Fellow GM's,

Developing a series of sessions based on the Alien Isolation game. I'm looking for encounter ideas, setting ideas, and skill challenges for this style of play in Star Wars.

Also, what are ways to add horror-style tension. I want my PC's to be afraid but beyond that, I want the actual players to be nervous. I know it's tough to do but there have to be some developments in this area.

For those unfamiliar, it's a near-unstoppable deadly creature in a broken down space station. Survivors have gone mad trying to survive (using them as done in Bioshock games). PC's are on a mission to recover a ship docked inside the station.

Thanks, all!

Hm... I'm not sure how well the system is built all that well for horror, but I'll be curious to see how it works out for you.

That said, I don't have setting or creature ideas of the top of my head (though I might in the near future), but I do have some thoughts on mechanics. Don't start off by making it clear they're playing in a horror game. Let's say they're following the bounty of a pirate queen on a desolate moon. They touch down far away and get into her compound, have a couple of encounters with pirates, and as they're fighting, make it clear that these guys are clearly on edge and unhinged. They're going further into the station, you're setting the mood by making it clear that the weather outside is getting horrible. There's a vicious snowstorm. There's another encounter with pirates, these guys ranting and raving.

And then you have them step into a room, somewhere really set up for a high octane encounter. no pirates, but plenty of environmental stuff to make for a good set piece. You have them roll initiative. They take their turns and then... nothing happens. Another round. They move and... nothing. Third round they move. They think they hear something in the air shafts. Hopefully by now they're taking a very close look at their surroundings, trying to figure out strategies for confronting whatever this is. Next round there's more noises, nothing identifiable of course. And the players are probably wondering what the hell is going on. And then the next round, all hell breaks loose. A couple rooms over they hear gunfire, they hear blood-curdling screams. If they rush to that room it takes them a couple of turns, but regardless of how quick they hurry, they find nothing but freshly mutilated bodies and the hint of something large and sinewy slipping into the shadows.

Once you've set that as the standard they'll hopefully be on alert as soon as you call initiative, scouting their surroundings, looking for escape routes and ways to slow down this thing. Use initiative, but treat it less like a combat scene and more like an action scene. I've been using initiative to set a high pace for non-combat set pieces and it's worked really well. I haven't applied it to horror concepts yet, but it seems like a natural fit. The combat monkeys are probably firing their guns, but I'd treat any combat successes as just opportunities to slow this thing down. Shorthand rule, if this thing gets within short distance, you're dead (Unless you're running with multiple creatures, in which case you can set the stakes by having them manage to barely murder one, and then raise the stakes by making it clear there's now more than one of the things on their trail, and they're hunting in packs). Once it becomes clear how outmatched they are, presumably they'll be just trying to get out and back to their ship (complicated by the fact that they're deep in the complex now, and there's a storm brewing outside) or finding a creative way to take care of this hellbeast(s). I'd consider making use of three-way fight scenes. Give them an encounter where the creature is facing off against pirates and make it a question of what they do in that scenario. Do they lay fire down in the hope of teaming up to take this thing down for good or do they try and sneak by? I'd use initiative for this as well, but instead of actually rolling for the NPCs engaged, I'd improv the action for their initiative slots. Get them to the captain's chambers shortly after their first "oh ****" moments. It could be interesting to have their target alive and clearly nuts and have them decide whether she's worth taking back with them (and how much of a liability she is), but you could also just have her as a suicide case. Regardless, I think getting them to the quarters is effective because it lets them access the station's systems. Make it so there's not a whole lot they can do here, but they do get a nice big map of the ship. Let them carefully plan their route out. Maybe the storm's knocked out the entrance they came through and they now have to find an alternate route out of the station. Give them some leverage as to planning, and then use encounters to totally throw them back off course and force them to reroute. I'd make this as open-ended as possible but build some modular encounters and make some notes on how the various rooms can be used to set up really tense scenes, but I'd establish a few choke points, routes they have to go through to get where they need to be that are designed to give them the tools and opportunities to take care of these things for good.

I haven't played Isolation yet, but I'd suggest maybe checking out the Dead Space games for inspiration as far as pacing and scenarios.

Fellow GM's,

Developing a series of sessions based on the Alien Isolation game. I'm looking for encounter ideas, setting ideas, and skill challenges for this style of play in Star Wars.

