Building a sense of threat can be an important element of horror games. A couple of games that I think achieve this well share a similar theme – the Alien RPG from Free League and Nemesis from Awaken Realms. Both capture the feeling of their (official or unofficial) source material. Both use simple but effective mechanics to create tension.
Alien RPG
The Alien RPG has a fairly standard core mechanic – a dice pool of D6s determined by an attribute and a skill. If your Agility is 3 and your ranged combat 1 you roll 4D6 to shoot, counting any 6s as successes. The twist is that characters accumulate stress as they encounter strange creatures or threatening events. The character’s stress adds additional dice to all rolls. With a stress level of 3, for example, the roll above would increase to 7D6. Rolls of a 1 on the stress dice, however, induce panic rolls. These can result in effects that range from ‘keeping it together’ through to ‘catatonic’ with larger stress pools leading to more serious effects.
The result of this mechanic is that a little stress is generally beneficial. Larger dice pools give more chance of success and the effects of stress are relatively minor. As the stress pools grow, both the likelihood and effect of a panic roll increase. This creates a natural growth of tension, giving characters the ability to have extraordinary successes in the late game at the risk of severe panic effects.
When running Chariot of the Gods, I found that the stress mechanic both effective and thematic. As the game progressed, and characters accumulated stress, the players started to dread any actions that triggered dice rolls. At the same time, their chances of success increased meaning that they always had a glimmer of hope. The fact that such a simple mechanic can deliver such exquisite balance in play is remarkable.
Nemesis Board Game
Nemesis is not a licensed Alien game, but it does not hide its influences. You play the crew of a spaceship who wake from cryo-sleep unexpectedly to find the ship infested with alien ‘intruders’. Characters become infected with larvae; encounter intruders that are hauntingly reminiscent of those from a certain film franchise; and encounter the intruder queen in her nest. Nemesis is a sprawling game, with many moving parts, but I found two mechanics in particular effective in building tension: noise and intruder bag development.
When you move about the ship, you place noise tokens in the corridors, determined by a roll of a die. With careful movement you can choose rather than roll to determine where the noise goes, but at a cost. Corridors can only have one noise token. If you would place a second token in the same place then you encounter an alien intruder. Every time you move, you increase the risk of an encounter, but you have to move to achieve your goals. The bright yellow tokens give a clear visual representation of this building tension and the looming risk of an encounter.
When an encounter does occur, you draw a token from the ‘intruder bag’ to determine what sort of beastie appears. This can range from lowly larvae to the queen herself. The bag itself is developed each round, with a token drawn at the end of the turn. If a low-level threat (a larva or creeper) is drawn then it evolves into a larger version (an adult or breeder). These larger intruders, if drawn, trigger additional noise rolls and so can often lead to encounters. While the duration of the game is determined by a turn counter, it is this building of noise from movement and the intruder bag development that creates a sense of rising tension and dread.
Hidden Agendas
Both the Alien RPG and Nemesis feature hidden agendas. These create a level of distrust among the players, and so both games could be described as semi-co-operative. Both games, however, leave the choice in the player’s hands. You never have to betray your companions, but sometimes it is easier (and more fun) to do so.
Alien cinematic scenarios are structured in three Acts, and characters have an agenda for each act. These agendas may be difficult to reconcile, and serve to develop the plot of the scenario. Completing (or at least working towards) your agenda earns a benefit, but how (or even if) you go about that is up to the player.
In Nemesis each player gets not one, but two hidden agendas. One is a personal agenda, and generally involves co-operating with the other players. The other is a corporate agenda, and these can be rather less beneficial to the rest of the crew. The twist here is that when an intruder first appears all the players must decide which agenda to pursue. By that stage the threat has built, and so it might be time to cut and run. Once again, that’s a choice you get to make.
Mechanics that Create Tension
Both Alien and Nemesis create tension through simple, but effective mechanics. These are well integrated with the game-play, and infuse the games with a growing sense of threat. Both also use tangible representations of this growth (stress dice and noise tokens) that players interact with regularly, keeping the focus on the threat. Both also include hidden agendas, but leave the choice to betray or co-operate in the player’s hands.
Finally, in both games the threat is very real. Characters in both games can easily fall to the alien threat, and neither relies on ‘success’ to deliver an engaging experience. Remember – it’s all fun and games until the android blows up the ship.