Strangers from Nowhere

Pod People is a horror TTRPG that reimagines body-snatching alien invasion movies - like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Invaders From Mars - from the alien organism’s point of view.

The currents of space brought you to the tiny blue planet called Earth. You arrived as a microscopic organism: a spore, evolved to withstand cosmic radiation and the million-year journey through the cold galaxy. Now that you have arrived, you will be driven by a single instinct: to replicate and replace the most intelligent life form on the planet. You will grow into a pod, and after a short period of gestation you will emerge as a perfect replica of someone in your close proximity. Once you take their place, you will disperse more spores, and without being detected by the humans around you, you’ll attempt to overtake their society... One doppelganger at a time.

But there is one thing unique to humankind that your long evolution on distant planets hasn’t prepared you for: the complexity of emotions. If anything, this will be your Achilles’ heel... Your inability to understand the nuances of human behavior will make it harder for you to infiltrate their world.

Despite being first and foremost a horror game, Pod People, at its heart, is about infiltration. While most games focus on action, this one centers around an alien organism’s ability to pass as the people it body-snatched. It’s an espionage game that hinges on human interactions.

THE STORY

The game’s premise echoes some of the great science-fiction movies of the ’50s and the ’80s: an alien life form invades our world by creating body doubles of people and taking their place. This is not an invasion fought with spaceships and rayguns, but one that brews under the surface, unnoticed by the masses.

PLAYING THE ALIEN ORGANISM

There are many role-playing games in which you can play non-human characters, yet even those tend to be rooted in a very familiar sense of identity. If you sit down to play, you will most likely have a character with abilities and skills and desires. Someone with a history of lived experiences to look back on. In other words, a person.

IN POD PEOPLE, YOU GET TO PLAY AN ALIEN SPECIES THAT IS TRULY ALIEN. A BEING THAT HAS NO SENSE OF SELF, YET SOAKS UP OTHERS’ IDENTITIES LIKE A SPONGE. A HIVE MIND THAT CONTROLS MULTIPLE BODIES, PRETENDING TO BE DIFFERENT PEOPLE...

In fact, you and your party will play the HIVE MIND of the same space organism, sharing the task of animating the different Replicas it grows in an attempt to take over the world!

THE SYSTEM

There are two main mechanics that are unique to Pod People: Deviation and Disquiet.

Deviation measures the disconnect between the Organism’s intention and how it is being perceived. In other words, it’s a way to measure how well it understands life on Earth and, more specifically, human behavior. If it steers too far from the norm, it will enter the UNCANNY VALLEY, and people will know, on a primal level, that something is not as it seems.

Disquiet measures the unease amongst the remaining human population. This is one of the great evolutionary advantages of having a hive mind: the Organism can recognize patterns that emerge within the community it infiltrates. It can sense the tension building under the surface in a very tangible way.

68 pages

For 2-5 players

Requires a ten-sided die, pen and paper to play.