Coincidently, we did a playthrough of the mini-adventure included with the Alien RPG hardcover last Saturday. (I meant to post about it here, but forgot.) It was my family and a buddy, with me as GM.
We all liked the stress mechanic. It really did spice things up when the poop hit the fan towards the end of the session. There was a lot of sweating when folks were building up high levels of stress and rolling on the panic table.
The only real complaint everyone had was that it really seemed like the studio wanted you to buy their dice, so their goofy crosshair and chestburster symbols are used all throughout the rules in place of the six and one faces of the die. This made it difficult for us to quickly parse what we were rolling since we didn’t have the official dice. We were using regular 6-sided dice - a black set with white pips for the base, and a red set with black pips for stress. We were constantly stopping to remind each other which outcome was the better/worse roll. “Wait. The two ones are bad on the red, right? But I have three sixes on the black!”
I don’t think we’ll buy the official dice. While we liked the system and the game is good for some laughs, we all agreed the setting is pretty limited, so our go-to RPGs will likely remain D&D5E and Fate. We’ll come back to this every now and then.
I’m not sure how he did it, but the BoD Bundle of Holding I picked up a few weeks back had solo rules included, called Alone in the Dark. The DrivethruRPG listing is here. They can probably be adapted somewhat to BoB, I’m sure.
Thanks for the writeup! Its interesting, that if you purchase the starter set, you get 2 x 10 dice of their own with it, along with the rules and such. Its a pretty decent deal.
Which adventure is this? I keep hearing that the starter set adventure, Chariot of the Gods, is quite a bit longer than the 4-5 hours the box claims it is.
That’s the one. We’re not done yet. I’d say we’re just starting Act 3. We’ve played 3 sessions late at night easily each 3 hours. I’ll follow up once we finish next Tuesday.
And actually, this is a complaint in general for the hobby. The boxed starter sets frequently have an adventure that’s better than the one included with the actual full book. I get that dice, figures, GM foldouts and the like should be exclusive to the starter box, but it annoys the heck out of me that the more expensive hardcover books come with such poor intro adventures in most cases, and in some cases, none at all.
Razgon,
Have you been playing in person? Our games have been over discord which has been great because there’s been a lot of break rooms because people had to accomplish different things. Curious how that has worked in your games with people not knowing what others are doing or has everything just been open and you just play it like you character doesn’t know.
I initially planned to go the gm-less / collaborative storytelling route with it, but circumstance forced my hand into solo play instead. This was before the solo Blades in the Dark rules were available, or at least before they were known to me.
Anyway, Band of Blades seems far more mechanics driven than most RPGs and its campaign mode is tightly structured as well, so adapting it to solo (or GM-less) play was pretty easy. By default, it calls for lots of things to be randomized using included tables (mission types and goals, for one). Plus, the GM does not really roll dice either: nearly everything is based on your characters rolling dice related to an appropriate attribute and seeing if you rolled a failure (1-3), partial success (4-5), or success (6). Then there’s the campaign layer where the GM has essentially no role to play at all (except for the camp scenes that happen after battle, which was the hardest part for me to solo).
For example: I roll on the mission table to get a mission to recover some ‘black shot’ (crucial resource for fighting the undead). I select which of my squads I’m sending. I roll for their starting position. I rolled a 6 meaning they are in a ‘controlled’ position, so I figure they arrive at the location of the resource without issue. I then start taking actions with the squad. Character 1 rolls a 6 to successfully locate the stores. Character 2 rolls a 4—a partial success—so they begin loading the stores, but this alerts a patrolling undead squad. I create a clock (one of the mechanics this game uses to represent things like passing time and enemy strength) and add ticks depending on the rolls of subsequent actions (a 6 = 1 tick; 4-5 = 2; 3 = 4 plus something worse happening) and when it fills the undead squad arrives and we battle them. I created a bunch of random tables to roll on as I went to determine things like if a partial success in combat resulted in an injury (the melee fighter slashed the enemy, but the enemy cut my melee person as well), a worsened position (the sniper took a shot and hit, but the tower they were on fell and now they’re exposed), and other things like that.
Hmm… that story lists a bunch of games explicitly designed for solo, and says “You can play ANYTHING solo! …if you play it by replacing humans with charts and Mad Libs.” OK. I suppose that’s technically true. And no shade to anyone who wants to do that. Not my thing, though, I guess.
Not yet - We’ve decided to try out Call of Cthulhu first so thats what we will play this coming sunday :-)
I’ve settled on the starter adventure that is part of the starter set, Edge of Darkness, since we are four people all in all! Me, my girls (Age 21 and 23) and my GF!
