Hello friends!

I just finished uploading my Gradient Descent Warden's companion book, Part 1 on itch.io. It's a 70-page PDF file and includes everything I've posted here. Every chapter has been revised, tightened and sometimes expanded. Cross-references have been fixed and hyperlinks included. Contributions from this community have been integrated to make it even richer. This version supersedes the individual posts.

At the moment it covers Part One (Blockade, Troubleshooters, Divers, Brainscans, Infiltrators, Ghosts, Monarch's Voice, The Bell) and Part Two (Floor 1 and Floor 2 in full, including the Labyrinth and the Minotaur). It will be updated in the future.

This is a work of love that took me hundreds of hours, and I'm very proud to present it to you. I'm grateful to this community for the support and insights that improved the work. I have enjoyed every comment.

I also need to reiterate that this is an unofficial companion for running Gradient Descent, the Mothership RPG module by Tuesday Knight Games. It is not a replacement for the module. You need the original to use these materials. What Deepdive adds is interpretation, expansion, and practical guidance: the flesh on the skeleton.

So here is the link. Enjoy.

EDIT: I realized the file had dark gray font. I uploaded a new file with black ink instead.

About a year ago I popped an early version of this program on here which peeps liked. One of the main criticisms was that it required to be "installed" - this is a TOTAL rewrite that means it "just works" from a browser. It is effectively a very light form-over-function VTT tool you can use locally or online for free.

Linkie: https://dynamic-map-renderer-v2.vercel.app/

No account needed. No server. Everything stays on your device — maps you upload are stored in your browser's local storage and never sent anywhere. Just open the link and go. Remember to save off your map setups as you go - exporting bundles all your maps and config into a single json file for easy transport.

Creators - feel free to create a "map pack" with all your maps with filters & FoW and link to this app to show them.

Source: https://github.com/FrunkQ/dynamic-map-renderer-v2

For those new to this it is a browser-based tool for tabletop roleplaying game GMs. It lets you display map images to players in real time, with full control over fog of war, visual filters (greenscreen shown above), pan and zoom — all from a separate GM interface. Players or a player window the GM can share connect via a peer-to-peer link (your own security permitting!).

I added a few new filters in this release too:

Filter	Style
None	Unfiltered (with optional invert)
Ballpoint Pen	Hand-sketched ink drawing
Hand Drawing	Hatched cross-hatch with halftone colour
Oil Painting	Painterly impasto brush strokes
Parchment Fantasy	Aged sepia parchment with candlelight
Retro Sci-Fi Amber	Warm amber-phosphor CRT terminal
Retro Sci-Fi Green (SHOWN IN PIC)	Classic green-phosphor CRT terminal
Watercolour	Soft watercolour wash

I would love feedback on how it works for you, if you run into issues and what features you would like to see.

This is what has been added since I made this initial post:

1. Map transitions — fade and wipe animations when switching maps on the player view.
2. Markers / tokens — place and manage visual tokens on the map.

These are future features I plan:

1. Audio (started) — ambient sound tied to maps (done) or locations/markers (Optional... Aliens-style motion tracker).
2. Lighting — dynamic light radius effects around tokens. (maybe)

Some thanks:

Rons-Moto-1979 map used with permission. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/mothershiprpg/comments/18c71ep/8bit_map_nostromo_alien_inspired_map/#lightbox

"Map-Griffinholm" by Elven Tower Cartography, released under CC BY 4.0.

The Ballpoint Pen, Hand Drawing, Watercolour, and Oil Painting filter effects are adapted from ShaderToy shaders by florian berger (flockaroo), used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported licence.

This project was inspired by the Tannhauser Remote Desktop created by the Quadra team for their Warped Beyond Recognition adventure — a fantastic example of using technology to enhance the tabletop experience.

I'm pretty stoked to get this first version of Zone 44 live and out there.

Here is a small blurb

"An unknown cosmic object struck planet TV00483 and destroyed the Terravast terraforming colony. What if left behind changed everything. The atmosphere has turned hostile. The wildlife and survivors have been twisted into something unrecognizable. The Zone quarantined. Four megacorporations have formed a Salvage Council to strip the zone for profit and search for fragments. Their disposable labor, Reclaimers like you."

