Posted 2020-09-02

Last Updated 2021-05-14

Calm For Mothership

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Here’s something to try in your Mothership campaign: invert Stress and call it Calm. In vanilla Mothership, Stress starts at 0 and goes up indefinitely as PCs encounter scary stuff. When something happens that triggers Panic, players try and roll 2d10 over their Stress. On failure, they must roll 2d10+Stress on a Panic Effects table and take the (usually disastrous) result.

Calm instead maxes out at 85% (like the other stats and saves) and goes down to 0%. Every time you would gain Stress in Mothership, instead lose that amount of Calm. Panic checks now have you roll d100 under against your current Calm (like the other stats and saves): if you fail, you look up the number you rolled on the new Panic Effects table below. A few things this change does:

• The Panic system now works the same way as the other Stats and Saves in Mothership, which means all checks and saves in the game are now d100 roll-under.
• It’s clearer to players how bad their character’s mental state is: 0% is worst, and 100% would be best, but you live in a terrifying, uncaring universe, so you can only get up to 85%.
• It reduces the number of rolls when dealing with Panic: a single roll now determines if you panic and how you panic.
• This also makes rolling on the Panic Table more random, since you’re no longer adding a number to the roll. This means that at 0 Calm, you could get anything on the table!
• The entries on the new Panic Effects table have been adjusted to be more oriented around long-term conditions. This was done with campaign play in mind.

Using Calm

Sounds good? Here’s how it works: if you have to make a Panic check, roll d100 under your Calm stat:

• If you succeed, nothing happens.
• If you get a crit success, gain 1d10 Calm.
• If you fail, look up the number you rolled + your Resolve on the new Panic table (below) and take the listed effect.
• If you crit fail, also lose 1d10 Calm.

If you already have the effect in question, stack it! (This may mean increasing the length of an effect, increasing the Calm penalty, etc.) If it doesn’t make sense to stack it, move to the next highest entry and give them that effect instead. For example, “Social Anxiety” would stack so that the character loses 2d10 Calm whenever they converse with someone new, then 3d10, etc.

Switching to a d100 system calls for a few additional changes:

• New player characters start with 85 Calm and 85 Maximum Calm.
• To convert a character from Stress to Calm, multiply their Stress by 3 and subtract the result from 85. This is their current Calm.
• The Calm system is overall less dangerous than Stress, and doesn’t ramp up as quickly, so while you should dock Calm whenever you would gain Stress in the old system, you’ll probably want to increase the numbers — where you would have had PCs gain 1 Stress, have them lose 1d10 Calm. Where they’d have gained 1d10 Stress, have them lose 2d10 Calm, etc.
• Instead of gaining 1 Resolve at level up, gain 1d10, up to a maximum of 15. Use Resolve by adding it to your Calm when looking up Panic Effects results.

There is now a Calm version of my campaign character sheet.

Panic Effects Table

Conditions are italicized. List these on your character sheet. If a condition does not have a listed duration, it is permanent. A condition may be removed upon leveling up (PSG 36.1) or possibly through other means as determined by the Warden. (Some entries are taken from or closely based on the original Panic Table in the PSG.)

