Scrap Rats

I’ve played a lot of roleplaying games, A LOT of them. Some people play exclusively Dungeons & Dragons. Some people exclusively play Old School D&D and it’s off-brand clones. Some people discover a new game and stick with that game alone. If I wasn’t a reviewer, maybe I’d have fallen into one of those categories. But I am a reviewer, and I’m also a bit of a magpie constantly seeking out shiny new things. I’ve played super-crunchy games and rules light games. I’ve played RPGs that need a small library and RPGs that fit on a single page. I’ve played a LOT of roleplaying games. 

Something that I’ve learned is that no matter how light or heavy a game is, you don’t always have the luxury of learning every rule and every detail. So I’ve been mulling over the idea of writing a review on a game that I explicitly don’t know. Just to see how playable it would be for a completely new player. What system? It shouldn’t be a D20 ruleset or other derivative of D&D. A one-page RPG would be cheating. It needs to have enough products that I wouldn’t just be picking up the core rulebook, but also not a small library worth of big hardcover books. There are two indie rule systems that I have been avoiding, not because I didn’t think I’d enjoy them, but rather out of fear I’ll enjoy them too much. 

Mörk Borg and Mothership have both been exploding over the past few years, with a near-steady stream of content being released into the world thanks to their open licenses.

I broke the dam on Mörk Borg when I fell in love with Pirate Borg. Then I found Scrap Rats…. and of course, it was for Mothership. So now here we are talking about just how easy would it be to sit down to a standalone setting/adventure for Mothership.

I suppose it’s obvious why a game called Scrap Rats would be an attractive choice to look at for TheRatHole.ca. Add to that obvious, that I generally lean towards SciFi themes over fantasy. Since we are looking at the superficial things that’s as good of a place to start as any. Yes, I literally judged the book by its cover. It’s a very simple cover, but when you pick it up the quality becomes apparent. The cover is a heavyweight cardstock with a protective film on the outside. The interior pages are similarly above average in quality, and the black & white artwork is cohesive despite having multiple artists. 

Getting into the book, it starts out with a fast and furious overview of what players should expect and the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG which you need to play Scrap Rats. Aside from a few basic questions, I could already figure out the most important player mechanics just from those two pages. Next up is “Creating A Classless Rat.” Again, you do need the core rules for some of the details but, also again, I can understand the process and if you handed me a pre-generated character I’d understand most of what I’m looking at just from this page and the previous overview. The pages on generating your ship have more tables but are no less easy to understand. Just a few pages, and I could sit down at a table and probably play a scenario with 90% confidence. (With only maybe 10% of that is bluster.)

But what would the scenario be like? Well, thank you, World of Game Design, that’s in here too. There are six “scenario arcs” included, each is only a two-page spread but still gives a great sense of the world (galaxy? universe?) that Scrap Rats infests. The Artifacts (specifically ancient items), Denizens (monsters), and NPCs (including non-Denizen adversaries) are all listed after the scenarios. There is also a handful of flavourful space station locations for your own adventures and random tables including Human Boss Enemies, amongst other things. 

So… could I sit down and play this game basically blind? Yes! There’s not a lot here that I couldn’t guess at, and nothing I can see that I couldn’t learn in about 5 minutes with a few questions about mechanical details. 

Could I run this as a Warden (GM)? No, and it doesn’t pretend that you should be able to do so. I would need the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG core rules to properly run it. That said, the Mothership Player’s Survival Guide is available as a Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG, the full Starter Set Digital Bundle is available from the Mothership website, and physical copies are imminent, so that’s not really a problem.

Do I think I could translate Scrap Rats to another system or bring assets into Scrap Rats from another system? I feel like that would depend on what the other game is, but overall yes. In fact, I have a review on Starfinder’s Ports of Call sourcebook coming soon, and I’m almost certainly going to have that cross-polinization in my head while I work on it.

The only problem for me is that you aren’t actually playing as a rat. BUT WAIT! YOU CAN! The book closes with how you can create and play as a Fragmentum Rattus. These human/rat hybrids, colloquially known as Ratters, come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and appearances. Physically durable but emotionally fragile, they are a great spin on the typical ratman concept.

I loved what Scrap Rats brings to the table, and I’m very curious to look at more Mothership products. If you’re interested in Mothership it can be found online at https://www.mothershiprpg.com/home or on Facebook at facebook.com/mothershiprpg

Tuesday Knight Games is online at wogd.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/WorldOfGameDesign