Chariot of the Gods #2 - ALIEN

 With my preparation for Chariot of the Gods complete (see last post), it was time for action.

Warning: here be spoilers!

First off, wow. It’s a rollercoaster ride. I had four players and Chariot of the Gods took 4.5 sessions (each 2.5 hours long) to play through. So that’s 10-11 hours of play, given that there’s a bit of admin at the start and end of each session.

Introducing the game

I took this slowly and followed the checklist I had prepared myself. I had four players, two very familiar with Alien, one who had only seen Alien and one who had seen none of the films (at least at first—they all caught up).

I had shared with them the general background for the game that I had created, and I then ran through the situation for Chariot of the Gods, explaining what the ship was, what it was carrying, and where it was going.

The players then chose characters—and I only asked that they pick Miller (the captain) and Wilson (the company rep) as I knew there was friction there (and I didn’t want the senior officers as NPCs). The others picked Davis (the pilot) and Cham (the roughneck), leaving me with technician Rye and science officer Alder as NPCs.

Buddies and rivals: Although I used the buddies and rivals set up in Chariot of the Gods, I asked them to describe how their buddy and rival had helped/hindered them in the past, which set up some great inter-player friction.

Banter

I started the game with the crew fresh out of hypersleep, having their post-sleep breakfast. The “banter” that I’d included on the character sheets was a good way to get the players talking in character and reinforcing some of the information I’d already explained. I also chipped in, playing the two NPCs.

Discord and Google Drive

I didn’t enjoy running Hope’s Last Day using Roll20, so I went back to basics for Chariot of the Gods. I used Google Drive and Discord (with the awesome Sebedius dice bot that automatically rolls on the panic table if you roll a facehugger).

I used Google Drive to hold all the background information and a document where I tracked things like stress. (In hindsight, I wish I had used Trello. But, I’ll know that for next time.)

Chariot of the Gods: the good

Chariot of the Gods was a lot of fun to run. Act 1 is a slow build and ends bloodily, Act 2 increases the tension, and in Act 3 it’s just crazy as things come to a climax. Here are some highlights.

• Everyone died. I had no survivors as everyone was in the reactor room when it overloaded. Happily, this was down to player actions and not the NPCs or monsters, so it was satisfying for everyone. It was very cinematic.
• The monsters are great. The players quickly nicknamed the Abominations “space zombies”, and the neomorph was effective (and tough!).
• We had several tense moments with the creatures. I killed two NPCs offscreen, and a neomorph killed Captain Miller in Act 2. (The captain then took over the new science officer I created, Alder.)
• The agendas worked well and created lovely conflicts and roleplaying.
• The player playing the secret android had missed that I’d sent her two characters, so it was only halfway through that she started acting suspiciously. I thought she had simply been roleplaying her persona to avoid suspicion.
• The players worked out there must be at least another creature on board as they hadn’t found the thing that had taken Ava out. I’d forgotten about that, so it allowed me to drop in another Neomorph. I didn’t use it, but I did have the players find a weird, recently-hatched cocoon I figured it had spent that last however-many-years hibernating in. So they knew there was something else out there…

The players told me they found the game tense, and even when they weren’t offscreen (the players split up a lot), they were happy to sit and watch. I think because the system is so brutal, everyone kept watching (rather than being distracted by the internet) because they knew things could turn nasty in a split second.

Chariot of the Gods: the not so good

A few things that Chariot of the Gods could have done better: 

• As I mentioned last time, the adventure could be organised better. In one session, I couldn’t find where the elevators were described. They weren’t on the deck descriptions where I expected and only found them by searching the pdf. Deck plans annotated with page numbers for the GM would have helped.
• I also found myself flipping rapidly between the events and the locations. Events would happen, and players would move around the ship which meant flipping back to the room descriptions. In hindsight, I should have created myself an event sheet for each act. (I did this with the monsters and found that helpful.)

I don’t think I played the NPCs effectively. I’m not sure that’s Chariot of the Gods’ problem, but mine. There was so much going on, and the players were (rightfully) in the spotlight that I often forgot to include the NPCs in scenes. On reflection, I should have created a Trello board—at least the NPCs would be in our eye line during play.

