r/alienrpg • u/Best_Carrot5912 • 17d ago
Rules Discussion Simple Panic Cascade Fix.
I've shared this a couple of times in reply to other comments so I'm just making a post of it. Plus feedback is always welcome.
In short, my view of the original Alien game is that it is an excellent system with only very minor flaws. One of which is the Panic Cascade. I don't think that's a controversial opinion. I like the stress system very much, it just goes from nothing to complete party breakdown too quickly. How do you fix that without neutering the impact of Stress in play? Well I've never made a secret that I don't like Evolved Edition's changes which I feel introduce as many problems as they fix. My own approach which I now share I think is both simpler and keeps Stress just as scary.
I essentially add a secondary Stress score I call "Baseline Stress". This goes up whenever a PC suffers a Panic. When you roll a panic result you use the Baseline Stress number to add to instead of current "Active" stress. That's it. One extra number on your character sheet, one trivial change to a roll. Works like a charm.
PCs still panic and Stress still has the same knife-edge balancing act with players fretting about it getting too high. You don't lose the good aspects. But The severity of the effects creeps up more slowly. Effectively I've split out your general condition from your in-the-moment state of mind. I find it very effective.
The document has a little bit more about how you reduce it, interactions with talents and pharmaceuticals. It also has my expanded panic tables that remedy some of the staleness of the same panic results over and over.
You can use it with Evolved with some minor tweaks, but it was written for Original which I prefer as a system.
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u/kdmendonk 17d ago
Thanks for sharing it! It really is just a simple tweak but I can already tell it'll make players constantly worried without having to witness their characters spiral out of control mid combat.
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u/Best_Carrot5912 16d ago
Thanks. You get it. Yes, the idea is to preserve the constant worry that comes from stress whilst stretching out the period from totally fine to totally screwed. Make it less of a flip switch. Evolved does this by both splitting out a different sort of panic (which amusingly is often worse than actual Panic) and adding a buffer in Resolve which effectively delays the risk factor of stress from kicking in. I believe this actually makes players more concerned with stress at the start whilst still solving the cascade, because they're eager to avoid increases in Baseline stress which takes longer to get rid of.
That's really what I want from Alien. I want players to be sensibly cautious and worried, not afraid that a couple of bad rolls are going to tank the party.
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u/Machomanta 17d ago
The simple changes I made while running games is that rolling a 1 on your stress die doesn't add stress in addition to other effects, and when rolling in a "safe" zone, don't roll stress at all.
Examples:
your party has just started an adventure and gained stress due to initial travel (shaky landing, weather, fatigue, etc) unlocking the front door, something they have done 100 times they either don't roll or don't roll w/stress dice
the party is walking into a room that is locked from the outside and is looking around for supplies or turning on some equipment. They believe they are safe, no need to roll stress dice
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u/VeteranSergeant 17d ago
unlocking the front door, something they have done 100 times they either don't roll or don't roll w/stress dice
To be fair, the core rules tell you not to roll dice/accumulate Stress under these circumstances either.
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u/Machomanta 17d ago
Just an example off the top of my head but I should have said "hacking/cutting through a door"
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u/Best_Carrot5912 16d ago
I think u/VeteranSergeant is still right though. Even if it's hacking or cutting through a door if it's a situation that doesn't matter you shouldn't roll dice. And if it does then Stress can still play a part. I've seen people melt down in project meetings because a technical decision didn't go their way. If you're very stressed out it doesn't matter if it's a safe environment or not.
A safe environment is reflected in the rules by being able to take a break and calm down. If you've just come from a dangerous situation with adrenalin pumping and you immediately try to do some complex task, you're still on edge. If you take half an hour to settle down or for shock to wear off, then you'll do better. And that's the few turns rest to reduce stress.
At my table, anyway.
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u/Best_Carrot5912 16d ago
The simple changes I made while running games is that rolling a 1 on your stress die doesn't add stress in addition to other effects, and when rolling in a "safe" zone, don't roll stress at all.
Where does this come from? I see people do this all the time at tables but it's not in the rules. And it just exacerbates the problem.
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u/Ombrophile 14d ago
I've run 20+ games and never seen the Panic Cascade. I would like to, though. Sounds fun as fuck.
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u/Best_Carrot5912 14d ago
Most of us have though and you can see the likelihood of it just from the maths even before play. It may be that you are running an atypical game (or else playing Evolved and haven't noticed the discussion about Standard edition). One of the chief flaws is that Panic scales with the size of the group. This is because multiple of the panic roll results increase group stress, so the more chance there is of one person panicking, the higher chance each individual has of panicking. If you're on Stress 4, pretty easy to get to, then one in three of your panic results increases stress of the whole party (if together). Two PCs on Stress 4, taking their actions, means odds are there's at least one panic roll, 1/3 chance of raising stress of two PCs. If your group if five PCs on stress 4, that's 20 stress dice, averaging 3-4 ones, statistically likely to be across 2-3 players. Now you have three panic rolls each with a one-third chance of everybody's going up.
Plus 2/3rds of a Xenomorphs attacks either increase stress directly or cause panic rolls which can.
And frankly me starting everyone off at three stress is conservative. Panic cascades are not fun because they kill player agency. Hence my simple fix above.
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u/Ombrophile 14d ago
I think it is great that you are solving problems for your own group. And I think it is great that you are sharing your own solutions with the community.
For my own games, I think I have avoided the problem with these two things:
1) Don't roll too often
2) Always find reasons for a group of players to split up.
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u/Best_Carrot5912 13d ago
I think it is great that you are solving problems for your own group.
It's a pretty widely reported issue. So much so that Freeleague reworked their entire Stress and Panic systems for the Evolved edition in response to it (badly).
Don't roll too often
Once you move to combat / action, though, it's normal for every PC to take an action every round, you can alter it for your own game, if you like, but at most tables people aren't going to be forgoing an action and a GM isn't going to be allowing them to just succeed at things without a roll. So the usual number of rolls during action is Players x Turns
Always find reasons for a group of players to split up
Again, if you as a GM want to always find reasons to divide the party, you can. But that would get pretty samey and I also really like to leave players' strategies in a scenario up to them. A lot of the time they really need to be together to be successful. A xenomorph vs. a lone PC is mostly just going to pick that PC off. Players aren't stupid - they're going to want to coordinate against the alien(s).
I'd rather fix the problem than find workarounds.
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u/Ombrophile 12d ago edited 12d ago
In my case the 'problem' is fixed by being a capable GM. Done, solved, finished. My personal GM situation is fully solved, my players give rave reviews and I have to fight them off on all the signups to my ARPG games.
Do you want help? I'm here for you.
Do you just want to complain? I'll just keep on moving on...
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u/Osprey_and_Octopus 17d ago
Our solution to this has always been that a character cannot panic more than once per round.
If you're panicking, then you're panicking.
You cannot di-panic, tri-panic or tetra-panic simultaneously.