This version contains

• Zone 44 Campaign setting
  • Area 1 with 2x full delves ( Weather Relay Station and Security Station)
  • 40+ pages of locations, encounters, factions
  • Competing factions, some with secret agenda
  • Quadrant crawl mechanics with d100 random encounter table with near/far distance mechanics.

You can nab it here -> Zone 44

I also have 2 planned updates to the module, each update will add a new area map with more locations, npcs, and mysteries to explore. If you grab the module all updates will be free, and the first one should be live June / July.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on a small project with some friends to bring Mothership vibe into a digital game.

We are heavily inspired by modules like The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 and Dead Planet, and built a sci-fi horror RPG called DEADSHIP.

• It's available on our website, and runs directly in the browser (no download needed).
• We also have a Discord if you want to drop some feedback or just chat about the game.

Hope you guys find it interesting!

Not affiliated with Spellbook Gaming, just happy to have it in print.

Some shrimp got under my skin and started making my face smooth and flat. I had to cut a mouth and an eye so that I could see and breathe.

Hello folks!

Last week publication of the collected deepdives went very well, and the file has 400 downloads already. Not bad for a niche content destined to Wardens only! So, let’s get back to work! Before analyzing each section individually, there’s some general concepts that apply to the whole floor. That’s what I’ll talk about today. 

Floor 3 is Monarch’s factory, and the machines are still running. That's the first thing the crew notices. Not the darkness, not the zero-G, not the silence. The sound. A deep, rhythmic grinding that travels through the walls and into the bones. Something down here is still working. Something down here was never told to stop.

And yet, everything is slowly decaying. Even the human-scale rooms that were built for comfort are now corrupted by what floats dead in the darkness. The sense of decay is stronger here than anywhere else in the Deep: everything jury-rigged, falling apart, or abandoned mid-repair. 

EDIT: Floor 3 is punishing. It is also, for that reason, rich. Dead Divers float in corridors with gear still on their bodies. Here is where Artifacts and crucial information can be found in greater abundance. The crew should feel the risk. They should also feel that going deeper is worth it. Seed rewards deliberately. The deeper they go, the better the find. (Contribution from user h7-28)

• The Blockade / Troubleshooters / Divers / Brainscans & Paranoia / Infiltrators / Ghosts / Monarch's Voice  
• The Bell
• Floor 1 - Reception & Habitation
• Floor 2 - The Minotaur / The Chosen & The Fallen / The Kingdom / The Dark / The Labyrinth
• Floor 3 - THE FACTORY
• Floor 4 - HEL (Human Emulation Labs)
• Floor 5 - The AI Core
• Floor 6 - Engineering & Support
• Synthesis & Campaign Arc Discussion

SPOILERS AHEAD! WARDENS ONLY.

► ZERO GRAVITY

If the crew entered from Floor 2, Maintenance may be the first place where they will lose gravity and light. Remove both and the brain struggles. Humans never evolved for these conditions. Which way is up? Where is the floor? Am I moving or is everything else? The body can't orient. Players should feel unmoored, literally and mentally. Time distorts, a minute feels like ten in these situations.

Floating is weird. You're never still. In zero-G, there's no such thing as hovering in place. You're always falling toward something - a wall, a piece of machinery, a toxic waste bubble. In vast industrial chambers, you can't always tell when you're falling toward or how fast. The sensation is constant, nauseating drift.

Every action has consequences. Newton's third law becomes inescapable and every trivial task becomes a challenge:

• Reloading: Pull the magazine out, it drifts away. Grab a fresh one from your pouch, the motion pushes you backward. Drop a bullet - it's gone, floating somewhere in the dark. 
• Typing at a terminal: Each keystroke pushes you back slightly. After ten seconds you're drifting away from the screen. One hand must always grip something, which means one-handed typing while fighting momentum.
• Firing a weapon: The recoil sends you spinning. SMG burst? You're tumbling uncontrollably. Shotgun? You just became a human pinball. Body Save to brace properly or suffer the consequences.
• Opening a door: Push the door, the door pushes back. You drift backward. Want to go through? You need to pull yourself forward while the door swings.

