The last three months or so have seen me resurrect my baking skills and extended them. I’m now baking two sourdough loaves a week (I love the toast it makes) plus until two weeks ago shortbread biscuits which have been replaced with pound cake. I’m developing a serious pound cake addiction.

Apart from the fact I’m enjoying the consumption of what I bake. What spurs me on and gives me a warm feeling is the joy my baking brings to Nan. She doesn’t eat much of it. But she loves seeing it straight from the oven, and having a small bit of whatever has just been baked once cool enough.

I have picked up a hard copy of the cinematic adventure Chariot of the Gods for the Alien RPG. This is technically the second published Alien RPG cinematic adventure if you count the mini adventure in the core rule book.

I’ve yet to run an Alien RPG game (hopefully once this pandemic has become safe enough to allow people to gather again). But reading this cinematic adventure it’s obvious they are at least on paper written differently from a D&D adventure.

A cinematic adventure comes with pre-generated characters, cast of NPC’s, agendas, maps, events and descriptions of key locations on the maps.

The pre-generated characters are the first difference. Cinematic adventures are the Alien RPG version of a one-shot. So the expectation is that the adventure is completed in a single session or possibly a second at most (depending on the duration of a session). They are also seen as a great intro to the Alien RPG and also for sessions at a con. With that in mind you get pre-generated characters for the players to choose from to play.

A cinematic adventure is split in to three acts, and at the start of each act players get a new agenda for their character to replace the previous acts agenda.

For me the biggest difference between this and say a D&D adventure is that within an act things are event driven. Some of the events may be mandatory, but the majority will not be, and may never be used. Very none linear.

The maps and the location descriptions are not any different from any other RPG.

With the act structure and events reading a cinematic adventure is a very different experience to other RPGs. Something that took me a little time to adjust to. It’s going to be very interesting to see what an Alien RPG campaign adventure looks like.

With the map and counters pack (on the way) that’s available, and the deck of cards this adventure is well supported for the GM and players.

The adventure is a softback, and 48 pages. And not bad value.