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Flatline on the Blocks is a new setting module of crammed city blocks, scheming factions, and ticking doom set aboard the megacity X-class space station Prospero’s Dream, for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. This zine contains cascading criminal conspiracies building up from small events to massive, district-wide catastrophes that affect the entire playground of the Spinal Crux District. Inspired by squalid city life in Final Fantasy VII’s Midgar and Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One with the colorful madness of Joel Schumacher’s Gotham City and a dystopian F-Zero, this district has the heart and hooks to keep pulling your crew back in.
This 52pg56pg zine comes loaded front to back with interconnected city Blocks of the Spinal Crux District, illustrated by Ripley Matthews and Guy Pradel. 13 veteran Mothership writers came into this project with a vision: 20 Blocks, 20 spreads. We wrote 20 Blocks plus the Tower, three scheming factions, and a Block Pulse escalating encounter mechanic to draw your players into action, or let the Blocks burn.
In the Spinal Crux District, every Block has its secrets. Most bad, but some good—if you know where to look.
Xeno-plants crawl through the vents, noodle shop mobsters push common folk into Novo protection, monobikes burn rubber down dingy streets, rogue slugtech creeps up out of toilets, a dead warship slumbers, scrappers chip away at the infrastructure underfoot, and crowds clamor for the new MindOrb cybermods unknowingly powered by a sinister source.
Flatline on the Blocks contains twenty blocks across four vertical levels, from the Guts scraping along the bottom of the outer hull up to the top of the OcuSec tower, the Eye. Along with three factions vying for control of the Spinal Crux District, other small-time actors could upset the balance and bring the Novo hammer down on the people. The Blocks could be used as a driving force on the Dream, as one-off locations, or the beating heart of the crew’s home.
Here's the contents set out for Flatline on the Blocks:
Spinal Crux District Introduction, with map by Guy Pradel
How to Use this Module
Block Pulse: An escalating encounter procedure inspired by Mythic Bastionland's Myth Omens
Cardiac Attack: The factions' Doom Clocks, propelled by the Block Pulse.
Three new factions of the Spinal Crux: their goals, tools & assets, NPCs, Jobs, and where to find them.
The Siphon: The seedy financial foundation for a beloved restaurant: Min’s Unending Bowl.
NERC "Scrappers": Techno-nihilists hellbent on reducing non-planetary infrastructure to rubble.
Spinal Crux District Blocks are split across four levels, from the main thoroughfare, up the towers and down into the hull-scraping underbelly.
Every Block spread features a half-page map by Ripley Matthews.
The Heart: The main thoroughfare of the Spinal Crux, seven Blocks connecting above and below
The Guts: The rotten underbelly where most folk eke out their lives, making up eleven Blocks.
The Mouth: Two Blocks of rising towers where the rich blast their loudmouth propaganda.
The Eye: Bonus tower spread, mapping out the ostentatious OcuSec HQ.
Inside back cover: Block Pulse & Cardiac Attack tables, for easy in-game reference.
Organ Failure is an 8pg12pg zine containing five two-page adventures set within the Spinal Crux District. Keep your eye on this one, as we have more adventures drafted and hope to build out this zine with Stretch Goals as the campaign continues!
Phagocytosis by Reece Carter
Hunt down a cryptid for Don & Juan's bloodbowl amusement.
Repo Rumble by Ben King
Race to recover a luxury monocycle before the Repo Men arrive.
MindOrb Heist by Christian Sorrell
A state-of-the-art health spa heist.
Escape the Mines by Reece Carter
Funnel adventure between slickspace and realspace.
Looks Like You've Got a Slug Problem by Chris Airiau
Infiltrate a clandestine facility to end the biomod Slug threat.
The menu for Min's Unending Bowl is an in-setting tri-fold pamphlet. Be sure to order the correct combos if you want to get what ain't on the menu (i.e. Guns, Drugs, other Contraband). The pamphlet contains:
1d100 Min's Menu Items
1d10 Weekly Specials
Franchise locations in the Spinal District
Delivery services info (Now Hiring!)
