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Konungr
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Re: Share your on-theme campaign Ideas

Fri 21 Jun 2019, 09:24

There is a significant difference between a bomb small enough to be strapped to a plane and a nuclear reactor that requires cooling TOWERS that is so large that it occupies a massive building and powers an entire small colony of 70-80 familys and all the equipment that is in the process of terraforming an entire world.

The bombs dropped in japan wouldn't do a fraction of the damage that reactor going critical would do.
 
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aramis
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Re: Share your on-theme campaign Ideas

Fri 21 Jun 2019, 09:39

Not one reactor going critical did the bomb thing. Not 3 Mile Island, not Chernobyl, not Fukashima Daichi.

Power reactors don't concentrate enough for a full cookoff. 

It's a huge plot-hole.
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RenoGM
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Re: Share your on-theme campaign Ideas

Fri 21 Jun 2019, 17:13

The players I run a game for want to play a science fiction RPG after our current Forbidden Lands fantasy campaign comes to end. They want something that feels a bit like Firefly (scrappy underdogs trying to make a living) but with a slightly more "realistic" edge like The Expanse. 

My current thought for Alien is to not tell the players that we're playing the Alien RPG. I might just say were using some similar rules as Forbidden Lands in a homebrew sci-fi setting and spend most of the sessions dealing with various underworld figures, competing smugglers, and law enforcement types. Once there nice and comfortable with the expectations of the setting it will be time to throw them for a loop. Maybe a smuggling job transporting xenomorph pods goes awry, or they return to a familiar orbital station that appears completely abandoned, or maybe they're attacked by something like the reavers from Firefly hosting alien parasites in their degenerate minds!

I'm not completely sure yet, but I definitely want a slow build to the realization that they are playing Alien! 
 
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Konungr
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Re: Share your on-theme campaign Ideas

Fri 21 Jun 2019, 21:55

The players I run a game for want to play a science fiction RPG after our current Forbidden Lands fantasy campaign comes to end. They want something that feels a bit like Firefly (scrappy underdogs trying to make a living) but with a slightly more "realistic" edge like The Expanse. 

My current thought for Alien is to not tell the players that we're playing the Alien RPG. I might just say were using some similar rules as Forbidden Lands in a homebrew sci-fi setting and spend most of the sessions dealing with various underworld figures, competing smugglers, and law enforcement types. Once there nice and comfortable with the expectations of the setting it will be time to throw them for a loop. Maybe a smuggling job transporting xenomorph pods goes awry, or they return to a familiar orbital station that appears completely abandoned, or maybe they're attacked by something like the reavers from Firefly hosting alien parasites in their degenerate minds!

I'm not completely sure yet, but I definitely want a slow build to the realization that they are playing Alien! 

You want corialis then. It has lots of ship rules and is often describe as being 1 part fire fly 1 part 1001 arabian nights and some other stuff.
 
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Konungr
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Re: Share your on-theme campaign Ideas

Fri 21 Jun 2019, 21:58

Not one reactor going critical did the bomb thing. Not 3 Mile Island, not Chernobyl, not Fukashima Daichi.

Power reactors don't concentrate enough for a full cookoff. 

It's a huge plot-hole.
Yes. In the universe where black goo turned pale giants into the genetic seed of all life on earth but also makes monsters there is also the plot hole that hadleys hope would not have blown up the way it did on screen.

On the other hand it did blow up the way it did on screen so something about that reactor results in a devestating explosion preceded by lots of blue lightning arking around every surface of the colony structure. You can try to explain it or you can accept it as part of the fiction.
 
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aramis
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Re: Share your on-theme campaign Ideas

Sat 22 Jun 2019, 00:27

Or simply explain that they dropped a nuke from the ship; It wasn't the reactor blowing up; it may have been the stored oxygen blowing up due to a meltdown. Or that Bishop was already convinced, and took some initiative and had planted a real bomb outside.

