Any suggestions for campaigns or individual scenarios? I’m not overly familiar with the genre, although I’ve seen Alien. Are we typically looking at landing on an alien world and exploring? If so, what do you have beyond random alien nests? Or are aliens overrunning a colonized world, in which case you have alien nests and overrun human structures? Something else?
I’ve got several guys clamoring for a Colonial Marines game, but I’m not sure what one looks like.
Start them off with standard military operations. Occupation, patrols, recon, peacekeeping. Then introduce alien weirdness.
I’d love to play USCSM version of “Three Kings.”
Cool. So human vs. human on an alien planet? Who are the factions you’re occupying/patrolling/keeping the peace with? Are you looking at the CM essentially being law enforcement in a rather hostile colony, or something else? In the source movies you generally don’t see the military interact with other humans, unless it’s set on earth (Predator), with its attendant factions.
Going on that Three Kings reference, I suppose you could investigate a report either of alien artifacts uncovered, or a riot or people in a far-flung outpost acting strangely, and follow the trail of the artifact…
Most Colonial Marines actions would be against other human beings, be they hostile colonists, rival nations’ armies, insurgents/terrorists or doing non-warfighting operations like assisting with disaster relief or other humanitarian efforts.
Gotcha. So a non-Earth planet colonized by multiple nations, etc. I’ve got some old Twilight: 2000 stuff I can mine for ideas on that. Thanks!
Have a look at the demo scenario of “The Regiment” (AW hack to play Colonial Marines)
Totally on target
Get 2 da choppa. And make sure to keep those guns that are the only reason you’re getting killed.
And land your giant flying spaceship/military base on the other side of bushwhack mountain so you can get ambushed and killed on the way to the alien’s.
And remember; Always dakka. Never enough dakka.
The PDF has stat blocks for soldiers and queens, but none for facehuggers or chestbursters. I thought I’d take a stab at the facehugger:
Facehugger
Might: 1
Nature: 5
Descriptors: Leaping, Implanting, Scuttling
Drive Off: 11Feint: +1D, Cunning hunter
Maneuver: +2D, Relentless leaper
Flee: 8Attack: +1D, Relentless leaper
Feint: +1s, Crawlspace crawler
Maneuver: +1D, Cunning hunter
Kill: 3Maneuver: +2D, Insectile scuttling
Feint: +1s, Choking tail
Armor: None
Instinct: Go for the face.
Special: Acid blood. If killed in hand-to-hand combat, the opponent must make an Ob 4 Health test. Failure indicates equipment or structures are destroyed as a twist or the opponent becomes injured or sick. Compromises will often include implanting an embryo into a combatant.
I tried to make it similar enough to the later lifecycle phases that it would be instantly recognizable, but different enough to make it unique. Order of Might I took from the PDF, and I gave it a relatively high Nature because it’s often found alone, and with a Kill conflict giving him 0.5x Nature for Disposition he’s still pretty easy to kill, but it is difficult to run away from, and almost impossible to convince it to stop coming–as you see in the movies.
Most of the weapons were taken from the soldier and the queen, although the Choking Tail is new, and Tireless Climber was replaced with Relentless Leaper.
Played a great game of this last night at Orccon in Los Angeles. Started out with a APC full of marines descending on a drop ship to secure corporate assets that had been overrun by insurgents on a terraformed colonial planet. We missile fire in low orbit ripped the ship apart and we had to crash land the APC and hump across an high rad wasteland in order to get past their fortified positions…that’s when the Predator attacked. We managed to kill the thing, but took heavy casualties with two PC marines knocked out, two injured and all of our NPC marines eviscerated. When the dying Predator triggered explosives strapped to its body, the two injured marines were slagged and we ended with my corporal captured and a lone PFC sitting back at base missing an eye.
Great fun!
So jealous!
We were so screwed! The PFC tried to turn back, but unfortunately my corporal had a Goal about using the mission to get a sweet promotion and a the dice to back it up 
I ran USCMC last night. After two tepid nights with TB, USCMC hit a groove and i think I finally got player buy-in. I think genre expectation had a lot to do with it. My players never played basic dnd and never experienced the classic murder dungeons. So it was hard to get on the same page. But all my players are huge fans of the Aliens franchise and with the switch of genre, they were perfectly ready to face the overwhelming odds.
This was also the first time designing a TB “dungeon” myself instead of using premades. It’s a bit easier in some ways when you make the dungeon yourself and know everything.
A couple of questions.
When medics heal an injury do the TB rules apply if they fail? Do you reduce a stat or can you do success with a condition or twist?
I was a bit fuzzy on inventory management. From what i can tell there isn’t any more loot tables, besides GM placed goodies.
A red shirt died in our game and the players started to cannibalize his gear and i was at a bit of a loss of what they could carry.
Hiya,
Glad you like it!
So if they want to carry anything more they have to drop something?
How about weapon range? My instinct was to call it a good idea to snipe xenomorphs that you spotted. (the players had beaten the xenomorph in a versus scout test) If they were in a conflict would it take a maneuver to close in with marines that established setting up long range? Or is the attack versus attack representative of that kind of charge?
I had fun and eagerly await the replicant rules =P
Weapon range should be reflected in the weapon stats (including Might). But otherwise, use common sense. The range on the marine’s rifle is quite long and should be enough to get most jobs done. The effective range on the pistol is probably about three steps.
Overloading calls for a test. Maybe Health. Maybe Soldier.
Otherwise, yes. You have to swap or drop.
Just reading over the rules - very neat…
Wondered though - when a base tests the operating costs, and fails, it becomes taxes (does this behave like resources?)
Is there a way to recover from that tax?
Hi, Dionysus. Thread necro is discouraged here. You’ll have more responses if you create a new thread and link to the old one.