In Space...... Alien RPG for Fantasy Grounds

In space….. no one gives a fuck if you scream.

That’s not entirely true. Your Game Mother will rather enjoy if you scream. And to be totally honest, you will very likely have a blast screaming yourself. In the Alien RPG, victims screaming is as good as earning XP and leveling up. And in many ways, your screams are indeed the very currency of your own advancement.

We are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here, so let’s take a step back and start from the beginning. The very beginning, 1979. Dan O’Bannon wrote, and Ridley Scott directed, what by many (myself very much included) is considered one of the greatest horror AND greatest science fiction movies of all time, Alien. We all know the story by now, and if you don’t, quit reading this and go watch it. It has all the trapping of a haunted house story, a body horror tale, Lovecraftian elements and much much more. Not many stories have been able to weave so many elements together so well, and still hold up year after year.

And then came Aliens, the ‘sequel’. Some seven years later, in 1986, James Cameron both wrote and directed what many consider (Again, myself very much included) one of the greatest science fiction action films of all time. It directly builds on the original story, and still very much has a core horror element. But this time, rather than our protagonists all being prey and clear victims, we now follow Colonial Space Marines, bad asses with heavy armament sent to wipe these Xenomorphs out of existence.

It doesn’t go so well for them.

But with these two movies, and a nod to a prequel of sorts, an entire universe of exploration and corporate intrigue was birthed. In under 4 hours of content, a very rich world was defined. Years to follow, novels and comics and future films would expand upon that world, but in all honesty if you know those first two movies you know everything you need to know to jump right into the Alien RPG. And if you watched those two movies, you already felt like you were part of this world. Both drew you in, and engaged you, and made you wonder what you would do in that same situation. And now, you CAN be in those situations.

Sucks to be you!

The game itself is published by Free League Publishing, and uses their year Zero Engine, but we aren’t going to focus on that here. Seriously, just go grab the game. Even if you just want it as a world reference as a fan of the Alien universe, it is fantastic. And the Stress/Panic mechanic is a true thing of RPG beauty. The game takes place starting in the year 2183, and covers all the official film releases minus Alien 3: Resurrection…. Since that one is set in 2379. Various forms of Xenomorphs, Engineers, other alien beasts, ships and weapons, all are well detailed in the core book.

But by mid October of this year (October 13, 2020), just in time for Halloween, the Alien RPG ruleset made its way to Fantasy Grounds. And at a price lower than a print copy of the core book, all the gorgeous art intact, it is a fantastic port to an incredible VTT. And that’s what we are going to focus on here today, how to create a character for Alien within Fantasy Grounds.

I- Loading the Rules Modules

First, we need to ensure the rules are loaded. As this isn’t a real tutorial on the basics of Fantasy Grounds, I will just go over the high points. When a session is created, the Alien RPG ruleset must be selected, and by default you will launch into some very cool retro green CRT type text. And that will completely make sense once you dive deeper into the lore and back story on this one.

Next you will want to go into your Library, and load the game Modules. It is also worth noting, this rules release comes with a user manual PDF tucked away in your Fantasy Grounds Documents folder. Any questions on which module does what, or how to actually sue the rules within the character sheet or combat tracker is pretty much covered there. A nice feature not all rules come with.

To create a character, we need to make sure that at the very least the Player Section is loaded.

II- The New Character

On our Menu, we want to click on the Characters label, which will open up our Characters module. And like all other FG games, click on the green plus sign to create a new Character. Most of the creation process takes place on the Main tab, but we will go over the other tabs also so we know what is where. The Main tab houses your Attributes, your Skills, your Talents, Health, Conditions and pretty much all the base mechanical concerns for your character. As a general rule, mouse over any Die icons or Face Hugger symbols. If your mouse becomes a hand, you can double click it to automatically create the direct dice pool and roll. If it stays a pointer (Like the yellow Face Hugger for Panic Roll), a single click will roll the die for you.

The second tab down is the Combat tab. This section duplicates a lot of the information from the main tab, but adds, you guessed it, sections for weapons and armor and other items needed in combat. Tracking your ammo occurs here, and ammo is handed very differently in this game than others you may have played. Just know that the ammo buttons are merely toggles, you flip them on or off, and there is no automation involved. Not yet at least.

Next is the Gear tab. This one deviates a bit from the official character sheet and encumbrance concept. Normally you track gear by how many lines it takes on your character sheet, and your Strength determines how many lines you have on your sheet, but for some automation to work, and formatting issues within FG, here we have a column to track our gears weight instead.

The last tab is Log. This is a very important tab, but is almost entirely just texts fields for you to type in what you like.

There is one exception however, and that is the RACE field. Race? You ask? There is only one Race, the human Race, right? Well, you would be correct….. unless you are an Android. Typing “Android” in this field actually turns some features of the character sheet off, like Panic, Stress and Pushing die rolls. Look to the game rules for more detail on that, just know that if you are going to create an android, type that here first, and then go about the modified character creation steps as normal.