Also, what are ways to add horror-style tension. I want my PC's to be afraid but beyond that, I want the actual players to be nervous. I know it's tough to do but there have to be some developments in this area.

For those unfamiliar, it's a near-unstoppable deadly creature in a broken down space station. Survivors have gone mad trying to survive (using them as done in Bioshock games). PC's are on a mission to recover a ship docked inside the station.

Thanks, all!

Hey there! Small galaxy - guess what I'm doing?

Please, btw, no spoilers as I haven't finished A:Isolation yet, but it's a terrifying and tense game. So like you, I'm very keen to replicate that feel. In no particular order, these are some of the things I am doing / trying to do.

• Feeling of being trapped. I'm actually setting my take on it on a sunken starship. Vacuum is scary but I find a couple of miles of dark water worse. The ship is partially flooded so there are sections that are impassable and sections that are passable if you can hold your breath long enough to find your way through the corridor and which exit leads back to air. Making the PCs feel properly trapped is one of the core things necessary to replicate the feel.
• Following on from that, the environment must conspire against the PCs. As well as pools of water and occasional intrusions of water plants just for atmosphere, one must have faulty lights, lifts that jam, scalding steam where there's a water leak over the plasma core (which of course the creature lurks in uncaring but the PCs not so much). In all good gothic horror, the central character finds candles blowing out, doors sticking shut, the mountain pass untraversable in the storm, etc. Find in-game justifications for this stuff so that you're not cheating the players, but make sure they feel the ground under their feet isn't safe.
• Following on from that, they must feel a sense of, well... isolation. One of the scary aspects of A:Isol is not just the threat but that you're so far from home and anyone you know who can save you. That tag line of "In Space, nobody can hear you scream" is rather too well known these days, but it was a great tag line, suggesting as it did that you're terribly alone. Find ways to emphasize this. Perhaps by slowly stripping them of their lifelines rather than just take them all away at once. PC groups are used to functioning without support - and they have each other after all. So you must first make them want / assume help is out there before you take it away, bit by bit. So maybe at the start of the adventure their sponsor or ally is in communicator contact with them. Recall Ripley talking to the away team over that crackly radio and the tension as she listens to them entering an alien ship. That ally can provide some useful service if it will help them stay talking to their ally - perhaps a surveying / mapping role telling them which sections of the ship they're entering or controlling electronic systems such as door locks or something. And then when contact is lost they'll feel it all the more. That ally need not be a single person, btw. It could be an entire ship but something happens - maybe an Imperial vessel arrives unexpectedly and their parent ship has to go dark, move to hide in the shadow of a nearby moon which means the PCs lose their support. Or the PCs use a large communicator which gets damaged or has to be abandoned during a chase. But the former is probably safer from a GM point of view. Whatever you can come up with to increase a sense of being alone is good. They may be one of several teams exploring the station. And those other teams go dark on them, one, by one, by one. That would be very effective: "C-team, have you reached the bridge, yet? C-team? Hello...?"
• Expectations. Set them you must. Players are used to the scenario where they deal with a series of progressively tougher encounters until they finally deal with the toughest encounter, kill it, and get points. You may think it is obvious that when something is scurrying through the air ducts towards you, you should run. But your players might just think you're trying to build up the next fight to be extra cool. So you need to prime them appropriately. Several ways you can do this but messing with their danger calibration is a good way. What I mean is that the players calibrate their sense of danger based on what they think they'll be fighting. They enter a clearing and see a group of ogres. 'Okay', they think to themselves, 'that's going to be a nasty fight, but that's what the GM is giving us so we draw our swords.' Then the dragon swoops down and rips one of the ogres in half. NOW they run because it's far more dangerous than they thought it was. To get this game working, you must stop your players thinking you'll adjust everything to fit their power level. They need to KNOW that they are outmatched.
  • Interestingly I have my own way of doing this in my one. It wont necessarily work for you but I'll share it anyway. You recall I mentioned environmental problems and specifically how the creature would be able to shrug it off. I'm probably going to have the PCs negotiating some hostile location - either underwater or the aforementioned jets of scalding steam. In either case, an environment where their goal is to get out of there in good time. Especially the steam version where they'll either have to keep their eyes pretty much shut because of the hot steam or where goggles which will mist up almost the instant they wipe them. That's where a claw will first appear out of it (or the dark water) to pull one screaming back in. The wonderful thing is that with the hostility of the environment, regardless of PC expectations, their aim will be to get out of there. They can realise later that their blaster bolts didn't do much other than drive it back, rather than realise in a stand-up fight where they die thinking they're supposed to stand up to it.
• Game environment atmosphere. Get a good set of sound effect tracks and play something suitable to the environment they're in. For me it will be echoing watery caves and the drip, drip, drip of the bulkheads. For you, distant whir of machinery or echoing corridors. But it can help a lot and I strongly recommend it. Maybe if you're doing the log thing, like in A:Isol, pre-record some tracks and add a little radio crackle or hiss. Similarly, try and schedule the breaks so that you have solid blocks of gaming uninterrupted by people planning / getting food, etc.
• Anticipate what the PCs are capable of. Find ways in advance to deal with that. They come loaded with grenades - okay, you have to decide what you'll do when they start throwing grenades at the creature. Is it immune? If not, you'll need to find a different way of rendering the tactic less effective. Remember how often the environment turns against the main characters in a good horror film. ("But if they fire, wont they rupture the primary cooling system?"). If you do make the creature immune to grenades you'd better come up with a good reason because at that point you're no longer running Alien, you're running Terminator. And your players will start to feel that you're just out to get them by just making arbitrary rules "Nuh-uh! My creature is immune to that weapon!" So think of why some tactic can't hurt it and then make the players aware of that in advance. You don't want them to feel you're not playing fair.
• The creature itself? Well that's up to you. I'm using a magnaguard as its an old Clone War era capital ship. But my group is fairly low-level and it's mainly because I want to use one. My adventure is going to be two parts Alien and one part Terminator. And I acknowledge that it's a risk using something like that. A custom assassin Droid might be better - something spider or octopus like. Or go with the alien creature - living things are scarier imo.
• That's all that I have time for, but I hope it helps. If it's of interest, I wrote up the movie Aliens for EotE. Let me find the link after this and I'll post it.

