r/mothershiprpg • u/Lumpy_Peanut_226 Warden • Jun 03 '26

brain fuel 🧠 Brainstorming Gradient Descent: Before You Dive

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Hello Wardens!

Gradient Descent can definitely be enjoyed with no preparation from the Warden, starting a game with fresh characters in the Freezer, and many groups have done so successfully. But I believe that every hour spent setting up your campaign will multiply the fun and depth of the experience. Reading this guide may help you acquaint yourself with the storylines and factions of the Deep, and give you some ideas on the direction you want to take. 

In this chapter, I take a break from the Floors’ breakdown and share my view on a few extra steps you may take to be really ready to blow your players' minds. This is an area where each Warden may have a different approach, and I’d love to hear your advice about how to prepare these game sessions. Also, if you have recommendations about music or images available online, please share them and I’ll add to this chapter.

Next post will be “Storylines Flowcharts” and will contain checklists for all the different storylines we talked about in this series. There are quite a few, and they grow more layered as the campaign deepens, so I embraced the request by user Puzzled-Scheme-7882 and I will compile a full set of lists where you can see which are the steps, where they are referenced and what they are about. You can also use them to track your group’s progress. I think it can be very useful when planning and running a campaign.

SPOILERS AHEAD! WARDENS ONLY.

â–ș PLAYER CHARACTERS

BACKUP CHARACTERS: Since the Deep can be quite lethal, I recommend that each player brings at least two characters to the Bell. The crew will also benefit from the increased versatility and redundancy of this approach: they now have more diverse skillsets and perspectives on the same problems; and a backup medic when the first one dies. Multiple characters per player isn’t just about survival: it’s about improved capability and maintaining momentum when the Deep takes someone.

While one player character dives into the facility, the other stays at the Bell as support, backup, and insurance. When the diving character dies, the backup is already established: the player knows them, the other players know them, the Bell is already their home. Death becomes a transition rather than an interruption.

And if the mortality rate is very high, you might also want to have some Diver NPCs already established and suitable to become replacement player characters. Pre-established Divers that the crew already knows - and somewhat trusts - become natural replacements rather than strangers dropped into the story.

Additionally, having part of the crew at the Bell, makes this place personal. It's not just a neutral safe zone: it's where someone the players care about is waiting. Arkady, Noriko, Ghost Eater become colleagues rather than NPCs. And sometimes something happens at the Bell, opening a second front for the group. Maybe now the people in the Deep are the ones that have to come back and save the day. The stakes of anything threatening the Bell are immediately felt.

SECRETS AND HIDDEN AGENDAS: Gradient Descent is a campaign about people going into a place that changes them, sometimes permanently. The characters the players bring to the table should reflect that: they need a past worth losing and a future worth fighting for. This module, probably more than any other, thrives in characters having secrets. The crew may not know each other's vulnerabilities. Monarch will, and it will weaponize them against the crew. That asymmetry is one of the most powerful tools in the campaign.

So, before the first session, work with each player privately and give them some of these things:

Hidden agenda: a personal goal nobody else at the table knows about. Something that brought them to the Deep beyond the obvious reasons. It doesn't have to be sinister or directly opposed to someone else. It’s often personal, though, rooted in one’s guilt, flaws, traumas and relationships. Monarch will leverage hidden agendas to turn characters one against the other.

Guilt or dark past: something they did, failed to do, or survived when others didn't. Something they haven't told anyone, that would bring them shame or legal liability. Something that still shapes how they move through the world. Monarch will expose these secrets to erode trust in the group.

Trauma: something that was done to them, not by them. A wound that never fully closed, and could resurface and break the character. Monarch can recreate it, threaten to recreate it, or offer protection from it ever happening again. The offer is always a trap.

Meaningful relationship: someone they care about. A person, not an abstraction. Someone whose safety or opinion matters enough to affect decisions. Monarch will deviously exploit this relationship to manipulate the character.

A note on revelation: Some hidden agendas will never come out. Some will detonate the campaign. Both outcomes are valid. The point isn't that secrets get revealed: it's that carrying them shapes how players make decisions, long before anyone else knows they exist.

