I'm really getting into Free League and their Year Zero Engine games! I admit... I mostly picked up Alien to add the Stress mechanics to *Coriolis*. Coriolis is my favorite Free League RPG. I would LOVE to see you dive into that game. The setting is beautiful!
My experience with the game was not favorable. This success only on a 6 is garbage and routinely makes characters with less than 6 dice look incompetent and 5 dice is supposed to be pretty good. We played 3 four hour sessions and gave up on it because we were having characters with 7 dice turn up no success so often that when we would get a success the only emotion felt was relief of frustration. But it makes sense when each die has a baked in failure rate of 83.3%. It gets better when you start accumulating fear Dice but it absolutely sucks when your expert character looks like a novice over and over, unless you have at least 6 dice. It's a horrible system, we use the book as a reference guide now and are experimenting with other systems to run Alien in.
@@ekorren Right now we're using Cortex Prime. It's pretty good at doing what the intent of the Alien rpg was by using an escalating die type system to represent the panic. I haven't talked to the group about it yet but I came up with a possible fix for the Alien rpg success only on a 6 problem. I'm going to suggest that target numbers start at 4 and each time you get a panic die your target number goes up by 1 until it hits 6, basically 2 panic die and you're so scared that you're scrambling ,rushing and bumbling just like the normal rules as written game makes you feel even before you have panic dice.
I'd suggest working together when you can, and more importantly get creative with your environment to build positive modifiers. Your GM may thank you for helping them make scenes cinematic. And Push those important rolls, if needed! :D
@@billn5866 I'm going to try the house rule I mentioned above but for the most part the system as is is a lost cause with epidemic failure being the norm since not every pool is going to have a minimum of six dice in order to create an average of one success and even then with a success being the average that means even at that level half the time a six die pool will fail half the time. I can't believe this system got past playtesting.
Compared to 1st level D&D characters who're usually facing ACs ~12-15 with a +4-5 on a d20, that's the same odds as rolling only 4-5 dice in YZE (only 2-3 dice if you Push). YZE wasn't just playtested, it's won several awards. It's OK if you don't care for it, but there's a difference between "I don't like it" and "it's hopeless garbage". I laud you for trying it more, and hope you have some better experiences with it going forward!
This is the prototype of video I would love to have for every RPG. Short, focused and effective :-)
this was super helpful ! thank you
Man, I'd like to have time to game all these incredible ttrpg's. I love the Aliens universe.
this was helpful! and your voice is very soothing
I'm really getting into Free League and their Year Zero Engine games! I admit... I mostly picked up Alien to add the Stress mechanics to *Coriolis*. Coriolis is my favorite Free League RPG. I would LOVE to see you dive into that game. The setting is beautiful!
I have all the Coriolis stuff in my shelf but haven't delved too deep yet. Maybe one day.
I didn't ev4n know there was an Alien RPG. This is so cool! Would be fun to do for Halloween for sure. ☠️
My experience with the game was not favorable. This success only on a 6 is garbage and routinely makes characters with less than 6 dice look incompetent and 5 dice is supposed to be pretty good. We played 3 four hour sessions and gave up on it because we were having characters with 7 dice turn up no success so often that when we would get a success the only emotion felt was relief of frustration. But it makes sense when each die has a baked in failure rate of 83.3%. It gets better when you start accumulating fear Dice but it absolutely sucks when your expert character looks like a novice over and over, unless you have at least 6 dice. It's a horrible system, we use the book as a reference guide now and are experimenting with other systems to run Alien in.
Have you found an alternative system that you think handles things better?
@@ekorren Right now we're using Cortex Prime. It's pretty good at doing what the intent of the Alien rpg was by using an escalating die type system to represent the panic. I haven't talked to the group about it yet but I came up with a possible fix for the Alien rpg success only on a 6 problem. I'm going to suggest that target numbers start at 4 and each time you get a panic die your target number goes up by 1 until it hits 6, basically 2 panic die and you're so scared that you're scrambling ,rushing and bumbling just like the normal rules as written game makes you feel even before you have panic dice.
I'd suggest working together when you can, and more importantly get creative with your environment to build positive modifiers. Your GM may thank you for helping them make scenes cinematic. And Push those important rolls, if needed! :D
@@billn5866 I'm going to try the house rule I mentioned above but for the most part the system as is is a lost cause with epidemic failure being the norm since not every pool is going to have a minimum of six dice in order to create an average of one success and even then with a success being the average that means even at that level half the time a six die pool will fail half the time. I can't believe this system got past playtesting.
Compared to 1st level D&D characters who're usually facing ACs ~12-15 with a +4-5 on a d20, that's the same odds as rolling only 4-5 dice in YZE (only 2-3 dice if you Push).
YZE wasn't just playtested, it's won several awards. It's OK if you don't care for it, but there's a difference between "I don't like it" and "it's hopeless garbage". I laud you for trying it more, and hope you have some better experiences with it going forward!