Mothership: Pushed rolls, stress, and... Flip 7?

02 May, 2026

Recently I have been enjoying the simple party card game Flip-7, which for all its simplicity has had myself and my friends shouting, pointing, and screaming with delightfully delicious frustration. The basic game is just a deck of numbered cards running from 0 to 12, where the number on the card is equal to the number of those cards in the deck. That is to say, there are twelve 12's, eleven 11's, ten 10's, and so on down to a single 0. The game's goal is for someone to reach 180 points first, and you do this by taking turns to draw cards from the deck and adding the total of all of the cards you draw to your score. However, where things get spicy is that if you draw the same card twice in one round, you "bust" and score zero. This makes for an extremely satisfying push your luck style loop that tempts you to take just one more card because surely you won't draw second 7 card, what are the chances? Damn it! On top of this there are other modifiers, and special cards to keep things interesting. I highly recommend grabbing a copy (I have the shiny edition which adds a nice iridescent flourish to the game when you pull it out on game night).

So you may well be thinking how this ties into pushing rolls in the game of Mothership, my currently favouritest sci-fi RPG that I can't get enough of. I'm going to assume you are familiar with the rules of Mothership from this point onwards. One of the aspects of Mothership that I've always had trouble with is the combat (and so do many others). As written in the Player Survival Guide when combat starts: "The Warden describes the situation and what is likely to happen if no response, then play goes around the table and each player describes how their characters react." This means that in a desperate situation, if you roll poorly, that your character could be immediately killed and there isn't any resource you can use to save yourself. However, what if there was a way to push your character when you fail a roll, possibly turning failure into success? To make such a mechanic fit with the desperate, high-stakes aspect of Mothership the mechanic should feel risky, as if you are pushing your luck each time you use it, and what game is exclusively built around pushing your luck? Flip 7.

Flip 7's push-your-luck mechanic would make for an amazing way for players to attempt to save themselves in desperate or high-risk situations. The general idea is that you can draw Flip 7 number cards whenever you fail a roll, and add the value of the card to whichever stat or save you are testing. For example:

A big monster is charging at Leeroy, and so he decides to shoot it. Leeroy's combat is 40, and he rolls 50, this is a fail, and almost certainly means Leeroy is monster food. To save himself, he can draw a Flip 7 card, he pulls a 12 so that now his effective combat is 52 for this round making his roll a success.

Now the most important part of Flip 7 is that if you draw two of the same number cards you bust. For Mothership, this would mean you take a point of stress, critically fail the roll, and panic. To make busting more likely, every card you draw from the Flip 7 deck remains in front of you until you draw a card that matches. For example, the cards you draw to improve a roll at one point in your session can match with cards drawn for a different roll, making you bust. Let's look again at the Leeroy example with this in mind:

Leeroy has shot the big monster, doing some damage but not enough to kill the monster, so instead Leeroy decides to run. This is a speed roll, his speed is 25 and he rolls 40, a fail, so he decides to draw more cards. Remember, last time Leeroy drew a 12, if he draws another 12 he will bust. The first card he draws is a 6, making his speed stat 31, not enough, so he draws again. He draws a 12, which matches the 12 he had already drawn and so busts. He takes a point stress, critically fails, and panics. Leeroy probably doesn't make it to the escape pods.

To ensure that there is always risk involved in drawing a card, all players should have at least 1 number card in front of them, this should be dealt to them at the start of the session or when the players bust. Below is a quick summary of the mechanic:

1. For each player, at the start of the session, or after a bust, deal one card to remain in front of them. ¹
2. After a failed roll: Players can draw as many as they like to add to their stat or save.
3. If a drawn card matches any of the cards the player has previously drawn they bust. They take 1 stress, critically fail, and panic. Discard all cards and return to 1.

And that's it. One thing to note is that some of the Flip 7 cards like Freeze aren't particularly useful, so I'd remove them from the deck. For the "Flip 3" card, make that so that the player that draws it must immediately draw 3 more cards making a bust highly likely, and will make for some excellent drama at the table.

I'm planning to try this in my next session and I'll post an update about how it goes. If you decide to give it a try, let me know how it works.