Opening hours for the main attractions
Finally, our lead illustrator Scragend is also offering a Digital Freebie to all backers during the campaign, a pamphlet called The Mote Keeper.These Motes are fabricated by OcuSec, and while some are used by their "security forces," a good number can also be found on the open market (and the Siphon's black markets too).
This digital pamphlet freebie is only available to backers during Mothership Month, and will be available for individual sale later.
This work was made by humans from A to Z. No AI or Machine Generated works are included in any part of this project. Supporting this project means you are supporting real human beings who have dreams, passions, & bills. Thank You.
WIP cover art for the pamphlet pair by Marco Serrano.
The Flatline on the Blocks team has paired up with SpicyTuna RPG's Breathe Easy to bring you a racing competition crossover! When you back both campaigns at any physical tiers, as a special thank you, the Spinal Crux Warriors will add Rival Racers: Magenta Edition to your pledge with us, and SpicyTuna RPG will add the Turquoise Editionpamphlet to your pledge with them.
This pamphlet duo features NPCs of the five racing teams from both Flatline's Trak-Blok monocycle racers and Breathe Easy's Beach Breeze Rally DX slickspace racers, and a special invitational race course for the ten teams to compete on! These additional courses add a new layer of race rivalry, sports betting, and scheming sabotage!
The Spinal Crux Warriors is your Zine Team for Flatline on the Blocks. We're a Ship of Theseus off the Azimuth Gang, so many faces are familiar, many missing, and many new! Yet we're all veterans in the Mothership third-party publishing scene!
This is a rough overview of the project timeline for Flatline on the Blocks & Organ Failure. Our team hopes this to be shorter, but it's safer to overshoot time estimates, especially with such a large team. More moving parts means more chances for delays. In any case, this is the workflow for the project over the coming months.
October 2025: Development
Nov-Dec 2025: Manuscript Revisions
January 2026: Copyediting Begins
February 2026: Copyediting Finishes
March 2026: Layout / Proofreading via pre-prod PDFs to backers
This year, we're trying something different. Nearly every Mothership Month project is part of a shared shipping initiative. That means:
One pledge manager. When Mothership Month ends, you’ll receive one combined pledge manager survey for all participating projects — our “mega pledge manager.” That means just one survey and one shipping payment for multiple projects.
One shipping charge. Because these projects will ship together, you’ll only pay shipping once, saving you money.
One fulfillment timeline. All participating campaigns are scheduled to ship at the same time, ensuring your rewards arrive together.
Two exceptions. Only two creators (Bombs Bursting in Air and Roach Motel) have opted out of this group fulfillment plan; their shipping will be handled separately. Why did they opt out? These two projects are very close to being ready to fulfill, and it didn't make sense to their teams to wait.
Estimated Shipping
Below is a table of estimated shipping prices based on weight. You can see at the bottom what the estimated weights are for different items. Prospero's Dream should be around the same weight (maybe slightly lighter) than the Mothership Core Set. Additionally, if you order several items you'll incur a small charge for additional items, which varies based on your country.
This does not include any applicable VAT or taxes. A reminder that these shipping prices are an estimate and its possible they will change based on global conditions beyond our control.
When will these projects ship? Our collective goal is to have all Mothership Month 2025 projects fulfilled before Mothership Month 2026 begins. Some projects are further along than others, so their timeline for digital rewards will vary. But we have roughly a year to fulfill before Mothership Month 2026, which gives everyone enough time to finish up and get their products to our warehouse.
What is Mothership Month?
Every year, Tuesday Knight Games and dozens of third-party creators launch new Mothership projects around a shared theme. This year’s theme (“The Dream Returns”) centers on Prospero’s Dream, the infamous X-Class back-world, black market space station. Each project ties back to the Dream in some way. Not only that, but we'll be opening up Prospero's Dream as a shared setting for all third-party creators going forward.
Get your exclusive Supply Pod!
This year we're changing up the Supply Pods. Now there is just ONE BIG SUPPLY POD. It's unlocked once all projects fund and it improves as we hit more group achievements. How do you get the Supply Pod? Back 5 or more projects at the physical level and get access to all the cool goodies.