Many easy off-screen retcons, possibly even that WY put a thermonuclear explosive device on the plant as a failsafe against rebellion. 

The plant itself cooking off is nonsense, unless WY has purposefully pushed the reactor safety limits to "Even more stupid than Burke and Gorman"

It's not the only plot hole, but it's one that's easily filled off-screen.

Still, a LD90 radius for a dirty fizzle (a specific type of subcritical-mass meltdown in a heavy water working fluid) is several km, with a physical destruction radius of a few dozen m (US Army field manuals I probably shouldn't have read and my then roommate shouldn't have taken out of the office). And a dirty fizzle was expected at Chernobyl, but it didn't quite hit the right level of reaction for it.

A dirty fizzle in the reactor would do everything BUT the glowing cloud... instead just a steam explosion and massive burst of mixed radiation.
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Konungr
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Re: Share your on-theme campaign Ideas

Sat 22 Jun 2019, 03:56

Sure, you can make up any of those reasons to explain it to yourself. Equally likely is Bishop used his belt time/space teleporter to go back to the 1950s and stole a Russian warhead and then teleported it back and used that for the explosion. We have exactly the same amount of evidence that that occurred as we do for any of the scenarios that you proposed. In that we have no evidence.
 
Bengt Petter
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Re: Share your on-theme campaign Ideas

Tue 09 Jul 2019, 16:29

My current thought for Alien is to not tell the players that we're playing the Alien RPG. I might just say were using some similar rules as Forbidden Lands in a homebrew sci-fi setting and spend most of the sessions dealing with various underworld figures, competing smugglers, and law enforcement types. Once there nice and comfortable with the expectations of the setting it will be time to throw them for a loop. Maybe a smuggling job transporting xenomorph pods goes awry, or they return to a familiar orbital station that appears completely abandoned, or maybe they're attacked by something like the reavers from Firefly hosting alien parasites in their degenerate minds!

I'm not completely sure yet, but I definitely want a slow build to the realization that they are playing Alien! 


I really like this idea! Not only because a space underworld would be really cool, but also because it's a new and creative take on Alien. As you suggest, it might be a way to use xenomorphs in a new way. I would also add The Company in some form. I imagine they, or at least some of their staff, must be working with (and against) several crime syndicates that might be operating in space. It should be possible to scenarios tat are space heists or tech noir in some form. In my eyes, new genres is a way to develop the Alien franchise. Hopefully I will soon post some ideas about the space underworld in another, new thread!     
 
Dreamer-of-Days
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Re: Share your on-theme campaign Ideas

Tue 16 Jul 2019, 17:35

As far as campaigns go, I'm thinking of having my players be a crew similar to the Betty's: all space cowboys, a la Firefly. Some missions they run across xenos, others they're trying to smuggle supplies past Weyland-Yutani or Colonial Admin, sneak contraband onto space-communist worlds, etc.

For single player campaign (just me and my wife), I want to emulate the experience of Isolation. Maybe have her start in a colony like Hadley's Hope, or LV-178... But move on to having her character deal with the seedy underworld of space-faring. Think the lower districts of Coruscant: human trafficking, drug markets, cartels, etc. Keep a big emphasis on sneaking and stressful situations, but utilize the game's systems and stuff like Working Joes... mix in some Bladerunner too.
 
Attackmack
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Re: Share your on-theme campaign Ideas

Mon 19 Aug 2019, 12:24

One idea Ive thought about is to have the PCs be common colony workers pretty happy with their lives, only to have it all thrown into chaos as a huge corporate starship enters a decaying orbit and crashes into the planet, unleashing some form of threat. Be it rival military, fundamental extremists or (of course) a xenos threat, the players will be among the few survivors trying to survive and eventually escape the planet.

Another I really wanna realise is to make all the PCs be corporate suit-type bureaucrats forced out of their comfort zone, having to deal with the danger and horrors without the help of ex colonial marines and rugged factory workers. Do they even know how to reload the battery packs on the motion trackers :D 

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