"Ever Played A "COWBOYS AND ALIENS" Scenario???" Topic

Either with 1) Greys or other aliens crashlanding in the Old West, or 2) with "cowboy" space pioneers/colonists trying to fight off alien resistance?

If so, what was your game like? What figures did you use? What terrain/scenics? What rules? LOTOW, perhaps?

Anything you wish you had done differently?

CC
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And here I thought I was being so clever with the title "Cowboys and Aliens".

Well, it so happens there's already a graphic novel (and a film in the works) with that title.

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Either way, it seems that my thread is a little broader than the comic book – allowing for both scenarios, 1) with aliens in the Old West and 2) those with cowboys on an alien planet.

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theinfosphere.org/Wong_Ranch

CC

Im planning a Spugs of the Old West scenario in the future.

Hmmm. Then maybe I should sculpt some cowboy hats for these guys, so they can blend in better in the Old West . . .

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Hats or not, I imagine those little guys could cause a lot of damage to Old West fighters:

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CC

Nope, CC, but I very much enjoy every random game idea you post on TMP. :)

Yes, in TSR's BOOT HILL rpg.

The Gamemaster threw the players a curve when the group I was in encountered space aliens.

It did not go well for us.

Please, do tell.

CC

But I want the little green alien toys fron Toy Story/Toy Story 2!

Gracias,

Glenn

Oooooooh the claw!

Nope, not cowboys and aliens, but a friend of mine invented a game called Chickens and Aliens. The chickens had to build robots ot fight the aliens before the aliens killed them all.

The second idea sounds a lot like Pinnacle's The Lost Colony RPG setting. It's a spin-off from their Deadlands: Hell on Earth series which is a bit more of an old west themed space opera.

Not yet, although I have tons of Old West stuff and about a dozen Brigade Games greys painted up. However, I do have a great scenario title for aliens versus cowboys: "3:10 to Roswell."

Mulligan

Didn't someone game Howard Waldrop's NIGHT OF THE COOTERS? It was H.G. Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS Martians invading Texas.

Here's another scenario title: The Thing That Shot Liberty Valance.

"Two Gun" Mulligan

I am working on a Cowboys and Predators game. I'm presently trying to decide what rules to modify.

Someone in our club used daleks as a random event in a wild west shootout.

"I am working on a Cowboys and Predators game. I'm presently trying to decide what rules to modify."

Ran an Old West game using opposing skirmish forces of Apache and US cavalry. Players informed that this was a "straight' Old West game, using LotoW, with a few add-ons and proceeded accordingly.

Initial shots fired, much fun being had when the GM-controlled and invisible Hunter showed up. Much gory nastiness followed, with the players figuring out what was going on after three turns of carnage.

The Predator has to very specific objectives (say, take the heads of the bravest warrior – leader figures – from each side) otherwise the game is just silly as he can kill pretty much anything on board. Do NOT play this game with those who can't stand losing or will argue each and every call by the GM, as they'll HATE this.

No, but that's the most awesome idea I've heard all morning. Of course, my morning was spent in a meeting, so the competition is pretty weak.

Gallowglass:

Matthew and I both have a twisted sense of humor, never argue with the GM, and I at least am quite used to losing, as you know. You should pull this on us; I promise not to divulge the secret.

Chris

Gallowglass, I posted a similar scenario here on TMP three years ago, featuring Cavemen vs. Predators: TMP link

The key is, you need to give the cowboys and Indians a fighting chance.

A prowling cougar or grizzly ambushes the Predator and deals some damage before succumbing.

The cowboys can stampede their horses or cattle into the Predator. Or, if they don't think of that, a passing herd of buffalo could do the job.

Maybe rattlesnake or Gila monster venom is far more toxic for the Predator than for humans, with unpredictable results: blindness, or deafness, or sudden seizures or paralysis.

The watering hole's mud has that "cloaking" effect that Schwarzenegger took advantage of in the first Predator movie.

A fast-draw gunslinger might get the drop on the Predator.

A sniper with a long rifle, hidden in hot rocks so his heat signature is disguised, might get a bead on the Predator, or at leat take out his shoulder weapon.

Things like that. Just keep chipping away at the Predator until the last handful of warriors can take him down.

One guy tosses dynamite at the Predator, which the group's sharpshooter then detonates.

The Predator ignores a guy armed only with a Bowie knife, not realizing he's a champion knife-thrower.