  Post back here to let us know what you decide and how the adventure goes - it's always interesting to us to hear how things went.

Here you go:

http://1drv.ms/1FwDLTV

Note, I'm aware you're going for an "Alien Style" game, not necessarily Alien itself. But I figured this might still be of interest. I was asked for the creatures from the Aliens movies, and the ones from Aliens are different to the one from Alien. At least in game terms. The original is a Nemesis and that's how I designed it. The sequel ones are minions. That's not a mistake. Minions can be very scary and very powerful. You don't need to make anything tough a Rival. Minion status is about how you want to manage them in game, not power level per se. The Aliens versions also have a Soak value higher than their wound threshold. Again, that's not a mistake, it lends itself to how I want them to play, in game. I want them to be alive and dangerous, be hard to kill, and then dead, not slowly worn down with a "I can do five more damage to it next round and kill that one off" attitude from the PCs.

But I'm getting off-topic. It's the nemesis version that might be of interest to you.

Here you go:

http://1drv.ms/1FwDLTV

Note, I'm aware you're going for an "Alien Style" game, not necessarily Alien itself. But I figured this might still be of interest. I was asked for the creatures from the Aliens movies, and the ones from Aliens are different to the one from Alien. At least in game terms. The original is a Nemesis and that's how I designed it. The sequel ones are minions. That's not a mistake. Minions can be very scary and very powerful. You don't need to make anything tough a Rival. Minion status is about how you want to manage them in game, not power level per se. The Aliens versions also have a Soak value higher than their wound threshold. Again, that's not a mistake, it lends itself to how I want them to play, in game. I want them to be alive and dangerous, be hard to kill, and then dead, not slowly worn down with a "I can do five more damage to it next round and kill that one off" attitude from the PCs.

But I'm getting off-topic. It's the nemesis version that might be of interest to you.

The aliens seem like the perfect blueprint for minion rules actually, incredibly dangerous in large numbers but very vulnerable to attack, mob-style glass cannons.

