We are living in a wonderful time when there are two great space horror RPGs on the market. I own both Alien and Mothership because they have their own strengths. Alien lives in the iconic space horror setting and lets players try to survive against the infamous Xenomorph, the hard laws of space and the treachery of the company. Mothership has many of these basic themes but adds in a bit of mystery because the creatures are unknown. It also has a very generous community full of third party publishers that can do very weird things in their adventures. ARKYVR, from Alewood games, isn’t as out there as some of the Mothership products I’ve read, but it does have an interesting premise. It turns Mothership from a space horror game into a found footage horror game.
Found footage refers to things like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity or Late Night With The Devil. In these films, everything is portrayed through a camera held by someone experiencing the horror. One of the challenges found footage films must overcome is why the people still keep filming even when weird stuff starts happening. ARKYVR builds this into the campaign frame: the PCs are paid to be there. They’ve been hired to film the goings on at the location whether they are there for boring reasons (like filming a safety video) or for more dangerous ones (like corporate wants to see the alien before they decide whether to capture or kill it). It’s an interesting twist on the classic campaign frame where the players and their ship wander into town, see the monster and try to survive until they can get out of orbit.
There are four new character classes that are built for this style of campaign. Each one gets unique gear and abilities to help on their mission. The Camera Operator gets advantage on Sanity saves while they are shooting plus a camera that can double as a melee weapon in a pinch. Producers are the faces that bring the team together and get a Save advantage when everyone is working together on the same project. They also get access to a powerful portable computer that can hack things like camera feeds just in case they don’t get proper permissions to film. Sound recordists gain advantage to Fear saves when listening through their gear, which includes a drone mike that can be useful in other ways. The Utility Technician has a bonus to help the crew get their shots and they have mechanical boots that function a little like mini versions of the cargo loader from Aliens. They help move heavy things during the regular filmers and make it easier to kick ass when things go south.
Shot management is a secondary game that drops down over the basic structure of Mothership. The players get a sheet of required shots from the Warden that represent the footage their client wants. They have to make rolls to make the shots usable and they also have to manage their recording space so they don’t run out of memory with bad takes. They’ve got to get these shots if they want to get paid, which can be a challenge if the “quiet cafeteria interview with the head of HR” is interrupted by an extradimensional spider dripping down from the ceiling. There’s also some discussion about what to do if the players don’t want to turn the footage over. That choice can switch up the direction of the game away from monster of the week into avoiding corporate bounty hunters. Or it can put them on jobs for a pirate broadcaster desperate to show the truth to the unsuspecting public.
ARKYVR as a campaign frame is worth picking up on its own, but it also integrates with baseline Mothership in interesting ways. I can see a mix of these media classes amid a regular crew and some tensions cropping up between the blue collar space truckers and the film crew sent by corporate. It also seems like an opportunity to do something that rarely happens in Mothership games: a sequel. Even if the players all went out the airlock last session, the Warden could send in a film crew to document the aftermath of what happened in a particular location during an earlier module. It could give the players a second bite at the apple, let the Warden show off how the corporation is covering up the incident or even function as a campaign epilogue as the players craft out the last time their characters will be seen on screen.
Bottom Line: ARKYVR offers a novel twist on the usual Mothership campaign while also functioning as an interesting collection of ideas for Wardens who want to kill their players in the usual way.
