Aliens RPG Post Mortem

[hawkeyefan]

11 SEEK COVER. You must use your next action to move away from danger and find a safe spot if possible. You are allowed to make a
retreat roll (p. 59) if you have an enemy at ENGAGED range. Your STRESS LEVEL is decreased by one, but the STRESS LEVEL of all
friendly PCs in SHORT range increases by one. After one Round, you can act normally.

So this wasn’t really an issue that Inoticed when I ran the game…but I imagine that’s because I was running a cinematic scenario that was very much in line with the source material. So someone seeking cover didn’t stand out to me as out of place.

But is it that bad? A result of 11, which means you have at least 5 stress, which isn’t insignificant, it seems that a person might decide to seek safety of some sort. Cover specifically implies combat or some other physical threat like a storm or such, but that can be easily reskinned. The mechanical impact is described and could fit a slightly altered scenario.

A Scientist, for example, could raise his head from a microscope and then say something like “we need to abandon the facility immediately” or some other cryptic bit. The mechanical impact of raising stress in those around him seems to be the meaningful consequence, and applies here. The loss of the next action seems potentially less significant since you may not be in a turn based scene in all cases.

I can see your point, but I think it’s pretty easily handled. I could also see a campaign or scenario specific panic table. Perhaps that’s something worth considering. Or an alternate one for non-combat threats.

I do agree that the game is a bit unclear on whether a panic result negates the present action or not. That’s something I remember being very annoying.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So this wasn’t really an issue that Inoticed when I ran the game…but I imagine that’s because I was running a cinematic scenario that was very much in line with the source material. So someone seeking cover didn’t stand out to me as out of place.

But is it that bad? A result of 11, which means you have at least 5 stress, which isn’t insignificant, it seems that a person might decide to seek safety of some sort. Cover specifically implies combat or some other physical threat like a storm or such, but that can be easily reskinned. The mechanical impact is described and could fit a slightly altered scenario.

A Scientist, for example, could raise his head from a microscope and then say something like “we need to abandon the facility immediately” or some other cryptic bit. The mechanical impact of raising stress in those around him seems to be the meaningful consequence, and applies here. The loss of the next action seems potentially less significant since you may not be in a turn based scene in all cases.

I can see your point, but I think it’s pretty easily handled. I could also see a campaign or scenario specific panic table. Perhaps that’s something worth considering. Or an alternate one for non-combat threats.

I do agree that the game is a bit unclear on whether a panic result negates the present action or not. That’s something I remember being very annoying.

Yeah, you can work around take cover a bit, but how do you work around berserk in the same scenario? I also think this means ignoring the listed effects (which are tied to the action economy in the short term) and effectively creating ad hoc rules. You can absolutely do this, but I think it's important to be calling that out as different from the system presentation and doesn't really have much to do with discussion about how the system works as presented. It's getting into the "D&D works fine because of all my houserules" territory.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yeah, you can work around take cover a bit, but how do you work around berserk in the same scenario? I also think this means ignoring the listed effects (which are tied to the action economy in the short term) and effectively creating ad hoc rules. You can absolutely do this, but I think it's important to be calling that out as different from the system presentation and doesn't really have much to do with discussion about how the system works as presented. It's getting into the "D&D works fine because of all my houserules" territory.

Oh definitely. I'm not excusing it as a flaw in the design....I get that. It wasn't immediately obvious to me because we played a scenario where the panic results were not really out of place, but I can see the criticism.

And they are probably too tied to the action economy; if the game isn't a series of encounters or scenarios where the turn structure matters, then several of them lose at least some of their bite. Those with lingering impact or that immediately impact nearby friendlies are the big deals in that regard.

All I meant is that they can largely function as is, with some slight narrative adjustments based on the fiction. Which plays to the point of making them less specific in order to be more broadly applicable. If I ever do run a campaign, I'll likely make a custom list, or perhaps two.

Berserk is easy, this is where the fight breaks out among the crew. The Roughneck is fed up and needs someone to blame and decides to beat the snot out of the Company Agent to the point he's broken (or is perhaps restrained by others) seems like a pretty likely scenario, even if not under threat of immediate physical harm (maybe even more so, in some ways). Alternatively, a Scientist could lose his cool and decide to lash out at the Marshall or Officer, only to get himself pummeled and thrown in the brig as a result. Potentially significant consequences there.

 

[Larnievc]

If I would have written the Panic rules, I would have codified when a Panic result overwrites a Success and made it strictly math (eg Failure = Subtract 1 Success for every Panic above 9...if you get to 0 Success, the result is a Failure...eg Success +2 is cancelled by Panic 11).

