Other Alien - Black Seas of Infinity (RPG Campaign Notes)

The Mighty KRP

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Alien - Black Seas of Infinity

"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."
H.P. Lovecraft

Here are some notes for an Alien RPG game I don't have time to run this year. You are free to use what you want, how you want. Work in progress, more to come.
 
Lindsay

Career: Pilot

Age: mid-Twenties

ATTRIBUTES
Strength: 2
Agility: 5
Wits: 3
Empathy: 4

SKILLS
Piloting: 3
Ranged Combat: 3
Comtech: 3
Manipulation: 1

TALENTS:
Reckless

SIGNATURE ITEM:
Personal Pendant (reveals a lot about Lindsay, including their true gender. Lindsay must regard it openly to reduce Stress).

GEAR:
Hand Radio
Seegson P-DAT




Lindsay might have been born in any of the planets of Known Space. But they were decanted on the planet Tormance in the Arcturus system. Most Arcturans tend to stay in their own system. Arcturans are insular as a rule because the 'wild-gendered' (most everyone else) simply don't understand the Arcturan's transcended (as they see it) genders.

But a romance with an outsider from the other end of Space introduced Lindsay to piloting. And as many have found since the Wright Brothers, piloting is really their first love. But there weren't many piloting opportunities when merely keeping to the Arcturan system. If Lindsay wanted to fly, they would have to leave home for the greater universe beyond.

It turns out Lindsay enjoyed just exploring the universe as well as flying to different parts of it. And when piloting gigs weren't readily available, Lindsay returned to the noble calling of companionship. Companionship is a simple career and calling in Arcturan space that is often referred to and thought of more crudely in most of Known Space.

So far, Lindsay is happy travelling and rarely feels homesickness. The only real sticking place is when Lindsay's uncommon gender is objected to. They appreciate those others who can accept Lindsay for the whole person they are.

GM Notes:

The genesis for Lindsay is almost completely from a throwaway bit of dialog in Aliens when one marine was teasing the other about 'Arcturan poontang' and the other confirmed that gender didn't matter when Arcturans were concerned at least in that capacity. There's no guarantee that either marine was either telling or expecting the truth and whether such Arcturans really such people or perhaps just a fantastic meme that all present were familiar with. It might have been just silly banter.

But some fanon came up with the idea that Arcturans were another species of sentient that didn't let gender get in the way of tactile relations with agreeable humans. But as others pointed out, sentient life should be rare and strange in Aliens. Smart aliens shouldn't be familiar and everyday in this eerie setting. The game might more start to resemble a scary version of Star Trek than its own unique voice.

Another more palatable idea was that Arcturans were simply one of many human societies with more flexible ideas about gender than usual. There are many human societies where this is the case.

And that seemed to satisfy most fans. Arcturus was a kind of 'Space Thailand', at least as some Vietnam Vets might have imagined Thailand to be. James Cameron has admitted that the Colonial Marines were partly based on Vietnam Vets. Remember, the Vietnam War wasn't that long over when Aliens was filmed. And so, Arcturus has become a sort of libertine paradise that grunts dream about for R&R. It is probably more fantastic in lonely marines' dreams in reality. But dream or reality, Arcturus is a very human place even at its most fantastic.

Even in our world, good old-fashioned humans can make very different societies. But I am thinking, we have a science-fiction universe to play with. Why not take Arcturus even further than our mundane world could possibly reach...?

In my game, Arcturus was an alternate society that believed they could eliminate bigotry and prejudice by eliminating the actual differences between people. At first, they blended the genes of their children. Each of the forty-something chromosomes came from a different donor. Acturan babies were still human but with the DNA of more than forty different parents. This had the effect of averaging the features of young Arcturans, which due to human quirks made them more generally pleasant if not downright attractive. This was something the Elders hadn't planned on but tolerated once it was expressed (in an interview, James Cameron described the Arcturans as very attractive in general).

But there was one major difference among people that remained. The Elders fixed that as well. They began to design different and unique sexes and genders for the next generation. Lindsay's particular gender is called gethen after the prescient novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin. (Yay, I get to riff off another science-fiction favorite).

