Constant Downpour Remastered

I picked up Constant Downpour Remastered when I spotted it for sale over on Ratti Incantatti¹. Constant Downpour is a survival hex-crawl for Mothership. The players crash land on Venus 3 during a routine mission. Unbeknownst to them someone had planned this crash as a hit. The players need to make it off the planet, before they go crazy or get beaten to death by the Venusians. The adventure was written by Marco Serano, and is inspired by the Ray Bradbury short story The Long Rain. David Simons is the main artist for the adventure.

There is a lot to love about this adventure. Exploring the wilderness is taxing. Marco links hex exploration to the Mothership rules for stress, to help capture the unrelenting nature of the rain, lack of sunlight, etc. There is a posse of mercenaries who crashed before the players, who will pursue them if they drag their feet. Giant Venusians who will try and kill them for being interlopers on their planet. There is the company the players are working for, who have secretly facilitated the crash, and a cabal within the company trying to bring it down from the inside. There are 17 keyed hexes, and some small dungeons. There is a lot happening on the world to draw the players in. The vibes are great.

There are clear procedures for play, something that if often lacking when it comes to running hex crawls. Characters gain stress for every two hexes they move through, forcing engagement with the panic system of Mothership. I like how simple and unrelenting the rules are. I had similar thoughts after I finished running Gradient Descent. There are additional procedures for crossing rivers, adding more depth to the activity.

There are four main factions. Potamo Major are the group that hired the party, and organized the crash. Poto Minor is a rebel group operating with Potamo Major trying to take them down. Crew 612 are another group sent to die on Venus 3—they are effectively a rival adventuring party. Finally there are the Venusians, the group indigenous to the planet. Each faction is detailed briefly, with key locations listed and the groups recent successes. There are descriptions of important NPCs following these descriptions. The Venusians or Crew 612 can be used to force the players into action when they get complacent or overly cautious.

There are 91 hexes in this adventure that have no descriptions. The GM will generate the descriptions for these hexes by rolling on random tables. For a jungle hex you roll a d10 to determine the type of jungle setting the players have encountered (dense foliage, natural walkways, complete darkness), and then another d10 for a random description of that location. There are 24 entries between those three tables. There are two d10 tables for descriptions of clearings, with 20 entries between them. Both types of wilderness have sounds and smells tables to add to their descriptions. Four rolls on various tables gives me: “A lattice of thick vines loop in the air. The vines look fleshier and bumpier than vines previously seen. The slap of large leaves echo in the thick sulfurous air. The vines ahead cross in near perfect plus signs.” I love these vibes, but this is more rolling than I want to do to generate what is effectively an empty hex.²

These tables could simply be used as inspiration, forgetting about all the rolling. Random tables are often used to communicate the nature of the world, even if you might only use one entry from the table in a game. Such tables encourages an open-ended view of the game world: there is nothing canonical. A prevalence of random tables is often a defining characteristic of OSR games and adventures. I worry people feel the need to include them where they don’t make much sense, or should be designed in a different way.³

One of the themes of the module is this idea of repetition, getting lost in the sameness of the world. In that way you could argue this approach to describing the wilderness reinforces that aspect of the adventure. If you roll up these descriptions you’ll see traces of what has come before. In Marco’s own words, “Weaponizing deja vu and melding grays work to reinforce the feeling of becoming lost to the environment.”

Travelling through these hexes in this game serves a purpose: they are a tax. Players gain stress as they move from hex to hex, and will always face an encounter. Marco has done a great job of using the mechanics of Mothership to feed into how the adventure works. There is always some amount of tension coming from each move through the wilderness the players make.

Marco’s suggestion for how to use these randomly generated hexes in play is also poor advice in my opinion:

When describing what is in front of players, it is beneficial to give two distinct descriptions. Example:

Warden: You finally see light as you break out of the complete darkness. Ahead is a clearing. The grass stands upright unaffected by the wind. It creates a mathematical curve .To the left the jungle continues and you see thousands of white orbs dangle from the branch extremities. Suddenly, the fruits fall, exploding on impact, hurling pebble sized seeds across the jungle floor. Which direction do you want to go?

It doesn’t actually matter which way you go! These are two random descriptions, and it’s likely you’ll move into a new hex with two random descriptions. Marco does a great job of placing clues, in-game maps, and geographic features throughout this module that will help the players put some thought into where they will explore in the game. This will make wandering the wilderness more meaningful. The advice given above undercuts the work he’s done.

If running this module I would generate all the hex descriptions and their encounters up front. I think seeing the encounters fixed in place might help create more connections between hexes. Where the players choose to go will be informed by what they’ve learned of the world so far. There is no need to roll two descriptions per hex. Marco has also included a lot of digital material that will help ease running a game. Every illustration is included by itself, making it easy to share with players as they encounter a Venusian Tank or a giant man-eating plant. There are six player facing ‘fog of war’ maps, and they can also be given to the players as the discover them through play. (By reaching certain locations or finding actual maps in the game.) There are even some recording you can play for your players, to make your game a little bit more immersive.

On the whole Constant Downpour Remastered is a solid adventure, and my gripes are minor compared to everything the adventure brings to the table. Constant Downpour takes some big swings. I didn’t even comment on the weird page numbering scheme or how cool the keyed hexes are! As I said at the start, there is a lot to love.