(I didn’t use the Sotillo. Things were racing to a climax in Act 3 and I didn’t need the extra complication.)

Stars and Wishes

I have recently started listening to The Gauntlet podcast, and I was taken with their stars and wishes. At the end of a session, you award a star to any other player for something they’ve done well. And a wish is something you’d like to see more of in the game.

Chariot of the Gods was the first time I tried stars and wishes. Everyone got the hang of awarding stars really quickly, praising other players (and me!) for things they enjoyed. Wishes took a little longer to get the hang of—it’s too easy in Alien for the players to wish for an easier, less creepy game. But I will persevere as it’s a great way for everyone to give feedback.

System

As I said when I wrote about Hope’s Last Day, I find the Alien system fiddly. It’s much crunchier than I prefer. Happily my players were forgiving and helped me look up some of the less-used rules. (For example, only when I described the reactor room did I realise I needed the radiation rules.)

However, I found a few quirks frustrating. 

• How do players tell if another character is lying? I ruled that it required an opposed Manipulation roll.
• Speaking of Manipulation, the option of a manipulated character attacking you seemed odd. We didn’t do that, but I couldn’t work out the logic of how that worked.
• There’s no Science skill! We’d have rolled that several times if there had been one.
• We never rolled for Stamina, Mobilty, Observation, Survival or Medical Aid. Instead, we used Comtech and Heavy Machinery a lot. (I’m not saying this was bad, but something I noticed.)
• I struggled with air supply rolls—I couldn’t get them out of their suits! The consumables section (and why isn’t that in the index?) suggests a roll every Turn. Unfortunately, I forgot to do that (it’s dull tracking such stuff, and it’s not usually how I run my games), so most players didn’t have an air supply problem. The PCs checked for air on the Cronus, but I ruled that the 70-year-old bottles didn’t work with their gear, so Cham and Davis went back to the Montero for more air. But I still forgot to get them to roll. (I worked out that the air supply would only have lasted a Shift at most, but it would have been nice if the game had made that clear.)
• I do like the Panic rolls, but they don’t always work out. We had a situation where Wilson (on 5 Stress) tried to manipulate Cham over the commlink and he panicked and rolled Seek Cover--which made little sense. Seek Cover works fine when you’re in a firefight or up against monster, but less so in other situations. So my advice is to hold the Panic Table lightly—and maybe some non-combat alternatives are worth considering.
• Initiative for combat is clunkier on Discord than in person. We rolled d10s, and I fudged it when players had the same number. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it wasn’t as easy as drawing cards.

I do like the random monster attack tables. They’re exciting and graphic—and each monster behaves differently. So I’ll use that elsewhere.

Unfortunately, my books are now showing signs of wear. Black pages are all very well, but they show wear quickly. And the perfect binding for the starter rules set is feeling loose. It hasn’t come loose yet, but it doesn’t feel as sturdy as it once did.

System changes

I was pleased with the changes I made.

• Banter: I liked how banter got the players talking in character from the start, and it helped get the game moving. I’ll use banter again—it’s a painless way to start a game, especially a one-shot.
• Buddies/rivals: The Session Zero questions helped establish everyone’s buddies, which got those relationships working. The players then built on that to help them earn Story Points.
• Story points: My change to Story Points did what I wanted them to - it encouraged the roleplaying I wanted to see (supporting buddies and undermining rivals) and helped keep Stress from becoming too debilitating. Was two Story Points too many? Possibly, but I will try that again before changing it. The change didn’t eliminate Stress—Wilson was often in the wrong place at the wrong time and constantly seemed to be on four or five Stress.
• Armour: My armour change sped up combat (slightly). I still made players roll for their suits, but I will keep the change for the future.

Final thoughts

We had a wonderful time with Chariot of the Gods. The adventure is tense and creepy—and with Alien’s lethality, it becomes a rollercoaster ride.

It is a complex scenario with many moving parts and could be easier to run. You will need to put the work in if you will run Chariot of the Gods. But it’s worth it.

And now I’ve finished Chariot of the Gods I can start reading Destroyer of Worlds.