Thoughts On - Alien RPG 11 (Updated)

 Hi Everybody,

                        We last left off with one of our brave heroes coming round in an autodoc, which was sadly all too familiar to him. Not so good, was the discovery that he is totally paralysed and deaf in the left ear. The right ear, however, picks up the screaming that is coming from outside very well, unfortunately...

He trembles in fear, that is, he would if he could, but the only thing he can do at the moment is keep his teeth from chattering together by biting his lip and try not to let the nasty something that is outside know that there is an easy victim inside.

Meanwhile...

Evie is trying to get the command visor back on. It is sending no commands to the robot dog, who at the moment is trying to shoot at Shepherd, taking cover behind a console.

Evie  takes off the visor and throws the visor carefully at Cowboy, who catches them and swiftly puts on the headset. He bashes it with his hand a couple of times and it hums back to life again. He finally gets control of Robotdog again - The "Mother" computer had been sending it orders to wipe out the group!

Bishop had been busy, it had merged with a data pad. "Ava 7" has short-circuited trying to process every thing at once. We put Doc in the auto doc once it was safe to get Rooster out of it for a while. Eva King freaked out now that all the shooting had stopped.

--------------------------------------------------------

Chaplin and two Marines come through the NEXUS portal from Fort Nebraska.

After a detailed search through Charles' belongings, an unauthorised Level 3 access card is found, giving him unlimited access to the "Mother Computer".

Cowboy wants to kill him on the spot. Rooster pleads clemency, "How many times has he saved our lives?"

Cowboy replies, "Get him off this base and make sure we never see him again".

Captain Silver turns to Rooster. "We do have another matter that needs attending to. At Fort Nebraska, five of our Marines have gone Absent without Leave. They took with them a certain vital package."

Rooster replies, "So what has that got to do with us?"

"Since you have proved to be rather resourceful in dealing with unusual matters, we thought you might like to take part in the recovery process. Especially since one of those men is your brother, Blue!"

"Blue! I have not heard from him in ages.   He is not the sort to go off base without good reason. But he should listen to me, if anyone."

"Good, good. You can go through the NEXUS at 08:00. Zulu.

Rooster just nods his head, stunned to hear about his brother. 

He turns to Cowboy, "What sort of pickle has he got me into this time?"

=========================================================================

The big reveal was that Charles had his own hidden agenda, malevolently guided by Richard, our GM.

We knew that Kitty was running EDAN, the robotic Phycho that had it in for us from the start, (with orders to do something nutty at least once a day, usually aimed at us), but not that Richard was running Charles to be a fruitcake as well!.

Our Alien game was paused for a while for personal reasons, this seems a good breaking-off point in the storyline to leave it. We are not sure when it will come back. Thanks a bunch to Kitty, John and especially Richard for all the fun and games they provided.

Thanks to you, dear reader, for wading through the episodes too.

"May all your Space Lanes be safe ones."

Ivor Cogdell

Thoughts On - Alien RPG 10 (Updated in italics)

 Hi Everybody,

                        Here is the latest Alien instalment for you.

16 August 2024 - Cowboy has a radio Chimp, we are calling him "Spanner". Edan has to be decontaminated from the black goo.  It has been found that the Regional NEXUS has become misaligned.

       Edan came in with the wheelchair mini-gun and shot Cowboy for 3 damage. The Auto doc is also hit. Bullets also hit "The Doc" close to his heart. Ava gives him first aid. Cowboy, finally looses control and shoots Edan. Cobalt also shoots at Edan and misses. Edan is unconscious. Cowboy is going to put him in a containment tube in the Alien Lab, where he can do no more harm.

30 August 2024 - Edan is in a big sample tube, but the alien in the Lab refuses to "Face Hug" it, it seems scared of Edan. At that point, the "Mother" Computer decides to keep Edan for itself. Charles tries to save Edan. Rooster tried to strangle Edan. Douglas tried to save Edan from Rooster. Cobold was then told to throw a grenade into the room, by Cowboy, to kill Edan. Cobold hates kids and it was an order, so he does so.

