Four Attributes

In most C.O.R.E. games, the Attributes are something like Body, Mind, Status, and Magic. In Alien Fiction, things can become much weirder. The Attributes here are Body, Mind, Persona, and Cosmos. Attributes range from 1 to 5. Each is explained in turn.

Body is the attribute most familiar and easiest to understand from a rules' perspective. It grants a rough measurement of the character's relative physical abilities. A character would use the Body attribute to perform feats of strength or agility, fight, or simply endure physical damage.

During an adventure, the character's Body (also called Body Energy or Physical Energy) might get depleted temporarily. Think these depleting energy as a pool of points. A character with an Attribute like Body 4 will have 4 points of Body Energy. As those points are lost from suffering damage, dice rolls using Body will become more difficult. If a character's Physical Energy drops below zero, that character becomes physically incapacitated and will collapse from exhaustion for the remainder of the scene.

Mind is a measure of the alien's intelligence, creativity, and memory. For an intelligence which has already been around a billion years, memory is no mere dump stat. Although all aliens are smarter than any human, they rarely act like it. They are as subject to impulsiveness or stubborn mindedness as any other form of intelligence, and this can come off as indistinguishable from stupidity. An alien might create the universe's most advanced encryption system but still set his password to "p-a-s-s-w-o-r-d". In other words, even hyper-intelligent beings can fail sometimes.

Mind attributes range from 1 to 5. This also sets the maximize size of Mental Power (or Mental Points or Mind hit points). During a contest of wills or a stressful mental challenge, Mental Power can be temporarily lost. When Mental Points drop below zero, the character becomes mentally exhausted and passes out for the remainder of the scene.

Persona is a social attribute. It works in place of a Charisma or Mental Affinity stat in other games, but it is also more broad than those two. Most simply described, Persona represents how the character is perceived by others. A poker face is as much an aspect of ones Persona as a silver tongue. The type of hit points associated with Persona are called Social Energy.

There are such things as Social Combats in this game. Two characters can risk their reputations to trade insults just as feasibly as they could risk their bodies to trade punches. They use their Persona Attributes to do this. If a character's Social Energy is reduced to zero, that character has been rendered socially incapacitated and capable of doing nothing but sitting in a corner and brooding (or crying).

The final attribute is Cosmic. This represents the power of the alien's unique special ability. Omnitech is one umbrella term for the powers of the aliens which are beyond human comprehension and therefore require no explanation, and that is where the Cosmic stat comes in. One example of a cosmic power is psionics. Another example is quantum tunneling. Another example is Sufficiently Advanced Technology Perceived as Magic (or just Magic for short). Another example is Omni-Ultra-Uber-Hyper-Destructo-Flame. The type of hit points derived from the Cosmic Attribute are called Cosmic Energy. When Cosmic Energy is reduced below zero, the alien loses connection with the physical universe and metaphysically vanishes for the remainder of the scene.

Nine Skills

The skills are combat, collection, fitness, nature, negotiation, skullduggery, supernatural, technology, and trivia. Every character has the same list of skills even if the points in a skill are zero. Actually, most characters will have zero in a lot of skills. They still have these skills even at zero for the purpose of using the Attribute + Skill + dice roll formula. Skills do not deplete temporarily like Attribute Energy depletes; skills are constant.

The Combat Skill covers all forms of fighting from bar room brawls to epic space battles, rap battles to world-shaping political contests. The situation and combination of which attribute is paired with the Combat Skill determines what form the combat takes.

Collection is a stat which represents the quality of the alien's collection of humans, her fleet of space ships, and any other items she might possess that could be considered valuable or collectible. Human characters can own collections, but those things will almost never effect the mechanics of the game. An Alien with a Collection Skill of 4 or 5 would be considered wealthy among her peers of other collecting aliens. Collection is used when determining many things: if the alien's ship is the fastest, if the alien already owns some gadget which is needed in the story, if the alien is able to obtain the gadget through trade, and the quality of the human champion who is about to battle for the alien's glory. We don't actually need to make stats for every human in the collection if we instead use the Collection Skill in their place.

Fitness Skill, this is a measure of general health and athletic capability. It is used to run from fights, hold breath, dodge, et cetera. You get the idea.

Nature Skill, here the character's knowledge of the natural world comes into play. The source of that knowledge could be book learning about biology and geology, or it could be survival methods learned from years of hands on experience roughing it in the wild. Nature may also be used to navigate while in unfamiliar places.

The Negotiation Skill means that the character knows how to converse, influence, persuade, and barter.

Skullduggery is a fun word which stands for all manner of illicit or illegal activities. The Skullduggery Skill is used when sneaking, surprising, pick pocketing, and cheating at cards. A character with Skullduggery points will also be streetwise.

Supernatural Skill, this is a degree of knowledge regarding magic or occult subjects.

The Technology Skill gets used a lot in Alien Fiction. It means that the character is knowledgeable about various forms of advanced technology and is able to utilize them. This skill may be used to diagnose specific devices or powers. Sidenote: Powers which use the Supernatural Skill are immune to analysis using the Technology Skill. The vice versa is also true.

The Trivia Skill represents all of the character's knowledge which doesn't fit under any other skill. It's mostly useless knowledge, but that uselessness is also the point. Trivia contests are quite popular in the universe, so perhaps trivial knowledge isn't useless after all.

In the next act, we will go through character creation rules step by step.