Lindsay prefers the pronoun 'they' but isn't too particular as long as they are addressed respectfully otherwise. Like the fictional Gethen, 'he' will also work as it is sometimes considered the default pronoun of traditional English.

I picture the companionship work Lindsay sometimes does as much like Companionship in the Firefly/Serenity universe (another shoutout!). Lindsay is saddened by how little the spiritual aspects of companionship are valued in the greater universe. Or if you would prefer, Lindsay really wants to be known for their piloting skills, rather than a difference that won't mean much to most people they interact with.

It takes some work to hide such an exotic gender in the terribly close quarters of space living. But trying to deliberately hide this difference may simply attract more attention.

In your game, you can use Lindsay to explore alternate genders and their ripples in society. But Lindsay works well as a simple outsider.
 
SPACECRAFT:

With no rules yet published for creating spacecraft, we will have to use the published spacecraft for now. I personally am very fond of the Prometheus but official game stats are not available for that yet. Until then, the most detailed ship is the Bison-class, like the Nostromo, although the plans are not as detailed as I would like.

Bismuth-compatible modular habitation

Early in the 21st-Century, the Bismuth corporation developed modules for habitation and released their specifications as open source. The modules all had extra piping, cabling and maintainance shafts so that no matter the modules were connected, power, plumbing, data and maintenance shafts could connect from one end of a Bismuth-habitat to the other end or any other point in between.

At first, it seemed cost-inefficient to make such generally compatible modules when careful planning would make a cheaper module dedicated to more specific purpose. But such universality meant that modules could be made at such a grand scale that volume discounts made the modules competitive.

The Bismuth corporation eventually went bankrupt, rumors that the young Weyland-Yutani corporation had something to do with this behind the scenes were never proven. Yet the modules themselves were quite durable and vast majority of them survived the company.

Easy to install also meant easy to steal, find. And soon Bismuth modules were scattered all across Known Space, some far from where they were originally installed. Other corporations created new modules to Bismuth standards. The modules were easy to upgrade with new electronics even if the modules were a century old.

Over time, Bismuth-style habitats became incredibly complex with wild and crazy structures. On a functioning habitat, with friendly personnel and a sophisticated A.I., the random and idiosyncrasies of a given habitat were just charming challenges for newcomers. Unable to be just intuited, a Bismuth hab is an inside joke for the locals that strangers are outside of.

But when the AI is down and the locals disappeared, a Bismuth hab can be a very scary place indeed.

GM Notes:
In the old-school RPGs, particularly the fantasy ones, you could 'roll' a dungeon. That is, you could randomly develop some underground labyrinth on the fly. No one really worried about logic, consistenly or realism. Why was a giant dragon in an underground chamber only accessible by tiny tunnels? It was gaming in the Seventies, baby.

But the Bismuth hab modules offer an explanation why a modern, realistic setting might have a wild maze of a frontier outpost to further unsettle and disorient PCs while the latest local cosmic horror stalks them.
 
EQUIPMENT:

I rather like the gear supplied in the core book and would only add one item.


DEVICE····WEIGHT····COST·····EFFECT
Specs·····-·········1,000····Visual, Audio and Data transceiver worn in glasses.

The original manufacturer called these devices S.P.E.C.S. (Streaming Personal Enhanced Communication Spectacles). Since then, there have been many differing versions of such gadgets and the terms 'specs' now commonly refers to any of them (despite failed litigation by the original manufacturer).

Specs stream video, audio, tracking and basic biosigns to authorized recipients. The wearer also can receive data through the HUD lenses and tiny speakers. The smart glasses can understand their limited range of applicable voice commands very well. Tiny sensors continually read the position and gaze of the eye and adjust the HUD display to match.

While they may be cost-prohibitive, they are included free with data contracts and many corporations and colonies assign them to their people as they can be quite useful. Often unsaid is the ability to track and record a wearer, knowingly or otherwise.

Despite seeming very delicate, the frames are quite durable. But the specs' sensors and network connections are notoriously unreliable in emergency or stress situations. In short, they work perfectly until you really need them. As they are comfortable to wear, they are generally worn as a backup when out of civilized areas. Any communications problems can be usually fixed within moments. But those moments are usually when you need the specs the most.