"BOOM"!

"Spanner" the Robot dog got blown up, and black pus is coming out of it. Rooster is paralysed in the blast and loses his left ear. Bishop disappeared. The Doc suffered a gouged eye and a damaged thigh. Edan's Cryo Pod is destroyed. He suffers a punctured lung and is unconscious. Douglas loses his left arm. Ava -7 has damage to one arm. The Robot Dog has a skin flap that moves aside, to reveal a red eye in its forehead. Eva King has now got control of the Robot Dog through the headset. Shepherd suffers a lost leg and the snake is getting ready to attack him, but Cobalt kills the snake in the nick of time. It expells black goo over the floor as well.

The Robot dog starts shooting bolts at Cowboy - He gets 1 hit and takes 1 stress for the wound. Eva is coming to help. Shepherd throws a sample case at the Dog, it bounces off its armour. Cowboy gets into the Mini-Gun adapted wheelchair and tries to contact the dog. (Stress has gone up to 9). But he panics and flees the area.

Officer Badog - He flees with Cowboy. Hunter the mechanic shoots at the dog and misses. Eva tries to control the dog with the head controller and fails. Ava 7 is going to bandage Rooster. The Dog reactivates. Eva gets a shock and the Controller falls off her head. The Dog shoots at Shepard.

Meanwhile, Rooster is jerked awake by someone falling against the Autodoc. Paralysed and only with hearing in only his left ear. But it is enough to hear Sheperd scream with fear outside the Auto-Doc.

He yells "What's going on out there?".

He can hear the retreating footsteps of Cowboy as he runs away in panic.

Rooster clamps his eyes tight with fear.....

That's where we will leave it for now. Until next time,

Regards from John, Kitty, Richard and myself,

Ivor Cogdell

Thoughts On - Alien RPG 9 (Update - in italics)

 Hi everybody,

                       I have found some of my alien notes, They are a bit disjointed and there is a gap since Diary entry 8. I will slot entries in as they come to my attention.

? - We explore the Air processors that are on the southern area of the planet.

? - "Nuclear Boy" fired nuclear missiles at two of the air processing plants, destroying the nuclear material that was inside, so that we could not drop a nuclear missile on him. (This was Cowboy's idea of dealing with the problem of "Nuclear Boy", We had tried three times, but they always malfunctioned for some reason).

? - While we were away, "Nuclear Boy" and "Terror Girl" have teamed up together, got into the research base next to the Alien ship, activated the Alien Nexus and went through the portal.

------------

10th May 2024 - We were exploring a WV base. We came across an Alien Queen, who we managed to kill, eventually. We came through battered and bowed, with two casualties. Dillon died with his head crushed in. Kiara died of a punctured heart. We managed to repair the Comms Array port and are now receiving signals from outside again."The Blue Hand are coming". Is that good or bad?

------------

7 June 2024 - We come across a crashed vessel. We salvaged the two Armoured Personnel Carriers, 1 week's rations, 4 hand grenades. We fix Edan's and the other's leg with an artificial one in the auto doc. We receive coordinates over the comms as to where the Blue Hand ship will land. Outside of the second nuclear blast zone.

27 June 2024 - I shoot the squid by Douglas. (Everybody gets 1 stress point). Cowboy gets hit by Edan using an alien weapon (friendly fire) and loses an arm. 

6 July 2024 - One squid exploded due to multiple hits. In the confusion, the group of renegades manages to swipe our second shuttle. The second squid attacks me and drags me into another room out of the line of fire. I managed to fight it off but suffered a broken knee in the process. I retreat with Cowboy and we drag him to an autodoc. He gets treated first, followed by myself, to fix my knee.

           We left the guards on the Blue Hand ship. We spotted an octopus nest on the way back to base. We avoid it for the time being.  Ava 7, the missing in action synth, was with the Blue Hand crew.Once back at base, She is now making a painting of an attacking Alien Queen for the Nexus room where we have installed a weighted net above the teleport point. We hope this will disorient whoever comes through first so we can capture them more easily.

