Samus Aran:
Thanks for the responses! So how would the answers differ, if at all, for full-fledged Fate?
No problem! Honestly, it really depends on what feel you want to evoke and how much you plan on going into it from a mechanical perspective. The Golden Rule of Fate is to always look to the narrative first and have your story inform your mechanics. And I feel the Golden Rule of GMing is to never rely on the stats too much, or you'll end up with a number block instead of a monster. :P
I'll get into it more below.
Samus Aran:
Nintaku:
1) Its High Concept should always address what it's basically capable of. Xenomorph [Function] or the like should cover the things it can and can't do in a general sense. That should give all kinds of justifications.
2) Other aspects make it more specific, and don't forget what species it was hatched from. A Predator/Alien is going to be different than a Dog, and different from a Human.
So NPCs get aspects, too, right? Looks like the full ones get a bunch, and you have your mooks, of course.
Absolutely! There's a lot to say regarding aspects and what gets aspects, but I like to think of them abstractly. Players will have five aspects on their sheet, but I also feel like if they want to drop a Fate Point and invoke that they're wearing a Fancy Gold Watch, then that's an aspect they have that simply wasn't important enough to write down, and now it's getting focus. NPCs are like that too, in that they have a number of aspect slots filled in already, just to give you some focus during play. Other elements of them can come up, but these are the important bits.
I assume you've already read all the Fate Accelerated/Core stuff, but it's useful here.
Here's a link to Fate Accelerated's advice on building opposition:
https://fate-srd.com/fate-acce...-gamemaster#bad-guys
Pretty straight forward, major opponents have a full sheet while minor opponents have an aspect or two.
Here's the Fate Core guidelines:
https://fate-srd.com/fate-core...d-playing-opposition
Very stratified, though that structure is simply a tool for ease of use rather than a hard rule you must follow or be smoten. Nameless NPCs get one or two aspects as needed. Supporting NPCs (anyone with a real part to play who isn't the Big Bad) get two or three aspects. Main NPCs are expected to have a whole five aspects, but their example has seven!
So as you can see, you just give your xenomorph whatever it needs for your story, and anything too little can be filled in later. I'd say a Queen should have more aspects than a Drone, as a general rule, but that drone from the first movie was the movie's big bad and deserved a full spread of aspects on its own.
Samus Aran:
Nintaku:
4) The unkillable one should have a Hunting stress track. Loud actions (anything Forceful or Flashy, most things Quick) would tick a box. Failed stealthy actions (Sneaky, maybe Clever or Careful) would tick a box. Failed slow actions (Careful, maybe Clever) would also tick it, since the thing has longer to track them down.
An important element is that Fate is pretty meta, so you don't need to think about who is setting off these boxes. Characters on opposite ends of your ship/station could be setting it off. Just think of it like a timer, and the person who marks a box when there's no box left to be marked is who gets the alien to appear with them. Whether it knows they're there or is just in the room looking is more dependent on the tone in the moment, but that should be what makes it appear. And then the track is emptied out.
This is the part that interests me the most, I think, because the concept seems perfect. Do you give this stress track to players? Do you give it to individual players, or just assign a general environmental one that applies to the entire group? I love the idea of the tension that it brings; in addition to the Alien showing up at times all on its own, you can get a feel for how much your actions are drawing its attention.
For this bit, I'd put those stress tracks on the alien itself. Then filling those stress boxes leads to something happening rather than the alien being Taken Out. Putting it on the adventure itself, much like the Game Aspect in Fate Core, would work exactly the same way, and you might consider how it would feel to have the track on the game rather than on the enemy.
For realism's sake, you could give it to individual players to have each one's actions draw the beast closer to them, but then realism would fly out the window when someone on the bridge and someone in the galley both set off the alien at once. I wouldn't go this route.
Samus Aran:
Nintaku:
Though I don't like that everyone can see how soon the thing will appear again. Maybe you could use compels to give out FP for bringing the alien closer, or have it be the price for a Success at a Cost (maybe even two boxes for a Major cost!), or something like that.
Sure. If it's a variable stress track or something, you could hide the total amount. Just say "That's another stress box marked." And then you don't have to have the Alien drop in right then and there. You could find a way to work it into the current scene.
Nintaku:
5) The killable alien would then have a normal stress track, and possibly Consequence slots if it's a dread beast from Alien or Alien 3, rather than one of the numberless bugs from Aliens. Or you might try Conditions! Give it specific ways it can be killed, and don't let the heroes kill it unless they fill all the conditions. Again, Alien and Alien 3 come to mind. They put that thing through a lot before it went away.
How does this work? Because this also looks very interesting to me. How do you combine Conditions with stress boxes to make a complex, multi-stage "defeat" mechanism?
I would probably forego Stress entirely using this method. Any shifts of effect from an Attack roll that get through take the alien out (unless it Concedes, which you could do early in the story to have the players attacked multiple times instead of having to kill the thing the first time it appears).
So you come up with some Conditions appropriate to your story. Maybe...
Burned [_]
Crushed [_]
Covered in Molten Lead [_]
Then each time the heroes want to harm it, they need to do one of these things. It's immune to Attack rolls until all three boxes are filled. After that, the next successful attack kills the beast! Stress wouldn't so much be a factor for the monster, and having it immune to a direct murder strike early in the story means the heroes would need to scrounge for the necessary tools to create these conditions, and then make plans to use them.
What do you think? :D