GM Notes: One thing I loved about the Aliens and Prometheus movies were the nifty but unreliable communications technology (the Colonial Marines' helmet cams and the Prometheus' spacesuits HUD display). As a GM, those finicky devices can work or not work as I wish moment by moment, shadowed corner by shadowed corner. It is a great tool for control and mood setting.

More fun than broken glasses and those that work perfectly are those that work sometimes. "The creature is heading towards you but you can escape by taking the (crackle of static)-tunnel!" Maybe there will be better reception in that darkened hangar? But this can be misused. The user should have some idea of how to get the glasses working or to better reception and how difficult that should be.

These glasses also help with a slight problem with the Alien movies, the communications and computer interfaces are quite dated compared to the tech of today. The in-universe explanation is that primitive tech is more reliable in the fickle frontier. But these glasses help. Essentially, they are a smartphone you see and hear through.
 
CORPORATIONS

Mako Investment Group (MIG)

The Mako shark is the fastest shark in the water. This was as poetic and visionary as the 20th-Century founders of the Mako Investment Group ever got. Beyond that, the group (usually referred to as just 'Mako') is a collection of soulless robber barons. Their M.O. is to buy weak and unstable corporations and gut them to make a profit, not caring about the shattered livelihoods or even lives they ruin in their wake.

As an organization, Mako will bend the law and even break it if they think they can get away with it. A fair amount of the black budget is making sure 'sympathetic' politicians and bureaucrats are well-placed in whatever governmental or regulatory organization Mako is likely to interact with. Mako has finally learned the value of a good public image and are willing to spend a few megacredits (measured to the old-fashioned penny) on charitable projects if it ultimately helps the bottom line.

Strictly speaking, Mako is privately-held corporation with some stock offered publicly, although never enough that the public has a collectively majority interest. Some members of Third-Empire royalty are known to be part of the board of directors and this is milked where new money craves old prestige. But Mako is not so patrician as to not make cautious inroads with the UPP. The UPP have had to enter into wary business dealings with the filthy capitalists as the war has left them even more destitute. Other known corporations secretly have enough stock in Mako to be setting policy behind the scenes.

Even Mako's defenders would have to admit that sometimes Mako acts blindly buying and stripping business that, with just a little TLC would actually make a true profit. Even Mako's detractors must concede that Mako 'feeds' on dying companies anyway and sometimes runs them with a ruthless efficiency that keeps employees employed where they would not have been for much longer.

Unable to replace every human workers with synthetics (they have tried), Mako knows enough to pay its most talented and dedicated workers what will keep them working for Mako. Mako also invests heavily in investigating the backgrounds of its workers to find new ways of motivating them. Working for Mako is a very Darwinian experience, you either have the be most talented or the most loyal. Usually, you have to be both.

One nifty employee benefit is placement in the Mako Corporate Colony, a quite pleasant world as worlds go. Mako knew enough to spend to get this motivational hook for its productive employees. Very few ordinary folk have a chance at living at such an Earth-like paradise without at least two commas in their credits accounts. Rumors that, once isolated from regular society at large, colonists are manipulated into a cult-like loyalty to Mako are unproven.

What is proven about Mako is their 'shiver of sharks', small groups of company troubleshooters that travel to distant places preparing to optimize the latest acquisition. Each of the shark teams has a spaceship named after one of the many species of sharks. Why Mako is so obvious about the shark teams given a likely dour reception upon arrival is a mystery in the business world. Some have wagered the obvious shark teams draw attention from the suspected secret teams that arrive in non-descript ships under prosaically-named shell companies.

GM Notes: What game use is Mako when there are very well-developed corporations already in the game? Well, Mako is a company that buys other corporations rather than have a defined identity of its own. So, week by week, Mako Sharks can be rustling cattle on one world, hunting rogue synthetics on another world and week and investigating strange alien signals the week after those.

If you like Mako efficient, they are very good at what they do and the PCs are the best of the best. If you like them less than professional, then poor Mako Sharks are sent to strange locations where they are not wanted to try and save businesses they don't understand with skills they don't have.