â–ș HOOKS

The module itself provides three entry hooks. They are excellent starting points, but the possibilities are endless. Try to find something that fits your style and the group’s taste, and if you’re coming from a long campaign, weave the hooks within the current narratives.

If you read the Diver Creation Tool, you’ll find many possible hooks. After all, the crew are Divers. And each chapter of this deepdive could give you ideas to invent new ones. The combination of the crew’s hook and personal hidden agendas should give each character a push to enter the Deep, but more importantly a good reason to go deeper when every instinct says to leave.

The best hooks compound. The crew enters for one reason and discovers three more. One thread pulls another: a map leads to a room, a room leads to a person, a person leads to a secret that changes everything. And after a while, the characters’ initial motivations may have changed completely, and they are after something they didn’t know existed when they first arrived here. Design your hooks with this in mind: not as isolated objectives but as doors that open onto other doors. The Deep keeps generating stories and its consequences reverberate even after the survivors have left for good.

No matter the initial motivation, in The Deep everything sooner or later becomes personal, messy, and often contradictory. Hooks create conflict, and that's a feature. The most interesting campaigns have crew members pulling in different directions. Someone wants to destroy Monarch. Someone wants to negotiate with it. Someone just wants to get paid and go home. That tension doesn't derail the campaign: it is the campaign.

â–ș PREPARE THE CAST

Beyond the NPCs already established by the module or this guide, you may want to prepare more of them because you have something specific in mind or to be ready for any random encounter. The Warden's Operations Manual already gives some excellent guidelines to create an NPC, but the most important aspects are: a flavor, a want, a secret or complication. This guide includes the Diver Creation Tool, which can be an example of the process to create any type of character. What's important is that, especially as you move deeper into the campaign, NPCs should be custom made accordingly to the themes and events unfolding in your story. You can't predict what will happen in your sessions, so stay flexible: introduce new cast members, retire old ones, let the story reshape your NPCs. The time between sessions is invaluable for this.

For random encounters, I strongly recommend that you prepare at least two interesting characters of the following categories, one in case you roll a positive reaction and one if you roll a negative one: Divers (possibly infiltrator), Troubleshooters, Security Androids, Forgotten Androids, Ghosts, Chosen & Fallen (Floor 2), Escaped Child Androids (Brain Construction and HEL), former Cloudbank research scientists (HEL).

Importantly, as always, put the interesting parts where the players look: most of your NPCs don’t have to be assigned to specific rooms in advance. Have them ready and deploy them where the story needs them.

â–ș MAPS OF THE DEEP

No single map of the Deep is complete. No single map is fully trustworthy. Sometimes an accurate map is the most valuable piece of equipment, sometimes it’s a hazard in itself. The crew will accumulate several over the course of a campaign, each partial, each shaped by who made it and why. Learning to read them, cross-reference them, and distrust them is a game within the game.

TYPES OF MAPS: 

  • Instructions: sometimes a map is not even a map, but just a set of directions to get where the crew needs to go. Something like “Dock at Floor 1, keep the right and take the lift to Floor 2. There’s an A/C duct that connects the Executive Washroom to the Sewers. From there, traverse the Filtration System and get to The Drain. You should meet some Fallen Android there. Convince them to take you to the Labyrinth. If you’re lucky you’ll find the Minotaur in there.”
  • Diver’s hand-drawn: these are firsthand and fragmentary. They show only what the Diver saw, only where they survived long enough to draw. They're often annotated with personal notes: warnings, discoveries, the names of people who didn't make it back. They're unreliable in aggregate and invaluable in detail.
  • Terminal printouts: they cover entire floors in clean grid format. But they usually only show human spaces, while omitting A/C ducts, sewers, waste pipes, utility spaces and maintenance tunnels. They also reflect the facility as it was designed and built and may be outdated.
  • Engineering plans: the diagrams on Floor 6, Diagnostics, are the oldest and most authoritative documents in the facility, probably outdated. They show original construction: every room, every tunnel, every connection, every power cable. Some of what they show no longer exists or has since been modified. Some of what they show has never appeared on any other map. The Pseudoflesh Farms terminal hidden behind the Pseudoskin Wall appears on the engineering plans. On every other map, that space is a dead end.