9th August 2024 - Cowboy had an artificial arm attached, it did have a flashing red LED. On further inspection, it was found to be a tracking device that had been added to the unit. We disabled it and checked for any more that were hidden, but none were found. The Blue Hand crew have a space monkey and Cowboy asks if he can use the controller helmet. Damien, the Synth Blue Hand leader agrees.

Edan builds a mini Gun into the mobile wheelchair. We are heading to the research base. We feel vibrations, The power level has been ramped up to 6, meaning the Nexus Teleporter can be activated.

There are more notes to add, but it's time for bed.

Regards one and all,

Ivor Cogdell

Thoughts On - Alien RPG 8 (No Spoilers) - Updated

 Hi everybody,

                      We drove over in a APC to investigate the crash site we had recorded from a couple of weeks ago. By the looks of the tracks, someone or a Sinth had gotten out more or less intact and rode off in an APC. We got back to our main base to find the Comms Array destroyed!

                    We went inside and were jumped on by critters we had not seen before, waiting in the control room to ambush us. More stress! I hit one with a pistol and Cowboy hit it with a minigun blast. The next turn, I got hit with a panic attack and dropped my pistol! Cowboy shot it and then we legged it, losing three guys to face huggers as we did so. We locked the outer hatch and did a runner, lucky to escape in one piece.

                     We made our way to another part of the planet in the shuttle and APC, where we met up with a science expedition from Hadley's Hope that had been out of touch with what had been going on, as their com unit had gone on the fritz ages ago, loyaly, they had decided to carry on with their mission. (This may be specific to us, don't count on it happening to you!).

                    JAME'S PERSONAL LOG - "I think our Cowboy is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, as he has just ordered us, against our pleas to dissuade him from this idea, to put together a low yield nuclear bomb, which he intends to drop on our main base from the shuttle, to get rid of the aliens infesting it. With misgivings, The Doc and I complete the weapon........."

To be continued.

Regards all,

Ivor Cogdell

P.S. No Alien for the last couple of weeks as I was at an "Alestorm" concert at the O2 Academy and later came down with a cold - See "In the Wars 4".

Thoughts On - Alien RPG 7 (No Spoilers)

 Hi all,

           Just to put your mind at ease regarding our cliffhanger that occurred last week (See Alien RPG 6). One of our heroes was bleeding out with a gashed leg, or so we thought. But no, it turns out that our Junior member had a saving throw that was triggered (roll twice and use the lower damage) and he turned out to have actually suffered a crushed hand and a slashed tummy, so he was wounded but it was not terminal. He was dragged off to the lair of one of the aliens. After some planning, we managed to rescue him using some robotics and a bit of alien tech. That was the good news.

              The bad news is that he had picked up some sort of contagion from the alien gloop when they were using it to stick him to the roof. He and the doctor came down with some nasty disease. We threw them both into a large airlock, which was the closest thing we now had to a quarantine area since our original medical room and Autodoc Pod had been shot full of holes during the previous episode fighting the silver alien. Their stress went through the roof again.

             On top of that situation, we have just received a report that a group of renegade Sinth robots had landed at our main base and it was under attack with very few people there to defend it. We have still not had news of the other spaceship that crashed in the badlands. Yes, it's all go on LV 426.

Regards,

Ivor Cogdell

Thoughts On - Alien RPG 6 (No Spoilers) - Updated

 Hello Everyone,

                           Thanks for joining me tonight. Richard, our GM has just got the Alien Colony expansion and recommends it to all GMs. It certainly got his creative juices flowing. He was on fire tonight. 

The episode begins as one of our NPCs had been infected by something nasty, it was gradually coming on over a few days, but we could not find the source of the problem. We popped her into the Auto doc, just to make sure. When she came out of the auto doc, she was silver and proceeded to wipe the floor with us. She killed one NPC and very wisely, four of the party fled. 

