The Affliction Deck

Seems like a fine mechanic, so long as it's balanced. If players have an equal opportunity to gather supplies/equipment to help mitigate large, sudden damage, then I don't see a problem. If not, it would be more of a game of luck, which I think would work against the spirit of cooperation.

Yes, sudden death can be as much an anti-climax as a thrilling danger. Perhaps actual death should be incremental with health point deductions attached to each horrific injury.

Haven't played and/or seen how this mechanic plays out in a game session, but your description reminds me of the Critical Hit tables from MERP - Middle Earth Role Playing - from back in the day.

Depending on the type of attack the target experienced, ranging from melee weapons to missiles to specific elemental/magical effects, a Critical Hit result warranted a throw of percentile dice and a lookup on the relevant reference table. All sorts of horrible, entertaining stuff would happen to victims with it in play. It was so good/terrible that we added it into our ADD&D 2nd Edition games.

My gut tells me that this kind of mechanic would work well with an action-oriented game, but not so much survival horror. You'll need to keep an eye on balance here so as not to simply frustrate players with the amount of insurmountable setbacks they experience in relation to ability to succeed at even the most elementary of tasks.

A nice thing about your use of a card deck is that players can dial-back or amplify the difficulty of the hardships they face by simply adding or removing cards from this deck prior to a play session. Something the MERP tables were unable to do... I can't tell you how many one-eyed, one-handed rogues and wizards were running around because of this... :)

More details regarding MERP if you're interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_Role_Playing

You could have Severe and Critical Wounds cards that were color-coded on the face for easy location, and keep them out of the deck, but then maybe shuffle some in at later game stages based on other things that happen..

Dunno if you could make that work, but you could have dynamic difficulty based on game events.

Well, I was thinking more like, when the aliens board the ship (or whatever), then you add the "aliens might jump out and kill you" sorts of things. Though I suppose that would be an event deck, not an affliction deck.

Feel free to ignore this rambling post but there's a paradox to be negotiated here, I think.

The threat of unexpected death = suspense (good)
Unexpected death = Argh! right... ok. damn. I guess I shouldn't have risked it, but...it might have worked. (not as good as the build up?)

Can characters die without having the game end for the player? Maybe players have several characters to play with?

I'm thinking about your desire to capture the experience of watching Alien. I think it's worth bearing in mind, that both the threat AND actualisation of sudden deaths created suspense because our experience of the film didn't end with the deaths. No-one got kicked out of the cinema when a death occurred.

If the game time was short, you could happily kill off players so the surviving players felt more and more isolated and scared. That wouldn't be an issue, I think. But if the game was longer, it might not be so good to kick players out of the game, particularly if death is unpredictable.

You want the players to worry about taking risks. But they will take them, if there's a reward for it (I mean, you WANT them to take risks too). Maybe the price of failure should be pain rather than death. Something to be afraid of, but not something to end the fun?

I suppose what I'm suggesting is - to get the Alien film experience, the players might be immortal, controlling mortal characters with whom they have some emotional investment.

I might be totally wrong. I just have reservations about sudden game-ending things, unless it's done in some special kind of way...

hi. one of the simplest ways to limit the threat of sudden death is to vary how the deck is shuffled (the wording of this will need tweaking) " shuffle 2 thirds of the deck in 1 pile. shuffle all the instant death and the other third of the deck into a second pile. place the first (nonfatal) pile on to the other (fatal) pile." as i say the wording was horrible but the method would mean that nobody dies until the deck is 2/3 depleted. i have played a few games that use this in event decks, but i cant recall their names. your system sounds cool. the additional flavour text could really add to the atmosphere.