I ran a one shot for the Alien rpg to get some experience with the system before running Destroyer of Worlds.  The panic rules worked fine for civilian characters like colonists or space truckers.  Destroyer of Worlds focuses on Colonial Marines though.  The panic rules seem a bit much for what are supposed to be trained, experienced soldiers.  One of the possible results is that the character screams.  This can cause a chain reaction since anyone who hears it has to make a panic check which might cause them to scream too.  I like the panic and stress rules but I think that soldiers should be a bit more resistant to this.  One obvious solution would be writing a new panic table but that's a hassle and would require some playtesting.  I don't want to make Colonial Marines immune to panic because that takes a lot of the stakes out of the game and isn't believable.  Any ideas to tone down panic for Marines but not so much that it's a trivial issue?

Treat it standard but give marines a bonus to the roll to resist it?

You roll d6+stress and consult a table that says what happens.  There really isn't a roll to resist.

I could change the way stress accumulates.  For example, firing a burst from an automatic weapon would normally give a point of stress but maybe it doesn't for Marines.  Mag dumping under stress is how the game tracks ammunition though.

Quote from: yosemitemike on August 26, 2024, 04:55:26 AMI ran a one shot for the Alien rpg to get some experience with the system before running Destroyer of Worlds.  The panic rules worked fine for civilian characters like colonists or space truckers.  Destroyer of Worlds focuses on Colonial Marines though.  The panic rules seem a bit much for what are supposed to be trained, experienced soldiers.  One of the possible results is that the character screams.

I'm not sure if you missed it, but you don't mention the Colonial Marine talents. They have two relevant to stress.

The "Overkill" talent lets you replace a Panic roll result of 11+ ("Seek Cover", "Scream", "Flee", "Berserk", or "Catatonic") with "Overkill" where you must immediately attack your enemies, ending if all enemies in sight are broken.

The "Banter" talent gives marines 2x the usual stress relief post-combat by chatting with each other.


Also, the "Command" skill lets the skilled character stop any panic effect in another character.

Wasn't that the thing with Alien tho: "No one can hear you scream in space."

I have a love hate (more hate than love) relationship with Alien RPG (well all the Free League games).

I love the idea of the games but the mechanic .... I have HORID dice luck and these games just enhance and play into that.

I ran a 1 off for my daughters' group, and had a few NPCs I ran with them using all the PC rules to make sure I had a good feal for both sides of the DM screen. At one time I had 7 or 8 dice to roll including stress dice etc. Out of all of them I go NO 6s (so no successes) and at least 3 1s including at least 2 of them on the stress dice. Of course I failed that check and something bad happened. Then one of the other PCs rolled a 1 on their stress dice it triggered a chain reaction and of course I again bollowed my check and more bad things happened and ... it keeps going.

I've played a 1 off with Twilight with similar rules, but at least with those games you do use other dice with the d6 so you have better chance to get a success than 1 out of 6 x times. However, the same poor dice luck still results in more failures than is fair

Now, taking all the poor dice luck out of it, I don't have the Marines' book so I don't know all the benefits/rules for them. But yeah, I would at the least modify the rules saying firing full auto does not cause a Marine stress, probably a few other things like that. Also, I'd change the narrate of "scream" to something else that may trigger a stress to those seeing it (and risks a chain reaction) but not be something so unmilitary as scream.

Quote from: Theory of Games on August 26, 2024, 03:41:38 PMWasn't that the thing with Alien tho: "No one can hear you scream in space."

Haaaa Rgr that !

Taking that as inspiration. Instead of 'scream' it could be "rant and curse uncontrollably for ...."

It sounds like you need a modified chart for marines. Replace "scream" and similar with things like shoot at shadows, chuck a grenade, rifle through your gear. Probably there are better options still, but you see what I'm getting at.

Separately I'll halfway plug Mothership, which is "industrial horror sci fi" and really kind of an Alien/Aliens rpg without the license. I think it's done well and doesn't have the fist full of dice problem mentioned above, but I haven't done anything with the Alien RPG to really compare. However, it's stress track has some of the same problem as you're describing, so if that's your only hangup with Alien its not a pure upgrade.

Quote from: Lurker on August 26, 2024, 06:50:50 PMNow, taking all the poor dice luck out of it, I don't have the Marines' book so I don't know all the benefits/rules for them. But yeah, I would at the least modify the rules saying firing full auto does not cause a Marine stress, probably a few other things like that. Also, I'd change the narrate of "scream" to something else that may trigger a stress to those seeing it (and risks a chain reaction) but not be something so unmilitary as scream.

I don't have the marines book either, just the core book. The core book does have a "Colonial Marine" career template (p39), and it includes the "Overkill" talent (p74) - so those characters can go into overkill instead if they get a scream result.