                            One of the scientists put the research Lab's nuclear power plant into critical mode, with a 10-minute countdown. The two of us fighting this critter reached record stress levels (14 and 17) before we finally took her down with three minutes to go before the reactor was due to go BOOM. We are now permanently at stress 1 and have a phobia of the colour silver!

                             Later, two of our party working outside got jumped by a silver face-hugger-ish thingy, as I was watching in horror on the monitor. Our Marine went catatonic, due to the phobia he had just received, and the other junior party member drove off in a buggy, with this thing as a passenger. He went into shock and froze at the wheel, crashed the buggy, as you would expect, slashed his leg open and is now bleeding out. That is where the episode ended.

               Side note: This was a three-hour session as opposed to our usual two-hour sessions. Thanks as usual to Richard (GM), John and Kitty. I hope you are having as much fun in your game as we are.    

Regards all,

Ivor Cogdell

Thoughts On - Alien RPG 5 (No Spoilers)

 Hi Everyone,

                       I just thought I would give you a quick report on the Alien RPG. It is almost one year since we started the game and apart from the odd week here and there due to work commitments, we have been playing it on a weekly basis on Friday nights, two-hour sessions of mayhem. This goes to show what the GM has at his disposal in the way of terror and shock tactics. We keep coming back for more.

                            This week, one of the party (not me) attempted to take out a face-hugger type alien attacking a party member who was wearing a spacesuit, with his flamethrower, the fact that three other Colonial Marines were in the line of fire and coming to help their buddy did not seem to bother him. RESULT - Three almost unconscious Marines, one with a broken leg. The Alien was weak, but still up and battling. I finally managed to bag it with a pistol shot. SPLAT! Just a day in the life of a Colonial Marine.

        We are due to have some colonists arriving soon, I'm not too sure what they will think of the amenities that we have here, or rather what's left of them after all sorts of critters have been rampaging through them.

Thanks again to Richard and John for a great game.

Watch your six!.

Ivor Cogdell

Thoughts on - Alien RPG pt 4 (No spoilers) - Updated 18.0.2023.

 Hi Everyone,

                 It was another mad one on Friday night. We had dissension in the ranks, not a good thing. Items of a dangerous nature were stolen (not by us, this time). A suspicious explosion happened in the Chemistry Lab, thanks to one of our group's actions (See below). The ammo supply has also gone up in smoke, not of our doing.

 Aliens have reached our area and have started to munch on colonists. We seized control from the authorities, declared martial law (One of our team is a Colonial Marine) and decided to put the base under lockdown and evacuated one section, for "safety reasons". The base is split into habitat units with the ground and first floors, connected by walkways, plus utility sections, a vehicle bay and a landing pad.

We managed to corner and squish one alien, but people still seem to go missing despite our best efforts, so there is at least another one out there. Our synth, "Eva 6" has been taking rather a battering, needing repairs to assorted components.  (Naughty GM dice). Our contraband that we obtained last week went bad and is now useless to us. (You try to make a buck and the universe stomps on you). 

The base communications are ok (so far), we have alerted our company back home to our plight, so help is on the way, but they will take a distressingly long while to get here. Our Meds are running short, as you may expect. What will happen next?

I will have to leave you wondering about the details at that point. Richard, our GM is recording everything, but I am not sure if he will ever get around to editing it and posting it on the net. He does have a full-time job and a missus to keep sweet. Hi Kitty. She has been playing a starring role as Edan, the pyromaniac 10-year-old.

I can tell you that we have progressed to other locations, where we are trying to keep the populations from taking a nose dive, due to the actions of various forces at work, we have not always been successful, and casualties have sadly occurred. There is always something to plan and look forward to in the following session. We have not gotten near to using the expansion box sets yet. VTT compatible.

As you can tell, we are loving this game to bits. Go on, buy it, your GM will thank you for it, and they will have so much mayhem to create they will be jumping up and down with glee. It's true to the original setting. You will not be disappointed. Nightmares are optional. Have you started a game yet?

