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Aliens in Dark Champions


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How much in the way of aliens can a campaign feature while still remaining Dark Champions, instead of Star Hero? The discussion of the 'weird conspiracy' subgenre in 6E2 does mention aliens, so it's evidently not a flat "aliens make it Star Hero" situation.

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

Therefore, overt alien invasions would probably be out of the question, unless everyone were irrational alien deniers("No, it wasn't aliens that destroyed New York, it was terrorists and bungling by those idiots at the Pentagon!").

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

I'm working on a weird-conspiracy Dark Champions campaign, which I intend to feature aliens. I want to know how overt those aliens can be, and how many of them have to be aliens only in the 'foreigner' sense of the word.

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

I'm working on a weird-conspiracy Dark Champions campaign' date=' which I intend to feature aliens. I want to know how overt those aliens can be, and how many of them have to be aliens only in the 'foreigner' sense of the word.[/quote']

 

If you have some specific source materiel in mind, I'd say look at that.

 

If the aliens are too overt or too numerous, you're afraid the game will cease to be "weird-conspiracy" and turn into something else?

 

Well, it's not a conspiracy if everyone knows. If it becomes public knowledge that aliens walk among us, it could be a fun game but apparently not the kind of game you want.

 

But you can still have several different kinds of aliens and feature them one way or another in every session, and still keep it under wraps. Look at The X Files. Even when they weren't dealing with aliens or monsters face to face, they were often involved in The Huge Mysterious Alien Conspiracy. Just make sure the characters can never prove anything, or are motivated (for whatever reasons) to not go public even if they can prove something.

 

 

It should be very covert - at first. A few red herrings are good - mysterious events that convince the players they're on to something truly alien, but then they discover it's a hoax or some kind of garden variety criminal conspiracy. Over time, it can become more overt for the player characters, as they might find themselves interacting directly with alien beings - but not in such a way as to provide evidence they can take to the press.

 

In other words, how you handle the aliens is more important than how many of them there are or even how prominent they are in the game.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Riding a palindromedary down Main Street

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

Even the overt presence of aliens can be more DC than SH. Though I have yet to see Alien Nation (either the movie or the TV series -- though I hope to some time), it strikes me as more cop show than sci-fi.

 

But The X-Files is a good example for keeping ET things covert. You can probably get a few decent ideas from Men in Black and/or Special Unit 2; those had stronger sci-fi elements, but could be "dialed back" to a more cops-and-crooks tone that just happens to include aliens.

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

I'd say, the old TV show Dark Skies. My Mainstream 6e Game plays heavily on what seems to be Covert Alien stuff here and there (it's far more complicated then that), and it's format is a Modern Pulp/Dark Champions level game (More Hugo Danner Less Kal-El, More The Bat-Man types, Less Jim Lee types).....

 

So yeah you could have Aliens in there. Even at the level of say, Alien Nation, or Threshold, or even shows like Prey, Fathom, Invasion, or a host of other things. It's the Atmosphere more then the actual hard type...

 

~Rex

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

Even the overt presence of aliens can be more DC than SH. Though I have yet to see Alien Nation (either the movie or the TV series -- though I hope to some time), it strikes me as more cop show than sci-fi.

 

But The X-Files is a good example for keeping ET things covert. You can probably get a few decent ideas from Men in Black and/or Special Unit 2; those had stronger sci-fi elements, but could be "dialed back" to a more cops-and-crooks tone that just happens to include aliens.

 

Hey, that's a really good point. Alien Nation had overt aliens and their culture and biology and even technology were often plot points, but it was still a cop show.

 

Part of what kept it more in "Dark Champions" territory than "Star Hero" was that the aliens were refugees and were basically stranded, which made them essentially Earth's and America's newest ethnic minority. Scientists were presumably trying to reverse engineer technology from the crashed ship, but there was no sudden great leap forward. There was no alien menace (except to paranoids) and they weren't a mililtary force to be reckoned with. The action was all Earthbound, and Humans were not able to go seek out new life and new civilizations, or even get around better inside the solar system.

 

But the original poster is starting from a "weird conspiracy" premise, so it's not likely to turn into something like Alien Nation. But it's worth remembering that even if "the lid gets blown off" and aliens become public knowledge, and even if the press and the public gives the idea some credibility, the tone will change but not necessarily into Star Hero. Rather than forcing the aliens into the open, it may just make them more devious and cunning. If they can pass themselves off as local, or "cloud men's minds" to conceal their presence, the result may be widespread paranoia in the population. Could your neghbor be not quite human? Could even someone in your family have been replaced by an alien imposter? It could make the worst parts of the Cold War seem like a totally innocent and trusting time.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

can you trust your palindromedary?

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

Hence, Dark Skies, or The Invaders, or even They Live. :D Symbiotic Alien Stuff and or Well Hidden Alien Stuff has a lot of potential in a DC game.

 

~Rex....says the Alien Nation TV show was a good time as well. Movie was even better.

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

Let's not forget the other "alien living in secret on Earth" TV show from back in

the '80s, Something Is Out There.

 

 

Major Tom 2009 :dyn

 

I missed that one for the most part. Heard good things..... From that range though for a DC game, Hard Time on Planet Earth has potential as well.

 

~Rex

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

For a fleeting moment' date=' until you specified the decade, I thought you were going to mention [i']Mork & Mindy[/i].

 

While I was thinking 3rd Rock from the Sun.

