HOSTILE

Hostile is sort of like the "grown up" version of Cepheus Engine. The base Cepheus Engine rules are this generic, semi-campy romp through classic 2d6 sci-fi adventuring. I love the base game for modding and as the universal system from which all else comes. Hostile is the 1970s retro-future serious alternative to Cehpeus Engine, where everything is gritty, toned-down, and realism is emphasized over the lighthearted.

The technology base is sort of a 1970s retro-future welded-together mess of cool, and the game goes from there into an Earth-based 2d6 sci-fi campaign. There is a heavy Alien influence here, but it isn't everything this game has to offer, and frankly, you can play this game without the space monsters and have just as much fun. There are other great influences here as well, including Blade Runner, The Thing, Total Recall, Event Horizon, The Abyss, Outland, The Expanse, and Pitch Black. Even TV shows like Ice Road Truckers or Deadliest Catch are inspirations for this world and the adventures it can provide.

Ordinary space workers in an industrialized future. An incredibly dangerous universe. Plenty of alien monsters nobody understands. A retro-future filled with cynicism, conspiracies, hidden agendas, and quick death.

Again, you could say this is just an Alien wannabe game, but it really isn't and deserves a little more respect and attention. Alien is just one series in the genre, and this genre is bigger than one franchise. It is like saying all superheroes are Marvel or DC and full stop, and you miss out on roleplaying games like Champions or TV series like The Boys. This is "retro-fi" at its finest, and tries to strike a balance as a "generic retro-fi RPG" the same way D&D tries to be a "generic fantasy RPG." And at times I feel I want the genre to move beyond Alien and break free from that creative stagnation, no matter how cool the movies still are.

There are six main themes to the game:

1. The heroes are everyday workers in space.
2. The future is heavily industrialized.
3. Everything is dangerous and every job is high-pressure.
4. The universe is populated by humans and space monsters.
5. The future is retro-future dirty, full of retro-tech, repaired, second-hand, and used.
6. The outlook is cynicism. Conspiracies, manipulation, lies, and dirty secrets are everywhere.

The Alien RPG is cool, but where Hostile shines is it is a few levels more generic and allows for all sorts of non-Alien concepts and creatures to be introduced. I could mod in psionic rules to Hostile and it would work, whereas in Alien it would feel really strange. I could throw "1950s sci-fi movie monster of the week" style adventures at the characters, like a blob, giant ants, giant worms, parasites that attach to people and control minds, space vampires, silicate rock creatures, or the monster out of The Thing, and it all just works.

I would still use Alien for one-shots or to introduce people to horror RPGs, just because it is so recognizable and accessible. But the market for RPGs also seems to be flooded with RPGs based on TV and movie properties, and I can only play so many of these before I quit playing all of them and just want something simple that does more than one thing. For now, I am done buying licensed RPGs and want experiences that break free from the source material and give me room for my own creativity.

Could I play all of the above with Cepheus Engine or even Traveller? Yes, but Hostile oozes flavor and gives you tons of specific gear, ships, weapons, armor, and a complete setting that fits the theme. I have this game next to Battletech on my game shelf and ooh that sounds like a cool peanut-butter-and-chocolate combination.

Battletech with retro 70s tech and a true hard science and survival mentality? That is cool, and removes some of that gleaming and brand new sheen from the universe and puts it back on a more humanistic and realistic grounding that I love. When the future gets too clean and plastic it gets too sterile and uninteresting. Even the original Star Wars movies had that gritty and clunky retro-tech feeling, and after a while, you get designers who want to change the look and feel to a cleaner aesthetic and you lose not only the feeling of the universe but a huge part of the story and meaning.

Cepheus Engine is always my "source code" for modding and game creation, but Hostile is the best implementation of that 1970s sci-fi game, but it breaks free of the original movies in the genre and gives you the room to put your own spin and creativity into the universe.

Mail Room: Alien RPG Starter Set

This is a very cool starter set. You get plenty of dice, cards, counters, some beautiful maps and deck plans, and a starter rulebook and adventure. You do not get the full Xenomorph as the adventure's monster, but once you consider the broader Alien-Prometheus sort of background the Xenomorphs should only be a small part of the equation here and all sorts of monsters should be able to mutate and morph from this alien DNA and the monster they do give makes sense.

"Alien DNA mutates humans and/or creates new creatures" - that is my game's tag line. This generic "alien DNA" doesn't even have to be "Xeno/Prometheus DNA" either - there could be many strains from different sources, and it honestly just a reason to infect anything and create a creepy bio-monster out of it.