Wasn't there a conquer-the-galaxy style computer game one time called "Spaceward Ho" with a cowboy theme to it? If memory serves, the colonization ships looked like conestoga wagons. Anybody know?

Yeah. This was it.

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That dude is flying a robo-shark in a vacuum and lassoing a planet. I still don't think he could take Brock Samson.

@ChrisJ – I was thinking yourself and t'other fella might get "Bad Day at Bieto" instead….mainly because I no longer have any Apaches. Actually, come to think of it – I never did, as they belonged to somebody else. And I need at least one Predator.

@jpattern2 – It's been a good long while since I ran the scenario. I've been looking for the file, but I have an awful feeling that it may not have survived the Great Hard Drive Crash of Spring 2008. I'm pretty sure it didn't.

I'll see if I can reconstruct it. I remember that I had a particular mechanism which handled/produced a deterioration in the Hunter's gear as the game progressed, leading to his thermal camo gubbins eventually going on the blink, as well as a table I used to roll on to "see what he'd do next" to make sure he didn't just motor around the table pulling the heads off of everybody.

I'll post it up here once I've got it done.

thermal camo gubbins

:)

Also, if memory serves, didn't Archive do a set of figures called "Space Texicans"?

I did have Old Red Eye show up in a Desperado game (Original Battlestar Galactica Cylon).

Yes. Yes we have…

Oh give me a home
where the saucermen roam
and the tentacled aliens play.
Under blue Western skies
'til you get vaporized
by a bushwackin'
gun-slinging Grey.

Home, home on the range.
We'll be riding to Roswell today.
You'll be facing a battle
if you mutilate my cattle.
And won't you please put
that dang probe away.

"Dang, I've been gutshot!" Mulligan

Its not space aliens, its subterrainean supercivilisation but I wrote up a game based on the serial Phantom Empire. It uses Rattraps 45 Adventure rules and can be found in the rattrap forums as Legend of the Old West in 45 adventures. I used artizan cowboys and was unhappy with the high degree of realism. I wanted rhinestone cowboys. I also used Fangs Guard from Brigades pulp sci fi range.

At Historicon two years ago. Ran a 5150 game where four extra players drooped in. Had to pull out the Foundry cowboys. Kind of coll watching a couple of cowboys riding into a retrieval ship to escape.

Mulligan

I once toyed with the idea of running a Desperado Old West game based on the premise, from the Predator movies, that aliens once dropped in on a western town in 19th America. The tricky part would be letting the alien move while he was invisible. Of course, he has to become visible in order to fire (not sporting otherwise).

I never got beyond the "what if" stage, but it's still a fun idea to kick around.

I'm not a westerner playing gent, but I bet it would be fun to face some cowboys off with Predators, Aliens, Greys, or those little 3-eyed guys from Toystory.

The Indians would know about the Preds… It grows hot this year, Kimosabe.

"The Indians would know about the Preds… It grows hot this year, Kimosabe."

Warren, you rock. CC

Absolutely.

"My grandfather's great-grandfather told him of the Fire Summer, when he was just a boy, and the Méstaa'e-háhkota-nótâxeve, the Ghost-Locust-Warrior, took many Cheyenne men before returning to his home in the stars."

(Apologies to any Cheyenne in the audience, Méstaa'e-háhkota-nótâxeve is the best I could do with an online dictionary. I'm certain that the grammar, if not the words themselves, is completely wrong.)

Stop reading my notes, yeh bastard!!!!

And if you want dinos instead . . . this game seems interesting:

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CC
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Videos:

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Mulligan, you crack me up.

This reminded me of your "3:10 to Roswell":

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CC

1. I think Mulligan need to make a recording of his song (his voice) and post it some where's on the net so we can listen to it. Any seconds on that?

2. "Méstaa'e-háhkota-nótâxeve"????? How do you pronounce that?!?!?

3. A slight correction… "took many Cheyenne skins/heads before returning to his home in the stars."

4. "3:10 to Roswell"?!?!? ROFLMAO!!!

For Warbeads aka AllOvertheSky -
auction

2. "Méstaa'e-háhkota-nótâxeve"????? How do you pronounce that?!?!?

Like it's spelled.

:)

I'd go with something like:
MEH-stah-ah-eh-HAH-koh-tah-NOH-tah-zeh-veh.

(I probably just said something horrible about some Cheyenne's mother-in-law.)

"skins/heads", good call!

Pretty much anything goes in "Wingnut's" fictional old west town of Beaverlick, WYO (See new photos of the Holland Oats Feed and Seed) Elsewhere on this board.

