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It is coming out later this year and I am stoked.
Link to the website.
The ALIEN tabletop roleplaying game will be a beautifully illustrated full-color hardcover book, both presenting the world of ALIEN in the year 2183 and a fast and effective ruleset designed specifically to enhance the ALIEN experience. The game can be played in two distinct game modes:
Cinematic play is based on pre-made scenarios that emulate the dramatic arc of an ALIEN film. Designed to be played in a single session, this game mode emphasizes high stakes and fast and brutal play. You are not all expected to survive.
Campaign play is designed for longer continuous play with the same cast of player characters over many game sessions, letting you explore the ALIEN universe freely, sandbox style.
The rules of the game is based on the acclaimed Year Zero Engine, used in award-winning games such as Tales from the Loop and Mutant: Year Zero, but adapted and further developed to fully support and enhance the core themes of ALIEN: horror and action in the cold darkness of space.
I am somewhat interested.
To be released in December, you can now preorder the rulebook as well as other items.
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I picked this up today and it's the first RPG I've picked up this decade which really made me sit up and take notice of not just the mechanics (on the pleasingly straightforward side of things) but the philosophical underpinning of the game.
There's basically two modes of play. One-shots are known as "Cinematic Games" and are meant to be played in 3-5 hours. They even skip character generation, using pregen roles for players to play. I thought this was odd until I realised that "Cinematic Mode" is supposed be quite lethal. Like, Call of Cthulhu levels of lethal (if not more). In a Cinematic Game at least several PC deaths is expected, if not inevitable, so using pregen characters is better than having players create their own characters, investing in them and then having them brutally offed. An interesting approach.
The other mode is a more traditional campaign, where you create characters and have them take part in longer adventures. They dial down the lethality and keep things ticking over for a longer story approach. That was really interesting and seems to work well (I need to give the game a full playtest to see how it pans out).
Lore-wise the game accepts Prometheus, Covenant, Alien, Alien: Isolation, Aliens and Alien 3 as canon (the timeline is two years after the events of Aliens and Alien 3). AvP 1 and 2 are ignored and Alien: Resurrection hasn't happened yet. The game deep delves into the Prometheus/Covenant side of the lore, bringing in the Engineers, the black goo, the various mutants and the Neomorph as factors in a game. I was dubious about this, but they do come up with interesting ways of suggesting ideas for these elements to be used in a game. It helps overcome the Alien franchise's problem of being quite small in scope. The rules also allow for games based around corporate espionage, frontier civil wars and other things which don't even involve any xenomorphs.
Mechanically, the game uses an archetype system with skills and talents and simple d6 rolling. The game's mechanical innovation is stress tests, where you can spend stress points to re-roll dies at the risk of panicking and doing stupid horror movie style things.
Overall, a good package. My main complaint is the expense of the supplementary material: the first adventure and the gamemaster screen are both roughly twice as expensive as they should be. But the game book itself is huge, well-written and entertaining. Looking forward to test-running this one.
Mm. I was hoping AVP1 would be included at least, if not Predator, Predators and Predator 2. I know the movies have issues, but still,.I prefer them to Prometheus, if only because I am not a fan of the engineers. But that's just me.
I got the PDF for this just the other day. Interesting note they include some brand new not-Xenomorph monsters to encounter as well.
Monster rules are fairly simple so I'm making up some Space Zombies for a intro mission. Key thing really is coming up with a d6 Attack table. for what the monster dose.
Mm. I was hoping AVP1 would be included at least, if not Predator, Predators and Predator 2. I know the movies have issues, but still,.I prefer them to Prometheus, if only because I am not a fan of the engineers. But that's just me.
Prometheus de-canonised AvP because they presented rather different backstories for Weyland-Yutani. Peter Weyland is the founder of Weyland Industries in the mid-21st Century in Prometheus, which means Charles Bishop Weyland couldn't found it in the early 21st Century in AvP1.
Not to mention that Covenant seems to be suggesting that the traditional xenomorph didn't exist 100 years earlier, when AvP was made, although there is a significant possibility that the xenomorph is based on a pre-existing creature template (as suggested by the statue of an xenomorph in the Engineer ship in Prometheus). And having xenomorphs rampaging around early 21st Century America in AvP: Requiem also creates tons of continuity problems (not to mention that Requiem is quite literally one of the worst movies ever made by the human race to date, which for all their faults Prometheus and Covenant aren't).