Most corporations have at least a pretense of providing desired goods or services, even Weyland-Yutani. But investment bankers, the corporate raider kind, don't really do anything for anyone except their stockholders. In a game of ruthless corporations, Mako is just that more ruthless.
 
The Chromium Empire

On the Frontier is a tiny world that nearly died through terrible mismanagement by its 3WE colonial government. In the end, a desperate coup led by a minor noble family succeeded in saving the population. Declaring independence from the 3WE, the Chromium Empire (all two systems of it) has discovered various organic and inorganic riches in its tiny domain.

The various major polities have calculated to the single credit the cost of 'absorbing' the little tin-pot monarchy, all for the good of its people of course. Shepherding the various riches of those distant worlds would just be a bonus. The Chromium Empire and UPP have been on good terms despite their very different ways of governance. The 3WE is waiting for the right time to reclaim its upstart rebellious outpost. The UA is trying to remain neutral. Deep down, the Chromium Empress knows that the moment it becomes cheaper to be taken over than to be negotiated with, her tiny monarchy is doomed. So she tries to play one great power against another. It can't last.

GM Notes: The major powers of the Alien Universe are very well-thought out, IMO. Somewhere in that great space, almost any political intrigue or espionage story can be played out. The only real exception is the monarchies and empires of Space Opera. The very tiny Chromium Empire is provided for those GMs who might want this niche option.

Depending on your likes, the CE can be a fairy-book kingdom set into the unforgiving cosmos of Alien. Or for all its royal trappings, it might be something like North Korea. I picture the Chromium Empress as someone with a minor 3WE title (given the libertine nature of royals, this may not be as exclusive a club as the 'Empress' would like) trying to keep her worlds safe from everyone else. She is smarter than most give her credit for but not quite as smart as she thinks she is. A good example of what might happen with the Chromium Empire is the Hawaiian Islands. Originally the islands were an independent nation but US corporations and some government influence essentially just 'claimed' Hawaii for the US. Their leverage was so overwhelming this happened without any real chance of military or even peaceful protest.
 
Casey

Doll (Deluded Synthetic)

Career: Medic
Age: Early Twenties in appearance.

Attributes:
Strength 3 (6 in synthetic identity)
Agility 3 (6 in synthetic identity)
Wits 4
Empathy 5

Skills
Mobility 3
Observation 3
Medical Aid 3
Manipulation 1

Talent
Compassion

Signature Item: A tiny stuffed newt, a gift from childhood

Gear: Personal and Surgical Kit



Casey has spent the last few years trying to find herself. She is a self-described fugitive from a very sheltered upbringing.

She remembers that her parents were no more hovershuttle than most until the incident. One of Hyperdyne's newer model androids had 'malfunctioned' in the company colony. Scores of people died before the matter was resolved. Casey was herself left in critical condition. Her parents were quite well-placed in the company and their settlement was quite generous. For all that, it took almost a year and most of the family savings before Casey was in good health again. Her memories are still quite fuzzy about the whole affair and her brief life before it.

It left a mark on her parents as well. They used what influence they had to gain a position on a more isolated lab world. There they could keep working in peace. There they could minimize harm to their daughter. And it was stifling for Casey. She was watched and monitored, discouraged from interacting with people she did not know.

It did leave her time for studies. A talented and promising medical student, Casey soon graduated to a full medic and has taken a position requiring travel far from her home, as far from her home as she could manage. Casey still gets transmissions and care packages from home. She still feels the pangs of homesickness. But somehow she feels her answer is far from home and out in the stars.

If only she knew the truth. The real Casey (or perhaps it would be better to say the FIRST Casey) actually did die from the rouge android's rampage. But the young girl had the best brain and genetic scans and endless media of her young life. It was easy enough to construct an android copy of Casey and to then replace that synthetic body with other synthetic bodies as Casey 'grew'. Soon enough, Casey was a young woman. Her parents had kept her sheltered but she escaped to find her own way in the universe. Now her parents are trying to discreetly find Casey before she or others realize her true nature.

