Lone Horizons

Just a quick note to say my Alien film playthrough in the Hostile RPG has been on hold for a while because I simply wasn't enjoying it much. I think partly it was because it wasn't actually much fun retelling the Alien story in prose form when I wanted to quickly get on with the gameplay and find out what happened next. I'm most likely going to return to it later, play through the rest of the story without writing it all out on here, and then do a final post with a short summary of what happened and how it differed from the film.

  The derelict ship Introduction In our playthrough of Alien in Hostile RPG, Dallas, Kane and Lambert have found the crashed alien ship on the planetoid LV426. The Adventure "Let's get out of here." Lambert says as Dallas leads the team towards the huge ring shape looming out of the fog. "We've got this far, we must go on." Kane replies, "We have to go on!". Back on the nostromo Ash watches their video feeds on screens which are becoming more and more distorted. "Will you say that again?" He asks Dallas after receiving some garbled speech from him. Let's see if Ash can do anything about the poor signal. This will be a Comms roll for which Ash isn't trained. I realised the Hostile rulebook treats every check as needing an 8 to succeed, applying positive or negative DMs to adjust the difficulty, rather than the way Cepheus Engine does it which is to change the target number from 8 to higher or lower. I'll switch to doing it Host...

  The surface of planetoid LV426 Introduction We're continuing the adaptation of Alien. Dallas, Kane and Lambert have stepped into the airlock, ready to traverse the forbidding dead landscape of planetoid LV426 in order to find the source of the mystery transmission they detected. Let's create LV426 using Hostile's world generation system, which is based on that of Traveller. I don't know if any of it will come into play on the journey but it's fun to do anyway. Universal World Profile LV426 X111000-C Asteroid G Starport X: No starport. Size 1: The closest size category which is 1600km in diameter. In the film the planetoid is only 1200km. Ash says the gravity is "0.86 - You can walk on it". This implies that it's 86% the strength of Earth's gravity. In Hostile a size 1 planet has 0.05 gravity, but we'll go with the film. Atmosphere 1: Trace. This is a very thin layer of gases surrounding the planet, obviously enough to cause the horrible wind ...

  The stasis pods open Introduction I've created the crew of the Nostromo from Alien in the RPG Hostile by Zozer Games and I'm playing through the story solo to see how it turns out. Just one more quick bit of character creation: Hostile has rules for characters suffering stress, but it involves doing an Intelligence roll. I find this a bit odd since it would mean a character like Lambert who can't handle the situation at all and freaks out repeatedly during the film, would have to have a low Intelligence score and therefore fail a lot of her job-related rolls. I'll assign each character a Stress characteristic which they'll use to do their "panic roll". This is based on their behaviour in the film. Dallas (Captain): 7 He stays very calm throughout the film but does panic and go the wrong way in the air vent when the alien's coming for him. Kane (Executive Officer): 9 (+1) Admittedly Kane doesn't get to experience being hunted by the fully grown al...

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...

  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,...

  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 ...