For the past few days, I have soloed my way through Moonlit Wings (12 pages, percentage system, on sale at DriveThruRPG). This is a technofantasy adventure for Cloud Empress/Mothership which I did use. To solo this, I used a virtual deck of Magic Cards (246 cards, expansion - Phyrexia: All Will Be One). I used seven PCs. The adventure started when the PCs accepted the mission - investigate the problem at a greenhouse at the outskirts of Upsilon City. There were going to be six sent on the mission, but the PC Jason has a grandfather who is a veteran and wanted to come. All seven passed the physical which qualified them for this mission. The PCs arrived at the greenhouse complex and entered the Reception Room. The door to the Dome was locked. The female PC Curry, figured out the password for the computer on the desk. She used the computer to unlock the door. They then entered the Dome and the Southwest Section. Sherry the PC noticed Lureka the NPC hiding up in a tree. Lureka said that she was waiting for someone, but Sherry determined that she lying. When the PCs found another locked door, Jason used his tinkering skill to get it open. In Control Room A, they found the NPC Irina all tied up. They freed her and Irina told them that Lureka was responsible. In the Northwest Section the PCs were attacked by genetically modified butterflies. Three PCs are wounded and they had to deal with the transformation effects that lasted for about an hour. In the Southeast Section, Grandfather's books started sprouting mushrooms. Later, the mushrooms exploded, spores went everywhere, and the books were gone. In Control Room B, NPC Wallow attempted to force a PC to eat a butterfly. The PCs subdued him. The PCs were not able to fix the computers in this room. When the PCs opened the door into the Compost Room, the smell was so bad that they closed the door and took a different route. In Office B, NPC Joseph pleaded with the PCs to escort him out of the complex. They agreed. In Office A, the PCs found documents about gene splicing. On their way to the exit, the PCs found a map of an abandoned lab. It is about 2 miles from this location. So, the PCs and Joseph did make it back to Headquarters. They all filled out reports and were questioned. The wounded PCs had to go through thorough examinations and they have the sore butts to prove it. Give this unique adventure a try! The Cloud Empress rules do contain lots of awesome charts.

This is a piece of art condensed in a few pages. Reading and running this masterpiece has been a pleasure, cant wait to play the rest of the shorties

The best setup for a social adventure I have ever read.

A wonderful game! I love the way the game mechanics themselves help guide the players in their courses. The magic feels exciting, powerful, and dangerous. The combat is tense and can turn so quick. The world is beautiful and harsh and strange and glorious. It's a setting unlike any other I've delved into in TTRPGs and I keep coming back for more.

I particularly like Dying-Earth-style far future science fantasy settings, and this one happens to be based off of my favorite story in that vein: Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. So I was hugely predisposed to like the setting.

And watt delivers so well on making the flavor so close to Nausicaa while still making this world entirely their own. The magic system is chef's kiss, and feels fully integrated with the world and it's economies, politics, etc. The tables that determine character's gear and immediate previous occupations are so juicy. Everything comes together to paint a unified and rich whole world.

Numenera, the main science fantasy system designed for this kind of game, often leaves me cold because there's not enough coherent world vibes / flavor. It makes it open for the GM to insert more of their own, but I think the GM can always do that. I prefer settings / games that come with a good, viable, unique flavor of their own, which I can always remix as needed. Something like Ultraviolet Grasslands is the gold standard for this, to my mind (though it's mechanic underpinnings are severely lacking). Cloud Empress doesn't quite match something like UVG, being perhaps the silver to its gold medal, but damn, it's still really good. An Olympic silver medalist is still the second best athlete in a sport in the world.

My only complaint is that the system is a direct and often unchanged hack of Mothership. Although the lethality and puzzling darkness of the setting do fit somewhat fit the rules of Mothership, other pieces of Mothership that were specifically designed for horror do not. I think if a few more independent mechanical design decisions were made the rules would match the setting much better. Dark and gritty but not explicitly and always horror, per se. Make it "inspired by Mothership" rather than "a hack of Mothership", and some of the rules systems would have just flowed better (and I think the openness of the Mothership 3rd party license would have still been app, which is almost certainly part of why it is a hack of Mothership). But that minor quibble is not enough to knock it down from 5 to 4 stars.

I wholeheartedly recommend this game.

It runs so well. I can't emphasize how much it gives the GM to help keep and maintain the pace. The variety of the interesting mysteries of various NPCs on the ship, as well the the intrinsic and escalating danger of the environment, chef's kiss. It even has a real-life timer so you can keep the action flowing and ensure a single session playtime. Truly one of the only "one-shots" that actually delivers on that premise.

A fantastic hexcrawl sandbox full of wonderful powderkeg situations for enterprising adventurers to ignite, exploding wild adventure all over everyone.

The various powerful beings and factions the players can run into encompass a delightful gamut of weird and idiosyncratic far future life.

These are so flavorful and pocket-sized, it is wonderful, and they can easily be dropping into all sorts of far future settings. My only reticence it that the 6-page length of most of them feels just a tad too pocket-sized. Part of me really wishes they could all have been 10 pages, like Last Voyage of the Bean Barge, to have just a little more room to flesh themselves out. But the request that there should have been more of this good thing is a good review in and of itself.

One of my absolute favorite game systems. It takes the core of Mothership and builds around it a quick and dirty game that oozes with personality. Every class, every item, every little table tells you tidbits about a super unique take on the apocalypse, blending together the best of science fiction and fantasy tropes (and one of my favorite ghibli movies). This + the adventures watt and the rest of the community has been coming out with is worth months and months of content.

The game system isn't super crunchy, but it takes time to voice all of the little details that the crunch-loving part of me craves. Definitely easy as a system to jump into, but the depth (and mystery!) of the world creates a lot for an weathered ttrpg fan to dig into.

(d100 system, 4 classes, each with 10 subtypes. Quickly built characters, easily made within 5ish min if you wanna rush a bit. This helps since there's a lot of weird and gruesome ways for characters to suddenly... become unplayable :P)

Really really cool setting, and a neat update to Mothership rules with e.g. a slightly different take on stress mechanics!

an interesting take and a very imaginative work. looking forward to running some mothership with my players this month and it'd be a good opportunity to bring this out

It is an amazing book, so imaginative, framed with beautiful and awesome art. I played a few sessions already, and they had everything I needed and wanted in a tabletop rpg. Definitely worth getting.

A thought provoking module of melancholy with many provocative prompts. The questions I was asked about my character brought out deep feelings about why I was adventuring in a horror game and why my character would even get out of the bed in the morning, knowing what lies ahead. I am still thinking about it. This is a superior solo gaming product, a superior Mothership product, a superior creation and I cannot wait to see what you develop next. Make no mistake: Hot stuff on Shore Leave would work well for groups. The book self-identifies as queer friendly, and it is. It is also human friendly. Android friendly. Deeply compassinate. I enjoyed the rules for souvenir hot sauce, too. Ha ha ha.