In space, no one can hear you complain about stress dice.
So, with a friend on extended holiday, we took a break from our regular game, to play a taster scenario of Alien RPG. We’ve seen the films, now we are playing the game. In this short scenario operating a small security team tasked with escorting some HR personnel to a mining asteroid to negotiate with some striking miners. Seems rather dull. Maybe there is more to this than meets the eye? Although we are assured this will be just a milk run, but then can you really trust the corpo types?
Before all that, and to take us through the basic mechanics, the three of us underwent some testing. Simple stuff really, but thematically designed to test our suitability for the job. Two of us are marines, mine a German called Hans, with his smart gun; Mulaney, an Irishman with a longer-range firearm and Abbess, our medic. She seemed ok, but I saw her in training after getting injured so I now know she’s an android, but I’ve kept that to myself, for now. I was warned beforehand that one of my crew isn’t what they seem, so I think that’s been confirmed.
So, there we were running, shooting, using a heavy forklift and some psych testing. Then we had a final test, to take out a droid in a testing ground. Mulaney got badly injured, but we killed it and successfully passed the training. This was useful to learn the basic mechanics. Not that there are a lot to remember. There are few skills and they run off one of four stats. You have very little equipment to begin with so it really is a basic starting character.
One of the key mechanics is that of stress dice. Normally, when you test a skill, you roll a number of dice equal to the stat plus skill plus any other modifiers. If you trigger stress through a game mechanic or the GM considers the activity stressful, you add an extra die. To be successful you need at least one ‘six’ result on any of the dice. Sometimes it is more, especially if it is a contest of skills. If the stress die results in a ‘one’ you fail the test and add another stress die to your pool. There are ways to reduce stress in more peaceful times, but otherwise, the stress dice make it both more likely you’ll score a six but equally fail anyway. It can be brutal, but it is an interesting mechanic.
Meanwhile, we are setting off to an asteroid mining facility. That was uneventful and masked what was to come. When we landed, we started to explore and quickly discover that miners had been attacking each other over some dispute. The marshal that accompanied us, conducted his investigations. We discovered several corpses and eventually starving miners who we were able to coax out from hiding. We also discovered that miners were striking over a lack of pay and poor treatment. Apparently, they had been docked pay and had restricted benefits for poor quality work or lack of productivity, the miners dispute this. Personally, I can well believe the miners, but now they just want to go home, especially since we found someone’s head apparently ripped from its torso.
We then delved deeper and discovered a high security bioengineering facility. Whatever could that mean I wonder? Then we heard footsteps. Thankfully this was bizarrely some young HR lady sent to record the company property left by the miners. Then we heard her scream.
So naturally, as characters, we thought maybe she’s been attacked by some of the miners unaccounted for. As players, we thought rather differently. As we arrived on scene, we discovered the barricaded facility that some of the miners were using. Then we found the remains of the HR lady. The blood was pooling under some of the shelves, but what drew our attention more, was the ventilation grille on the floor. We looked up and saw the empty space for the ventilation. We could guess as players what had happened.
We called the marshal to come and see for himself what was going on and we headed back, with no mention of the secret facility we had discovered. Meanwhile the remaining company team were back on board the space vessel. So that was where we left it going into the final session… I don’t think this will end well, but never mind, it has been a fun little taster.
About the Author
As well as playing board games, Neil has been playing a variety of roleplaying games since 1982, including creating campaigns as a GM and espousing the art and craft of being a good GM and the therapeutic value of games generally.
