Really cool system. …Definitely worth checking out!” — Shut Up & Sit Down
“Mothership is a supremely cool sci-fi DIY zine game whose supplements really know how to create a fun module without railroading players. Designers and players alike should check it out!” — Adam Koebel, Dungeon World
“What a great game. What an impressive achievement… I cannot say enough great things about Mothership. I want you to go buy it right now.” — Dungeons & Possums
This project is EU, CA, and AU customs friendly shipping. Shipping is added through kickstarter with additional shipping added for any add-ons later in our BackerKit. Retailer shipping will be calculated after the campaign.
Additionally, we’ll be using DriveThruRPG to fulfill the PDF portion of our kickstarter!
The module is on its third draft and going through developmental editing right now. We’ve done some layout tests and begun commissioning illustration. This will be our third Mothership module, so we’re confident we can put out a high quality product in a timely manner. The biggest risks to our timeline would be a result of unlocking stretch goals and the additional coordination and logistic hurdles that brings into play.