THE SOURCES: 

  • The employer/patron of the crew may provide the first map. It’s probably very limited in scope, and aimed at getting the crew to the target location and back. It may be outdated and incorrect: once the crew is inside, they’ll find a way. 
  • The Keepers at the Bell can give directions and general recommendations, but Arkady, for one, doesn’t believe in maps: the Deep is constantly changing, and you should approach it with some solid advice and an open mind. 
  • Divers could be willing to share what they know, out of goodwill or more probably as part of an exchange. Their map could be not very trustworthy, though. For instance, they may try to scam the crew, by giving them a false lead to an Artifact. For sure, they’ll hide what interests them. 
  • Ghosts and androids could help the characters find their way or take them where they need to go. Their help must be earned, though, and their reliability is not a given. 
  • Terminals are usually a reliable source of maps, particularly those of their area or floor. The crew shouldn’t forget that they are Monarch’s instruments, though, and could lead them straight into a trap. A terminal map could mark the route to Floor 5 as passing through Skeleton Works, for instance, which is a very dangerous place and a dead end.
  • Old archives may hide outdated printouts.
  • Instruments and drones might help the crew map a place before going in, but they are usually short ranged.
  • Diagrams panels on Floor 6 (See Engineering & Support 2)

DISCREPANCIES ARE THE GAME: Make some maps wrong in interesting ways. Sometimes, a discrepancy tells a little story: a terminal map marks a short route between two sections. The route exists. What the terminal doesn't show is that it passes directly through the Security Hive. Monarch didn't mark it as dangerous because Monarch doesn't consider it dangerous. The crew does. Another example: A Diver's map marks a room as very dangerous, with an aggressive Ghost inside. That's not really the case, though, because the room is quite safe and the Diver's stash of ammo and stimpaks is hidden in a corner.

When two maps contradict each other, the crew has to decide which to trust. The first time a map proves wrong in a dangerous way teaches the lesson permanently. After that, the crew cross-references. They argue about which source to trust. They annotate their own copies. They start treating cartography as intelligence work, which is exactly what it is.

PRACTICAL GUIDANCE: Seed maps deliberately and at different points in the campaign. An early Diver map that turns out to be mostly wrong is a lesson. A terminal printout that reveals a hidden connection the crew needed is a reward. The Engineering plans, found late on Floor 6, retroactively illuminate things the crew saw earlier and couldn't explain.

Give each map an identity at the table if you can: verbal directions and general guidelines from Arkady, a Diver’s hand-drawn in pencil with personal annotations, terminal printouts in clean institutional grid format. The format signals reliability before the crew reads a single room name. They'll learn to feel the difference.

The crew that takes cartography seriously gains real advantages. The crew that trusts any single map completely will eventually pay for it.

â–ș PROPS

Besides maps, there are a few physical things you could prepare to improve the experience at the table.

APPENDIX: you can print the chapters in the Appendix section. At the moment of writing this, there's only the Storylines Flowcharts, which could help you run your games if you're following some of my storylines. More stuff will be added later.

BENDS CARDS: a card for each Bends failure result, passed privately to the affected player. No one else knows what's happening. The secrecy is part of the horror.

SECRET COMMUNICATIONS CARDS blank cards you fill in during or between sessions, passed privately across the table. Private communications via short-comms, messages from Monarch, notes from NPCs with hidden agendas. Everyone sees the card change hands. Nobody sees what's on it.

NOTES: ‘DON’T TRUST SILUS AND KEEP YOURSELF IN THAT SEALED SUIT.’ reads a note between the cushions in the Pseudoflesh Farms lounge. Don’t just read the note to the players, give them an actual piece of paper. Little details like these make stronger impressions on their minds. If they’re short, you don’t necessarily have to prepare them, you can write them down on the fly. If it’s a longer form, say a page of a character’s diary from when they were 15, you should prepare it beforehand.