You should feel free to create any monster given this background, from huge crawling brains with tentacles, a spider eyeball, anything from The Thing movies (a huge influence on my ideas as well), a snake with a human head, a mutant hellhound with tentacles, intelligent vines with human blood, monster crabs, icky triped grabbers, giant boring beetles, monster worms, or anything that creeps you out. I like "expanding the monster list" for this to the "DIY monsters" that the games like Lamentation of the Flame Princess or Dungeon Crawl Classics use.

You make your own monsters. They are unique and not like any other. They are not in a tired old bestiary. You do not know what they can do or their powers, attacks, defenses, or weaknesses. Every time you have an adventure, this is both the first time anyone encounters the beast and the last time anyone will.

If a monster is in a bestiary, it is not a monster anymore.

These have to come from your imagination, fears, and inside your mind.

This is very much an "Expanded Universe" view of the Alien universe, and I feel one that suites a role-playing horror game a lot better than just having week after week of Xenomorphs. I am not even as tied to the time or the technology, if I wanted to run a few one-shots in different times with different technology levels that would be cool as well. The system is pretty rules-light and you could create pretty easy stats for new gear and weapons quickly (or reskin the existing items).

This is one I am really excited about, and more soon!

Minutiae

 

One of the interesting contrasts in the Traveller community, and I will pull GURPS: Traveller into this discussion because it highlights the issue, is the "micro versus macro" topic.

Macro Games

Classic Traveller is a macro game. For all you care, there is one planet in a star system, the most important one listed in the UDP, and when you jump in you visit that. You don't worry that much about gravity, space stations, moons, other planets in the system, what the continents look like, what the safe jump distance is and if the star's gravity prevents jumping in near the planet, or any of that other low-level hard sci-fi detail. We don't worry about what the spaceport looks like, who the planet's leaders currently are, local customs and cultures, or much about anything else - this is all fluff, if it is there it is nice to have but not critical and it is not needed for play.

The universe is a large place, and if we get get bogged down in the details we will never go anywhere!

You see the same thing in B/X and D&D style games, there are parts of the game heavily abstracted because if we got bogged down in details no high fantasy would ever happen. The game would shift from adventure to some second-by-second combat simulator where having a metal pauldron on your left shoulder really matters then the goblin's spear targets a random hit location and you are left-facing them.

Ironically Forbidden Lands is more of a macro-level game as well. It does have resource tracking, but a lot of those systems are abstracted and the system is more of a macro-level game on the macro story level than the "3 arrows left in my quiver" sort of game. I get this feeling it tells a larger brush of events and history than does a game that depends on marching order and precise combat map positioning.

Micro Games

In a game where minutiae matters, such as GURPS, Aftermath, Space Master, Rolemaster or others - heck yeah I want a system layout that lists every planet, every moon, every space station in the system, who the locals are, their government, the current in-system conflicts, what companies are there, what the system's defense forces are like, a random space traffic chart, maps of the planets, data on the economy, any wars or major events going on, what each planet produces, and on and on.

I want to be low level because I want to immerse myself in this universe!

The more detailed games have that assumption, where if you are tracking every kilogram of weight on every character, adjusting their casual and combat loadouts, and designing their skills and abilities down to the last character point - you want detail. The game runs on details. The game thrives when you get immersed in not only your character, but also the world you are in.

In some ways, especially in combat and the rules around feats, actions, and interrupts, D&D 3.5 was more of a micro-game, and D&D 4 especially so with powers and positioning.

I can see how players can get tired of all the detail, and games like GURPS or Rolemaster can be a chore to slog through and get working. It is like a phone or tablet with so many user options things are not simple anymore, while you have incredible options and power available for power users, the average user who just wants a phone that works can get turned off quickly. Even I get tired of the detail - I love it - but there is a point where if all I am doing is shuffling rules and choices there is little room left for story or anything compelling me to actually play.

But it is cool to know there is a mineral rich asteroid floating in low orbit of a low-density gas giant on the outer edge of the system, and you find an abandoned research facility on it not in any system records and the adventure begins...

Variant Games

That, for me, is the appeal of very low-level sci fi, and you see a variant of this in the Alien horror RPG as well. That game has macro-ized rules in places, but micro in the places where the horror is - the characters, what they carry, their stress levels, and where they are in a station are critically important. When the bad stuff happens, the game gets micro quick. In the day-to-day cargo hauling, space business and travel, it stays macro as it should.

Micro games can macro if you hand-wave away a lot of stuff too, like using GURPS to play Traveller and never getting that deep into the details. The question becomes, how deep do you want to go in the areas of the game that DO go micro? Do you even need that level of detail? It is nice to be able to sim second-by-second combat and know all the small things, but is that important for the story you are telling and the game you are running? If you crave the details, go micro and relish the game's low-level expressive power.

