In the last WIP update, I talked about a ‘track’, as your adventure progressed you would work along the track and that would throw the horror elements into your game, without you needing to know what sort of xenomorph you are facing.
It isn’t working very well. I think in my mind’s eye I had just an Alien ‘the movie’ style setting. Trying to have one track for colony-based adventures, and ship-based adventures, and barren cold rock adventures, is putting too much work on to a pretty inflexible tool.
My fix requires two tools. The first will become part of the open question/inspiration prompt tool. I am thinking of a few alternative d66 inspiration prompts. Roll against two or more lists of words and combine them. Then I can have a list of installation-related words, and a list of planet-side-related words, and possibly company words, and so on. If then mix and match lists to best describe your particular setting.
The second tool is a really simple d6 x d6 table. The top row has the possible xenomorphs. To start this will just have the Engineer, Neomorph, and XX121. You can extend the table as you buy more Alien products and have more Xenomorphs to choose from.
Down the side of the table are the life stages.
You do not roll on this table until you reach Act III and roll three xenomorph icons on a 3d Stress roll, or your story reaches a point where the Alien must enter the story, for the story’s sake.
The idea is that you don’t meet the alien until the last minute, and you don’t know what the alien species is or what you are facing until that roll is made.
Engineers are a special case, and I am imagining the story spinning off into a Company conspiracy-type adventure when that happens.
In my initial goes, this method seems to be working better, and be more flexible.
I hope to have something to show by Friday. Tomorrow (May 13th) is my birthday, so not much work will get done.