Aliens and Entities...
Paul Elliot, the man behind Zozer Games, who produced that "Hostile" RPG I've been enjoying of late has produced two small supplements to complement the main book. The first, "Pioneer Class Station", details a small 600 ton space station with a very characteristic set of 8 radially arranged fuel tanks extending from it's tower-like central core. It's described as a multi-role outpost- minor fuel depot, small-scale helium mining base, science station, comms relay or traffic control tower being some of the examples given, so the players could encounter it anywhere. The books also includes a short scenario where a contact has been lost with a remote science station and the last ship sent to resupply it and the crew are sent to go check it out.
This starts somewhat unpleasantly with the crew being woken by sirens the second they arrive, the local star having started emitting powerful gravity waves that have slammed into the ship as it was coming out of hyperspace and caused serious damage. You've got 30 minutes of breathable air left, but that's plenty since the reactor will go critical in just ten. Oh, and one of your crew (an NPC) seems to have been reduced to a pile of black powder in his hypersleep pod. Good luck.
Assuming the crew manage to survive this little mishap they'll be looking for a spare life support regulator and a new reactor coolant pump. Both of which should be available on both the last supply ship and the station. However some hasty scans will reveal a cloud of debris that comprises the remains of the supply ship, which got the worst of the gravity storm, and the station isn't responding.
Your crew can take the lifeboat and search among the wreckage for parts or pay a visit to the station, a wise GM will make them do both. Unfortunately the gravity storms have set loose some sort of hyperspace entities (shades of Paul Kidd's Genestorm RPG) that can consume humans, reducing them to black powder. Remember that NPC...? Yeah, there's already one on your ship, which will complicate matters for anyone left there doing repairs.
All excellent material to be sure, but one thing I found almost as good were the stats for the wrecked vessel mentioned, a Platform Supply Vessel, 5000 tons (comparatively small in the Hostile universe) that can haul a combination of dry cargo, liquids and passengers and is specifically stated as being to sort of ship sent to supply distant outposts, out-of-the-way colonies and isolated space stations. Just the sort of places your players can enjoy what Hostile can throw at them.
And that's where we come onto the second book, "Alien Breeds". This corrects one of the minor deficiencies with the main "Hostile" book by giving an in-depth look at a Xenomorph. It draws heavily on the "Alien" franchise. Well, it takes the alien from that wholesale, let's be honest; eggs, facehuggers, queens, the lot. However, lest your players get too confident, thinking "We've seen the movies, we know what to expect." it gives a myriad of suggestions for alternate forms. You can get spider-like versions and snake-like versions. There are puppeteer ones that implant two embryos- one you vomit up and one which stays in, controlling your actions. A variant of this is one that re-animates your shattered corpse afterwards. There are ones spread by spores (clearly inspired by Alien-Covenant), ones that can breath fire, ones that spit acid and ones that mutate YOU into the final alien form, to name but a few.
It also gives a scenario, a small mining colony that has stumbled upon a small number of eggs and now three adult xenomorphs are now hunting the colonists. However they seem to be getting help from one of the outpost crew. That puppeteer variant...? Yeah.
So, in all an excellent couple of additions to the Hostile range. You can pick the pdfs up from DrivethruRPG/RPGNow and the books from Lulu (drop a line to Paul Elliot first though, buy the print version and he might give you the pdf version gratis). One hiccup was that my Pioneer Station book had faded lines across most of the pages, obscuring lines of text and being blatantly obvious on images. I might have passed it off as adding to the "used future" aesthetic of Hostile, but sod that for a game of tin soldiers to I went "Oi!" to Lulu customer service. They responded in a few hours, asked for some pictures and, when I duly provided these, said, "Yup, sorry, our bad, another one is on it's way to you, keep the old one or chuck it.", so fair dos to them.
Next purchase might be Zozer Games "Zaibatsu", old-school cyberpunk action in futuristic Japan, actually set in the same game world as Hostile as it happens and uses the same "Cepheus" mechanic, but with a very different neon-lit, street samurai, black ice feel.
So, grab your copy of Neuromancer and stick Blade Runner on the vid. That future we left behind is coming back...
This starts somewhat unpleasantly with the crew being woken by sirens the second they arrive, the local star having started emitting powerful gravity waves that have slammed into the ship as it was coming out of hyperspace and caused serious damage. You've got 30 minutes of breathable air left, but that's plenty since the reactor will go critical in just ten. Oh, and one of your crew (an NPC) seems to have been reduced to a pile of black powder in his hypersleep pod. Good luck.
Assuming the crew manage to survive this little mishap they'll be looking for a spare life support regulator and a new reactor coolant pump. Both of which should be available on both the last supply ship and the station. However some hasty scans will reveal a cloud of debris that comprises the remains of the supply ship, which got the worst of the gravity storm, and the station isn't responding.
Your crew can take the lifeboat and search among the wreckage for parts or pay a visit to the station, a wise GM will make them do both. Unfortunately the gravity storms have set loose some sort of hyperspace entities (shades of Paul Kidd's Genestorm RPG) that can consume humans, reducing them to black powder. Remember that NPC...? Yeah, there's already one on your ship, which will complicate matters for anyone left there doing repairs.
All excellent material to be sure, but one thing I found almost as good were the stats for the wrecked vessel mentioned, a Platform Supply Vessel, 5000 tons (comparatively small in the Hostile universe) that can haul a combination of dry cargo, liquids and passengers and is specifically stated as being to sort of ship sent to supply distant outposts, out-of-the-way colonies and isolated space stations. Just the sort of places your players can enjoy what Hostile can throw at them.
And that's where we come onto the second book, "Alien Breeds". This corrects one of the minor deficiencies with the main "Hostile" book by giving an in-depth look at a Xenomorph. It draws heavily on the "Alien" franchise. Well, it takes the alien from that wholesale, let's be honest; eggs, facehuggers, queens, the lot. However, lest your players get too confident, thinking "We've seen the movies, we know what to expect." it gives a myriad of suggestions for alternate forms. You can get spider-like versions and snake-like versions. There are puppeteer ones that implant two embryos- one you vomit up and one which stays in, controlling your actions. A variant of this is one that re-animates your shattered corpse afterwards. There are ones spread by spores (clearly inspired by Alien-Covenant), ones that can breath fire, ones that spit acid and ones that mutate YOU into the final alien form, to name but a few.
It also gives a scenario, a small mining colony that has stumbled upon a small number of eggs and now three adult xenomorphs are now hunting the colonists. However they seem to be getting help from one of the outpost crew. That puppeteer variant...? Yeah.
So, in all an excellent couple of additions to the Hostile range. You can pick the pdfs up from DrivethruRPG/RPGNow and the books from Lulu (drop a line to Paul Elliot first though, buy the print version and he might give you the pdf version gratis). One hiccup was that my Pioneer Station book had faded lines across most of the pages, obscuring lines of text and being blatantly obvious on images. I might have passed it off as adding to the "used future" aesthetic of Hostile, but sod that for a game of tin soldiers to I went "Oi!" to Lulu customer service. They responded in a few hours, asked for some pictures and, when I duly provided these, said, "Yup, sorry, our bad, another one is on it's way to you, keep the old one or chuck it.", so fair dos to them.
Next purchase might be Zozer Games "Zaibatsu", old-school cyberpunk action in futuristic Japan, actually set in the same game world as Hostile as it happens and uses the same "Cepheus" mechanic, but with a very different neon-lit, street samurai, black ice feel.
So, grab your copy of Neuromancer and stick Blade Runner on the vid. That future we left behind is coming back...