I have vague memories of watching Alien for the first time late at night on the tv in my bedroom. Obviously I wasn’t old enough to have seen the movie at the cinema. So I had had to wait for it to make it to television.

But I’ve been a fan of the movie and the franchise ever since.

It’s also why I jumped on the bandwagon for the Alien RPG.

The obvious jumping off point are the Alien movies (Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection) and the prequels (Prometheus and Alien: Covenant). As far as the RPG is concerned the Alien vs Predator movies are not cannon.

Within the Alien RPG core rulebook on page 219 they give a reading list that apart from three of the suggestions can be found on Audible. Which was handy for me with a few spare credits burning a hole in my virtual pocket. But the reading list is a great starting off point. Which is as follows:

ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE by Alex White, and OUT OF THE SHADOWS, RIVER OF PAIN, SEA OF SORROWS. The later three are available as audio plays, and really well produced. I’m a fan of audio plays so I jumped at getting them.

Also on Audible is ALIENS: BUG HUNT by Scott Siegler and others. However the graphic novel ALIENS: DEAD ORBIT by James Stokoe is obviously not. The first of two “technical” books in their list THE WEYLAND-YUTANI REPORT by S.D. Perry is unsurprisingly not suitable for the audio treatment.

ALIENS: COLONIAL MARINES TECHNICAL MANUAL by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood is another of their suggestions. One that I’d add is the William Gibson script for Alien III that was never made, and for a long time lost. And has now been turned into an Audible audio play.

But I can also get inspiration from out side of the Alien franchise, the sci-fi horror genre is a rich one to draw upon. Naturally any list will never be comprehensive. But the ones below are movies I’ve enjoyed and think would make cool cinematic scenarios for the Alien RPG.

Yeah The Thing prequel that was done might be worth a look but it’s not a patch on Carpenters take on the book.

Obviously one or two of these suggestions have been influenced by the Alien movies.

But as you can see more than one of these films is set underwater.

Ok I lied about Underwater nobody liked that movie.

Inspiration for the campaign side is a different thing totally and something I’ll cover in a future post.

What movies would you watch to help inspire you for playing an Alien cinematic scenario?