Last year right after the Blue Moon UFO's came out we crashed one into Buffalo Billiards Pool Hall in town. We used several standard Foundry cowboy figures plus Jeff Valent's Rail Crew, and the Super Fig's John Henry fig. The aliens used were Ground Zero Game's Greys (I think). They had to run about collecting DNA samples to power their Bio-equipment in their damaged saucer. I think they had to gather five samples from five differnt species.

The game involved time travel and a group of Interstellar Police types were also covertly trying to foil the Greys and return an artifact that had been stolen from the future.

That unit was varied, featuring the Ivana figure from Jeff Valent as the female Adam Strange-type leader. The Jump Monkey and Zero Device bubble-domed robot from Super Figs was on that team, as was the Hasslefree "Other Race Pirate" figure Stalks, an Alpha Forge Hyrdissian, a Spug from Spriggan Miniatures, and a Quar from ZombieSmith, giving that squad a multi-stellar national feel.

There were at least five players, I think, including one using Wingnut's heavily kit-bashed Jeff Valent ornithopter that has old-style cloth wings and a guy dropping bricks out by hand as a weapon.

I was the interstellar police. The grey player wiped out the Rail Crew posse, got DNA samples from a horse, a human, my monkey and was chasing down a cow when the game pretty much went to pieces. My brother, quietly playing a normal posse of cowboys, avoided combat much of the evening and stayed away from the crash site. he wandered to the railway, climbed onto the car with the rail gun, levelled at crashed UFO, with my lead female character in the cockpit sabotaging the controls. He ripped off one shot, demolishing the UFO and three of my four remaining characters as well as the sole surving rail crew worker, three greys, several innocent bystanders, and ground recovery crew for the ornithopter. The adjacent tobbaco shop also went up, as did the gallows and the Morrison Hotel next door to the Billard Hall caught fire. We pretty much decided he won the game by firing just the one shot. Since he also took out about an eighth of the town I think his posse was rode out on a rail.

Check out some of Wingnut's terrain here.

beaverlick.blogspot.com

He could probably be convinced to throw up some pictures of that game (I think he took some) and the ornithopter.

Oh yeah, we used modified Desperado rules. We have also had Dinosaurs, Mad Scientists and Queen Victoria visit the town. That was all in one game. Others included gorillas in the dynamite shed, a nitro-glycerin eating goat and members of the Tongs, a Sasquatch round up that included a couple of Lovecraft's Elder Gods, and a an-fashioned last-man standing battle royal that went from 25 figures down to two. The last two characters were blow to crap and down to about two bullets between them before I finally won that when the chick I was shooting it out with finally bled out, leaving me with three hit points and one bullet.

I've been toying with a scenario involving a wayward Martian cylinder (the fleet was enroute to invading Venus, and this crew of the worst misfits of Martian society made a left turn at Alberquerque (or was that Aldebaran?) and landed outside of town. They cobble together a poor excuse for a Tripod from the salvage of their vehicle, and set out to conquer Earth, enslave the humans, and ruin Christmas.

On a different path, another plot came to mind involving the Awful Green Things From Outer Space and the crew of the E.S. Znutar. A single AGT reached the planet, and the eggs don't hatch well in the bright sunlight. The AGT must find a suitable warren of somewhat sheltered hatching areas to hide its eggs in.
That sleepy little cowtown over there would be perfect….

Capncarp: "I've been toying with a scenario involving a wayward Martian cylinder (the fleet was enroute to invading Venus, and this crew of the worst misfits of Martian society made a left turn at Alberquerque (or was that Aldebaran?) and landed outside of town."

Hmmm. An aborted mission to invade, but the misfits don't get the order to stand down. And so they are the only ones who make it – until the HG Wells all-out invasion happens years later, that is.

I like it!!!

Would there be three survivors on the craft, perhaps? And would their names be Private KERLEE, Sgt. LAREE and Capt. M.O.?

Of course, according to the Martian version of events, the trio was human, and Mars was the destination:

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CC

There's a scene in the serial "Zombies of the Stratosphere" where "Larry Martin" in his Rocket Man outfit shoots it out with cowboys! loading stolen uranium, which is to be used for a Martian invasion ship, onto a DC-3 out in the California desert.

..and you thought the writers of "Lost" are on drugs. LOL

A Grey crash landed in Aurora Texas in the late 19th century. Or so a Texan once told me. Anyway, it has to be true because you can read about it on the internet, and a Texan told me it was true.