That said, I don't have setting or creature ideas of the top of my head (though I might in the near future), but I do have some thoughts on mechanics. Don't start off by making it clear they're playing in a horror game. Let's say they're following the bounty of a pirate queen on a desolate moon. They touch down far away and get into her compound, have a couple of encounters with pirates, and as they're fighting, make it clear that these guys are clearly on edge and unhinged. They're going further into the station, you're setting the mood by making it clear that the weather outside is getting horrible. There's a vicious snowstorm. There's another encounter with pirates, these guys ranting and raving.

I really like this. This is what is missing from my own adventure - they will currently have a feel for what they're walking into. I'm going to change it to work like you suggest. Give them the idea that it's a lair of aqualish or old CW-era battle druids.

to their ship (complicated by the fact that they're deep in the complex now, and there's a storm brewing outside)

I think it's a good idea to still give the PCs a mission. Players like to succeed and it also makes the game a little more interesting than just kill it or escape. If they have to rescue a child or retrieve some data or whatever, that lets them achieve victory without undermining the danger of the creature by killing it, for example.

Regarding your point about multiple creatures, that's not a bad idea. Whilst A:Isol is a wonderful game (and again, if anyone is posting here, please avoid spoilers as I'm only part way through it), running something with a single unstoppable creature is quite hard. You have little way to scale threat and too many risks the players will put you in the position of either spoiling some clever plan to isolate / trap / lure it away unfairly; or let it work and then watch them just walk through the rest of adventure. Multiple creatures hunting them gives you a lot more safety margin and can still be very effective horror. Just because Aliens was more of an action movie it doesn't mean that Alien wouldn't have been equally a tense horror movie with multiple aliens. Worth at least considering.

Here you go:

http://1drv.ms/1FwDLTV

Note, I'm aware you're going for an "Alien Style" game, not necessarily Alien itself. But I figured this might still be of interest. I was asked for the creatures from the Aliens movies, and the ones from Aliens are different to the one from Alien. At least in game terms. The original is a Nemesis and that's how I designed it. The sequel ones are minions. That's not a mistake. Minions can be very scary and very powerful. You don't need to make anything tough a Rival. Minion status is about how you want to manage them in game, not power level per se. The Aliens versions also have a Soak value higher than their wound threshold. Again, that's not a mistake, it lends itself to how I want them to play, in game. I want them to be alive and dangerous, be hard to kill, and then dead, not slowly worn down with a "I can do five more damage to it next round and kill that one off" attitude from the PCs.

But I'm getting off-topic. It's the nemesis version that might be of interest to you.

The aliens seem like the perfect blueprint for minion rules actually, incredibly dangerous in large numbers but very vulnerable to attack, mob-style glass cannons.

Thank you. I really appreciate the feedback. The Aliens version of them was exactly what I wanted to achieve. I don't want them to be weak (and they're not), but I don't want them to be something you slowly wear down the hitpoints of. What I wanted was "oh ****, oh ****, oh ****, thank the Force it's dead!" High soak minions give me that exploding threat effect. They're actually dangerous not because they have a lot of hit points - that actually lets the players feel more comfortable because they can gauge progress. They're threatening because they're random. A series of desperately trying to roll a 12 on a d12 is much scarier than knowing it will be dead in five rounds, even if there's a decent chance you might kill it right away.

I'm also indebted to another poster for coming up with the Camouflage talent. You can't give minions the "quality" skills such as Stealth, only the "quantity" skills such as brawl. So the Camouflage talent works perfectly. The other ones, such as Ungodly Quick and Many Legged, were mine and I'm quite proud of them. These were my first or second attempt to make some monsters for this system.

That said, I don't have setting or creature ideas of the top of my head (though I might in the near future), but I do have some thoughts on mechanics. Don't start off by making it clear they're playing in a horror game. Let's say they're following the bounty of a pirate queen on a desolate moon. They touch down far away and get into her compound, have a couple of encounters with pirates, and as they're fighting, make it clear that these guys are clearly on edge and unhinged. They're going further into the station, you're setting the mood by making it clear that the weather outside is getting horrible. There's a vicious snowstorm. There's another encounter with pirates, these guys ranting and raving.

