Alien: Caster of Worlds

In this series of posts, I'm taking an act from DoW and providing guidance to run it as it's own story. Each will have it's own three-act structure and take the characters on some harrowing journey that they are unlikely to survive. Even these, more focused, cinematics will still likely take 3-6+ sessions to complete. For this post we're looking at Destroyer of Worlds Act II: The Storm DoW Stand-Alone Cinematic: The Storm (Act II) Overview  A small squad of marines is part of the skeleton-crew garrison in a hostile, mostly-abandoned oil colony. They find themselves fighting for their lives when a UPP invasion force arrives. It seems like things can't get any worse. But they do get worse. Much worse. Characters  The seven suggested PCs work well for this scenario. This scenario runs like a war movie. It can support larger (4-7) player counts and all the firepower you want to give them. It still won't be enough. Dante and Chaplain: Dante shouldn't start this v...

The Destroyer of Worlds adventure contains an abundance of ideas and content. It has so much content that each of it's three acts can be expanded out into it's own stand-alone cinematic. The author (the incomparable Andrew E. C. Gaska) has suggested these could be run in a sequence - with each expanded cinematic leading into the next. That could work. But that's not what I'm exploring here. In each of these series of posts, I'll be taking an act from DoW and providing guidance to run it as it's own story. Each will have it's own three-act structure and take the characters on some harrowing journey that they are unlikely to survive. Even these, more focused, cinematics will still likely take 3-6+ sessions to complete. DoW Stand-Alone Cinematic: Manhunt (Act I) Overview  A somewhat rag-tag group of marines is assembled to hunt four AWOL soldiers in a largely abandoned and unwelcoming colony. Through their investigations, they realized the missing marines were ...

  The Alien RPG offers two modes of play: Campaign play is similar to what you find in most RPGs. We have a central group of characters. We follow them from adventure to adventure. Their experiences and actions have consequences for those characters and the worlds they inhabit. Those consequences carry over from one chapter to the next.  Cinematic play represents a self-contained story. It takes on a three-act structure with a proscribed beginning and end. The characters are central to the story, but they aren't necessarily expected to survive it. Cinematic play is a thrill-ride headed towards a dramatic conclusion.  I've only played and ran Alien with the cinematic play mode. And I love it. I love that the characters have a real reason to fear for their lives. I love the secret agendas and the intra-party conflicts they inspire. I love the strange-bedfellows party compositions as dead characters are replaced with whoever happens to be around. And I love that a meaningful...

Now that we've finished our play-through of Destroyer of Worlds, it's a good time to reflect on the experience. Overall we had a great time. The players and I all found it to be very rewarding and enjoyable. That's a credit to the adventure. It's a great set-up and setting and contains an over-abundance of fantastic ideas and scenes. But also I skipped about two-thirds of the adventure's content and added (or at least re-mixed) much of what occurred.  Destroyer of Worlds is a strange beast of an adventure. (Which is why I'm still writing and thinking about it).  Some changes and recommendations:  Get rid of the other marines. Reducing the marines to a skeleton crew kept the PC at the center of the action. It also made it seem like the UPP war was largely unwinnable. This forced the PCs to pick their battles and priorities.  Move Wojcik's death off-screen. The adventure pulls out all the stops on alien variants. I wanted some variations but also wanted to ke...

The final session began with the group consisting of the marines Zmijewski, Dante, and Carvalho, accompanied by Marshal James Hyram and recently-rescued UPP soldier Li Xiu Ling. They had been sent by a UPP major to clear out the Fort Nebraska sublevels. Carvalho had been downed by an alien that escaped into the maintenance tunnels. The powered-up space elevator, with the promise of escape, beckoned to the group. The marshal and Li patched up Carvalho and his melted foot. Then the group made their way into the elevator. They checked that the cargo area of the climber was clear. The marshal radioed the major with a tale of needing to move the elevator to enter sublevel 3. Then they removed the restraining elevator clamps and blast shield and sent the climber car hurtling off towards the orbital platform.  As the elevator was rising, Zmijewski heard movement coming from the officers' lounge. The door opened to reveal Colonel Myers. The base CO had come to the climber to use the radio ...

The marines (and marshal) made an arrangement with the UPP commander. They would go down into the Fort Nebraska sublevels and clear out whatever was killing off the soldiers that the major had sent down there. In exchange, Major Liu promised he would not nuke the colony. And he would allow them all to leave with any of the remaining USCM forces.  The group loaded up with gear from the armory and made plans. They didn't trust the UPP major. So instead, the plan was to visit the nuclear storage and set some of the weapons to blow up the base. Then go to the reactor and restore the power. Then head to sublevel 3 in search of some answers and medical assessment.  The main question was how to get out of there alive. Iona revealed that he knew a way out. He told them about his encounter with Mallory Eckford and how she offered them an extraction through the UPP blockade - if they could get to the orbital platform above the colony. Everyone was deeply skeptical of Iona's clandestine ...

In the prior session, our marines, assisted by Marshal James Hyram, raided the insurgent compound amidst the UPP invasion. They linked up with Carvalho, killed Imre Botos, found the bodies of Hammer and Wright, and rescued Dante. Mason was killed during the raid.  The group escaped and was hiding from UPP and insurgent patrols while they caught their breath and planned their next move.  Meanwhile, events that the party was largely unaware of were occurring in the colony. Colonel Meyers had anticipated the UPP invasion and had made some plans of his own. He took a particularly virulent strain of their black oil pathogen and added it one of water kegs being sent to spaceport. Meyers identified the infected water container for one his marines, LC Francine. Her orders were to offer the untainted water to the colonists crowded at the spaceport. When the bombardment and invasion began, Francine was told to brew coffee with the infected water and make sure it was available to tempt t...