If all you care about is story and the large sweeping arcs of narrative, stay macro and do not waste your time with games that are a lot of low-level work for little narrative return. If you love the details, pick a favorite game that gives you what you crave and dive in. Nothing is "better" than the other, it is just personal preference.

Design Matters

Ultimately this is the game designer's job, what parts of the game are micro (and where the focus of the fun is), and what parts stay macro for ease of play and to reduce focus. When we played Car Wars we came up with a pretty cool "tire design" system. Yes, tire design. You could custom design your tires. You could put sidewall armor on radials, customize the tread, add internal run-flat support, and all sorts of cool features.

We could design the tires that came with the game and they came out perfect. Wow!

We had some cool tires on some cars and none of them mattered for the most part. Were they cool? Heck yeah! Did they matter to story? Very, very rarely. We ended up shelving it and just going with the standard tires for the most part, as that type of detail did not add anything to the stories we were telling.

It was the perfect case of adding detail where we thought it mattered, but it ultimately didn't and the game was better without it. Unless you are playing a game where you run a tire company, seriously, buy the ones on the shelf.

The game survived without tire design. It was minutiae and honestly, added detail to an area that wasn't that important. Some games on my shelf I still see this here and there, where some cool subsystem is still in the game yet adds very little.

Depends on the Game, Group, and Mood

Also, I have different moods, ones where I crave the detail, and others where I could care less and want a larger swath of story. Groups are like this too, and they can have preferences on how macro or micro a game should be given their tastes and the genre they are interested in. new players to tabletop gaming should probably start with more macro games, and as their tastes develop, go wherever they wish. Some will want to get into detail. Others just like story and covering everything in a more abstract way.

There are times I absolutely love immersion, and that includes rules and detail.

There are others I just want story and the large sweeping arc without the tiny details.

There are even others when I want to play with "story mechanic games" like FATE or Genesys.

Genesys I currently have out and I am playing with right now.

Mail Room: Alien

Oh wow, seriously impressed by this one. The presentation of this one is sort of like one of those "movie companion" books, like those official guide to the movie sort of coffee table books for fans. There are pages full of art with one lonely box of rules in an offset center box, floating in the space of nothingness.

Beautiful.

And they took out Alien: Resurrection from the timeline, and included Prometheus and Covenant. Well, that over the shoulder basketball shot in Resurrection is still in my timeline, thank you. There is no retconning pure awesome.

Not Your Typical Alien?

The book gives you license to change the alien, the monster, the abilities, and the threat. I suppose including Prometheus in the timeline is a good thing, since once that black goo DNA stuff gets loose and melds with any lifeform - you have no idea what it is going to do. I wouldn't go so far as to make it like The Thing, but if that goo gets on a dog, or a tiger, a cockroach, a centipede, a jellyfish, or a strange gel worm...who knows what it could mutate into? Even among the alien xenos themselves you could have a similar variance in abilities and powers, and the book says keep the players guessing.

What we saw in the movies could be only ONE of the life forms. Hollywood's infatuation with that one monster could be blinding us to the real horrors which lie in the dark void of the universe. Corporate profits over everything else? Sounds like Alien to me.

So the door is opened to all sorts of space horrors.

I feel this is a good thing, because you don't want the knowledge of the movies to define the game and to limit it in player's heads. If tonight's monster is a giant bone-and-flesh blob of bio-goo that melds and absorbs with any crewmember it eats, that is the monster. If it is a space cucumber that bores into people's heads and uses mind control on others, that is the monster.

Another thought, with a movie like The Thing, that DNA is very rapidly acting and it insta-transforms into a final form. I do not feel this is "good Alien form." In the Alien universe, the black goo sets into motion a series of evolutionary changes - and this is true for most of the movies - where something goes from one form into another in a series of staged evolutionary steps. Sometimes the form changes. Maybe it creates a cocoon. Maybe it turns into a larvae for a stage. Maybe it burrows into a host on one stage and pops out in another.

That series of horrifying, staged, unpredictable biological evolutionary steps I would keep as a centerpiece of the game. Any monster I build would share this trait, and I could probably dig through a book about insects and how they lay eggs, create cocoons, create hives, build nests and traps, parasite other insects and lifeforms, and turn into different forms through their lifespans for a bunch of great ideas.

You want players to feel their characters are like test subjects in a petri dish, with the next evolutionary step being more horrifying than the next, and the game green lights this.

Excellent.

Looking Forward to This

More when I dive in, and this already has a highest recommendation from me just from what I have heard and seen as I cracked the book open. And it is a high quality stitched book with very high production values. I am really happy with this one.