I really like this. This is what is missing from my own adventure - they will currently have a feel for what they're walking into. I'm going to change it to work like you suggest. Give them the idea that it's a lair of aqualish or old CW-era battle druids.

to their ship (complicated by the fact that they're deep in the complex now, and there's a storm brewing outside)

I think it's a good idea to still give the PCs a mission. Players like to succeed and it also makes the game a little more interesting than just kill it or escape. If they have to rescue a child or retrieve some data or whatever, that lets them achieve victory without undermining the danger of the creature by killing it, for example.

Regarding your point about multiple creatures, that's not a bad idea. Whilst A:Isol is a wonderful game (and again, if anyone is posting here, please avoid spoilers as I'm only part way through it), running something with a single unstoppable creature is quite hard. You have little way to scale threat and too many risks the players will put you in the position of either spoiling some clever plan to isolate / trap / lure it away unfairly; or let it work and then watch them just walk through the rest of adventure. Multiple creatures hunting them gives you a lot more safety margin and can still be very effective horror. Just because Aliens was more of an action movie it doesn't mean that Alien wouldn't have been equally a tense horror movie with multiple aliens. Worth at least considering.

I'd maybe layer the opportunities on and let the players decide the risk-reward for pursuing them. In the afforementioned scenario their stated mission is to bring in the pirate queen, extract whatever data is available for her pirating operations, and recover a ship she stole that has sensitive data on it. They can bring the pirate with them, but she's half-mad and at best will slow them down, at worst might alert the creatures and the lunatic pirates to their presence. She was actually meticulous in her record keeping before going crazy so they can recover information, but it requires spending more time hacking into the systems and withdrawing the information. The ship they need is in the docking bay, but it requires going out of their way and the hangar is where the creature's set up a nest for its brood. I'd attach positives to each possibility as well that the players can exploit if they're smart. If they can properly suss through the queen's rambling, they can possibly learn about its weaknesses and patterns. The data she has on file can also give them access to more detailed base information. Recovering the ship will require they go face-to-face with the creature, but it also allows them to circumvent leaving the station and taking a long trek on foot back to their ship. I'd also fill the station with things they can use as makeshift weapons to chisel away at the creature's stealth and stamina so they can have that moment where they're suddenly on their front foot and make that push to become the heroes of the story.

In short, I'd approach it like a level designer for a sandbox video game. Create a map of the ship, sketch out rough encounters for each room (with pros and cons for different routes and detours that might not be immediately apparent to the players), and try to sprinkle it with as many optional objectives as possible. I think the tension of risk vs. reward is one of the most powerful agents in telling an interactive horror story. Do you take the big risk and hopefully come out better for it, or do you go against the path of least resistance and just hope you can push through with your limited ammo and knowledge? I'd also use initiative liberally outside of combat. Nothing builds tension like having to measure out every action you take.

As far as multiple creatures, I'd probably go that way as well. The advantage of horror in film is that the tension is fully under the control of the writer and director. GMs don't have that luxury. If you create contingency threats in case the crew cleverly takes out the initial threat, and they don't actually destroy that initial threat, they don't even have to know there was a backup. Time is an issue too. The longer you spend in the presence of a threat and the more you learn about it, the less dangerous it is, so scaling up your threats for a game that will likely take a few hours is probably a smart move. Having creatures in various stages of the life cycle or fulfilling different roles in the ecosystem means the players will always be on their toes because they won't know what to expect. How scared are the players going to be when they realize that this pair of horrible monsters they've been running from are only a threat because they're fleeing from the even more terrifying predator that's set up a nest in the cargo bay?

Anyway, I hope this might be of use to either of you. It sounds like you already have some ideas of your own, and now I'm excited to see how it turns out. I have half a mind to plan a horror adventure for my players.

I have to concede, the thought of the PCs having carefully lured it into a trap and all standing there with their blasters at the ready knowing it's finally pinned in the dead end corridor... and then hearing the slow rasping hiss of another one behind them... Well it's a pleasure, to be honest.

The aliens all look alike (not trying to be specist here), so the players may not even know they are facing more than one until three of them slither out of an air vent.

I have to concede, the thought of the PCs having carefully lured it into a trap and all standing there with their blasters at the ready knowing it's finally pinned in the dead end corridor... and then hearing the slow rasping hiss of another one behind them... Well it's a pleasure, to be honest.

The aliens all look alike (not trying to be specist here), so the players may not even know they are facing more than one until three of them slither out of an air vent.

