Idea for an Alien-style game.

[Supplement Four]

I thought this would be cool.

Have your players roll up new characters for a new campaign. Tell them it's a Traveller game, but keep the details vague. If you want, mix in a little High Colonies or 2300 (I think those games can give the right "feel"..the right "atmosphere").

I was thinking of starting the players off with a free-for-all, like the good old days. Remember? You'd roll up a character and see what happens during chargen, and then just wing it from there, not playing a structured adventure at all.

Ah, the good old days, running a character straight out of chargen. Whatever you chose as a player is where the game goes. You guys want a ship? How are you going to get money? The GM wings it from there (this type of game best is the GM has secretly prepared some obvious choices for the players: He may know that they'll need money, or a ship, or weapons, or a job, whatever. Prepare it, and make it look like you ad-libbed it.).

Anyway way, the game gets going in this manner. The players really see nothing coming. The universe can be the Third Imperium, or the actual Alien universe using the CT rules...or even some other universe, such as the 2300 universe, with the Alien transplanted.

So, the players play, going about their business, when one person puts their hand into some goo....long, stringy, sticky goo.

The GM can take the Alien stats from the JTAS, but don't let on that this is THE Alien from the movies just yet. Even if the players start to guess, because of the goo, or for some other reason, make them feel what they're up against is similar but not exactly like the Alien in the films.

The goal is to not let them be sure until a character confronts the thing for the first time...and, they can see that, yes, indeed, it's the creature from the movie.

Oh crap!





Let the thing dart around without being seen. What was that? I dunno?

Hey, where's the cat? Anybody seen him?

You can even have an NPC or two disappear.

Might make for a cool couple nights worth of gaming, or even the start of a new campaign.

Just a thought.

 

[saundby]

Or, when you see it...it's something nasty out of Lovecraft. And anyone who knows their Lovecraft will know that by itself it couldn't account for everything they've seen. It must have friends...

 

[fiat_knox]

Facehuggers.

When they imagine that the big adult aliens themselves are the most dangerous thing they'll ever encounter, have a facehugger drop on one of the party from an overhead duct.

And let them hear the skittering of its companions. There's more then one of them around ...

 

[Supplement Four]

More thoughts on this...

I'm thinking this should be a two-part adventure.

Part I - Have the PCs roll up citizens, pretend to follow players' whim, run into a nest of Aliens, but keep it secret. Let the players think what they've run up against is like Alien but not the Alien.

Key points of Part I is:

1) The surprise at finding out what, exactly, it is out there going bump in the dark.

2) The danger should be immense. Kill a PC or two if necessary. The players don't run into one Alien...they run into a nest of them.

3) One or a few PCs survive, but are trapped. It's hopeless. The players are left wondering how the GM ever expected them to get out of this mess.

And, now that you've put the fear of God into them and shown them how the Aliens should be played in an rpg...right when the players are at their lowest...you stop the game, cut, and move on to Part II of the adventure.





Part II - I'm thinking this is the rescue mission. It's the "Aliens" to the "Alien".

We begin Part II with the players rolling up new characters (which is why it was OK to kill some PCs in Part I). Except, these characters will all be military--probably Marines.

The Company/The Imperial Navy/The Mercenary Group, what have you, is charged with rescuing the survivors from Part I.

Take a Broadsword Class vessel. Arm the PCs to a tee. We're talking Battledress and Plasma weapons.

This is a great opportunity to make the most out of Book 4's weapons.

Where, in Part I, the situation was hopeless, here, in Part II, the PCs will be ready to fight what waits for them.

Part II is nothing but an an old fashioned run-n-gun bug hunt. It's like those old D&D modules with a dungeon and some nasty in every room, except, what we're talking about here, is heavy firepower and an Alien infestation.

Be sure to leave the PCs in Part I in a cliff hanger. Since the same players are playing both sets of characters, they'll be doubly interested, playing as the Marines, to find out just what happened to the original crew who stumbled upon the aliens.

The nasty GM can have the Marines find some of the Part I PCs slimed to the wall, big holes in their chests where the Aliens have burst out.





Using what you've got:

What I've outlined above is the general scenario. It can be adapted to any way the GM wishes to play.

For example, the Part I PCs can stumble across the Kiniur. Aliens aboard that lost ship tear them up. They get off a distress call. Marines come.

Or, how about making the setting using the short Shadows adventure?

Another neat idea is to set the Alien infestation on a lowly populated, low tech world--a world preferably not on a major trade route. It'd be neat for the Part I PCs to make their way through a low tech villiage on the world before they encounter the Aliens. Then, in Part II, when the Marines come through, the GM can describe what was left of the villiage--the carnage that must have taken place there. (Try to keep surprises in both parts of the game to keep it interesting.)



