There's a design problem with the Story Points that I have managed to solve with the help of Ultimate Edition mechanics. The Story Points work well enough for most pregens that players are given for the Cinematic Scenarios, except the occasional extremely altruistic or even suicidal character for whom the incentives are misaligned. Why would a player playing such a character sacrifice him say halfway through the scenario, so that he misses out on half the adventure? For a stupid point that MAY help his NEXT character in the NEXT scenario survive? If survival is a reward, why not scrap the point and try to make BOTH his characters in BOTH scenarios survive? It just doesn't make sense from the perspective of a player to sacrifice his character—and thus further participation in the scenario—for one of these points. They just aren't sufficient reward for the sacrifice.
And yet, people do sacrifice their characters according to their Agendas, simply because most people are decent folk who want to follow the rules/script and have a good time. And this works well enough and I am sure it will work for us too. But I am just not happy with it because I know that when player incentives are fully aligned, EVERYONE will have more fun, and first and above all the player called on to make the sacrifice. It's much better to not have to rely on his "good will" and instead give him a balanced choice, and let him make up his mind. If the mechanics are balanced well, he will have a REAL decision to make, instead of just going with the flow to get along and "have fun".
Understand the nature of the problem: Most pregens have no issue, because most pregens are normal people who want to survive. But every now and then a scenario throws an extremely altruistic or even suicidal pregen at a player, simply because the movies do, and if you want to simulate the movies, you need a few of these characters. But it's not fair to the player who lands them, because he's called upon to throw his character away and basically quit the game, and all for a stupid Story Point, all the while every other player gets the Story Point AND gets to keep their character!
Now, in the designers' defense, there's not much they could have done to fix this within the constraints of their system. They simply don't have anything with which to reward players "after death", since they have no overworld with a metagame like Ultimate Edition. But since I have all these things, and in spades, it's very easy for me to redress this situation.
So first of all, in Ultimate Edition Alien (aka Ultimate Alien), a player sacrificing his character to fulfill his Agenda gets A FREE HERO IN MASTER OF HEROES MODE. This is the Strategy Layer I'll be unveiling shortly, and in which players with normal pregens have a HUGE advantage, since every character of theirs that survives a scenario automatically moves to that layer. So in Ultimate Alien, solving this issue with Alien is even more imperative than in base Alien. In base Alien all pregens get tossed at the end of a Cinematic Scenario, so the player with the altruistic/suicidal character is not at such a huge disadvantage. Sure, he'll miss out on some of the scenario, but at the end of it all the players will be equal because all characters will be tossed.
So now I have equalized normal pregens with the rare altruistic/suicidal ones, or at least almost equalized them, because sacrificing your character means you don't get to play the entire scenario. But at least you can still get your Story Points, and you'll still gain a "hero" for the overworld at the end of it all.
But that's not all, because I've given Story Points much more weight too in Ultimate Alien, making them far more effective in motivating players to follow their Agendas. And the way I've done this is to introduce a STORY POINTS LEADERBOARD. I will make a leaderboard for Story Points on the Battlegrounds site that will track ALL the Story Points gained for all players across all the Cinematic Scenarios they play. Of course the Story Points are made to be spent, but I will be tracking the total number gained from the start of the Season, and the top players will gain the advantage of first dibs on any pregen they want for every scenario they play.
In the first scenario we're starting, Hope's Last Day, I used a first-come-first-served system to assign characters, but I never really like this system, it's dumb and can't be connected in any way to game mechanics. It's good in generating FOMO to get teams filled out sooner than otherwise, but that's not as big of an advantage in terms of game quality and fun as a mechanic that feeds back into the actual game. The leaderboard on the other hand is a terrific motivating factor, it means that every single Story Point you gain brings you closer to ensuring you get your first choice in the next scenario you play. Moreover, these choices become more and more important further and further into the season, because in later scenarios and campaigns there are characters commanding entire Colonial Marine squads or even entire spaceships! This is one of the aspects of Alien that surprised me, that there are often chains of command and the players aren't equal the way they are in the typical fantasy RPG. In practically every D&D or PF adventure I have seen, no player can command any other player (Kingmaker is an exception here, which is why it's so awesome), but in Alien, wherever there are Colonial Marines for example, there is a chain of command, and you either follow it or you're in trouble!
So with Ultimate Alien I find it incredibly exciting that the players will be competing from the very first moments of the very first tiny introductory scenario for points which, many months later, might allow them to control an entire squad of Colonial Marines or an entire ship. Right now there is only ONE such ship commander position, in the sandbox campaign that was just released (and of which I'll be speaking at length soon):
Imagine commanding a ship like in an Alien movie and being responsible for so many decisions: where to land, who to send out and with what vehicles and equipment, when to take off, and so on. I get excited just writing about it! And only ONE player in the Battlegrounds can have that experience: whoever ends up on top of the Ultimate Alien Story Points Leaderboard after half a dozen scenarios and a full sandbox campaign (the ship command is available in the second full sandbox campaign, that as aforesaid, was just released).
But even beyond this one extremely unique opportunity, there are plenty of other cool characters to claim, including various commands in the Colonial Marines.
Of course this doesn't mean that everyone who ends up at the top of the ranking will want to command a ship or lead a squad. But he will get first dibs on whatever role he wants, and that is only possible in my Ultimate Edition version of Alien. And that's before I've even fully explained how Master of Heroes will work, which will take everything to a whole new level.