After this intro adventure, we will try out Aliens and see which one we will dedicate some more time to :-)
Is the adventurer Destroyer of Worlds poorer? I see that it is a standalone adventure as well so I kinda just assumed it was a good adventure. Or have I misunderstood, and that adventure isn’t part of the hardcover rulesbook?
The core rulebook comes with Hope’s Last Day, an adventure on LV 426 (as made famous in the movies) just as things go wrong. It seems neat from playthroughs. But not sure how it compares to Chariot of the Gods or Destroyer of Worlds. But they are all cinematic games. They all look good from the unboxings I’ve seen. In fact, I’ve got them all on their way to me to try out hopefully. :)
I realize my recent comments have been all over the place so apologies. I am in a fun discovery phase after being away from this section of the hobby for many years, and that is rewarding in and of itself.
Is there a good tabletop RPG system that would simulate the experience of the STALKER games? Such as exploring an extremely dangerous zone of exclusion for artifacts and equipment, etc.
What I have found so far:
Mutant Year Zero from Free League might be a close fit.
Zona Alfa, which is more of a light wargame system.
Other Dust, by the phenomenal Kevin Crawford, that is a close adaptation of Stars Without Number.
There is an official STALKER RPG made with blessings of Boris Strugatsky that is diceless and much closer to the novel of Roadside Picnic. I might get that for the lore/source material, but I am not sure if the system would work for what I am looking for.
Various retroclones of Gamma World such as Mutant Crawl Classics or Mutant Epoch.
Darwin’s World: 1st edition D20 or 2nd edtition with Savage Worlds.
Red Markets, which is zombies, but the underlying concept might work.
I am sure there are others that I am missing or maybe even a really close approximation.
Oh, okay - then I get your gripe about this. As I mentioned earlier, the adventure in the starter set is supposed to last a good 4-5 hours, but most play it at even longer times, and the adventure itself is supposedly pretty good.
I think Mutant Year Zero is very much that sort of game. Red Markets is also a decent shout (keep in mind that it’s not just boring regular zombies - there’s something weird going on with its zombie virus and you get special zombies and other hazards) but keep in mind that it’s a game explicitly about economics and desperately clawing for money to keep going, about what you can afford to make your jobs easier versus needing to support yourself and dependents, about the stress of your occupation, etc. I think it’s a really cool system if that’s the sort of emphasis you want in your stories, but STALKER isn’t about that stuff to me, and it might not be what you’re looking for.
I think Gamma World is pretty goofy so retroclones of it would probably be as well. Are you looking for the bleak tone of STALKER? Kevin Crawford’s usually good, I dunno what Other Dust is specifically like though.
I really don’t know much about it, but the Degenesis RPG nabbed an Ennie a few years back. It has some sleek, stark books.
I would think with Fallout’s components of vaults and radiation that RPGs based on it might also bring you luck. Modiphius released one that looks to be some sort of miniatures-heavy RPG or wargame.
Mutant is exactly that. Problem being of course that you play weird mutants. The games mechanics don’t work if you are not. The other RPGs are all focusing on a bit of a different thing. Mutant: Elysium may help you to play straight humans but I haven’t read that yet though I own it. Even their Fantasy Forbidden Lands game is about exploring an unknown world in search for magic and treasure. For me Mutant, even with all their weird, powered characters, is still the best Post Apoc RPG about exploring a dangerous world.
Degenesis is cool and free to play now, so very worth to check out. I just found the setting to be overbearing. I like to play in my own worlds and Degenesis is all about their world and their setting. It’s massive and deep. https://degenesis.com/
Oh! One more thing about the Tabletop RPG industry in general. I’ve purchased pdf copies of lots of games from major ones like Pathfinder to indie titles like Fate and it amazes me how many are just basic recreations of the books that don’t go the extra bit to take advantage of the digital format. Cyberpunk RED, (whatever my feelings of the system) has a great pdf. There is linked text all throughout that will take you right to whatever definition or section of the rules you need to reference.
I understand why it’s not done when a company is just doing a quick and dirty scan of the paper into pdf because the book is so old that no one has a clean digital file format, but why new games still treat pdf as nothing better than a watermarked document is beyond me. Come on folks! Get with it.
Could be worse. WOTC refuses to do regular PDF releases of current 5E content at all. You can subscribe to D&D Beyond, you can load up your shelves with expensive full color hardcovers, or you can get fucked (/pirate them).
