Let's review the ambitious labyrinthian design of Mothership's Gradient Descent, a 64-page mega-dungeon with a half-letter (5.5 × 8.5'') format.

This is gonna be a long one, so I'll experiment and break this review into multiple threads. This one will be about graphic design.

Mothership is a lived-in universe. No matter the particular brand of sci-fi you bring to your table, the books imply a grimy, sweat-soaked space made of pig iron and leaky hoses.

Of all the Mothership products, Gradient Descent is the truest expression of that.

Exhibit A: Textures

For example, the pages look like Sean McCoy didn't design the book so much as found it wedged behind IBM terminals tasked with MKUltra—and then faxed it to himself.

Every page has this weathered look deliberately placed where it would exist in real life.

Before I was a copywriter, I crawled inside furnaces in manufacturing, and strung from the catwalks over centrifuges and die toolings were books like this.

Cobbled together, photocopied, faxed, stomped out, squeegeed dry, and faxed-again manuals.

This design speaks to my soul.

If Gradient Descent were a handout, the graphic design would be perfect. Atmospheric. It feels more discovered than constructed.

But as a gm article, it fights itself on usability, economy, and storytelling, which I'll explain further in parts.