 

I would say that the difference between Star Hero vs Dark Champions is in part the tone of the game but also the tech levels and the fact that Star Hero has more of a multiple planets possible then Dark Champions would normally have.

 

But really your game is what you say it is. If it is a Dark Champions game and that is the rule set your using then Aliens, Cuthulu Horrors, or Nazi's from the end of time don't matter they're just the villains of the piece (or maybe the good guys depending on how evil your players are.)

 

Just a thought.

 

Mallo

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

Even if you don't want to use aliens per se, absent aliens can be a useful tool.

Imagine if your enemy has agents who can walk through walls, turn invisible, or use thought-operated radios - but they're just humans with weird gear. Part of the question in the campaign would be "where do they get these wonderful toys..?"

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

Even if you don't want to use aliens per se, absent aliens can be a useful tool.

Imagine if your enemy has agents who can walk through walls, turn invisible, or use thought-operated radios - but they're just humans with weird gear. Part of the question in the campaign would be "where do they get these wonderful toys..?"

I may use that sort of scenario early in the campaign, and then have the aliens come to get their stuff back.

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

...

But The X-Files is a good example for keeping ET things covert. You can probably get a few decent ideas from Men in Black and/or Special Unit 2; those had stronger sci-fi elements, but could be "dialed back" to a more cops-and-crooks tone that just happens to include aliens.

 

Actually, Special Unit 2 specifically denied the existance of aliens. I always snarked "You guys don't talk to SU ONE much, do you?"

 

Weird story: I was watching SU2 re runs while the Dresden Files show was on. Kept expecting the SU2 cops to show up and chase Murphy away...;):ugly:

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

In my experience, aliens in Dark Champions settings tend to follow one of two notions. The first is that the aliens are the leaders of a weird conspiracy that either already rules the world or is seeking to do so. The second is that they are monsters to be hunted down and terminated with very extreme prejudice. You also get combinations of the two.

 

Imagine that the characters are working with a good group of aliens, perhaps as part of a weird conspiracy acting behind the scenes. Their enemies are a bunch of bad aliens out to eat people or destroy the world.

 

The good aliens could be similar to humans, which could lead to an inter-species romance among other possibilities. Or the bad aliens could be the ones similar to humans and use that similarity to get the players paranoid that they're working for the wrong side. Lots of possibilities for Dark Champions plots there. It would be like the Cold War with aliens.

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

You would do well, I think to check out Roger Corman's movie Not Of This Earth. A humanoid alien with telepathic mind control abilities who can also kill through eye contact (so he wears sunglasses all the time--the original MIB look) is sent to Earth to find sufficient quantities of human blood to save his people from dying. He works in secret to advance his research and collect victims. There is some advanced technology, including a teleporter (humans don't travel well through it) but most of the time he works covertly using Earth-level technology.

 

View the original if you can find it--it was remade twice, in 1988 with Traci Lords and in 1997 with Michael York as the alien. I've only seen the original and the remake with Lords--it was very similar to the original, but with soemwhat better special effects and female nudity.

 

Hope that helps.

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

Imagine that the characters are working with a good group of aliens' date=' perhaps as part of a weird conspiracy acting behind the scenes. Their enemies are a bunch of bad aliens out to eat people or destroy the world.[/quote']Since DC tends to be morally ambiguous, instead of having "good" and "bad" aliens, you have aliens with a more complex moral code and desires. For example:

 

1) Alien is hiding on Earth as a refugee (MiB style) and is the victim of a mundane crime. Since he can't go to the police without revealing he's an alien, he decides to take the law into his own hands. He still has some tech that will help him in his crusade against the scum of humanity.

 

2) The aliens want to return home, but their ship is too damaged to salvage so they're trying to elevate Earth technology to the point where it can build a new ship. What happens to Earth because of the advanced tech is of no concern to them (provided they don't have to deal with the consequences).

 

3) The alien is actually a human from another dimension where things are radically different and has problems fitting in.

 

4) Aliens are smugglers shipping Earth "delicacies" off to the stars in exchange for something trivial to them. (Whatever the aliens want would have to be unique to Earth. If it's drugs it would have to be plant based and not one that can be cooked up by anyone with a high school chemistry book. Likewise, what they are offering as trade would be something easy for them to get or make but still valuable on earth. Like maybe they found that if you leave a lump of carbon in their hyperdrive, the energies turns it into a blue diamond.)

 

5) Aliens studying human behavior and performing an experiment by giving a group of disgruntled humans the chance to strike back against the injustices in their society.

 

6) Because Earth is not a member of the Galactic Federation yet, it's a favored spot for criminals to hide. Some just want to lie low while others are trying to carve out their own criminal empire.

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

If all else fails (and you have a copy of it, or know someone who does), you could

always refer to the Dark Conspiracy RPG core rulebook for ideas on how to run and

use aliens in a Dark Champions campaign. Granted, the setting is placed a few

years in the future, but it shouldn't be too hard to adapt most of what's in there

for the purposes of running an "aliens living in secret among us" campaign.

 

 

Major Tom 2009 :dyn

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Re: Aliens in Dark Champions

 

I'm working on a weird-conspiracy Dark Champions campaign' date=' which I intend to feature aliens. I want to know how overt those aliens can be, and how many of them have to be aliens only in the 'foreigner' sense of the word.[/quote']

 

For sourse material for this type of campain, I sergest the X-Files. Humm also I would sergest The Invaders (another TV series, a clasic from the late 1960's, where a group of people stumbling on pieces of a secret alien invasion each week, with the invasion atempts always under our noses).

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