Quote from: Toadmaster;1119581I don't see this at all. With stats of 2-5, and starting skills of 0-4 it is not unreasonable to assume that a skill roll in an area of a character competence (career) will be on the order of 5-7, odds are you will roll a minimum of one success (roll a 6) nearly every time, and on the off chance you fail you can push your roll (re-roll, but adds a stress level) and the odds are very unlikely that you roll not roll a single 6 on 10-14 dice.

It is also clearly stated that rolls should be unusual, saved for special circumstances. Characters with a skill are just assumed to succeed on most common tasks, so a roll is for something particularly difficult or weird.

the stress level does assist with the odds of success, but you are talking pretty high levels of stress for them to start to equal the value of a skill or stat.

I have actually ran it a number of times and failures abound despite the math.

Quote from: Gagarth;1119612I have actually ran it a number of times and failures abound despite the math.

We had exactly the same problem with a sister game, Coriolis, which uses the same core system. Failures were so prevalent so I had a ton of Darkness points (the failure currency). I'm not an adversarial GM but the players still felt like chumps where they shouldn't have.

Quote from: Gagarth;1119612I have actually ran it a number of times and failures abound despite the math.

I had the exact opposite problem running Mutant Year Zero.  My players often succeeded, sometimes by pushing, with extra successes to spare.  They often ran out of things to spend the bonus 6s on and made short work of any challenge I put in front of them.

So, some groups have successes galore, while others have failures galore. What does it say about the system? Perhaps too swingy?

We played just 2 sessions of Mutant Year Zero and I don't feel it's enough to give a conclusive impression.

Quote from: Itachi;1119622So, some groups have successes galore, while others have failures galore. What does it say about the system? Perhaps too swingy?

We played just 2 sessions of Mutant Year Zero and I don't feel it's enough to give a conclusive impression.

Yeah I'm not a fan of dice pools, for pretty much that reason. Theoretically 1 in 6 will result in one 6 when you roll 6 dice, but probabilities being what they are I can believe one group feels the system has too many fails and another too many successes. They seem like a good idea but I've never played a game that used a dice pool system that was anywhere near as consistent as a traditional 3d6, d20, d100 roll higher / lower than your skill which is why those are my preference. Dice pool systems start with me having one foot out the door.

For a game like this where I wouldn't expect high survival rates / long term characters / campaigns, a dice pool makes for an easy system to pickup so I'm ok with it.  Whether death is due to aliens or just the hostile environment these rules really are not ideal for a long term game, or at least not long term character development. I do think they could work well for a high mortality sci-fi game without the Aliens front and center, sort of a The Deadliest Catch In Space.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1119602Look at the success of those dinner party games like How to host a murder.

Those have been around a long long time and have had a cyclic rise in interest over the decades. Just not in a big commercial format till I think the mid 80s. The "How to Host" line has been around a while, and a few imitators. The first came out in 83 or 85. They made at least 15, and one for Star Trek I recall seeing at GenCon way back. Though according to my notes on these. There was a published one back in the 1930s of some sort. But have existed as parlour games at least in the 1800s.

Thus ends todays history lesson.

And an Alien party game would be great. I really wanted to see the Alien War tour that was in the UK way back in the 90s.