Alien Romance Disaster
974 words

Premise:  Three Players.  Themes of strangeness, xenophobia, familiarity, betrayal.  

Player One:  Human (Diamonds)
Player Two: First Contact Alien (Spades)
Player Three: Rival Alien (Clubs)

Each player gets all the cards of their suit.  Hearts, with the jokers shuffled in, make up a face-down deck.  

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As a group, decide on the setting.  Choose one:  
●	small town in the middle of nowhere
●	mining colony on a planet far from the hubbub of commerce
●	a ____
●	somewhere else

Player One should tell us about the people there and the prominent factions, at least two but maybe four.  Player Two should tell us about the faction leaders and their strengths.  Player Three should tell us about their plans and their weaknesses.

Write them on cards.  

Going in a circle, name some cool powers, features and tech for aliens.  We’ll call these Alien Traits.  Six of them.  Write them on index cards and put them in the middle of the table.  

Here are some ideas if you’re stuck:   telepathy, EMP grenades, shapeshifting, prophetic third eye, reactive scales, laser rifles, infrared/ultraviolet vision, solar regeneration, robotic prosthetics, hereditary memories, poison secretion, high-tech spaceship. 

Some Alien Culture dichotomies:
●	One gender vs. Three genders
●	Human-looking/Monstrous behaviors vs. Monstrous-looking/Human behaviors
●	Honor and rigidity and safety vs. Ethics and individualism and uncertainty
●	Monogamy vs. Polyamory
●	Militarized vs. Pacifist

Write these on cards too.  Then write this one in Sharpie or extra big letters and put it in the middle:
●	Predator vs. Prey

You should have 12 cards on the table.  

Now add these cards:  Diplomacy, Resilience, Edge & Wonder.  These are your Stats.

Now you bid on the categories.  The aliens bid on all the areas.  The human bids only on stats.  Put your bids face down on each card.  Only face cards can be used on the Stat cards.  You must bid something on each dichotomy, but not each trait or stat.  You may double-up on any bid, but do so publicly so others see what you’ve done.  

If there are ties, each draws a card from the Heart deck to resolve.  A Joker is a critical miss …. maybe should be removed from this section.

Jack is 11, Queen is 12, King is 13.  Ace is 14 essentially, but not considered a face card.  

Winners of the Alien Traits claim the trait for themselves.  Not all traits may be bid on, in which case they are not in the game (yet, maybe).  The winner of an Alien Culture card chooses which dichotomy represents their race, and the opposite defines the other alien race.  The winner of a Stat gets +2 in that stat, second place gets +1, 3rd gets 0.  If you don’t bid on a stat, you get -1.  

(Note: Stats are for individual characters, traits and culture notes are for the alien race as a whole).

The alien characters should then speak a bit about their alien culture.   Name them.  Talk about their physicality.  They need to be something that is romantically compatible with a human, but could be so psychically or through VR if not physically. Afterward, the human character should then indicate something about each culture that attracts them and something that repels them.  Write this on the on your sheet.

The predator/prey dichotomy sets up the precipitating event of the game.  One alien is hunting the other one, in a manner that suits their nature.  

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While the aliens are writing about the culture, the Human player make clocks for the faction plans.  Write down what will happen when and if they are achieved.  Make the stakes high.  

What else?

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Diplomacy/something sexier.
●	When you try to make someone believe you...
●	When you try to manipulate someone..

Resilience
●	When you suffer physical harm...
●	When you experience great setbacks...

Edge
●	When you experience mortal conflict and utilize your nature..
●	When you harness the power of an Alien Trait...

Wonder
●	When you seek answers about the world.. (alien)/ When you try to understand an alien’s nature..(human)
●	When you 

When you add a romantic element into a scene, draw the top card from the Hearts deck and add it to your hand.

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When there’s a conflict between two players, each chooses a card.  If there is a clear advantage, that player adds a card from the Hearts.  The third player narrates the result.  

When a card is played, it is discarded.  When you run out of cards, pick up your discard pile.  You now have a full hand.  If the Heart deck runs out, reshuffle and create a new face-down deck.  Heart cards played by PCs should be discarded back into the Heart discard deck.

The Heart deck also supplies opposition from non-PCs.

Jokers indicate the advent of great change.  It interrupts the conflict so that it doesn’t get resolved.  Whoever plays it should identify what they were thinking of, and take an uninvolved players guidance on how it plays out.  

JOKERS
Things to think of as wild cards:
●	Major government discovery and investigation
●	The arrival of more aliens from one side or the other
●	natural disaster
●	something else

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Answer this:  How do characters advance?  Are they set in stone on the character sheets or derived from bidding or from play?

When you act against your nature ...
When you bridge a gap between …

Answer this:  What do you get when you advance?  Some thoughts.  Mark each option off when you choose it, you can’t choose it again.
●	+1 to a stat.  (max +3)
●	Gain an alien trait that wasn’t bidded on in alien creation.
●	Acquire massive material resources through human or alien means.
●	Receive support from a Faction; add +1 to related stats when acting with support of that Faction.
●	__________________

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Answer this:    How does scene-framing work?  A rotation? 

Players can spend a face card to enter a scene you’re not in?