Modern Advances: Alien Abductee

[IDA_Guy]

"At least this time they didn't drop me naked in St. Peter's Square."

How they do it is as big a mystery as why they do it. But there is no doubt that it happens. There is always the white light. Sometimes, you vaguely remember dream-like images of small beings with large black eyes, staring at you, probing you. They never leave any evidence of their comings and goings, save for the fact that every time you lose hours or days of your life. But why you? Why is it you they choose to abduct and what is their purpose?! Somehow, you must find an answer to these questions! (Or at the very least get them to drop you off at Disneyworld once in a while.)

Modern Advances: Alien Abductee is a Modern OGL advanced class that lets players create someone who has the dubious honor of being the target of alien abductions. While it is perfect for a campaign where characters know The Truth Is Out There, it is also the solution for the problem of what to do with a character when its player only occasionally attends a campaign.

With strange visitors from another planet beaming the character hither and yon (thanks to the class ability "Missing Time"), GMs will never have to do back-flips to work in the character ever again.

Designed by veteran game designer Steve Miller, Modern Advances: Alien Abductee is flexible enough to be used as a lark, or in serious campaigns where the threat of alien abductions is real. This eight page booklet features:

• The Alien Abductee advanced class, which models conditions of alien abductions as presented on television and in fiction.
• The Unnatural talent tree and two new feats.
• A fully detailed NPC -- Alien Abductee Amanda Mason.
• Compatible with IDA's Mind Over Matter

Available now at e23, RPGNow, and DriveThruRPG.

 

[Turanil]

Modern Advances: Alien Aductee, by Steve Miller, is a small 8 pages PDF (6 pages of actual game content) for d20 Modern. It features an advanced class, a new talent plus feats and skill uses, and a NPC of said class. This PDF retails at 2$ (at the time of the review anyway) and is 100% Open Gaming Content.

Art and layout: The art merely consists in two photos of a girl (the abductee), and the layout is just basic. While the document is clean and easy to read, I have seen more exciting layouts.

This PDF certainly looks more like a joke (based on a renown urban myth), than a serious gaming supplement. After all, in the introductory paragraph the author states that he had designed the character class to take care of missing players: when they aren’t there, it’s just that their characters have been abducted by aliens. Nonetheless, this supplement also reflects a 20th century legend that has great probability to appear in a modern or future campaign featuring mysterious and manipulative aliens. So now lets see what the PDF proposes:

Advanced Class: Alien Abductee: Compared to other d20 modern advanced classes, I find the Alien Abductee a little bland. Yet it is done right, except for the 1st level ability. "Missing Time" has a chance (1 in 8) of giving you a free feat for a gaming session you missed (meaning that the character had been abducted by aliens). Even if it will seldom happen, I don’t like the possibility to gain extra feats beyond the normal allotment. In fact, if I ever use this class in a game, I will houserule Missing Time that way: first you get the XP the other players got during that gaming session you missed; then, where you would have got free skill points or feats, you instead gain some clue to something relevant to the campaign. Of course, all XP gained due to Missing Time can only be used to gain Alien Abductee levels, hehe…

Talent Trees, Skills, and Feats: I like the talent that enables to spontaneously cast a zero-level spell a couple of times per day. The use of Mage Hand in a modern campaign without magic can be much useful in the appropriate circumstances. In fact, I think that this talent is what can give some flavor to the Alien Abductee class. Other than that, the feats are simply along the lines of “Alien Weapon Proficiencies” and the like.

Alien Abductee NPC: I much appreciate that a NPC having levels in the Alien Abductee class has been provided. Too often, supplements featuring new classes don’t feature an example NPC. However, any new class has more chances to be used by a DM than a player, so I like that a DM’s job be eased with some pre-generated NPCs. This one (a security personnel woman) will probably fit fairly well in many d20 Modern games.

Of course, you will easily understand that concerning this supplement, I can only be biased. Yet, if I ever run this d20 Sci-fi campaign I always wanted to run, I will certainly use this PDF. In fact, I can use it in a post-apocalyptic RIFTS-like game, as well as I could see it in a Transhuman-Space d20 Future campaign. Both the abductee character and the class would be useful. The first as a plot device, and the latter (as suggested in the supplement’s introduction) as a "punishment" for missing player’s characters. Fact is that in my groups, there is always one or another player to miss a gaming session (me included). As such, it would make for a near entire party of abductees whose adventures would eventually revolve around finding and countering these mysterious aliens that have kept kidnapping them ever and again over the course of the campaign. This could indeed make an interesting plot…

I give Modern Advances: Alien Abductee a 3 (but would have liked to give it a 3.5). Despite I think it will be useful to any modern / future campaign featuring aliens (especially games ala “X-Files”), I still see it more of a joke than anything else. Then, the art and layout is really basic, plus I have never been fond of supplements just featuring a single character class (this is here that I am biased…).


(Disclaimer: we aliens cannot be held responsible for neurotic and hysterical female humans women having problems of missing time and other urban legends. If they have missed their time, it’s not our an alien problem!)

 

[Steve Miller]

Thanks for the review!

Thanks for the kind review, and I'm glad you enjoyed 'Alien Abductee'!

The entire "Modern Advances" series is intended to be humorous in nature. I hope that the game mechanics are solid enough that the material can be used in "serious" games, but the presentation will always be a bit off-the-wall and goofy. (Although, frankly, I don't think there's anything funny about the suffering that Amanda Mason and her family is being put through by their alien tormentors...)

And, yeah, I took time to plug 'Mind Over Matter,' because the class was written to work with that product. (It's not necessary to have MOM to use 'Alien Abductee'--and like you point out, the Unnatural talent tree is probably plenty to simulate powers gained from bizarre alien experiments--but there are elements in that product that are perfect if you're running games with aliens in them. One of the races included is, basically "The Grays.") Plus. I was there anyway, and I had the space....

 

[Turanil]

I hope that the game mechanics are solid enough that the material can be used in "serious" games

As I said, apart from the Missing Time ability that I would modify, the class can be used indeed, and also in (relatively) "serious" games. But I can see that missing players would drive the plot toward something that maybe wasn't intended at first by the DM. That is, if the DM wants to keep the game coherent/serious and therefore takes into account that some PCs are regularly abducted...