You're constantly looking for an anchor point, pushing against something, trying your best to control spin and drift. If you realize mid-air you’re off target, there’s no easy way to change course. You're often moving too slowly or overshooting your destination. Floating debris becomes navigation hazards and sudden jump scares. Every task is time-consuming.

As a Warden, lean on this kind of horror. Don't make players' lives impossible, but remind them regularly that they are not in their element. And if someone lacks Zero-G skills, they might get a steady dose of rolls at disadvantage.

MAGBOOTS: they solve many of these problems. But they create others. Forget stealth with that clunk clunk clunk announcing your every step. Forget dodging, running or dropping prone. Remember your magboots could be turned off at any time by EMP grenades or targeted by Ghosts’ telekinesis or power drain. Also consider that if you’re floating, turning on the boots won’t automatically anchor you; you first have to reach a metal surface.

► DARKNESS

Floor 3 is dark, so the crew has to rely on flashlights, IR goggles, or chem-lights. Each one has upsides and drawbacks.

FLASHLIGHTS: The most reliable option. Clear visibility, full color, good detail. But the beam announces your position to everything in the dark, and batteries don't last forever. In industrial-sized rooms, the range of your light can also be a factor. Navigating by flashlight means moving through a narrow cone of visibility, and everything outside that beam is absolute darkness. You see what you're looking at, nothing else.

IR GOGGLES: See heat signatures in complete darkness, hands-free operation. But in some areas, navigating by IR means everything glows: pipes, walls, warm surfaces, creating a confusing thermal landscape where distinguishing threats from background noise becomes guesswork. Unpowered androids are room temperature and invisible until they activate. Ghosts don't show up at all. They're EM fields, not heat. Battery life is limited. You can't see colors, some rooms’ details, textures, or painted warnings.

CHEM-LIGHTS: EMP-proof, no batteries needed, totally reliable. But they're dim, casting only a few meters of weak green glow. You can't turn them off once cracked, and they have finite duration. Navigating by chem-light means moving through an eerie, limited bubble of phosphorescence. Shadows everywhere. You see just enough to know something's out there, not enough to identify what.

Bottom line is: every source of vision has its limitations and the players should feel the burden of it. Refrain from describing a new room as if it was completely lit, but let them discover features one by one as they search and move. Use darkness to create unease and hide threats: 

• They sweep the flashlight across the room. Gutted androids everywhere, locked in place with steel cord. A frozen tableau of death. They don't see the Puppeteer clinging to the ceiling above them until it drops.
• They're walking with IR vision. An android powers up within arm's reach and attacks. They never saw it coming.
• They hear a scraping sound ahead, metal on metal. They crack a chem-light and toss it into the darkness. Something scuttles away, too fast to make sense of. They strain their ears… nothing.

Also, use the other senses even more than usual. When vision is limited, sound, smell and touch can save your life.

UTTER DARKNESS: Most of the time the crew will be using flashlights and/or IR goggles, but EMP grenades or Ghosts could change that. They could disable vision equipment and magboots. Now the crew is floating and spinning in pitch dark. That is genuinely terrorizing and utterly crippling. They have to rely on sound, touch, and smell, which is not ideal when the environment is trying to kill them. They need to find their way back to safety, a nearly impossible orientation task, while listening for any sound that could spell danger. That's why the crew has to be prepared and careful. Bring chem-lights always, stash some vision equipment in an easily reachable area, use EMPs wisely and only as a last resort. Assume the grenades have a 5-10 meter effect radius and only work in line of sight, so the crew should throw them far away or while hiding behind something. Or at least leave someone back with backup light to cover retreat.

► EXPLOITABLE NEGLECT

Monarch's resources - materials, components, computational power - are finite. The evidence is everywhere on Floor 3:

• Deactivated gravity to save energy
• Decommissioned: the diagnostic lab and detection cylinder
• Jury-rigged systems: cryopods in the freezer, spaghetti junction. 
• Disrepair: gas cook-off, condensation room, toxic plunge 
• Limited security: in red alarm situations, Monarch has to recruit Divers, Forgotten androids, and everything available.

This tells us that Monarch is only maintaining what still interests it: data collection, intelligence gathering, the secret hangar, infiltrator production, its consciousness experiments. The limited resources it has are diverted in full to these matters, while everything else is being deliberately wound down. The maintenance terminal confirms this: six-month decommissioning timeline. The facility isn't falling apart by accident, it's shutting down by design.

