Alien: Franchise Mode of Play

 


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 death, or worthy self-sacrifice, is totally worth striving for - as the tale rushes towards it's inevitable end. 

I love cinematic play. But. I want those sacrifices and sell-outs to mean something. I want those ragged few who managed to find the finish line to live on. I want to meet those survivors years later and see how they turned out.

I want the best of both worlds. So, I plan to combine the two into a hybrid system. I'll run games in the cinematic style. But the events, outcomes, and surviving characters (PCs and NPCs) will carry over from one scenario to the next. The stories don't have to be connected. I'll play with different groups of players. There's no expectation that a returning player will play the same character, even if they survived. But it's a possibility. Actions, outcomes and loose-ends from one cinematic will play into the next one.

Much like the movies we're emulating, we can tell self-contained stories with implications that carry over from one to the next. We can call this Franchise Mode. 

Since characters may survive from one cinematic to the next, we should consider the experience and reward system. The campaign experience system does a nice job encouraging a lot of the fun RP mechanics: buddy, rival, panic, and agendas. But, given our expected levels of character mortality, we also want reward options that carry over from one character to the next. 

I'm going to start using XP for my franchise cinematics with additions:

  • 5 XP can buy you a Story Point
  • Story Points and unspent XP can carry over to a new character
  • Unused Story Points can be carried over by the player to future cinematics

The published cinematics support the franchise model pretty well. The elements and biological agents introduced in Chariot of the Gods were the genesis of the project depicted in Destroyer of Worlds. The outcome and multitude of loose-ends from our Destroyer of Worlds run will serve as catalysts for adventures of my own creation. And we shall see where things go from there.

I'm looking forward to finding out in future episodes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alien: Dead On Arrival - One-Shot Cinematic

Image
The CSCSS Santa Cruz, a passenger, and light cargo vessel is departing from the Anchorpoint Station. Anchorpoint is a bustling space station on the far frontier, the last outpost on the ragged edge of colonized space. You are among the lucky thirteen people - crew and passengers - making this journey. You each have your reasons for wanting to be on this ship, which is bound for the prosperous ICSC capital of Alexandria. If everything goes smoothly, you are expected to arrive at the core system after 68 days of uneventful cryo sleep. You look around at your fellow travelers and... you sure hope this goes smoothly. Scenario Overview Alien: DOA is a one-shot cinematic adventure for the Alien RPG. It works best with 5-6 players, can be completed in a single session, and can work well as an introduction to the Alien RPG and setting.  Higher player counts are possible. With multiple GMs, the scenario could accommodate up to 12 or possibly 15 players. With minimal modification, it co...
Read more

DoW: Aftermath and Lessons

Image
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...
Read more

Introduction

Image
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, ov...
Read more