The only thing I wonder about is if the people playing this game will limit themselves to what they saw in the movies. I feel there is so much more here to explore if you pull in the horrible evolution of Prometheus, and realize the movies are not telling the whole story.

They are made by the corporations.

Generic System: Alien

One of the things I love about the Alien RPG is the stress dice system. From the Youtube videos I watched of this being reviewed and played (I know, why aren't I on Youtube?), the game uses a "stress dice" mechanic to ratchet up tension and bad consequences as the game progresses.

A slow build that builds tension for the introduction. At 30 minutes we get our "huge shocking moment!" At the hour mark the PCs begin to learn how screwed they all are and the NPCs start dying. By hour two everyone is completely frantic and panicked as they rush to complete objectives, and the first PCs start to die. By hour three of the game the few players with still living PCs are screaming their character actions as insanity grips the table.

Great stuff, very "experience focused" and I am looking forward to reading this game. With any space monster, not just the iconic xenomorph, this works in any situation and any setting where you are trapped in a place where you slowly start to figure out the place is not the safe castle you thought it to once be. Your home is the monster's lair, and you are just guests. For dinner.

But let's play this game - and a scenario like this - using a generic system, just as a thought experiment.

Captain Maxwell Brave

Well, figuring this mind experiment is designing characters with "any generic system" and I have access to a full range of character design options, let's design our first character. Now, the game could be GURPS, Savage Worlds, FATE, or any system that allows character design choices.

My character, of course, is Captain Maxwell Brave, the captain of our Alien starship and right off, as a player, I buy the fearless and brave advantages. I do not want my space captain to feel the effects of fear, panic, stress, or any other hinderance from some two-bit space monster that happens to get on board HIS ship.

Let's buy levels of charisma and inspiration as well, in order to help protect his crew, give inspiring speeches, and immunize any crew on his ship from panic as well. Just having Captain Maxwell Brave on the starship means confidence! Any crew just knows if he is in the command chair, that nothing bad can happen to them.

He is also a retired professional pistol marksman who won thousands of competitions from around the galaxy, just because we need a quick reason to buy up that pistol skill to insane levels. I mean, the design system ALLOWS me to design any character I want, right? You wouldn't be a bad game master that nobody wants to play with and limit my choices?

Doctor Geldoc Smart

Next character! Due to a hideous lab accident that took away his hair, gave him a good amount of disadvantage points of unattractiveness, and an insane amount of acid resistance, Doctor Geldoc Smart joins the crew as chief scientist. What do we need attractiveness for anyways in an Alien scenario, we are not going to bars and looking for missions? Did I say acid resistance? Yes I did! His skin is highly resistant to acid, just because...no I am not designing characters to cheat the situation! How dare you insinuate that? You must not want me as a friend! This game system said "create any character you want!"

He also has heightened senses, as a result of the accident. Um, why can't he? His exposure to acid affected his sense of touch, but all other senses are now heightened. Why, he bet he could just smell an alien around here somewhere...

So anyways, if we are playing this game as intended, our scientist is super smart, has access to a wide range of super-science devices, and can use science to defeat any alien creature he encounters. Why, his science is so powerful he can make mind-control helmets that he can use to control any alien's mind! Or anti-alien force fields! Or alien control rays! Or anti-acid grenades! Or teleportation wristbands for the crew!

There is no problem he can't solve with science!

Toolman Manny Jackson

Now, Toolman Manny Jackson builds robots. He can build robots for anything. Why, he doesn't need to go anywhere dangerous or do anything dangerous, he just builds a robot and sends the robot to do his job for him. That's right, Toolman is so smart and so resourceful, he could build a robot out of anything, even a kitchen appliance and some unused silverware. He can build robots to do all his fighting for him as well, making deadly weapons out of common household objects, like a deadly razor disc launcher out of a movie-player and stack of movie discs.

Manny can also fix darn well near anything, and work remotely using a robot and his VR glasses. Who needs to send a team down to the engine room to fix the overheating reactor when Manny can whip up a team of robots, arm them with weapons, and send the miniature army of bots down there to do the job for him?

Reactor overloading? Nope, not happening with Manny around. no need to escape to orbit, the reactor is fixed! He will expect a bonus from the company however for saving the facility.

Manny can also fabricate any type of weapon he needs, from plasma guns to flamethrowers, just with a couple common household objects. Did you know a DVD player could be turned into a heavy laser machinegun - just because it has a laser diode inside it to read the disc?