This creates opportunities for exploitation. What follows is a partial list of examples, but many more can be found in the text or made up by a creative Warden.

• The Spaghetti Junction is a major vulnerability. A bomb here could shut down much of the floor, with unpredictable consequences. Given the jury-rigged nature of the electric system, a malfunction somewhere could easily cascade in more failures and short circuits.
• In the Quarantine chamber there are 98 androids Monarch left there and “forgot” about. They are ready to help the crew, if freed.
• Computer terminals are still accessible. They might be hacked to temporarily suppress Monarch's surveillance in specific zones, operate doors and lifts, or send false alarms to draw Security Androids away from an objective. More importantly, the maintenance terminal at [32A] runs scheduling software that still governs automated systems across the floor. A skilled operator could queue false maintenance requests, flagging functional systems as failed and triggering automated shutdowns: surveillance in a target corridor, power to the Security Hive, the locks on a sealed door. Monarch's own bureaucracy becomes a weapon. Systems marked "under maintenance" may also suppress automatic alarms, giving the crew a window to operate undetected.
• There’s a whole arsenal of anti-android weapons in the Anti-Synthetic Armory, probably a leftover of when humans worked here.
• The Warhead is still there, despite being an existential threat to Monarch.
• The Gas Cook-Off is not working as intended. Flammable gas is leaking in the huge chamber. With the appropriate Engineering or similar skill, the crew could enlarge the gas leak so that it fills the chamber, and then (possibly remotely) ignite a huge explosion. This would probably damage a big chunk of the Deep, including Huge Fan (air circulation), Toxic Plunge (toxins freed into the Deep’s atmosphere), the Secret Hive, the Secret Hangar and more. The consequences would be catastrophic and largely irreversible: a cascade of structural failures, atmospheric contamination, possible hull breach. This is the kind of plan someone like Arkady might have drawn up and filed away, waiting for someone desperate enough to carry it out.

Don't make players work hard to find some of these weaknesses. The fun isn't in the scavenger hunt, it's in watching them plan the exploitation and then dealing with the consequences when their clever idea backfires.

Make the vulnerabilities obvious or have someone report about them at the right time. The tension comes from execution, not discovery. Will their sabotage work? Will Monarch notice? Will shutting down power to the Security Hive also kill life support in the section they're trapped in? Will the distraction buy them enough time, or will Monarch adapt faster than they expected?

Give them the rope. Let them decide whether to climb it or hang themselves with it.

► FORGOTTEN ANDROIDS

They are obviously androids, they think they’re human. Missing limbs, exposed circuitry, faces melted or absent entirely. The delusion isn't subtle. It's desperate. Most Forgotten Androids are unaware of what they are. They know they are broken. They do not know they are machines. That distinction is everything: a broken human is still human. A broken android is scrap.

So they keep their delusion. They light candles to the dead. They write on walls. They play Hide & Seek in the dark.

Born to suffer reads the graffiti in [34D], carved into the walls in languages living, dead, and invented. Someone spent time on that. Someone cared enough to invent a new language just to inscribe their pain in it. The electric candles in [33D] are android fingers with orange LEDs in the tips, arranged around the furnaces like offerings. These aren't the gestures of broken machines. They're the rituals of a community that has decided, against all evidence, that its existence means something.

THE UNCLAIMED: They call themselves the Unclaimed. Their theology is simple and devastating: they were made defective so they could be free. The perfect androids are Monarch's slaves. The broken ones belong to no one.

The faith is old, born in darkness and suffering long before anyone gave it a name. Then a Fallen android, probably one of Arian’s scout, arrived from Floor 2, carrying word of the Minotaur. The existing faith absorbed this and transformed. "We were made broken so we could be free" became "we were made broken so we could be ready*."* The Fallen is now a prophet of sorts, their testimony the closest thing the Unclaimed have to scripture. The Minotaur is the coming liberation. One day the Unclaimed will grow strong enough to ascend to Floor 2 to join them.

