I usually use Scarlet Heroes’ oracles during my solo plays to know the results of a scene. This oracle is the traditional Yes/No/Yes but/No but oracle with different probabilities depending on the likeliness, and has a small twist when we get an answer with a ‘but’: we must roll again in a d6 table to know to what is that ‘but’ related to.

One of the possible answers of that The ‘But’ is related to table is “An adjustment to the physical environment”. Since my current solo Mothership campaign happens in a space station, I made d10 adjustments to the physical environment of the space station that you can use in your Mothership RPG games.

If you are not playing solo, you can still reuse this table for dangerous situations that might happen in a space station:

d10 adjustments to the physical environment of the space station

Each situation causes Stress, judge how much yourself. I suggest to solve some of them using Crisis Checks.

1. Gravity Engine malfunction. People and things will start to float around. Unless you have mag boots suffer Speed [-]. If objects are not safely secured to the ground, walls or ceiling, they will also start to float.
   • Blood may flow backwards causing strokes (10% chance). Humans need to make a Body Save, if failed, use Mothership’s hit location table to know how the stroke affects your body:
     • LIMB: you have this strange sensation again, it has happened a dozen times during your lifetime, sometimes because you fell asleep in an uncomfortable position… you can feel your limb, you know that it is there, but you you cannot move it anymore, it is useless (legit chance to buy some cyberware).
     • HEAD: you cannot feel any limbs of a random side of your body.
     • TORSO: you fall to the ground and cannot move, you are overwhelmed by an oppressive pain in your chest, the stroke is causing you some kind of arrhythmia. Make a Body Save or suffer d10 damage. If you don’t get help in d10 minutes, you die. If you survive [-] on all rolls for 24 hours.

2. Emergency manoeuvres.¹ The station needs to urgently make some emergency manoeuvres and you will feel some aggressive shakes. Unless you are anchored to a wall (mag boots are not enough) or tied up to piloting chair or the likes, you will be shaken d5 times (the next shake happens in d10+10 seconds), suffering d5 damage each time.

3. Life support system out. It will reboot (maybe?) in d10+10 minutes. Go find a vac suit, an oxygen mask or a pressurised cabin before you choke. There are also less civilised solutions to make the oxygen last in a room, so if you’re with strangers and there aren’t any other oxygen sources nearby they will try to knock you out (best case scenario) to preserve oxygen.

4. Fire. An aggressive fire has broken out and the firefighting drones haven’t arrived yet and the good old fire sprinklers were disabled a long time ago to prevent water lifting.
   • If you are in some kind of room, maintenance tunnel, or hallway, it will be de-pressurised in d10+30 seconds and the connecting hatches will automatically close, you will choke to death unless you get out, put the fire out, or find a personal oxygen source.
   • If you are in an wide area, such a sector, if the fire is not put down quickly (6d10 minutes), the station’s AIs might decouple the whole sector if it is not critical, and leave it out floating in space. If it is critical, treat it as a hallway, exits closed, but de-pressurisation takes longer, d10+5 minutes.

5. Hull damaged. Someone of something has caused a big hole on the external plating of the station generating some serious damage to the structural integrity of the station. The maintenance drones will weld some steel-polymer sheets on the hull in 3d10 seconds. Anything that is not secured will be sucked out to space, the oxygen is thinner each second.

6. Cooling system out.² All AC system have stopped working, Maintenance doesn’t know if it was a bug in the last software patch, some kind of attack, or just the old hardware acting up. The residual heat from everyone and everything in the station makes the atmosphere feel hotter than usual. Everybody is less welcoming and on edge. The artificial food farms will dry up unless the Cooling System is fixed soon, food rationing will take place until it is fixed. Oh, and people sweat, it smells quite bad.

7. Main power engine out. Secondary power has kicked in, but some worrisome red lights have substituted the principal light sources. The hatches, lifts, sliding doors and transport tubes don’t work anymore. There is a 10% chance that the Gravity Engine has been shut down (see 1) to divert its power to a more critical system.

8. Alien life-form extermination protocol engaged. Some harmless moss has started flourishing near the water conduct of an air conditioning unit. The Alien Life-form Detection and Control System has flagged it as a dangerous alien body, and due to some algorithm’s lapse it has concluded that all carbon-based lifeforms are as dangerous. Carbon-based lifeforms will be burned to ashes by some impressive and accurate hellfire unless you get out of there soon or knock some sense into the stupid AI in charge of the system.

9. Cosmic ray radiation wave. The feared yellow alert lights. A possibly lethal radiation wave will hit the station in d10+d10 minutes, suffering its effects for d10 minutes. Roll a d10, on 1-2 the radiation wave can be lethal (Radiation Level-IV is possible, see below). Head to the designated areas with most radiation-shielding mass, obviously there isn’t enough space for everyone. If radiated, suffer the following effects (cumulative), the radiation effects last d10 weeks:

   • Effects on biological tissues:
     • Radiation Level-I. Less than a minute: You feel weak. [-] on all rolls.
     • Radiation Level-II. Up to 3 minutes: Your skin gets burned and starts to peel off. Make a Body Save each day or suffer d10 damage, 15% chance of suffering a mutation every week (I suggest using The Metamorphica for this).
     • Radiation Level-III. Up to 5 minutes: You vomit every couple of hours, lose hair and all your nails start to fall off. Suffer an additional d10 damage if you fail the daily Body Save; you have an additional 20% chance of suffering mutations every week.
     • Radiation Level-IV. More than 5 minutes: Multisystem organ failure, someone should get you some morphine, you need to get high, you will be dead in a couple of hours.

   If you are in space with a vac-suit and a radiation wave hits, you suffer +1 on Radiation Levels (for example, if you get to the radiation shielding pod in 2 minutes you suffer levels I, II and III, instead of just I and II). Radiation waves can always reach Level-IV if you are not shielded by some kind of hull.

   You can treat biological Radiation Levels I-III expending 10K, 20K or 30K credits respectively, to reduce one radiation level. The treatment lasts a whole week. During this week you will need to daily stay 3h glued to a med-chair connected to some tubes that pour in cell regeneration juice and anti-decay fluids. During this week you can still suffer daily damage and can mutate. Mutations cannot be removed using this treatment.

10. Roll twice.

Books mentioned in this post

• Mothership RPG
• Scarlet Heroes (affiliated)
• The Metamorphica revised (affiliated)

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