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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8419781" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Presently, I think I see the game a little differently than [USER=7016699]@prabe[/USER] and [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER] (who both see this as something of a Trad/Story Now tweener).  I see (at least the Frontier Colony play) being entirely amenable to Story Now play along the Alien thematic axis.  However, as noted above, I think the Panic rules are ultimately not beautifully crafted.  They definitely seem to be written too specific to Xenos on your ship or confronting your marines in a creepy abandoned colony.  So my thoughts:* I look at the thematics of the character build rules, the xp triggers, the extremely good (imo) condition/exposure rules, the very solid encumbrance/gear rules.  These all support survival horror, hubris-of-mankind tinkering with biology and engineering Story Now play about your biome trying to kill you and the politics/fears/curiosities spraying gasoline on the tender that is inherent to the Alien milieu (including the Corporations and the UPP and the UA) quite well.  Things are big and sweeping and scary...but the thematics inherent to build/advancement are personal and intimate.* The GMing advice tells me this game aspires to Story Now ethos.  Here are the seminal parts I feel:p18 The Game MotherThe game is a conversation between the players and the GM, back and forth, until a critical situation arises where the outcome is uncertain. Then it’s time to break out the dice—read more about this in Chapter 3.It is the GM’s job to put obstacles in your path and challenge your PCs, forcing them to show what they’re really made of. But it is not up to the GM to decide what happens in the game—and above all, not how your story is supposed to end. That is decided in the game.  That is why you are playing the game, to find out how your story ends.That is pretty much the Agenda of Dogs in the Vineyard "prep situation not plot...don't play the story...play the town" and Apocalypse World "play to find out."* p206-208 Principles<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Riff from the movies</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Limit their resources</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Stay in the shadows</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Increase the pressure</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Let them breathe</li> </ul>- F U E L T H E I R AG E N DASThe PCs are living and breathing characters in the world of ALIEN, each with their own agendas and goals. Learn their agendas by heartand feed into them. Put them in situations that directly challenge their goals and see how they react. Use their fragile humanity against them.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Bring horrible death</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Reveal the univierse</li> </ul>Among these, I see a host of Story Now aspirant principles.  I picked out Fuel Their Agendas in particular because it is so apropos of the premise of play in an Aliens game and the tech (character build and triggers and special item) push play toward this.  It is the dramatic need portion of play and its telling GMs that play should orbit around this heavily and I think the system does solid work to enable this.As I've said above, my only complaint (thus far...there absolutely may be more) is how the Panic rules were implemented.  Tight codification vs interpretation of Panic overwriting Success would have been preferred and less specificity on the actual fiction of each result would have been better.  If I was writing Aliens, these two things would have been changed.</blockquote>

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