Regards,

Ivor Cogdell

For more information go to https://www.alien-rpg.com

Alien RPG (C) by Free League Games

Thoughts on - Alien RPG pt 3 (Slight Spoiler)

 Hi Everybody,

                      Just a quick update. We survived our first adventure and made it to a space station above a colony. After minor mishaps, we have transferred to the colony and did a job for the administrator, checking on "information received". We had NPC character fatalities along the way. Once at the designated location, we discovered the item and also hid some "contraband" for later collection. We returned to base with the requested item, only to discover another problem.....

                     There seems to be competing companies for assorted resources, which adds to the overall situation and its complications. The richness of the characters are enhanced and the plot can be expanded.

I hope this whets your appetite to try the game for yourself.

Regards,

Ivor Cogdell

For more information go to https://www.alien-rpg.com

Alien RPG (C) by Free League Games

Thoughts on - Alien RPG pt 2 (No Spoilers)

 Hi Everyone,

                    This is my second musing on playing the Alien RPG (C) by Free League Games. So far all of the PC's are still alive at session seven, each session lasting for about three hours play. We have had some disasters (big time), some errors of judgement, some out of our hands. We have come across aliens, we killed some, but have also had some casualties amongst the NPC's.

                 In battle, we get one attack and they get two. You need about 10 six sided dice per player. you roll your stress dice first, to see if you can attack it and then the rest of your dice pool to see if you hit by getting a six, damage is deducted from its hit points depending on what you were using to splat it with..

                Without giving anything away, there are other things you will be doing when you are not alien hunting, such as repairing things and trying to get your stress levels down. When you get bad news or you meet a new type of alien, your stress level goes up by one, which affects your performance and in some cases affects your team mates too. You know you are in trouble when your stress score reaches double digits. LOL.

                In our latest episode, we have just finished all of our repairs and are just about to head back to base. Will we make it. Tune in next time to find out.......

                I have been informed that there are quite a few types of missions that you can go on. A starter kit and expansion modules are available, which is great news, as we are all enjoying ourselves. That counts as a successful use of time and money. It can be used on the FOUNDRY virtual tabletop app.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Regards one and all, keep watching those corners,

Ivor Cogdell

For more information go to https://www.alien-rpg.com

 

Thoughts on - Alien RPG pt 1 (No spoilers)

 Hi everybody,

                        I have just played the first episode of the starter game of Alien RPG by Free League Games. By courtesy of my gaming buddies of long standing, Kitty, hubby Richard (the GM and NPC controller), plus the cat ( in-house random tables) and brother, John. There is a starter set and at least one expansion module to get. Richard got the game at a local games store.  Character creation was simple, just a few stats blocks and choices to make. I believe the online community have made content for the game as well. There are character sheets (Static and dynamic) and graphics to download on the website. There may be a Roll 20 virtual setting, but I do not know for sure about that. We were using video conferencing, but this only lasts for an hour, unless you get the premium version.

 The introduction got us into the mood of the game and established character types and frictions or connections between players. I am playing a space dock, red haired roughneck, James, nicknamed "Rooster" Kincaid.

                      There is a good setting and introduction to the background to the story. It took about three hours to get to the second act. How and why you get to this point is up to your GM and your characters. You can do as you please, at one point one of our children set fire to a lab. Yes, you will be pleased to know that there are stats for children. I(f you allow your actual munchkins to play, is up to you. (Our GM rated it as a certificate 15, for all of the violence yet to come). We did try to do a recording, but sadly, it failed. (The others were ok, but have not been edited by the gm yet. I will add a link when ready).

                     Once we arrived at act two, here is where you follow your own path. It took us about three hours of play to get to this point.  If you have seen the original films, you know what to expect. If you have not, you are in for a treat. Go find Alien and its sequels, including its clash with predator.

                    I was the first one out of the airlock and down the ladder, wish me luck....

Ivor Cogdell

For more information go to https://www.alien-rpg.com

Alien RPG (C) by Free League Games