Inspiration: First Contact

Currently my favorite design is Mothership. A ttrpg game from Tuesday Knight Games written and illustrated by Sean McCoy. It is my favorite design because it is made of many small parts fitting together into a much greater whole. Layout design, game design, experience design, and graphic design all coming together.

Once you flip into the game the first thing of note is the layout of the book. It starts out with character creation, allowing the reader (who is ostensibly a player as this is the "player's survival guide") to figure out who they will be playing. Showing off the great character sheet and skills tree. I'll get back to that part later. Then it continues with various mechanisms and basic rules. Most relatively simple, but all laid out in an easy to reference way. Then two tables of 100 unique trinkets and patches for you to roll. A bunch of random tables for the Warden (The person running the game) to pull inspiration and theme from.

The character sheet may look complicated when you try to take it all in, but is actually quite simple. All of the steps needed to get someone from almost 0 knowledge of the game, to having a character to play with. The steps all have numbers and arrows leading between them, allowing you to easily follow them. Each step instructs you do do something like "Roll 6d10 for each of you STATS" (Which it has a connecting line to show you where they are) or "Pick a CLASS".
And after you're done that, finding anything is relatively simple. Do you need to know if you have a skill? Just look at the tree on the right and check which ones you've filled in the box of.
The skill tree is quite simply an advancement system. You gain Expert or Master skills after getting the skills that lead to them. You can't very well be a "Tactician" without some "Military Training" or be an expert in "Genetics" without knowledge of "Biology". It also gives us some implied setting. "Rimwise" means you know about the outer rim, but it leads to "Firearms" and "Close Combat", which implies that those outer rim colonies are likely rife with crime. Or at least that you need to know how to defend yourself to live out there.

The cheat sheet is just plain useful. It tells you vocabulary, common mechanics, and has a flowchart to follow when doing the more structured combat part of the game. This is almost everything a player of this game needs to know.

But don't just believe me, it's the winner of the Gold ENnie for best game 2019, and Silver ENnie for best adventure 2019. Or go take a look yourself, it's free!

All of these ease of use, ease of teaching, and inspirational pieces come together in a great design that you don't need to commit hours to before playing with. Also, the design allows hacking and modifying quite easily, like these psionics hacks that I made for it.

References:
1. 2019 ENnie Winners! (2019, August 3). ENnie Awards. http://www.ennie-awards.com/blog/2019-ennie-winners/
2. Downloads. (2018, June 21). Tuesday Knight Games. Retrieved 6 April 2020, from http://www.tuesdayknightgames.com/downloads
3. Mothership: Player’s Survival Guide - Tuesday Knight Games | DriveThruRPG.com. (2018, June 21). Retrieved 6 April 2020, from https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/245017/Mothership-Players-Survival-Guide
4. Mothership RPG. (2018, June 21). Tuesday Knight Games. Retrieved 6 April 2020, from http://www.tuesdayknightgames.com/mothership
5. State, F. (2019, December 18). Runic Technology: The Many Minded Beast. Runic Technology. https://runictechnology.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-many-minded-beast.html