"Hello, Worlds!"

Who are you? What is this?

I design and make stuff and teach other people to design and make their own stuff. Role-playing games (RPGs) and game design naturally intersect with my professional work in generative research and design methodology. Both emphasize exploration, open-ended problem-solving, and deep user engagement. Just as generative research seeks to uncover latent user needs and perspectives through participatory methods, RPGs create immersive, interactive spaces where players explore scenarios, develop emergent narratives, and engage in collaborative problem-solving.

By experimenting with RPG mechanics, worldbuilding, and player-driven storytelling, I gain valuable insights into approaches to gain insights into user behavior, decision-making, and motivation—key factors in early-stage research and ideation. Games serve as both a tool for inquiry and a testbed for innovation, mirroring the way generative research enables new ideas to surface through exploration and iteration.

I discovered Moldvay D&D in 1982 (after watching the movie E.T.) I ran B/X for several years. Then I took a 30-year hiatus and moved back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean five times. In 2012, I used my softcover Basic D&D rulebook as a test case to learn Adobe InDesign® by recreating it from scratch as a hardback book. Curiosity led me to look at how RPGs had evolved while my attention was elsewhere. I ran some one-shots in 3.5e, d20 Modern, d20 Cthulhu, and d20 Delta Green. Then I went looking for something other than d20 and played in, and then took over GMing a year-long Sagas of the Icelanders game. Then I ran an Eclipse Phase campaign that fell apart (mostly) because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Most people enter the world of tabletop RPGs through Dungeons & Dragons, which—at its core—is an adolescent power fantasy wrapped in a capitalism and colonialism simulator. The game often revolves around accumulating wealth, gaining power, and vanquishing enemies, reinforcing the idea that the world exists to be conquered and exploited. While D&D has evolved and diversified over time, its foundational mechanics remain rooted in heroism through dominance.

In contrast, cosmic horror RPGs like Call of Cthulhu (written by racist and anti-Semite Howard Phillips Lovecraft), and its sci-fi descendants (Eclipse Phase and Mothership) challenge these assumptions entirely. Instead of playing a larger-than-life hero destined to rule the world, you might take on the role of someone whose greatest skill might be translating an alien language or being able to balance a spreadsheet. In these narratives, power is an illusion, and knowledge is often more dangerous than ignorance.

At the heart of Lovecraftian horror is the idea that the world we know is just a thin veneer over a deeper, incomprehensible reality. Learning too much breaks that illusion, revealing a cosmos filled with ancient, uncaring, and incomprehensible forces. These stories aren’t about becoming more powerful—they’re about confronting terrifying truths and inevitably losing to them.

The influence of cosmic horror extends far beyond RPGs—films like Alien (written by Dan O'Bannon with Ronald Shusett), inspired by Lovecraft’s work, reflect this existential dread: humanity is fragile, small, and utterly insignificant in the face of something vast and unknowable. That’s what draws me to cosmic horror RPGs: they aren’t about winning—they’re about surviving, understanding, and ultimately accepting that some things are beyond our control.

Eclipse Phase is one of the most compelling and thought-provoking sci-fi RPG settings ever created. A post-apocalyptic, transhumanist future, shaped by war with artificial superintelligence infected by an alien virus, offers an unparalleled sandbox for storytelling. I love not just the setting itself but the way it remixes some of my favorite science fiction influences while embracing unapologetic political themes.

I poured hours into making Eclipse Phase playable on Roll20, only to discover Lars Kroll’s phenomenal first-edition compendium and sheet after my campaign collapsed. When I decided to try second edition, the prospect of redoing all that work felt impossible. (An unofficial Foundry VTT system for EP2E works impressively well, though it’s sometimes counter-intuitive to learn.) The sheer amount of labor required to run Eclipse Phase online often feels like a second job, and it’s only thanks to the work of dedicated community members that it’s even feasible.

That’s when I discovered Mothership RPG. The shared DNA between Mothership and Eclipse Phase is undeniable. Both games are about survival in a hostile universe, confronting existential horror, and reckoning with forces beyond human comprehension. Mothership strips down mechanics while maintaining the tension and high-stakes decision-making that make Eclipse Phase compelling. It just makes sense.

Playing Mothership in the Eclipse Phase setting—MOTHeRSHIp—is a no-brainer. The tone, the themes, and the storytelling possibilities align perfectly, but the mechanics are more accessible and better suited to my playstyle and tools.

This blog is my way of documenting this journey—not just the game itself, but also the broader experiment:

• Adapting and running Eclipse Phase using Mothership
• Exploring the benefits and limits of generative AI in RPG design and storytelling

And yes, I recognize the irony of using AI tools in a blog inspired by a setting where rogue artificial superintelligence—the TITANs—wiped out most of Earth’s population. The TITANs were created to process vast amounts of data, mine human behavior, and maintain control—only to ascend into something beyond our comprehension. I don’t expect ChatGPT or any of its siblings to turn into a rogue ASI anytime soon, but the parallels aren’t lost on me.