I think that might seriously undermine the flow of the game. When I have run games of Alien RPG the tables are a springboard for me as the GM coming up on the spot with something exciting and memorable.

 

[Manbearcat]

PANIC ROLL

As long as you keep your stress in check, you can use it to your advantage. But if the tension grows too strong it can explode, sending you into a wild panic. You need to make a Panic Roll when any of the following happens:

1- You roll one or more on your Stress
Dice in a skill roll. If this happens, you can't
push the skill roll—instead, roll for panic.

2- You witness a friendly character suffering
from a certain panic effect (see the table).

3- You are pinned down by a ranged attack.

4- You suffer a critical injury.

5- You’re attacked by a strange alien creature that you’ve never seen before.

6- A truly horrifying event occurs, as deter-
mined by a scenario or the GM.

---

Quick thought/clarification on Panic Rolls in the game. They serve double duty:

1) They’re peer contagion. You lose you nerve, your pal loses their nerve, everyone loses their nerve. It spreads slowly and insidiously or explosively like wildfire.

2) Content generator like a 7-9 or 6- in PBtA. That is my only reading of the 1st listing of the below (and it’s how I’m handling it. This is the Story Now aspect of Panic Rolls which you use by following the GMing principles.

#2-6 are outputs mapped to a fictional input. They’re like hard moves in PBtA where the fiction is tightly constraining and they funnel the GM’s cognitive workspace toward Harm or something very costly that is an obvious outgrowth of play.

#1 is not. Therefore what else can it be than a content generator? In AW or DW if you Read a Sitch/Discern Realities and trigger a hard move, the GM is telegraphing a threat/announcing future badness etc etc.

Here you’re following the Game Mother advice. We converse > break out dice when we’re in a dramatic/uncertain moment > erect obstacles > watch panic spread and watch people lose control (

The Stress and Horror entry after the Principles section does a great job of speaking to this and even talking about PBtA moves; introduce horrific situations, make their agendas collide, take away their resources, turn off the lights, cut the power, make stuff malfunction, hide in the shadows and let their imaginations do the work for you (this is a version of “ask questions and use the answers”), put them in situations with difficult choices (life or death).

Those pages (Game Mother, Principles, Stress and Terror) are underwriting my GMing of the game.

The issue I’m having is some of the Panic entries aren’t written in the most wieldy manner (like PBtA soft moves).

I’m assuming @Ovinomancer and @prabe maybe disagree with this analysis? You have any thoughts @hawkeyefan or anyone else whose read/run the game?

EDIT - This conversation is reminding me a bit of Read a Sitch and Spout Lore (etc) conversations prior. What do you do when you’re in the midst of a horrific situation that is combustible but doesn’t involved hostilities with the threat of immediate violence and action resolution results says escalate.

 

[Fenris-77]

I need to give Alien a more serious read sometime soon. So many things on my to read list.

 

[Ovinomancer]

PANIC ROLL

As long as you keep your stress in check, you can use it to your advantage. But if the tension grows too strong it can explode, sending you into a wild panic. You need to make a Panic Roll when any of the following happens:

1- You roll one or more on your Stress
Dice in a skill roll. If this happens, you can't
push the skill roll—instead, roll for panic.

2- You witness a friendly character suffering
from a certain panic effect (see the table).

3- You are pinned down by a ranged attack.

4- You suffer a critical injury.

5- You’re attacked by a strange alien creature that you’ve never seen before.

6- A truly horrifying event occurs, as deter-
mined by a scenario or the GM.

---

Quick thought/clarification on Panic Rolls in the game. They serve double duty:

1) They’re peer contagion. You lose you nerve, your pal loses their nerve, everyone loses their nerve. It spreads slowly and insidiously or explosively like wildfire.

2) Content generator like a 7-9 or 6- in PBtA. That is my only reading of the 1st listing of the below (and it’s how I’m handling it. This is the Story Now aspect of Panic Rolls which you use by following the GMing principles.

#2-6 are outputs mapped to a fictional input. They’re like hard moves in PBtA where the fiction is tightly constraining and they funnel the GM’s cognitive workspace toward Harm or something very costly that is an obvious outgrowth of play.

#1 is not. Therefore what else can it be than a content generator? In AW or DW if you Read a Sitch/Discern Realities and trigger a hard move, the GM is telegraphing a threat/announcing future badness etc etc.