Ridley Scott - whom Fox has entrusted the franchise with for the time being - also hates the AvP movies and apparently gave Damon Lindelof a withering death stare when Lindelof suggested they tweak the script to suggest that AvP was still in play, so he clearly doesn't give a toss about the continuity.
The only film that Scott has time for that he wasn't involved with is Aliens, which he quite liked and he's good friends with Jim Cameron. As far as I can tell, the rest don't exist (he's friends with Fincher as well, but Fincher has pretty much disowned Alien 3 at this point as well).
Interesting note they include some brand new not-Xenomorph monsters to encounter as well.
They have some flora and fauna from different worlds, including some hostile-but-not-xenomorph-hostile animals. They also have the bad guy synths from Alien: Isolation to mix things up.
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I have received my special edition rulebook (it's gorgeous) and plan on running Chariot of the Gods later this month. I'll post my thoughts afterwards in this thread. Unfortunately the dice are sold out everywhere I've looked (or way too expensive) so it looks like I'll be using generic dice for this session.
Mm. I was hoping AVP1 would be included at least, if not Predator, Predators and Predator 2. I know the movies have issues, but still,.I prefer them to Prometheus, if only because I am not a fan of the engineers. But that's just me.Prometheus de-canonised AvP because they presented rather different backstories for Weyland-Yutani. Peter Weyland is the founder of Weyland Industries in the mid-21st Century in Prometheus, which means Charles Bishop Weyland couldn't found it in the early 21st Century in AvP1.
Not to mention that Covenant seems to be suggesting that the traditional xenomorph didn't exist 100 years earlier, when AvP was made, although there is a significant possibility that the xenomorph is based on a pre-existing creature template (as suggested by the statue of an xenomorph in the Engineer ship in Prometheus). And having xenomorphs rampaging around early 21st Century America in AvP: Requiem also creates tons of continuity problems (not to mention that Requiem is quite literally one of the worst movies ever made by the human race to date, which for all their faults Prometheus and Covenant aren't).
Ridley Scott - whom Fox has entrusted the franchise with for the time being - also hates the AvP movies and apparently gave Damon Lindelof a withering death stare when Lindelof suggested they tweak the script to suggest that AvP was still in play, so he clearly doesn't give a toss about the continuity.
The only film that Scott has time for that he wasn't involved with is Aliens, which he quite liked and he's good friends with Jim Cameron. As far as I can tell, the rest don't exist (he's friends with Fincher as well, but Fincher has pretty much disowned Alien 3 at this point as well).
Interesting note they include some brand new not-Xenomorph monsters to encounter as well.They have some flora and fauna from different worlds, including some...
a loss. I loved Predators.
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I ran half of the demo adventure Chariot of the Gods last night. I had four players instead of my expected five, so I ran the fifth crew member of the Montero as an NPC. We played approximately seven hours and only got to Act II, though we're close to the end of that act. Two of my players are experienced roleplayers in my P2 and 5e groups, a third was someone who played 2e back in highschool thirty years ago (and nothing since then), and the last had zero tabletop roleplaying experience (he hadn't even seen the Alien movies, so he was a very fresh set of eyes on the game).
We had a blast, and promptly scheduled our second (and last - since things are starting to ramp up towards a conclusion) session for a week from now. I enjoyed running a game with high tension, and the players did as well. I used the wonderful Syrinscape Sci-Fi player to set the mood right, which my players seemed to appreciate.
The stress dice turned out to be exactly that: every time a player rolled (only done in tense situations where success or failure really matters) I noticed that everyone, including me, would lean in to see the dice as the came up, striving to see the result of the roll.
The agendas turned out great, and my players really took to them. All but one achieved their agenda in the first act, and the one that didn't was kind of restricted by the orders issued by the captain of the ship. Even the guy with no prior experience really got into his role as company liaison. He even emailed everyone in-character when he got home after the session. I love it when RPGs engage players on that level.
Overall this is definitely a recommended RPG from me, and once we finish Chariot of the Gods we're talking about starting up a regular game. I just hope Free League Publishing can put out quality content fast enough for us to consume it.
I have received my special edition rulebook (it's gorgeous) and plan on running Chariot of the Gods later this month. I'll post my thoughts afterwards in this thread. Unfortunately the dice are sold out everywhere I've looked (or way too expensive) so it looks like I'll be using generic dice for this session.