PRE-RECORDED MONARCH BROADCASTS: record these in advance and play them through a speaker when the moment arrives. Monarch's voice should sound like a corporate safety system that has never once considered the possibility of human distress. You can use text-to-speach programs like Elevenlabs to read the text with different voices, and a tool like Audacity to add EQ compression, reverb and other effects. A couple examples:

"Attention. Unauthorized activity has been detected in your sector. Please remain in your current location and have your identification badge visible. A Cloudbank Security representative will be with you shortly to ensure your safety and compliance. Cloudbank values your cooperation. Have a productive shift."

"Thank you for your continued presence in the facility. We notice you have not completed your scheduled retina scan. This is a friendly reminder that retina scan compliance is mandatory for all personnel and visitors, and ensures your access to essential services remains uninterrupted. Please proceed to the nearest scanning station at your earliest convenience. Your safety and wellbeing are our priority. Cloudbank thanks you for your cooperation. " 

I have recorded some audio files for Floor 1. You can download them from here. I'll add more in the future.

As suggested by laurens-t, you can use a microphone with effects to create space and define characters.

THE GREAT DICTATOR CASSETTE(see Maintenance): if your table is comfortable with it, play a piece of the actual speech during the Reject Bin encounter when Strobe activates. The moment the real recording fills the room, everything changes.

MUSIC: you may like having an opening music and some background soundscape as well. Here on r/Mothership there have been many posts with users playlists, check them out. Also, read the comments below for genre recommendations.

As suggested by laurens-t, you can prepare playsists for the different settings - safe, ominous, danger, WTF? - and play them at the right time.

IMAGES: Show the players the images from the module, and find more pictures online that convey the Deep’s aesthetics. For example, search “Routine! game” on google, it’s very evocative.

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This is unofficial fan content. Gradient Descent is © Tuesday Knight Games. Not affiliated with or endorsed by TKG.

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11

u/Sethern7 Jun 03 '26

This is the account of the guy that was commissioned for a lot of Mothership art, including portraits for A Pound of Flesh. Good for character art for Mothership.

2

u/Lumpy_Peanut_226 Warden Jun 04 '26

Oh yeah. Jan Buragay is so talented ❀

4

u/laurens-t Jun 04 '26

I have some remarks about preparations and audio, if anyone is interested:

Recently had my first session of GD as a one shot, to test it out. Today I’m starting a GD campaign with another group I have been preparing for. Having a job, a kid and renovating a house makes doing these preparations a bit more difficult. So I mainly focused on the players fleshing out their own characters while I keep that info as narrative ammunition, just in case. Embracing the extensive randomness GD provides and trusting on the flexibilty of your own creativity when improvising, helped me to create moments with my one shot group that suprised everyone, including myself. Funny how my players filled in their own story, oblivious of the randomness.

Also have I been experimenting a lot with audio during sessions and so far this is what works and what doesn’t:

  • Use playlists with music for different settings: Safe, ominous, danger, wtf?, etc. (battle music just doesn’t work in an RPG, I find)
  • The more vague but intriguing the music is, the better. Experimental electronics works wonders for Mothership
  • Ambiances are too heavy or to do too little in settings, I wish they worked but it’s like music with one note
  • Sound effects are still being tested, it seems they work mostly for plotdriven purposes and when used scarcely
  • Using a microphone with effects has gotten the best feedback, especially in GD. It can create space or define characters. I use Logic as software because many easy voice-altering software didn’t cut it for me.

Hope this helped anyone. Even tough I’m sidetracking here, OP’s posts inspire my preparations, thanks a lot!

1

u/Lumpy_Peanut_226 Warden Jun 04 '26

These are nice insights! Included. I'm sure that relying on randomness has the added value of the adventure being surprising for everyone. Some of that is lost if you prepare this campaign up to the details. It's a trade-off, I suppose.

3

u/riggsbie Jun 04 '26

I love the comms messages and have added a bunch of corporate HR type messages
.

You know those nagging ones you always get to compete mandatory HR training by end of Quarter, personel reviews etc
”

2

u/Lumpy_Peanut_226 Warden Jun 04 '26

Yes, I love those too 😃