Hahahaha. Right? Or they're in the hangar. This thing's been hounding them for hours now. They've shot the hell out of, lit it on fire, locked it in a room with no oxygen, to no avail, and now, in what they think is the final showdown before the adventure wraps, they finally put the monster down. They all breathe a sigh of relief, only to see dozens of gleaming eyes staring at them from the distance....... and now it's not about wearing one of these bastards down and getting the hell out. It's OH **** RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN THERE'S A PACK OF EM!

I haven't played Alien Isolation yet, but Aliens happens to be my favorite movie of all time! I wrote the following adventure as an homage:

The Quarantine Quandary

I have to concede, the thought of the PCs having carefully lured it into a trap and all standing there with their blasters at the ready knowing it's finally pinned in the dead end corridor... and then hearing the slow rasping hiss of another one behind them... Well it's a pleasure, to be honest.

The aliens all look alike (not trying to be specist here), so the players may not even know they are facing more than one until three of them slither out of an air vent.

Hahahaha. Right? Or they're in the hangar. This thing's been hounding them for hours now. They've shot the hell out of, lit it on fire, locked it in a room with no oxygen, to no avail, and now, in what they think is the final showdown before the adventure wraps, they finally put the monster down. They all breathe a sigh of relief, only to see dozens of gleaming eyes staring at them from the distance....... and now it's not about wearing one of these bastards down and getting the hell out. It's OH **** RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN THERE'S A PACK OF EM!

Heh. Despite the tension of the moment, there's always been something darkly humorous about Ripley's face in Aliens when she's been running for her life from the creatures, finally comes to a stop, turns round and finds herself in a room with fifty eggs all laid out before her. It's the moment where Ripley's player looks at the GM and just says "really...?"

If you (OP) do go with multiple creatures, just make sure to avoid the inverse ninja effect. You want them all to be scary, not to lose that. To that end, it's perfectly fine to have it NOT attack sometimes. Some of the tensest moments in A:Isol are when the alien passes you by. You hear it thumping in a vent above you or you're holding your breath whilst you hide in a locker and there's that moment when it's right outside. Imagine how scary it is once your players know there are multiple when they get a sense that one of them is watching them, tracking them. Do they actually communicate? Does it mean more are on the way? Or is it simply satiated right now? It's okay for the players to kill one of these things but that should never end the threat.

Oh, and scariest moment in Aliens when I watched it as a kid? Bishop being welded into that pipe. Sealed in, barely able to move your shoulders, hard to breathe and no way out... Urgh! It's not all about the combat.

I have to concede, the thought of the PCs having carefully lured it into a trap and all standing there with their blasters at the ready knowing it's finally pinned in the dead end corridor... and then hearing the slow rasping hiss of another one behind them... Well it's a pleasure, to be honest.

The aliens all look alike (not trying to be specist here), so the players may not even know they are facing more than one until three of them slither out of an air vent.

Hahahaha. Right? Or they're in the hangar. This thing's been hounding them for hours now. They've shot the hell out of, lit it on fire, locked it in a room with no oxygen, to no avail, and now, in what they think is the final showdown before the adventure wraps, they finally put the monster down. They all breathe a sigh of relief, only to see dozens of gleaming eyes staring at them from the distance....... and now it's not about wearing one of these bastards down and getting the hell out. It's OH **** RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN THERE'S A PACK OF EM!

Heh. Despite the tension of the moment, there's always been something darkly humorous about Ripley's face in Aliens when she's been running for her life from the creatures, finally comes to a stop, turns round and finds herself in a room with fifty eggs all laid out before her. It's the moment where Ripley's player looks at the GM and just says "really...?"

If you (OP) do go with multiple creatures, just make sure to avoid the inverse ninja effect. You want them all to be scary, not to lose that. To that end, it's perfectly fine to have it NOT attack sometimes. Some of the tensest moments in A:Isol are when the alien passes you by. You hear it thumping in a vent above you or you're holding your breath whilst you hide in a locker and there's that moment when it's right outside. Imagine how scary it is once your players know there are multiple when they get a sense that one of them is watching them, tracking them. Do they actually communicate? Does it mean more are on the way? Or is it simply satiated right now? It's okay for the players to kill one of these things but that should never end the threat.