They are just d6s, so although the custom dice are nice, they're not necessary. I found somewhere on eBay in the UK which had them (along with the card deck) at a reasonable-ish price so stumped up for them.
a loss. I loved Predators.
Fox seem to have adopted an approach where there is an ALIENS only universe and also an ALIENS/PREDATOR universe which is totally separate. It's unclear if the ALIEN RPG will bring in Predators later on.
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I ran a second session of my Chariot of the Gods game yesterday. We played for another five hours (thirteen total so far) and still didn't finish. We got into act III, but no one has died yet. However, one PC had her arm torn off by an abomination (extra terrifying because this abomination was a former crew mate). Luckily for her the rest of the crew arrived in time to save her life. Perhaps in our third session we will finish this adventure. It's been great so far and my players are really enjoy playing their roles.
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Our third and final session of Chariot of the Gods was yesterday. It was four hours, for a total of seventeen, far more than I initially though would be required.
It ended pretty much as one would expect from the Alien universe - the corporate liaison betrayed everyone and tried to escape, the hidden synthetic sabotaged the ship's reactor and caused it to self-destruct, aliens and mutated humans attacked the PCs one at a time, but in the end two PCs did manage to escape, albeit barely thanks to some incredible rolls on their part and poor rolls on mine, with a third character's fate unknown as she was alone in a depressurized shuttle, low on oxygen and missing an arm that was lost earlier in combat.
All in all it was a great session, and everyone agreed to play the game some more. This was a hit with my group for both inexperienced and experienced plays alike.
I ran Hope's Last Day for my group yesterday and it ended in a TPK. Man, those xenomorphs are deadly. If you don't kill them before they get close it's game over for at least one player. The acid splash is brutal.
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So we played the first cinematic scenario recently, which will be included in the Soon to be released Starter set.
It went rather well. I had advised my players to see again the movies, and one of them even bailed out at the last moment because of this.
The Rules system is okay, and fitting well with the genre. It has some subtleties that are not apparently evident (Pulse rifle fire / Flamethrower exact effects) that need researching, but otherwise, it really fits the bill.
For the scenario "Chariot of the Gods" : basically you are royally (CENSORED) but maybe if you stick together, you might survive.totally true to the films.
I look forward to the next one, just out in .pdf, and I should receive it sometimes soon.
I look forward to the next one, just out in .pdf, and I should receive it sometimes soon.
I received Destroyer of Worlds earlier this month and it turns everything up to 11. I'll be running it as soon as this pandemic ends.
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I ran Destroyer of Worlds for my group this past week. Boy, does this game really like setting out PC agendas in conflict with each other.
I also just preordered the set for Heart of Darkness and it looks to raise the stakes even further. We may plan another RPG marathon week later this week to play it, once the trauma of this game wears off.
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The Alien RPG vexes me.
If you want to play a tabletop simulation of the movie Alien or Aliens using the pre-created scenarios, it's fantastic.
If you want to do almost anything else or play the "campaign" style where you're not just trying your best to kill everyone and they play the same characters week after week, you're on your own. Until they release the "Space Trucker" splat (which seems to be last on their list) I think I'll keep this shelved.
The whole Space Trucker thing seems like a much more simplified Traveller. I can't make -EVERY- place they go have an alien hive or a war going on.
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I've been writing up a campaign that is a bit of a mix of space trucker and colonists. Rough outline is there is an old CEO who is sick and tiered of what he calls "Corporate BS" So he plans to pick a planet that is out of the way and set up a colony where he can retire, sit on a porch and drink brandy. The first story has the PCs save him from some Corporate assassins who would rather he just die than retire. As a reward he gives them a chance to be part of his Retirement Colony plan.
Missions that follow are largely about getting things ready and the trip to his little out of the way paradise. Salvaging an old space station, dealing with pirates, corporate nonsense, environmental challenges, etc...
Things like salvage a wreck before it gets destroyed by micro-meteor shower, but wait, while you are in the middle of that there is a distress signal from a dad and his two kids in an escape pod, right in the path of the shower, saving them means loosing out on some salvage and putting your ship in danger, leaving them to die....well it's a crappy thing to do and technically illegal.
Saving the real bad for when they actually get to the colony site. "Nice little paradise world...oh hey we found some ruined alien temple thingy want to take a look?"