First Officer Sophia Blade

Renown martial artist and blade fighting specialist Sophia Blade joins our crew with the ability to turn anything into a deadly thrown weapon, her special transpera-steel acid-resistant fighting blade, and a dodge skill high enough to avoid any splash of blood (or acid) that comes from her precision strikes. Why? She doesn't like getting dirty! Don't question my character design choices I am not doing this to avoid acid splashes in melee! Are you accusing me of cheating? The rules say "any character you can imagine!"

I just have a great imagination is all.

And she grew up...um...in a gladiatorial arena fighting aliens! Yep, that is her background. No wonder we can buy all these melee skills, she is hunted by every known xenomorph in the galaxy known to humankind because she um, killed so many of them in the arena. Any ship with her on it is bound to have three different xenomorph species on it at one time so many are hunting her, but it is no problem!

So anyways, Sophia Blade's chi powers allow her the remarkable abilities to wall run, survive for short periods in a complete vacuum, disappear like a ninja in a puff of smoke, move through areas undetected, stalk her enemies like a professional assassin, lay down deadly traps for enemies, and deliver killing blows in the first thrust in combat. Her character race is defined as "ninja" and she comes from a planet of ninjas.

Doctor Marcus Healman

Ex Special Forces doctor Marcus Healman joins the crew, with his uncanny ability to bring back the dead, heal any wound, and create any drug he needs with a minimum of materials and effort. Did you know common breakfast cereals contain so many minerals that they can be used as the base for most any generic drug? He can also create cybernetic limbs and bodies, just in case a crewmember gets too chewed up and needs a complete body replacement.

And since Doctor Healman served in the Colony Wars (tm) his combat skills are par excellence, and his skill at shipboard guerrilla warfare is second to none. Why, he could find a patch of mud to cover himself in and hide in in any ship, even the most spotless. He knows how to use most any heavy weapon and arms system produced today. He can fly military spacecraft, drive tanks, work automatic grenade launchers, and crew any weapons system in the galaxy.

Oh and he is hunted by every other faction in the universe, so not only will we have three extra xenomorphs on the ship, there are probably five squads of enemy soldiers hiding on the ship somewhere waiting to take him out. And no, none of them know about the others.

Why combine him with a soldier character? Because the game master wants us to design average working characters, that's why. I know this isn't a military mission! That is why he is "ex" special forces!

You Get the Point

I know you are enjoying these extra-silly writeups, and I will do more in the future since I love doing them. But they highlight a point. Some systems give you so many options players can immunize themselves from almost any problem thrown at them, and they sabotage the genre instead of support it. The Alien game thankfully (to the best of my knowledge) uses rules to support the experience, and while I could design the above characters in the system - they would not have the game breaking rules behind them to make them immune to the challenges the game throws at them.

Yes, I am cheesing generic systems. This isn't to say they are bad, just...there is a tendency to cheese them once the players know what they are getting into. You get into this "players versus the genre" fight that isn't necessarily "players versus game master" - though it could turn into that quickly during play. This is just a natural reaction of humans to survive, use the tools given to them, and optimize their chances of survive given the options presented and allowed to them.

This isn't really the fault of the players or the game master, and it is really more of a game design issue. Yes, you could find a more mature group that avoids the cheesy choices and designs realistic characters that fit into the genre, but you are asking players to make artificial choices at that point and limit themselves in an unnatural way.

Also, some generic games deal with this sort of cheese better than others. Some other games are so full of cheese and broken builds they have holes in the pages. Your mileage may vary, and a lot depends on your players.

The Alien game takes a different angle, from what I know, and puts players on a mostly even field. There aren't game-breaking choices available. The rules are written to enhance the experience, not to sabotage it. I like games written to deliver an experience, and I also like the freedom of generic systems.

But there is a conflict between generic systems and the ability of players to immunize themselves from specific experiences and genres. Given most any generic system, I can build characters that deal with horror scenarios pretty well. I know the rules that will be used against the players (fear, shock, stealth, etc), and I will use the design options available to defend against them, either subtly or overtly like the characters above. The above characters are way over the top I know, but to tell you the truth, every one of them has been played at my table over the last 40 years.

Game Shopping: Alien

I have read the reviews and watched Youtube videos - this one looks like a winner. The mechanics are a mix between boardgame and RPG, and I want to say it almost feels like a Eurogame in spirit, but a RPG in essence.

And from what I hear, the Xenomorphs are de-emphasized, and there is campaign play. You could play without having the iconic Alien in your game. You could play a one-shot cinematic game. You could make up your own space monsters with a little work and a 1d6 attack table. I could make this a Roger Corman RPG and come up with any silly space monster I want, like a red space turnip with tentacle arms.

I can't wait for this to come - looks incredibly fun, and the production values from what I hear are top notch. Will check this out soon.