Lone Horizons

Introduction I'm doing a solo Hostile RPG campaign based on Alien. We made the crew, so the last thing we need to do before starting is plan out the ship. The Hostile setting book gives details of the USCS O'Bannon, a light towship which seems to be based on the Nostromo (Note the reference to Alien co-writer Dan O'Bannon). USCSS Nostromo I don't think the ship's stats are going to come into play much but let's list them here anyway. It's a 400 ton ship with a streamlined hull meaning it can enter a planet's atmosphere. It has 8 hull points and 8 structure points which are what it loses when it takes damage. The other stats are related to its travel speed and other factors that won't be needed in our game. Interestingly the Nostromo was built by Lockheed Martin, a rather infamous real life company. I managed to track down some deck plans for the ship on Imgur  which were in turn taken from what looks like a defunct Swedish fan website. Maybe they cam...

  Ash (Ian Holm, RIP) Introduction We're making the crew of the Nostromo in Hostile, the RPG from Zozer Games in order to play through the plot of Alien and see who survives. Wow, this is taking me a long time but we're almost done with character creation. That's what happens when you only have an hour of free time per day, I guess. Ash, Science Officer Characteristics Strength:  14 (+2) Dexterity: 9 (+1) Endurance: 13 (+2) Intelligence: 11 (+1) Education:  9 (+1) Social:  7 Ash, the secret android sleeper agent onboard the Nostromo is incredibly strong and tough as demonstrated in his fight with Ripley and Parker, gripping Parker and disabling him, pulling him to the floor. He doesn't stop attacking even after being partially decapitated and has to be hit with a cattle prod and short circuited. He has a better than average Dexterity as we see when he uses a laser cutter on the facehugger, carefully cutting its limb without harming Kane. He's more than capable menta...

Over on YouTube I played a solo session of Tunnel Goons using Wallet Dungeons to generate an adventure site. Check out the video below.

  Samuel Brett (Harry Dean Stanton, RIP) Introduction We're making the crew of the Nostromo in Hostile, the RPG from Zozer Games in order to play through the plot of Alien and see who survives. Today it's Brett. Right. Samuel Brett, Engineering Technician Characteristics Strength:  8 Dexterity:  5 (-1) Endurance:  9 (+1) Intelligence:  4 (-1) Education:  8 Social:  6 Unfortunately for Brett we have to give him quite low characteristics across the board based on his performance in the film. He's probably strong enough to lug heavy machinery around but he's quite short and has a small frame, so his Strength is average. He's not fast enough or intelligent enough to catch Jones in a net when he jumps out of a corner and escapes, so I've given him lower Dexterity and Intelligence. He's probably quite tough physically though as he works in the horrible industrial environment of the Nostromo, so he gets 9 Endurance. His bio on Xenopedia says he dropped out of...

  Joan Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) Introduction We're making the crew of the Nostromo in Hostile, the RPG from Zozer Games in order to play through the plot of Alien and see who survives. Next up is Lambert.  Joan Lambert, Navigator Characteristics Strength:  6 Dexterity: 7 Endurance: 5 (-1)  Intelligence: 5 (-1) Education:  8 Social:  9 (+1) Lambert, the Nostromo's navigator has the worst reactions to the alien threat of all the characters, panicking and freaking out multiple times throughout the story. She has a slight frame so I've given her average Strength and lower Endurance to represent her lack of "toughness" of all kinds. Since Hostile's stress mechanic is an Intelligence check, I've had to give her 5 in order to give her a -1 dice modifier as she's so prone to panicking in the film. She studied navigation in higher education which gives her an 8 for Education, and before all hell breaks loose she does joke around with the crew now and then,...

I made a video with some solo RPG gaming tips. Have a watch and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

  Thomas Kane (John Hurt, RIP) Introduction We're making the crew of the Nostromo in Hostile, the RPG from Zozer Games in order to play through the plot of Alien and see who survives. Next up is Kane. Will he be luckier in our playthrough than he was in the film? Thomas Kane, Executive Officer Characteristics Strength:  6 Dexterity:  5 (-1) Endurance:  7 Intelligence:  8 Education:  9 (+1) Social:  12 (+2) Kane makes quite an early exit from the film so we don't get to see him pushed to his limits and chased around by the alien, but he does take some important actions in the plot. He's a skinny lad so we'll give him low to average Strength. He gets 5 Dexterity because he rather clumsily falls off the walkway into the egg pit in the derelict. He's quite inquisitive and seems intelligent, but he can't be too intelligent since he sticks his face into what's obviously an egg with something moving inside it, so he stays on an 8 and doesn't get the +1 modifi...

  Dennis Parker (Yaphet Kotto, RIP) Introduction We're making the crew of the Nostromo in Hostile, the RPG from Zozer Games in order to play through the plot of Alien and see who survives. Next up is Parker. Dennis Parker, Chief Engineer Characteristics Strength:  12 (+2) Dexterity: 8 Endurance:  11 (+1)   Intelligence: 8 Education:  8 Social:  8 Parker is a big strong lad, used to hauling heavy machinery around the bowels of the Nostromo, plus he manages to knock an android's head off so we'll give him a high Strength. There's nothing to indicate he's very dextrous, but he must be ok with his hands if he's fixing mechanical parts. He gets 11 Endurance as although he gets grabbed and pinched hard by Ash when he goes crazy, he recovers quickly and gets back into the fight. We'll give him 8 Intelligence as he's naturally curious, questioning how Kane was able to breathe with the facehugger attached to him. Not much is known about his education history. As ...

  Arthur Dallas (Tom Skerritt) Introduction We're making the crew of the Nostromo in Hostile, the RPG from Zozer Games in order to play through the plot of Alien and see who survives. Next up is Captain Dallas. Arthur Dallas, Captain Characteristics Strength:  6 Dexterity:  7 Endurance: 5 (-1)   Intelligence:  10 (+1) Education:  9 (+1) Social:  12 (+2) Dallas's characteristics are hard to pin down. He obviously cares about his crew a lot but is prone to making rash decisions under pressure. He orders Ripley to break protocol and let him back onboard the ship with Kane and the facehugger, and panics when he loses track of the alien in the air vents, fleeing the wrong way and going into its path. I'll represent this trait by giving him only 5 Endurance. He gets 10 Intelligence because he comes up with the plan to trap the alien, which was a pretty good plan even if they couldn't execute it. From his page on Xenopedia we know he went to a flight academy ...

  Introduction Hello! I haven't been very active on the blog lately due to spending time making the Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign videos for the YouTube channel . However there are some gaming projects I want to do that are probably more suited to this written format, like learning to play Hostile from Zozer Games. I'm already learning DCC while making the videos for it, so I'd like a break from taking long pauses on camera going "Errr... Let me just find the page for thief criticals". I've been thinking for a while about doing a playthrough of the film Alien in Hostile. Why Hostile and not the Alien RPG? Because I already own it, and I am broke. A couple of years ago I randomly found a Reddit post by a guy who adapted the film into a scenario for Alien RPG and ran it for his wife and son who weren't familiar with the film. It was really entertaining and I haven't dug it up in preparation because I don't want it to influence me. More recently Pau...