That's kinda a neat idea for a few nights gaming...I just may develop this some more.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Part II is nothing but an an old fashioned run-n-gun bug hunt. It's like those old D&D modules with a dungeon and some nasty in every room, except, what we're talking about here, is heavy firepower and an Alien infestation.

That sounds like the original Starship Troopers - the book. Which is a way cool description of BattleDress at work.

 

[Darkhstarr]

Best to make slight changes the Alien chemistry, or once the players figure it out they be in the laundry reload their ammo with Borax rounds. My wife is a game killer-can't believe chemistry was one her worst courses.

 

[Supplement Four]

Might be a good use of the Leviathan deck plans, too.

 

[kafka47]

Better yet, the Tigress Plans from Mongoose. Setting the reactor to go critical would be a necessary part of the plan or overloading the spinal mount. Do an "Alien/Aliens" thing is not as hard as it seems with younger gamers especially in their 20s who never saw an Aliens film other than Aliens vs Predatator. I know, I have run them and scared the bejesus out of them.

I would also change the location from a planet to a comet where it is thought the Tigress impacted due to a misjump. PCs are part of a Salvage Team commissioned by the Navy or Imperial Megacorp to investigate the intermetant distress signal coming from the Oort Cloud. This way, you can recreate the Aliens threat to an Earth-like world.

 

[mike wightman]

Alien has been done to death - I doubt any player wouldn't recognise what's going on.

Use mysterious deaths aboard a jump ship trope but don't reveal the monster - the monster could be a psycho passenger or crewman, a psionic manefestation of a serial killer jump space entity, cthulhu himself, anything but a facehugger

 

[Supplement Four]

Alien has been done to death - I doubt any player wouldn't recognise what's going on.

But, sahr, you injure me.

You must raise your opinion of my skills as a GM and deceptionist.

 

[tim_manley]

Alien has been done to death - I doubt any player wouldn't recognise what's going on.

Use mysterious deaths aboard a jump ship trope but don't reveal the monster - the monster could be a psycho passenger or crewman, a psionic manefestation of a serial killer jump space entity, cthulhu himself, anything but a facehugger

I'm running the game for my 16 year old and his friends and I know my son hasn't seen the movies yet (and by movies I mean #1 and #2, I pretend the others don't exist). And I think it's pretty safe to assume his friends haven't either.

Heck, for his 16th birthday we showed Monty Python and the Holy Grail and out of the group only 2 had seen it.

Man I'm getting old....

 

[robject]

I think Aliens would be great for a couple sessions, and S4's suggestion to break it down into two pieces of one whole is clever and, I think, can be engaging.

The key is in giving the "first team" an achievable goal, regardless of personal risk. Then the hope that some of the first team has survived (and needs rescuing) is enough to enliven the second night.

Any variant on Aliens would work, too. The Space Hulk game was essentially an Aliens ripoff, and had all of the horror of soulless biogeneered killer creatures lurking in claustrophobic corridors...

 

[tim_manley]

I'm running the game this Friday (4/11).

It's their first exposure to Traveller and the game will be designed to be a "one-shot".

I'll use pure CT rules. The first part of the night will be them creating characters from scratch per straight rules. They've never been exposed to a character generation system like this before and I'm eager to see how they go through it.

I'm using the station map from the old game Intruder. If I had time I'd actually design this using Book2 rules, but I don't. So I'm just using it as a floor plan.

I'm modifying DA3 Death Station scenario a bit (thanks for the advice on that one).

The concept will be the players are hired to investigate a station that has gone quiet. The person hiring them wants it kept secret so he's sending a team that no one knows about. They'll show up to a station that has power shut off and is in emergency power. The station crew have been "alienized" and are each in different stages of transforming into a xenomorph. The first one they'll meet they should be able to handle easily, the second one not so easily. It'll be up to them how they deal with it and how long they stay on the station. I'm planning on having "hooks" that they'll find once they get access to the computer and discover some very expensive items on the station. Give them a "do I steal it or don't I?" type of quandary.

After the game I'll see what they think and how they like it and if they want more. I'll tell them that the game has rules so they can design their own ships. I know one of the boys is a Firefly fanatic so he may be interested when I tell him that some think Firefly was inspired by Traveller.

I know I've tried to get my kids interested in gaming of all types (wargames, RPGS, etc) and so far this one (my 3rd out of 5) is the only one that has shown any interested. But he's been purely fantasy and has resisted any sci-fi gaming until now. The reason is the way I was describing how character generation works and how you start with experienced characters that have already had life experience.

And, to this I have to thank Pathfinder's Campaign guide. He was really excited that he can generate a history for a character before the game and I just chimed in "you know the Traveller system does that by default".....

 

[Supplement Four]

Post play session report, please!

 

[tim_manley]

Post play session report, please!

You can count on it!

 

[tim_manley]

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=32328

Here is my update on the game.