Aaron
Goonsquad Officer
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I decided to make a "general" RPG thread where we can discuss all the non major RPGs that already have threads in, and general RPG news and such.
I just came back from my first Alien RPG session and wanted to share my feelings for it. After this one session I can say that we all had a thoroughly good time, though there were a couple of issues.
The game system itself is very attuned to the Alien "world" or atmosphere, especially the stress/panic system. They did their homework on this one. You can play this in three ways basically. You can "homebrew" it by just creating your own adventure. Then there are two other modes. One is basically just a "one-off" mode where you have a limited scenario with set characters (basically just like one of the films), then there is a campaign mode, which is a string of one-offs which are tied together into a general narrative. We played one of the pre-made one-offs, but that can become the first part of a narrative.
Characters are interesting, and in addition to regular combat and skill stats, you also have a buddy and a rival. Furthermore, everyone also gets a personal objective that only they (and the DM) know (at least at first). My personal objective was that I was actually an android pretending to be human. I can let them know, but I shouldn't, though if I take damage and "bleed white" the game is up. Once people know I'm an android my Strength and Dex stats shoot up.
Combat is also good, if you roll more than one "success" on a hit roll, you can choose from a number of things for the extra dice to do, from plain old extra damage, to push back, to pin, to switching initiative places and more. The more successes you roll, the more you can chose.
I only saw two drawbacks, and to be honest, they are maybe more group related than game mechanic related. The first is that we split the group (of five) up at the start (we were investigating a derelict ship) with three boarding the ship and two on our. This meant that the two on our ship did very little and were a bit left out. We decided from the next session that the two would join us. The second one was the pre-arranged rivalries. One of the players took this maybe a bit too far, and as he was the captain, he overrode everything that his "rival" suggested. Maybe taking the rivalry a bit too literally. Again, maybe not quite mechanic related.
Anyway, if you like RPGs and like the Alien setting, definitely give this a look.
I just came back from my first Alien RPG session and wanted to share my feelings for it. After this one session I can say that we all had a thoroughly good time, though there were a couple of issues.
The game system itself is very attuned to the Alien "world" or atmosphere, especially the stress/panic system. They did their homework on this one. You can play this in three ways basically. You can "homebrew" it by just creating your own adventure. Then there are two other modes. One is basically just a "one-off" mode where you have a limited scenario with set characters (basically just like one of the films), then there is a campaign mode, which is a string of one-offs which are tied together into a general narrative. We played one of the pre-made one-offs, but that can become the first part of a narrative.
Characters are interesting, and in addition to regular combat and skill stats, you also have a buddy and a rival. Furthermore, everyone also gets a personal objective that only they (and the DM) know (at least at first). My personal objective was that I was actually an android pretending to be human. I can let them know, but I shouldn't, though if I take damage and "bleed white" the game is up. Once people know I'm an android my Strength and Dex stats shoot up.
Combat is also good, if you roll more than one "success" on a hit roll, you can choose from a number of things for the extra dice to do, from plain old extra damage, to push back, to pin, to switching initiative places and more. The more successes you roll, the more you can chose.
I only saw two drawbacks, and to be honest, they are maybe more group related than game mechanic related. The first is that we split the group (of five) up at the start (we were investigating a derelict ship) with three boarding the ship and two on our. This meant that the two on our ship did very little and were a bit left out. We decided from the next session that the two would join us. The second one was the pre-arranged rivalries. One of the players took this maybe a bit too far, and as he was the captain, he overrode everything that his "rival" suggested. Maybe taking the rivalry a bit too literally. Again, maybe not quite mechanic related.
Anyway, if you like RPGs and like the Alien setting, definitely give this a look.
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