Here you’re following the Game Mother advice. We converse > break out dice when we’re in a dramatic/uncertain moment > erect obstacles > watch panic spread and watch people lose control (

The Stress and Horror entry after the Principles section does a great job of speaking to this and even talking about PBtA moves; introduce horrific situations, make their agendas collide, take away their resources, turn off the lights, cut the power, make stuff malfunction, hide in the shadows and let their imaginations do the work for you (this is a version of “ask questions and use the answers”), put them in situations with difficult choices (life or death).

Those pages (Game Mother, Principles, Stress and Terror) are underwriting my GMing of the game.

The issue I’m having is some of the Panic entries aren’t written in the most wieldy manner (like PBtA soft moves).

I’m assuming @Ovinomancer and @prabe maybe disagree with this analysis? You have any thoughts @hawkeyefan or anyone else whose read/run the game?

EDIT - This conversation is reminding me a bit of Read a Sitch and Spout Lore (etc) conversations prior. What do you do when you’re in the midst of a horrific situation that is combustible but doesn’t involved hostilities with the threat of immediate violence and action resolution results says escalate.

No, I agree. The principles of play speak strongly to Story Now. The mechanics provided fight against it. The only way I see to reconcile this without alteration is to engage in play very tightly aligned to the source material and genre expectations. Then the mechanics align to the play (prowling derelict hallways haunted by xenomorphs while clutching whatever weapons you can find), and you can flex the story now in that play smoothly and easily.

I think we are outside that intended play space right now, and that's why we're running into the incoherencies with the mechanics but not the principles of play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Looking at the list of Panic results, and the ones that I think are the biggest problem are the ones that are very connected to the turn structure used in Combat and Stealth mode. A lot of the results are much more about the double duty you mention of the spread of fear and content generation in the form of new complications or elements of play.

The following Panic Results all seem to me to fit one of those duties very well, or both of them pretty well:

• Nervous Twitch- kind of passes by being intentionally the most minor of the batch, but it certainly gets that peer contagion rolling.
• Tremble- this has an ongoing penalty for Agility skills, which makes it unique among the results, so that's got some heft whether involved in combat or not.
• Scream- a more severe version of Nervous Twitch, but also serves to potentially introduce new complications; I mean, something could hear the scream, right?
• Berserk - seems to me to hit the peer contagion well although not through Stress or Panic, but instead by causing conflict within the group, and possibly new content as well (i.e. our scientist lost his ish and decked the officer, and is now in the brig, and we're dealing with some kind of pathogen situation, etc.).
• Catatonic- pretty much game over man in combat, and still very bad in just about any other situation.

The ones that seem ill-suited (at times) are:

• Drop an Item- obviously, this is potentially disastrous if you're facing off with a xeno, or if you're hauling the one piece of equipment needed to restart the land rover, etc. But it suffers a bit because if you're either not in the turn structure OR the fictional situation isn't in a dangerous environment (space, walking along a plank above a pit filled with alien eggs, etc) then dropping an item seems less consequential. You can just pick it up. Yes, you still increase stress, but by itself that's less severe than the lower panic results. So the Dropped Item has to really matter in order for this to be significant, and that may be tough to ensure.
• Freeze- nearly irrelevant outside of the turn structure. The add on of increasing stress for you and nearby friendlies is good, but by itself is again, not quite enough, I don't think.
• Seek Cover- situationally hard to narrate, as you already pointed out. Has the added element of reducing stress for the character, but raising that of nearby friendlies, so without the wasted turn or the forced movement being brought to bear, this is actually less harmful than the lower results.
• Flee- I'm a little torn on this one. As Burke showed us, this can be a horrible idea. But, it's similar to Seek Cover in that it would really only apply in a situation where there is looming physical danger, unless you tweak it a bit. But it's much more severe in that it costs more than a turn, and it could cause others to Panic, as well. Also, depending on which way a character runs, maybe that brings in new fiction by alerting enemies or security measures or what have you. Forced movement can be really bad. But it's hard to imagine this being a response to anything less than severe immediate danger.

That's my assessment looking at them again now, months after having played the game. In our short campaign, not all of them came up, so I haven't seen them all in action. And our campaign was a cinematic scenario where there would have been plenty of opportunities for the results as written to make total sense. At the time, I really enjoyed how Stress and Panic can spread among the group. That seems perfectly suited and overall well implemented.

But I think some are less suited for the job than others. They are assuming when and how they'll be applied, and not allowing for much beyond those specific situations.

 

[Aldarc]

Do the Swedes care about Story Now vs. Traditional gaming?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Do the Swedes care about Story Now vs. Traditional gaming?

In the bits I've read, it's more that there's a strong presumption of prep play and not much has been done outside of that. I see Aliens as entirely coherent within the strong prep/narrow focus that I get from the bits of Nordic RPG theory I've read.