Better Than a Battle

We're making good progress in our family Alien RPG campaign. The intrepid colonists have struck out across the frozen, irradiated surface of their new world (thanks to a pesky xenomorph whose acidic blood caused the colony ship to crash) in the hope of reaching a Weyland-Yutani outpost that (they hope) is waiting for them. This part of the campaign is all about survival, and it's shaping up to a a really fun change of pace from typical combat encounters. Amy makes no secret of her disdain for lengthy, tactical RPG battles, and I too was looking for different kinds of threats and challenges in this campaign. 

We've had our share of cool, memorable moments so far -- I particularly enjoyed the bit where Nathaniel's character, a ten-year-old kid, piloted the escape pod down to the planet -- but one episode really serves to highlight what makes this campaign so different from our usual RPG fare. After dispatching a nasty scorpion-like creature in a hail of gunfire, the heroes stopped for a breather. Matthew's character, a smarmy Weyland-Yutani executive, botched his consumable resource check (rolling four 1's on 4D6!) and thus, in narrative terms, the character ended up spilling his entire water supply on the ground. The impact of that roll was far better than any battle, as dehydration is a foe that cannot be fought with pulse rifles or incinerator units. The other characters then had to share their own precious water, and now they're not feeling quite so confident about their ability to reach the outpost...