Roll	Effect	Description
100	Heart Races	Lose 1 Calm.
97-99	Moment of Panic	Lose 1d5 Calm.
93-96	Overwhelmed	Lose 1d10 Calm.
90-92	Nervous Twitch	Lose 1d10 Calm. The nearest crew member also loses 1d5 Calm.
89	Hallucinations	For the next 1d10 hours (determined secretly), you have trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy.
88	Cowardice	Lose 1d10 Calm. For the rest of the session, you must make a Fear save to engage in combat.
87	Rattled	Disadvantage on all rolls for the rest of the session.
86	Outburst	Suddenly shout, cry out, slam your fist against a wall, etc., making a loud noise. Nearby crew members lose 1d10 Calm.
85	Psychotic Break	Immediately attack the closest crew member until you do at least 2d10 damage or 1 Hit, whichever comes first. If there is no crew member nearby, you attack the environment.
84	Crippling Fear	Gain a new Phobia, determined by the Warden. Whenever you encounter this phobia make a Fear save at Disadvantage or lose 1d10 Calm.
83	Mild Anxiety	Your Maximum Calm decreases by 2.
82	General Anxiety	Your Maximum Calm decreases by 1d10.
81	Hypervigilance	Gain Advantage on all surprise rolls but lose 1d10 Calm every day.
80	Escapism	You always have Disadvantage on Body Saves to prevent Addiction.
79	Social Anxiety	Lose 1d10 Calm whenever you converse with someone new.
78	Emotional Detachment	You now lose half the Calm (rounded up) you normally would from all sources but you gain the Panic Effect of an Android, in addition to that of your own class. If you are an Android, gain the Panic Effect of a Marine.
77	Recurring Nightmares	Every time you rest, make a Fear save. If you fail, lose 1d10 Calm and do not heal. The Warden will describe your nightmare.
76	The Shakes	You can’t keep your hands steady any more. Disadvantage on ranged attacks and all tasks requiring fine motor skills. Drugs may be able to help with this.
75	Panicky	Whenever you make a Fear save, roll under your Fear or your Calm, whichever is lower.
74	Losing Your Grip	Whenever you make a Sanity save, roll under your Sanity or your Calm, whichever is lower.
73	Anhedonia	Whenever you would recover Calm, recover half as much Calm instead.
72	Severe Anxiety	Lose double Calm from all sources.
71	Broken	Make a Panic roll whenever a nearby crew member fails a save.
70	Psychotic Episodes	Once per session, the Warden may take over your character for one round. The first one happens immediately.
65-69	Heart Attack	Death in 1d10 minutes unless you get medical attention. -1d10 to your Body save.
60-64	Temporary Insanity	You become insane. Your character is played by the Warden (or by you but you must act destructively and against the interests of the rest of your team or else the Warden takes over) until they sleep at least 6 hours and succeed on a Sanity Save.
40-59	Severe Heart Attack	You die. Take one final action before you go.
1-39	Psychological Collapse	You become permanently, irreparably insane. Your character is now played by the Warden. All nearby player characters must immediately make Panic Checks.

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Update (2021-05-14): @Amputret on the Mothership Discord has created an excellent Android Calm Table based on the table above for use with Androids specifically.

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Stress vs. Calm Breakdown

Switching to the Calm system means that the overall distribution of Panics is going to be different. Here’s a chart showing a character’s chance to experience each possible type of effect when called upon to make a Panic Check using Mothership’s Stress system with 0 Resolve:

Note that the probabilities described incorporate both the initial 2d10-over-Stress roll to determine if the player panics, and the subsequent 2d10+Stress Panic Table roll on failure. Some interesting takeaways from this breakdown:

• PCs are pretty safe while they still have single-digit Stress, but they’re guaranteed to die if they are asked to make a Panic Check with 30+ Stress.
• The Bonus results (Laser Focus, Adrenaline Rushes) are mostly a tease for players with 0 Resolve: a player can only ever get one of these from failing a Panic Roll if they have between 2-8 Stress, and even then their best odds are just 1% if they have exactly 5 Stress.
• It’s actually impossible to get the first result (Laser Focus) if you have 0 Resolve: the lowest result you can ever get is a 4, which gets you the second entry on the table. Resolve, however, can bump you back up the table to get those elusive Bonus entries (thanks to @yourGMJack on the Mothership discord for pointing this out).

Here’s a chart showing the same thing, but with this Calm system. It’s a bit more boring as a chart:

My hunch is Stress is probably the better system for one-shots and mini-campaigns, and Calm may be better suited for longer campaigns, as Stress ramps up and becomes lethal much faster (on average, assuming 1d10 Stress gain / Calm loss, you’re going to have a roughly 50% chance of death when making a Panic Check after gaining Stress 4 times vs. losing Calm 13 times.) We’ve been playing with this system for a while in the Warped Campaign and it seems to work well.

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Edits:

• 2020-09-02: Updated Stress vs. Calm breakdown to reflect that it is assuming 0 Resolve, thanks to @yourGMJack on the Mothership Discord.
• 2020-09-02: Updated the Panic Effects Table to remove suicide-related entries. Thanks to @Aerinx on the Mothership Discord for pointing out the issues involved.
• 2020-09-03: Added a link to the Calm version of my Mothership character sheet.
• 2021-05-14: Added a link to an Android version of the Calm table by @Amputret on the Mothership Discord.