GM Notes:

Casey psychology is very unusual compared to the human baseline. Essentially, Casey believes she is human and will rationalize away or just repress any proof to the contrary if she can. The exception would be if continued insistence that she is human would just make it more obvious that she is very much not. For example, if Casey's white 'blood' is revealed by an injury, she will simply attend to the injury if she is alone. She will 'forget' that the blood was white instead of red. But if her injury is revealed in front of others, believing and insisting that she is human would just make her exposure more obvious and worse.

Her subconscious makes her a private and reserved person to help hide the revelations a more intimate relationship might reveal. Also, the usual android inhibition to violence manifests as a pacifistic and meek personality. While her parents believe that Casey is malfunctioning in her rebellion, it could be that a human Casey would have made the exact same decisions and that android Casey is keeping to her human façade programming perfectly.

As far as legality goes, it is your call as to whether such a deluded android is legal. But it is a nifty trick to have Casey aboard ship. When her white blood is revealed, most players will think Casey to be an android infiltrator. And this means you can keep hiding the real android saboteur. :-)
 
Pops

Career: Roughneck

Age: see below

ATTRIBUTES
Strength: 3
Agility: 3
Wits: 4
Empathy: 4

SKILLS
Heavy Machinery: 2
Stamina: 2
Close Combat: 2
Pilot: 1
Medical: 1
Comtech: 1
Manipulation: 1

TALENTS: The Long Haul

SIGNATURE ITEM:
Early twenty-first century smartphone, only really good for solitaire nowadays. Old habits and old friends die hard a century or two on...

GEAR:
Cutting torch
D6 doses Hydr8tion
Stash of hard liquor
Seegson C-Series magnetic tape recorder

Pops had it all, wealth, health, some small measure of fame and many loved ones. Every year of this new millennium seemed to be so much better than the first. But then came the diagnosis, Cancer, the Big C. He only had so much time left.

But Pops had one more stroke of luck, the mad genius Peter Weyland had finally perfected his prototype hypersleep chambers. And he needed volunteers. Pops met the criteria and was frozen succesfully. Once a year, he was defrosted for one day which was the best compromise for the family he left behind and the time the cancer still allowed him.

After a century or two, the particularly viscous type of cancer Pops had was finally curable. And Pops was awakened for what some thought was the last time. But Pops found himself a stranger in time. His family had aged away from him and his great-grandchildren were strangers. This current present was no more valuable to him than an uncertain future. Pops spent a few years becoming techno-literate enough to survive in this new age even to make a living long after he should have died.
Eventually Pops became what is colloquially called a 'Space Trucker'. Now he sleeps for a living, along with other lonely souls who do the same. It is not the same as lost family but it will do for now..

GM Notes:

Pops is a Buck Rogers, Rip Van Winkle character for the Alien Universe. He was born in the Twentieth or Twenty-First Century depending on how physically old you want to make him before he was defrosted and the life he has now. In canon, the first usable hypersleep chambers were invented in the Twenty-Twenties. Pops could only have been a young adult when frozen, old enough to consent to the freezing and have a family started. Or Pops can be really old, a senior citizen when he was frozen. He would have been old enough to see the original Alien in old-fashioned theaters were he not already trapped in that universe. Cancer is one of the modern ills that seems to still bedevil the later centuries. Ripley's daughter, Amanda, dies of cancer in fanon of all things.

It likely cost a great deal of money to keep someone in the early hypersleep chambers. But this does not necessarily mean that Pops himself was rich. He could have been worth a great deal as a research subject and Weyland Industries (later Weyland-Yutani) underwrote all of the costs. Pops also wasn't the very first of the sleepers or he would be forever famous (there can only ever be one first). But it could be that Pops was very talented, famous or any other level of relative success. He may also be privy to many secrets the later decades have forgotten. Pops may even be quite wealthy, his investments growing over his long sleep.

The one link to now Pops has is his family line. His enforced sleep kept him from truly knowing his own children so he is determined to stay as close to his later descendants as they will allow him. Pops is a living example of one factor of life in the Alien Universe, sleeping away from others.
Had Ripley had some other normal life on another freighter, would she still have eventually outlived and become 'younger' than her own daughter, Amanda?

