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Jeff Wilder
Posts: 39
Joined: Wed 31 Aug 2022, 01:58

Re: Character agendas vs player agency

Thu 03 Nov 2022, 20:45

You can rewrite them or skip them. So can your players.
We enjoy them, as the players find it fun thinking of ways to utilize them. They also get my players to play a bit outside of their normal box, and more like characters in an Alien movie. Ymmv

Same for us. We've played Pathfinder with unwritten rules (don't steal from the party, split treasure fairly, no PvP, and so on) for so long that the Agenda mechanic is fantastic for us. It fits with the whole focus of ALIEN being a shift from "exploration, combat, level up ... oh, and roleplay" to "roleplay ... oh, and try to survive."

I can understand the criticism for a campaign, but Agendas are for Cinematic play. And they're not as simplistic as they might appear at first glance. Sure, Cham's deal is "I'm a good guy, and these people are my found family to be protected," but what happens when (as in our playthrough of CotG) the family begins shouting at each other furiously and almost come to blows? There is a lot of latitude for Cham's player in the written Agenda.
Jeff Wilder | San Francisco Bay Area
"And if you bore me, you lose your soul to me." | Belly
 
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Shads
Posts: 72
Joined: Sat 09 Feb 2019, 15:51

Re: Character agendas vs player agency

Wed 09 Nov 2022, 20:37

holy shit i LOVE the personal agendas.

they are suppose to motivate your players to a goal, THAT dont mean they are forced to.
for example, spolier terratory here.

one player have "make as much money to save your sick bro at home" agenda, and when their ship with valuable gear cargo was going boom in t-minus 10, she wanted to get the stuff, but hearing the time tik down, she could not keep her cool and bailed on it, valuingen for the moment her personal saftey over her brother.

the other player, the captien who want to get out of WYs boot on the other hand went BALLS DEEP in getting that cargo out, and got like...1 out of 15, so not very worth but almost blew half of the crew up.

it was AMAZING to see player 1, struggle with thier agenda and personal saftey, personal agendas is in my opinion the absolute best shit ever for cinimatic play,
they matter much less if at all in Campain play though.

Ya should not play Cinimatic play the same way as Campain play though.
 
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strangecoloursFL
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri 16 Sep 2022, 18:23

Re: Character agendas vs player agency

Fri 11 Nov 2022, 13:29

One of the first things which occurred to me on reading through Chariot of the Gods and the interactions between the story and the players agendas was the similarities with the Fargo TV series I was watching at the time (had an internal double take when I found Noah Hawley had gone on to work on the new Alien TV show). By that I mean I am inspired by the built-in conflict and the intensity of the aims of each character driving the tragic mess which follows - I find it easy, in my head at least, to map that cauldron of impossible to resolve aims and agendas used in the Fargo TV series formula on to Alien cinematics.

For me, the interactions between agendas in Alien cinematics add complexity as the unpredictable but inevitable flashpoints which will lead to some of the main action and role playing highlights in our sessions (which typically lead to fatalities piling up and the eventual endgame). Every group is different, but the agendas can be used at first to hold the group together and then later provide the fault-lines needed when things begin to fall to pieces (and then even bringing a pair of characters back together in the final act).

As a GM I tend to offer a small amount of additional (hidden) information/background to players (that I've written or sourced from outside the scenario) before each session, so that if interested enough, they can hit the ground running with their agenda and have a clear idea of how it fits with the story, without giving too much away or "controlling" what they choose to do with those breadcrumbs. Not every agenda has such prominence in each act/session, but it is better for everyone if player-triggered (rather than event-triggered) agendas are cultivated by the GM when the story needs it. How much I end up nudging it would be for the players to say, but it seems to have worked so far.

Players more used to campaign play can quite often feel they can take their foot off the pedal in terms of driving their characters and the story, but in cinematics, it's necessary that the pace is stepped up a notch and the Agendas assist players and the GM in keeping that going.
 
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_ArthurDallas_
Posts: 505
Joined: Wed 04 Mar 2020, 03:22

Re: Character agendas vs player agency

Fri 11 Nov 2022, 17:28

StrangeColoursFL is right. Alien RPG cinematics need some pacing and agendas are good to help players and Game Mother to do so. I have read somewhere that the best scenarios are the ones with the best characters mixtures and chemistry. You need the agendas to do it.

But in the Alien RPG Campaign, it's more open friendly I would say and you probably don't need any agendas there. Maybe you should play the Colonial Marines Operations campaign (The Frontier War).

Enjoy your games folks.
 
Magnimost
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Re: Character agendas vs player agency

Sat 12 Nov 2022, 13:54

We finished Chariots. The agendas worked OK. Feedback from players was that those were definitely new to them, and Lucas even apologized to the rest of the group for getting one of them killed, and almost TPK. The group min-maxer was really struggling with the pregens (and I'm not a fan of them, either). There were more weapons in the scenario than I was expecting, and they managed to kill the Juvenile, and almost killed the Adult as they kept together most of the time.

The intra-group tension is predicated upon the right characters surviving, though, which is a risk in such a deadly scenario. Lucas almost died when they moved tritium from ship-to-ship using Daisy and it blew up taking three characters with it, but we retconned it since the player wasn't playing during that session and was an android, so he just came to knock on the window of the bridge on Cronus in the next session. Clayton also managed to use the EEV fairly early on, so without Lucas and Clayton there wouldn't have been much going on.

In the end Lucas managed to turn on the self-destruct mechanism (twice) which shocked at least one player. He escaped with the EEV (which they had scooped back up earlier), and took two other PCs who didn't have insight knowledge on the EEV while Cronus blew up with Ava who was desperately trying to stop the countdown, and a hibernating Clayton as they booted her off the EEV along with NPC Flynn.

Another weakness in the scenario are a few cases of railroading: PCs can't stop the Cronus countdown, navigation back to earth, or Montero blowing up. A bit surprisingly I didn't hear complaints from the players, but hope the other cinematcis aren't on rails as much.

They want to play another cinematic and I enjoyed running it, so good experience overall! Thanks for the pointers and feedback!
 
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strangecoloursFL
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri 16 Sep 2022, 18:23

Re: Character agendas vs player agency

Sat 12 Nov 2022, 14:13

All characters died in Chariot of the Gods and Destroyer of Worlds when I ran them.

In Chariots the whole story unfolded, with characters dropping off one by one in the final session, Lucas only revealing himself in the final scene in a confrontation on the bridge of the Cronos, purposefully destroying the ship while others tried to stop him.

In Destroyer of Worlds, all but one of the remaining PCs were "escaping" into orbit on the space elevator, after final confrontations. The insurgent leader had become a PC (after his previous character Chaplain was shredded by a Xenomorph), was persuaded to assist the team, but was then left behind, and for a variety of reasons, he triggered a nuke he had wired up in the armoury, taking down the space elevator (and everyone/everything within).

I think you have to be able to trust the players with the amount of PvP that agendas bring on, for cinematics to work out well.

Edit: an important part is keeping everyone's hope alive that there's something they can do to get out of the situation (even when it's becoming clear they won't), still achieve their agenda or failing that for their death to have "meaning"...

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