Back in I think 1979 when the original Alien movie came out it became this infamous scary movie. A couple of years later when I finally got to see the film for the first time it didn’t disappoint. The hype was real. Then Aliens came out. And wow! I was in love with this franchise, the whole universe.
So this Alien RPG is something that ticks a lot of boxes for me.
For fans of the movies, books, comics, and video games the good news is the RPG is set before Alien 4. However Prometheus and Covenant are canon. which may or may not be good news depending on your view of the two movies. It should also be noted that the Alien v Predator movies are not canon in this setting.
As an aside as to what constitutes the Alien timeline, I did read on the internet somewhere, but never dug any further, that Bladerunner and Soldier (the Kurt Russel movie) were part of the Alien timeline! One day when I have nothing better to do I will dig into this a bit more.
I don’t think it will be a surprise to anyone that based on the setting the Alien RPG that the designers say it has three themes, space horror, sci-fi action and sense of wonder. The Year Zero Engine that the game uses has been adapted to support those themes.
The Alien RPG uses d6 dice. It helps to have two different colours for your dice. You can buy the official dice. There are two sets, a base set (black) and a stress set (yellow). They have a face hugger on the one face, and a cube on the six face (as shown in the photo below). But these are not required. Regular d6 can be used instead. And I like that. It winds me up when a system requires custom dice (FFG I’m looking at you). That’s just an excuse to fleece gamers. Even with these official dice I’m boarder line in recommending them because of the cost. Each pack gets you ten 16mm dice. But cheapest I’ve found is £15. In my opinion these shouldn’t be more than a tenner.
As an aid to playing the game it’s possible to get a deck of 55 cards that contains 22 weapon cards, 20 character cards, 3 vehicle cards and 10 initiative cards. I particularly like the initiative cards I find them useful in my D&D sessions. However the Alien RPG uses them with a twist. Instead of rolling a die to establish the initiative order, players and the GM on behalf of any NPCs draw a card at random to determine the order. Naturally this way of doing initiative can be replicated using regular playing cards with the ace acting as a one. The character cards match up with the characters in the rule book. So can be handed to players to reference if using them. These cards are nice and handy but not essential.
I actually like the official GM screen. Despite it just being three landscape panels. My preference would have been four like the official D&D screen. The side the players see has a piece of lovely atmospheric art. I thought the tables on the GM side were ones I would use during a game, particularly the panic roll table.
Let’s look at the rule book.
Basically the heart of the Alien RPG is a d6 dice pool made up from a combination of an attribute and skill, plus stress level. Roll at least one six and you succeed, roll a one on a stress dice and you are making a roll on the panic table. The more stress you have the more likely something bad happens.
There is an element of push your luck here on the attribute check, because you can decide to push your luck and reroll any none six dice results. You can do this once per check, although some talents may allow this to be done more than once. However there is a catch. You increase your stress level and have to add another stress die to the roll. So if you hit a one on those stress dice with the increased stress level you are more likely as I said above to have something bad happen to you.
The Alien RPG has two modes of play Cinematic and Campaign.
Cinematic is the Alien RPG version of a one shot. It uses pre-written scenarios and characters. The scenarios follow the dramatic arc of the Alien movies, high stakes, ramping up the pressure, and brutal. The chances of surviving are low. The rules contain an introductory Cinematic scenario, Hope’s Last Day. Plus there is an additional Cinematic scenario Chariot of the Gods that can be bought separately (although in August you can buy it as part of starter box set that includes maps, tokens, dice and cards). A brand new Cinematic scenario is also being published in August.
The other mode of play, Campaign sees players creating their own characters and exploring the Alien universe over several sessions.
The characters players create can be one of four careers, frontier colonist, space trucker, colonial marine or company rep. Naturally these are all humans. However with the agreement of the GM it is possible to be an Android within the game.
Characters have personal agendas that act slightly differently in the two modes. They can also have a buddy and rival.
I’m not familiar with the core system that Alien is based upon. But it does seem less complicated than some other systems like I have used or seen. Which is good in this case. Keeping things simple means they are less likely to get in the way and take players out of the game.
Having just four attributes and twelve skills for a character plus a talent contributes to this. It speeds up character creation and keeps the character sheets a lot simpler and easier to reference.
When playing a Campaign you need to chose one of the frameworks based around the three main careers of space trucker, colonial marine and frontier colonist. Within the refuel book there are tables that allow you to generate missions within those frameworks.
What I like about the rules is that it also caters for space travel and combat. So it is possible to have a planet/space exploration campaign that involves fighting it out with space pirates, rival corporations etc. And that really appeals to me that you have rules here that can switch between that close quarter horror to almost space opera!
With the majority of my RPG experience being D&D or similar where a grid based system on maps is used. Within the Alien RPG they use zones. Which should make it easier to do theatre of the mind, and also speed up combat. I’ve seen a similar system proposed for the Genesys RPG by fans.
But there is a tonne of information in this rule book along with some great art work. I love the guidance they give on running this style of game, the suggest further reading, the structure of a Cinematic scenario.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of this rulebook and what is covered. At 392 pages this is not a small rule book. And this would be a much bigger post if I went into real detail. I’ve just highlighted bits that have stood out to me so far.
If you are a fan of the movies then this is a must I think. The supporting accessories are pretty good and useful. I like this a lot. I just hope I can find some players locally to play a Cinematic scenario or two.