Oh, and scariest moment in Aliens when I watched it as a kid? Bishop being wielded into that pipe. Sealed in, barely able to move your shoulders, hard to breathe and no way out... Urgh! It's not all about the combat.

Yeah. By the time there's a swarm of aliens, there wouldn't be mechanics for fighting them. At that point it's run or die, and the players should have spent enough time battling one of these things to realize that.

And yeah, I'd put lots of instances where it doesn't attack, or where it's distracted. I'd use initiative liberally though, even when there's not a threat coming. Keep that level of tension and make it matter all the more suspenseful for when something does happen.

Also, make sure to spilt the party. Nothing increases the level of unease when being stalked by a creature, and you know you don't have the full crew together.

A lot of really good stuff here. Since this is turning into a good brainstorm, I'll post my thoughts that I've had and incorporate what I've gathered from here. I also think it's important to note that the PC's are a squad of clones in an Alternate Universe.

I like the idea of the creature being a seemingly unkillable. I pulled a Mantellan Savrip from SWSE, reskinned it, and leveled the crap out of it. I also like the poison infecting PC's since implanting creatures in them is probably bad. The creature is going to be a hit and run enemy, very stealthy.

Of course, trying to avoid railroading means it can't be actually unkillable so my idea is to start off with a very strong one and follow up with minions. Not that the PC's will know that. Hopefully increasing anxiety if they kill the first one and stumble upon a nest of others. Also, with hit and run attacks, it can sneak away if they do some damage and I can replace it with a new one, again PC's thinking there is only one until the twist reveals there are quite a lot more. The twist happening after they've dealt with one in a hopefully clever way. That way they get that sigh of relief, feeling of accomplishment before I stumble them upon the nest. Presumably, they'll all leave the TeamSpeak lobby at that point but I hope not.

So far we've entered the station. Broken radio transmission sounding like technical difficulties but as per trope, when they find the whole message it's actually stating to stay away. Only emergency power is on. So docking was impossible as the doors were sealed. Space jump over. I tried splitting them up upon entering the station with an environmental hazard during the space jump. 2 teams of 2 to keep it reasonable. I also tried to have weapons scanners controlling entrances to forbid them from bringing in weapons (retrievable in later session). Of course, rolls went the way they did and only 1 PC is without.

The place has been in chaos and the place is in shambles. They turn on the power to find that it was cut to seal the creature away and they just let it out. Some NPCs in view to die savagely.

I'm using most of the survivors as additional enemies. They've gone insane, Bioshock style. Some station security is left and still sane with tidbits of information to help the PC's come up with a plan to deal with the creature.

Call for Perception checks. Many Perception checks

Then drop the Alien on them after several tension-building rounds

Only the person with the best roll actually perceives anything, and what they see is a swift movement in the shadows and then it’s not there. But make sure to write that down on paper and give it to them, so that only they see what’s written on the paper. Then it’s up to them to describe how their character reacts. Of course, everyone else thinks they’re crazy.

Next time, the person with the best roll is again the only one to perceive anything, and this time they think they hear something scamper through the air ducts. But again, that’s written on paper so that only they can see it, and it’s up to them how they react. And everyone thinks they’re crazy.

Go through each and every one of the senses, maybe multiple times. Make what they perceive seem to be contradictory and non-sensical. But never any combat.

It’s only when they’ve gotten all the way into the system and finally found the MacGuffin that they’re looking for do they turn around and run into the egg/brood room. And then it’s a billion times harder to get out of the scenario than it was to get in.

Make sure to sprinkle in some crazy and crazier and really super crazier “survivors” as they go deeper and deeper. These are the potential opportunities for combat, if the party is trigger-happy. Hell, they might get wiped out by the crazies who are trying to survive, even if the party members themselves manage to hold their fire.

Make sure that some of the survivors have already been implanted, so that they can have a chest-burster scene — for the half of the party that doesn't find the MacGuffin, and carefully orchestrated to happen at the same time.

Oh, and don’t forget the synesthesia trick, where you taste smells, smell textures, hear light, etc….

Nothing is more disorienting and alien than forced synesthesia.

I find 'redshirt' NPC's really handy in situations like this, as well... it's a good way to give the party some useful NPC's, and then show juuuust how terrifying the monster really is.

Remember - "The GM giveth, and the GM taketh away"