Pops is quite devoted to his crewmates, the only people travelling to the same places and at the same 'speed' as him. Denied the present, he is now trying to reach the furthest future he can by sleeping towards it. Pops is a great fan of the 1970's and knows how to show off the best of that ancient decade. This taste can spread to his crewmates. This could help explain the (now) retro Seventies styling of the Alien franchise.
 
Poe
Scientist

Strength: 2
Agility: 3
Wits: 5
Empathy: 4

Talent: Inquisitive

Skills:
Comtech 3
Medical Aid 1
Observation 3
Survival 3

Signature item: A tiny dreamcatcher pendant with a spider in the middle (the closest recognizable thing to a facehugger the adult Poe can conceive of).

Equipment:
Hand radio
Neuro visor
Seegson System Diagnostic Device
Personal medkit


The facehugger crawled into the crib and, true to its name, hugged the face of the tiny boy. Upon attachment, it realized that the toddler simply didn't have the mass and resources to grow an embryo properly. The alien was perceptive enough not to harm the child, a dead host did not serve the hive. The creature then released the child. In human terms, it was tossing the small fry back into the lake to grow. In this hive, there were more eggs than adult humans. Some would escape and some adults might escape with the infant. As a species, xenomorphs were patient. Today's infant human would be tomorrow's host.

The beast skittered off with no further reason to recall the tiny seed prey it left behind. But the boy would never forget it...

Poe was told that his colony had suffered a catastrophic failure that had killed most of his family and razed most traces and records of the colony. Adopted with his cousins, he had no reason to doubt this story. Even later, when he was old enough to understand the rumors that the Company had 'sanitized' the colony to cover up some embarrassment or Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know, Poe simply accepted the public account of the lost colony. At least at first.

But then came the nightmares, terrifying creatures tormenting a small child and stealing away everyone he ever cared about. He was sent to the best psychologist and professional dreamers the Company allowed. They might not have cured the nightmares but they were managed to the point that Poe could function.

As Poe grew up, he spent as much time with professional dreamers as his cousins and friends. He began to develop a skill with dreaming enough to match his almost frantic interest in the subject.

Over time, he found a profitable career as a scientist that specialized in dreams and trauma. But the work was frustrating. There were such prudish and timid limits on what the dream machines and the dreamers who used them were able to do. If only the safeties could be shut down but under the very best of supervision, of course.

And so Poe became an amateur dreamer. It was much easier to get to the heart of dreams without so much professional oversight. To help legitimize his more aggressive dream equipment and therapy, Poe became an expert in horror fiction. From the earliest mythology to the latest holos and recorded dreams, Poe was a gourment of terrifying tales and ghost stories.

Coworkers and friends know Poe as a fun guy who brings the dreams. They can be scary but they are resolved in the end...usually.

GM Notes:

One of the most interesting but underplayed aspects of the Alien Universe is the existence of dream technology. People can share, record, copy and edit dreams. Poe uses dream therapy for cathartic release. He puts people through a horrific experience that they are able to resolve resulting in a net reduction of stress assuming everything goes well. He is secretly recording their experiences as a kind of research project. Poe also tries to shape the dreams of others. Most days, he is a moral man but he is driven to understand his dreamers. And nothing reveals a soul as much as its fears.

For his own part, his own experiences are buried and repressed in his subconscious. The memories are fairly accurate but formed by a mind so young, most psychologists believe they are creations of imagination formed by a brain so new the differences between reality and fantasy were blurred. I am using an actual encounter with Xenomorphs as Poe's barely remembered trauma but you can substitute any kind of freaky alien encounter or other trauma.

Poe's dream tech and his knowledge of classic horror tropes and genres allow you as GM to play different genres of horror or even different RPGs. The general rule is this, the dreamers gain stress points as they go through the scenarios but reduce more stress points then they earn as they resolve the story. This works well unless the story is interrupted or the characters don't have a happy ending in their guided dream.

It can also be used to enter a dream sequence into an Alien game. Remember, characters don't always know that they are in a dream. Think of Ripley's chestbusting dream in the first scenes of Aliens. It was a shock until we realized that Ripley was dreaming. This is like hot sauce, don't overuse it in your game.
 

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