I'd guess that the expanded character creation rules in the Colonial Marines Operations Manual has other talents that add more variety to dealing with stress.

I've been prepping a game, but I haven't run it yet. I hear what you're saying about bad dice luck, but I would say that the genre of Alien is well suited to cascades of terrible things happening. The trick is interpreting rolls as bad things happening rather than the character being incompetent.

Play this instead? https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/17308

The Alien rpg is always gonna be crappy because it's a licensed cashgrab trying to profit off the brand recognition of a decaying decades old IP. After being reaffirmed in my disgust by the trainwreck that was Romulus, I've again opted to just not touch this shit ever. I'll make my own game if I ever want to do bug hunts.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 28, 2024, 09:10:20 AMThe Alien rpg is always gonna be crappy because it's a licensed cashgrab trying to profit off the brand recognition of a decaying decades old IP. After being reaffirmed in my disgust by the trainwreck that was Romulus, I've again opted to just not touch this shit ever.

Well, I generally agree with this sentiment on licensed products, but what the hell does Romulus being a bit shit have to do with the game designers?

Quote from: WERDNA on August 28, 2024, 12:52:29 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 28, 2024, 09:10:20 AMThe Alien rpg is always gonna be crappy because it's a licensed cashgrab trying to profit off the brand recognition of a decaying decades old IP. After being reaffirmed in my disgust by the trainwreck that was Romulus, I've again opted to just not touch this shit ever.

Well, I generally agree with this sentiment on licensed products, but what the hell does Romulus being a bit shit have to do with the game designers?

Everything after the first two movies is shit, but they're obligated to keep that shit in the game. The engineers, the black goo, etc. This makes the game bad as a result. Something made of shit with some sprinkles on top is still shit. I'm not spending money on that shit when I can easily make my own stuff that isn't shit.

Quote from: WERDNA on August 28, 2024, 12:52:29 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 28, 2024, 09:10:20 AMThe Alien rpg is always gonna be crappy because it's a licensed cashgrab trying to profit off the brand recognition of a decaying decades old IP. After being reaffirmed in my disgust by the trainwreck that was Romulus, I've again opted to just not touch this shit ever.

Well, I generally agree with this sentiment on licensed products, but what the hell does Romulus being a bit shit have to do with the game designers?

There are a lot of good licensed games. There are also many more crappy ones, but 90% of everything is crap. Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Superheroes, James Bond 007, Star Wars D6, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and many others were really good.

I don't know enough yet ton fully judge the Alien RPG, but it has good effort put in, compared to some. So it's a cashgrab, but at least it's not a cheap cashgrab.

I'd say just play Mothership (and ignore all the dumb-ass pronoun bullshit) but Stress has its own baggage there too.

In order to gain Stress you have to be making rolls and failing them. And the game does go on a bit about how the Warden should not be calling for rolls very often, even going so far as to say at one point you don't even HAVE to call for combat rolls if you don't wanna.

So then I move on to HOSTILE or Aliens & Asteroids. But I kinda like percentile systems better than 2d6, so I hem and haw some more

I did try a one shot of mashing the Alien stress system with Traveller d66. I used the Traveller base mechanic, but then when an event that fit the Alien stress system happened I had them roll an extra d6 (keep the higher 2 dice) . If they ever rolled a 1 on the extra 'stress dice' then I used the Alien stress test etc. Even accumulating additional stress dice etc.

It seemed to work fairly well, but was more forgiving than Alien's roll all the dice and only a 6 is a successes rule. A lot more rolling dice easily resulted in well above the average of 6 on 2d6. Plus attribute / skill on top of the roll gave a good amount of successes (were the same hand full of dice with lots of 3,4,5s would have failed in Alien), but at the same time more dice gave more and more chances at getting a 1 and triggering the next step up the stress ladder. It even resulted in some good stress chain reactions (that does make Alien movie like and fun).

That said, it was a more horrorish Traveller than normal I wouldn't use it in all my Traveller game. Plus it was a one shot so I don't know how well it would work in the long run.

I tried an Alien mini campaign and thought I'd like the stress system and it was interesting at first... but later the experience spiraled out of control quickly once you accumulated more than 2-3 points.   The gm was new for the system also trying it out for the first time and was a bit skimpy in allowing the party to breath/rest to relieve stress meaningfully in order to build tension and we were at 8+ for two out of the four sessions and it was NOT fun.  Every shot was pretty much guaranteed to run out of ammo for my character and the stress die were numerically more powerful than my skill and attributes combined.  Even if the GM had given us rests to bring it down to zero, it was too easy for supposedly experience war veterans to gain stress.   Honestly, I wouldn't play it again despite liking the core YZE system overall in its other incarnations.