III- Character Concepts

Now that we know what tabs are on the Character Sheet, what do we need to know to actually create the Character? That is pretty simple in this game. There are only a few main choices to make that have any mechanical impact.

First up is your Career. A Career represents a very stereotypical archetype from classic science fiction in general, and the Alien series more directly. On the right hand side of the screen, you can open the Careers list and see what is available. There may be more offered in the future, but the base nine from the core rules are more than enough to get started. Expanding each gives you more detail on how to create a character of that type.

The details of your Career will let you know what starting funds and items you have, but it also has a very important section regarding your Skills, Attributes and Talents. This is the most important bit of detail from the Career screen, and we will use this to define how we can build our character.

Worth noting, you don’t have to 100% stick to this as a cookie cutter molded character. Ask your GM (Game Mother) if you can play a Kid, but you don’t want to be 10 years old. Maybe you are a street rat, so the same Skills and Talents apply, but you don’t think your starting equipment would be a toy or a doll. Seems like a pretty easy change.

The Skills and Talents also have menu items on the right you can open up and get more detail with. When you are looking at Talents, you can even filter to specific Career Talents to make things a bit easier to navigate.

IV- Putting it All Together

So now we know all this, and we are ready to make our Character. We will do almost everything first on the Main tab, assuming we aren’t making an Android. So open the Main tab, and also open up your Career detail screen so you have see it as a reference. See these lines on the Career detail?

Those are the key lines you need to make your character. They are going to define what you do in your Attributes and Skills detail section. To change one of these values, you can either click on it and then type the number you want, or mouse over the value and hold your CTRL key down. With the CTRL held down, your mouse when can adjust the value up or down. Pretty simple.

A standard character gets 14 points to spend on their Attributes. The minimum you can put in each is 2, so really you can consider these all at a starting point of 2 and you have 6 points to spend. The maximum you can set an Attribute to is 4, with the exception of your professions Key Attribute. That one Attribute can be set to 5 at the start. You don’t have to set it to 5 if you don’t want to, but it generally ties into things your Career is typically good at. That’s it for Attributes, quick and easy.

Next up are all those Skills, well a dozen to be exact. When you roll a skill, your dice pool if your Skill value and the core Attribute value of the associated Attribute combined. So Close Combat, when you double click the little Die icon next to it, will roll a dice pool of your Close Combat skill rating and your Strength rating combined. Even if your Skill value is zero, you roll by clicking on the skill, and it will default to your core Attribute and still roll.

At character creation, you have 10 Skill points to spend, and you can put one point in each skill. The exception to this, much like your Attributes, if you have certain Key Skills for your Career, defined in those important three lines of text in the Career detail screen. You can put up to 3 skill points in your Careers Key Skills, but only one point in any other skills you might choose. 10 points, skills are done. Easy.

The last of those important lines of Career details lists three Talents. These Talents are unique to your Career. No one else can choose them, and at character creation, you get to pick one of them as your starting Talent. As of this writing, these are not draggable from the Career detail sheet, but you can open up the Talents menu and filter by your Career to narrow it down to your available options. Pick the one you want and drag it into the Talents section of the Main tab and you are done.

In the future, when you spend experience to learn new Talents, you still have your other two Career Talents available to you, plus all the other miscellaneous Talents available in the game. Dragging them from the Talent list to the main tab is how you will add each.

Right now, mechanically, your character is basically done. Yeah, equipment needs to go on the correct tab (dragged from the Equipment menu item/list) and your Agendas and other details need to be typed out, but as far as the dice rolling game engine stuff, your character is complete.

Push it!

While I stated this isn’t really a Fantasy Grounds OR an Alien RPG tutorial, there is one thing I will go into a bit more detail on. That is the Pushing a Roll feature of this Ruleset. The Stress and Panic system in Alein is flat out amazing. It is such a great way to simulate fear and stress, the fight or flight response, Adrenalin….. just all around great stuff. And the FG ruleset automates this very well.

When you make a roll, the Stress Dice are automatically added each time it is appropriate. And after that roll is made, whether you get any successes or not, you can click on the PUSH button to push your luck and roll again. This will automatically add one to your stress and then make your new roll with the new amount of Stress dice. If you had any successes, the chat field will show held successes to the left of a black dot, and the new die results to the right of it.

The Push feature can only be used ONCE per roll, just like the rules say. However, as of the time of this writing, if you have a Talent which allows you to Push a specific roll a second time, that is not yet implemented. This will have to be figured out and handled manually. Also, if a Panic result occurs, the chat will tell you, but right now it won’t automatically roll the Panic roll. The PC has to do that from the Main tab, or the Combat tab, or the GM can do it form them.

And that’s it. Pretty much all a player needs to know to jump in, create a character, and play the Alien RPG on Fantasy Grounds. There is more cool stuff within the rules, and they are pretty well implemented in the system here, but you will learn and explore those as you get more involved in this game.

As always, if you see any blaring errors here, let me know. Also, things may very well change as this is a new set of rules, and things will likely evolve with the Fantasy Grounds implementation, but I will try to keep this page as up to date as possible.