ALIEN PLAYER CHARACTER

Player character number 1 anyway

Dean

Officer

Attributes

Strength 2

Agility 3

Wits 4

Empathy 4

Skills

Heavy Machinery, Stamina, Close Combat 1

Mobility 1, Ranged Combat 1, Piloting

Observation 1, Comtech 1, Survival

Command 2, Manipulation 2, Medical Aid 1

Talents

Frontline Leader

You get +2 dice to COMMAND rolls to rally a broken character

Equipment

IIC Flight Officer Licence

IRC MK.50 compression suit

Seegson P-DAT

Personal Agenda

Bring the crew back safe

A L I E N W A T C H L I S T

Okay, have now rewatched Alien and Aliens, Outland, the cutscene movie of Alien Isolation, watched the cutscene movie of Alien: Rogue Incursion and videos about how ALIEN Evolved Edition plays, reread Dark Horse Aliens v1 and 2. That’s probably enough homework to play.

The Tyrant Philosophers RPG playtest

The Tyrant Philosophers RPG playtest signups are now open for the Handiwork Games adaptation of the novels by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Mage: The Ascension mic drop

Snooty member of the Akashayana, Cara’s Mage Tradition of martial artists from 1883: “Let us see what our Tradition learns in the next century. That they let someone like you claim their name.”

Cara: “Well, I don’t wanna brag. So I’ll just kick your ass and you can draw your own conclusions.”

Hell yes proud of that one.

Star Wars Episode X

Director Jon Watts directed Skeleton Crew, writer Simon Kinberg co-created Rebels. Which are the most useful good credits.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire 2026

Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition

Empire

When I am through with you
There won't be anything left

We have...

A Toreador jazz singer turned club owner looking for the soul in music

A Ventrue former labourer looking to move up in the world

A Malkavian seer looking to make a buck with their gift

A Tremere phlebotomist looking for independence from the blood trade

A Hecata scientist looking to challenge death itself

I’ll have to be sure to connect the first three and last two so this doesn’t feel like two games at one table. (Still better than five one-player games!)

Looking to be a less scruffy bottom rung of the ladder game than usual. I’m sure there will be plenty of ways to get them in trouble though, just starting in nicer scenery.

(Stopping myself putting the previous post to the tune of Leaving On A Jet Plane.)

T minus 24 hours

The character sheets are printed, the rulebook and dice are in the bag.

Now we wait.

Idea still nebulous, as “I’ll run this because nobody else is” ideas always are.

After last year, might go more episodic in case of player churn.

Very aware that I could readily do like three other games. But, eh, only one Sunday slot this year.

Stanislav Petrov Day

Because one person doing due diligence can save the world.

There's A Monster At The End Of This Video!

There’s A Monster At The End Of This Video! from Sesame Street on YouTube

Thanks to Derek for the link: Reinventing the classics for new media

Jim Henson at 90

And still baffling studio people.

Playing ALIEN

A chance to play ALIEN at GEAS on Wednesdays, so stood by the GM first to make sure they had a player before some others came over. Could have also gone for Cosmic Dark but looked like it had enough. (And there were also games with wizards and stuff.)

Looks like no major changes to character creation in the Evolved Edition, and it only takes a couple minutes even without the helpful creator. I’m sure this has nothing to do with a potential high bodycount.

So far I’ve made an Officer, two Roughnecks, a Marine, a Marshal and an Entertainer, so I can start with a hero, a useful support type, a flawed civilian with a key skill, a fighter, a different protag, or someone all but useless that I can inflict on the group later on, mwa ha ha.

No androids... or are there?

And the most difficult part - coming up with a name that people can shout in an action scene. A good ALIEN-y name should have one or two syllables and a hard consonant.

Autumn

The equinox is upon us! At like 1.08 this morning.

Happy birthday Mark!

CHVRCHES, Roses

Fill a glass with delusions of the good days of blood and wine, of pearls for swine

Kinda gothy guitars, kinda crashy drums, opening  Portisheady thrum, spoken word bit, this is the stuff

The brain is actually two organs

The new research finding shows that the human brain consists of two ancient nervous systems cleverly packaged together - a more primitive part that regulates our hearts’ beating, our breathing and other functions, and another that makes us distinctly human, capable of poetry, mathematics and wondering about our own origins.

How long before a zombie movie addresses this?

GEAS one-shot AAR

Judging by tonight’s one-shot I should have put Drive on the cut down skill list, as there were three attempts to run enemies over in the final fight.

Emma Ruth Rundle, Enough

Emma Ruth Rundle, Enough

More Gothy and also more Nirvana-y than expected

Via Stereogum, via A Very Special Episode

Adapting a property that may not adapt

The Pod Universe and the creators’ predecessor Are You Afraid Of The Dark Universe? look at cinematic universes, constructing settings for lots of stories, so the same kinda thing as an RPG setting and series / campaign planning.

And as we know some settings make better big settings than others.

Have you ever considered a setting and decided it really wasn’t viable?

Have you ever decided to go all in on that?

This week, a guest pitch for the Eraserhead Cinematic Universe.

Labelled The Worst Idea We Could Come Up With

With a chapter heading Why Eraserhead? Dear God, why?

“We are gonna try and do our best job with this terrible idea.”

Kinda makes me wanna...

CHVRCHES V

The new CHVRCHES album preview starts at the same time as my fortnightly Vampire: The Masquerade session. This seems like a trick by a cruel god.

I mean

Come ON