Introduction

Introduction

This blog will be about my experiences running the Alien RPG. We'll start with an Alien: Destroyer of Worlds cinematic campaign. This will be a mix of design and preparation notes along with session reports on how everything played out. 

Naturally, this blog will be filled with extensive spoilers for Alien: Destroyer of Worlds. So, read on, or not, accordingly. I'll also assume you're somewhat familiar with the adventure and will refer to the adventure contents, without necessarily explaining them.

Bio 

I'm an experienced GM having played and run a number of systems. I've played Alien: Chariot of the Gods and got to learn the system there, but never run Alien before. We're playing with 4-5 players - with various amounts of RPG experience - none of whom have played Alien before. 

I've promised a mini-campaign/cinematic RPG experience that'll play out over 4-6 2-3 hour sessions. 

Destroyer of Worlds Overview 

This adventure is a glorious, overstuffed sandbox. There is a ton of content here and it's just overflowing with ideas and scenes and adversaries. Each of the 3 acts could easily be a satisfying 5-6 session campaign by itself. (complete with it's own dramatic conclusion!)  As written, these events are all meant to pile on top of each other, taking place over just a few days. But there's really just too much here. It's hard to see how you could play through it all in a reasonable amount of time. And even harder to see how the characters could survive (more on that as we go along). 

Part of the challenge of fitting it into 6 sessions will be deciding what to cut and how to strip it down to the essentials. I also want to balance the pacing and leave time for character development and intra-party conflict. 

Inspiration without Constraint

For any published adventure I run, I like to use the contents as inspiration and guidance. But I don't allow myself to be constrained by it. This is my version. I'm going to re-mix the contents extensively, cutting, adding, and adjusting to tell the story I want to tell as best I can. I do this with everything I run. But it's really essential here. You need to pick and choose and make it your own. 

System Modifications 

I like the system quite a lot. The stress mechanics combined with quick and brutal combats capture the source material quite well. I am playing with a few significant modifications:

• No initiative: I'm not using the initiative system. Instead, we'll play out action scenes with me allocating turns to characters in a rough rotation, trying to give everyone equal time, but also surfing the rhythms and dynamics of the scene. In a face-off situation, I'll either choose who goes first or have the player do a mobility or observation check to get the jump on their opponent. 
  
  
• Blocking: As written, the melee blocking rules seem like they would make the players remarkably alien-proof. That's not what I want. I'll treat blocking as slow action and only allow it if the player declares that's what they're doing before they are attacked. 

Major Plot Changes

In my version of this adventure I'm planning some significant plot changes:

• Ghost Town: I'm emphasizing the colony as a ghost town. Everything is portrayed as part of a once-much bigger and more bustling institution, now down to just a skeleton crew of stragglers left behind. The biggest change is that I'm treating the military presence as almost entirely gone as well. Instead of 200 marines left, I'm saying we're down around 20. No tanks, no dropships, and just 1 other APC at the starport. Even ammo and additional gear are hard to come by in a stripped-bare armory. The few soldiers left are stretched too thin and just the useless dregs left behind. The players are really on their own.
  
  
• Black Oil All Along: The adventure features lots of xeno variants, but also suggests they all come from our traditional XX121 friends. I've decided that Project Life Force was started with a sample of black oil. This helps explain the variants we'll see in the AWOL marines. But we'll also say the Life Force experiments did result in a strain that works like XX121. So, when it comes time to come back to the base, the players will encounter those as well.
  
  Instead of the big, mysterious black oil drop to end Act II. I'll be using a more integrated, smaller, and more home-grown variation of the idea.
  
  And of course, black oil is the ultimate MacGuffin.
  
  

The Law of Conservation of NPCs

After I introduce a character, however incidental, I'll continue to look for excuses to bring back that character. In this case, some minor and created-on-the-fly characters managed to stick around or came to play significant roles in the story.