https://xiaofang64.itch.io/flatline
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/562593/flatline-a-mothership-tpk-scenario
YOU DIED. AND THAT’S JUST THE BEGINNING.
...
Your last job went wrong. Everybody died. And then you woke up.
The afterlife is a white-walled room with some suit who says he’s
an “angel,” here to judge your “sins.” Is this Heaven? Hell? Or
something worse?
One thing’s for sure. In this galaxy, NOBODY RESTS IN PEACE
...
Flatline is a trifold sci-fi horror/mystery scenario designed for use with the Mothership RPG 1e (Tuesday Knight Games).
In Flatline, players start the adventure dead, and must discover the truth behind their resurrection. Flatline can be played as a one-shot mystery, or as a continuation of a campaign after a Total Party Kill (TPK)! Plus:
- Unique mechanics for playing a CYBERGHOST.
- A layered mystery; NPCs with conflicting agendas.
- New TECH for dealing with the undead
Dying in Tabletop Games
In TTRPGs, there's no topic quite as perennial as dying! When should it happen? How much should the players collaborate in their deaths? How do you make it far? Should it even happen at all?
Every game and every gamer have their own answers, and there's no one-size-fits-all method. In general, I'm a fan of the OSR vibe of of life being cheap and death being quick and glorious. But without those training wheels, there's an even more terrifying beast that threatens to rear its head to threaten the GM:
The Total Party Kill.
The paradox of character death or the Total Party Kill is this: you don't want it to happen, but it is the threat that it could that makes life meaningful. If you know the GM WON'T kill everyone, there's no tension when you strive to avoid that outcome.
A TPK can still make for a memorable and fun session with a group mature enough to handle it. (My favourite was a Mausritter scenario in which half the party turned into zombies and killed other half!) But the risk-reward ratio is skewed. And if it happens early, it can kill the flow of the game.
Flatline isn't the final answer to the TPK. But it's an answer, something for the back pocket that hopefull gives the GM a little peace of mind. I wanted to do a sci-fi horror spin on the "our next adventure is in hell" trope, but one that still preserves the oppressive atmosphere of space-horror and give the sense that the players are getting off the hook lightly.
And I like to think I succeeded; during my first playtest, one player opted to just go back to being dead rather than return to life as a Mothership character!
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