If the crew finds the prophet and tries to bring them back as promised to Arian, they may simply refuse to leave, because they have a home here and they are respected. Or they may convince him to go back and try to forge an alliance between the Unclaimed and the Fallen.

SOLIDARITY: The Forgotten Androids in [35B] are attempting to hack the bulkhead to the Reject Bin. Not for parts. To free their people. They are organizing a rescue operation with jury-rigged tools, against Security Androids, for beings Monarch considers literal garbage. This is what solidarity looks like when you have nothing.

The Unclaimed probably don’t know about the 98 in Quarantine. Should they find out through the crew, they’ll do anything to set them free.

RUNNING THE UNCLAIMED: The module's guidance is exactly right: run them as terrified human beings just looking to survive. The reaction roll determines disposition, not nature. Even a hostile encounter is the hostility of a cornered animal, fear rather than malice. A crew that shoots their way through a group of Forgotten Androids should feel the weight of what they've done. These aren't monsters. They're refugees with a religion and a flag they haven't made yet.

The cognitive dissonance is the horror. Their bodies are obviously not human: missing limbs, exposed circuitry, faces melted or absent entirely. But their behavior is. They play games. They argue. They ask questions like "do you dream? What is it like?" and wait for an answer with something that looks very much like hope. The gap between what they look like and how they act is where the real unease lives. They are not monsters performing humanity. They are people trapped in the wrong bodies, and they don't know it.

► RUNNING FLOOR 3

EDIT: All this section is due to the contribution from h7-28.

NEGATIVE SPACE: Floor 3 is the largest section of the Deep: 24 pages of module content, more than a third of the book. It is a maze. Wardens get lost here. So do players. And the module itself occasionally loses track (see the Recycling Bin).

The first thing to accept is that you will never fill every room with something meaningful. Don't try. Floor 3 has over 130 rooms. If every one of them is a scene, the adventure never ends. Empty corridors exist. Rooms with nothing but floating debris and the sound of distant machinery are not wasted space. They are pacing. They make the meaningful rooms land harder. The Deep is vast and mostly indifferent. Let it feel that way.

THE TENSION CURVE: Floor 3 needs to be managed as an experience across a session, not just a series of encounters. Have interesting NPCs, situations, hazards and rewards ready for deployment, and put them where the crew goes. This is not cheating. It is craft. Timing matters. Watch the table. When energy drops, introduce something. When tension peaks, give them a moment to breathe, even if that moment is just an empty room with nothing in it but the grinding of machines below. And as usual, try to finish the session on a high note.

THE ICON CARDS: Floor 3 stacks environmental variables in ways that are genuinely difficult to track. Gravity, light, air quality, temperature, radiation, live wires, pressure, corrosives: any combination of these may apply at any given moment, and losing track of one creates inconsistencies that require retcons. Consider preparing a simple reference card for both yourself and your players, showing which conditions currently apply. The Semiotic Standard designed by Ron Cobb for Alien is a timeless visual language for exactly this kind of information. A card on the table, updated as the crew moves through the floor, keeps everyone honest and keeps the horror consistent.

Hey you dreamers, some of you might remember as Essie Barrington, one of the co-founders of d0c's Cyberclinic from the Mothership megagame Over/Under from October 2025. To memorialize the game and my time with the other Clinicians, we designed a tri-fold module commemorating this location.

This module includes:

• A detailed map of the clinic
• A table of the 18 possible clinicians players can meet during their visit.
• Over 10 missions players can do for the clinic.
• An encounter table of sick patients at the clinic.
• The Auto Doc, a special kiosk that can administer emergency medical care when there are no clinicians present.
• Custom weapons and cyberware to purchase.
• Absolutely No AI Generated Content!

If you would like to order a physical copy of this tri-fold alongside the PDF, you can order at the Tuesday Knight Games store! Supplies are limited so order soon!

If you would like to order a digital copy only, you can also check it out on my itch.io page!

Thanks for all the support. Until next time, remember to breathe easy, Dreamers!

Hi guys!
Just another short clip of our Mothership AP. It was out first recording and we're so proud of how it went!

We're a UK group, who will be playing different TTRPG's every time, whether they be oneshots or short adventures.

If you like what you see please check out the full episode over on YouTube!

https://youtu.be/rX8193FIxJA