Hostile: Alien - Character Creation Part 1

 

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 Paul Elliott posted a video on Zozer Games's YouTube channel in which he made Ripley as a Classic Traveller character, so I thought that would be a good place to start as Hostile is based on Cepheus Engine which is based on... some or other edition of Traveller.

The Alien Breeds supplement for Hostile has stats for all three stages of the xenomorph lifecycle, renaming them for use with Hostile, so we'll use that too.

Obviously this will contain full spoilers for Alien so if you haven't seen it, what are you doing? Go and watch it. I'm going to be really strict about dice rolls which does mean the crew could completely wreck their ship and die when they land on LV426 during that nasty storm, or one of them could splat the newborn alien with a frying pan if they roll high enough, and then they'd all go back into cryosleep. We'll just go with it and see what happens. One fun thing about Hostile is the rules are so crunchy that they cover (I think) everything that happens in the film from landing a ship on a planet during a storm, to firing a flamethrower, to opening a ship's airlock and depressurising it.

Regarding info on the crew like their first names etc, some of the DVD and Blu-Ray releases had a special feature where you could read the company personnel files of each of them. I lost my Alien Quadrilogy box set along with most of my DVD collection several years ago, so I've had to cobble together bits and pieces from various websites to get this info.

Let's get on with character creation!

Character Creation

Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)

Ellen Ripley, Warrant Officer

Let's make Ripley first. I recommend watching Paul's video as he goes through his reasoning for assigning her characteristics and skills, so I'm going to use his array of characteristics for her and check that Hostile allows for the same skills in its rules, which are probably a bit different to Classic Traveller.

Characteristics

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 8

Endurance: 10 (+1)

Intelligence: 10 (+1)

Education: 8

Social: 4 (-1)

See Paul Elliott's video for more details.

Career

Ripley is a commercial spacer: a crewman or officer aboard a company ship.

Rank and Position

In the film her rank and position is warrant officer which doesn't exist in Hostile. Paul chose the rank of third officer for her, but I think she's actually second officer since Dallas is captain and Kane is executive (first) officer, and there's a scene where she pulls rank on the others when they want her to let them back into the ship after Kane has been attacked by the facehugger.

We'll go with the rank of second officer, and position "warrant officer" which is her job title in the film. This gives her a rank score of 3 but it doesn't affect anything else in character creation.

Age

30. This puts her at the lower end of the mature category which would give her 14 skill points, but I got the impression from the film that Ripley wasn't a very experienced member of the team as she seemed to rub everyone up the wrong way and perhaps lacked the experience to know when to go with the flow for the sake of teamwork. So we'll put her in the young category, giving her 8 skill points.

Skills

In Hostile characters receive three level zero background skill levels plus their Education modifier. Ripley was born on Luna (our moon) which is an off-world colony and gives her a specific list to choose from. Additionally she receives 8 skill levels from the commercial spacer list. It's important to note that each level of a skill above 1 costs that and its previous skill levels added together. So the rulebook says buying Pilot-3 would cost 6 skill points (1+2+3).

Finally, remember that in Cepheus Engine games having a zero level in a skill means the character has basic training and can make a skill roll without suffering a -3 penalty.

Edit: While making Captain Dallas I realised all characters get a free zero level in one extra skill from a list, to represent knowledge learnt in education. I've given Ripley Investigate-0, which she demonstrates by prying into what the Company knew about the alien.

We've gone with the following:

Vacc Suit-1

She puts on a vacc suit in an extreme situation at the end of the film so we know she's done it so often she can do it with her eyes closed.

Loader-1

Another skill from Aliens not demonstrated in the first film but let's go with it. She uses a cargo loader in a very extreme situation so we'll give her level 1 rather than zero.

Computer-1

She's able to interface with Mother well enough and she plays a role in the landing of the ship, so we'll give her one level of Computer.

Comms-1

The rulebook says Comms can be used to analyse complex sensor data, which I think is what she's doing during the landing sequence. She also combines this with her Computer skill to work with Mother in partially decoding the message coming from the derelict ship.

Brawling-0

This isn't really demonstrated in the film as she gets slapped in the face hard by Lambert at one point, but her colonial upbringing grants her a zero level of brawling.

Vehicle-0

We see Ripley take control of an APC in Aliens, so we'll give her a zero level in it.

Administration-0

Like Red Dwarf's Arnold Rimmer she frequently reminds her crewmates of the company's rules and regulations, except she gets them right. We'll give her a zero level in this one.

Investigate-0

Detailed above.

Psych Profile

Taken from the Hostile Solo rules, this is a summary of a character's personality which we can refer to when making roleplaying decisions. Ripley is pretty grumpy throughout the film, her demeanor ranging from serious and professional at the start to extremely stressed when things have gone badly wrong. She reminds the others of their responsibilities and the regulations they have to abide by even when it makes her unpopular.

However she sticks by her crewmates and encourages them to keep going, and even goes back to rescue Jones the ship's cat. Finally she never gives up even when it seems like all hope is lost. Let's bear all of this in mind as we go.

I've made the following notes on her character sheet:

• By the book
• Professional
• Serious
• Prone to stress
• Loyal
• Empathetic
• Resilient
  

My Thoughts

That took a lot longer than I expected actually as I had to keep checking the points-based character creation rules in Hostile. I'm going to stop there for the night and come back to make the others soon. Some of them will be quicker than others to make as they don't all live very long in the original story and thus don't get to demonstrate many skills!