Let's Read the ALIEN RPG

[chuckdee]

Two Predator movies.
Two Alien movies.
Two Terminator movies.

That’s it.

I like the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Predators, Prey and Alien III. I don't really like Predator 2.

 

[CRKrueger]

I like the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Predators, Prey and Alien III. I don't really like Predator 2.

I’ll give you Alien 3, but Christ it’s dark.

I love Lena Headey, but all the extra Terminator stuff I just treat like the Kelvin Timeline - “One possible future, I don’t know tech stuff.”

Prey was pretty cool, but it kinda sucked for the chick, because some Predator is going to kill her and take that pistol back in order for one to toss it to Harrigan in Predator 2.

 

[Cessna]

I’ll give you Alien 3, but Christ it’s dark.

It is. That's why I like it.

 

[Voros]

I’ve seen Predator 2 a few times. I don’t find it memorable. I actually think it’s visually ugly compared to the original. Danny Glover is like overly spastic in it and Gary Busey is Gary Busey.

I tried to rewatch P2 recently after reading some praise and remembering that I found it underwhelming, decided to give it another chance.

The first 5 minutes was an extended gunfight that I found so loud and boring I turned it off. Will give it another try sometime.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I tried to rewatch P2 recently after reading some praise and remembering that I found it underwhelming, decided to give it another chance.

The first 5 minutes was an extended gunfight that I found so loud and boring I turned it off. Will give it another try sometime.

I wouldn’t bother. Both “Predators” and “Prey” are far better.

 

[Voros]

I wouldn’t bother. Both “Predators” and “Prey” are far better.

Yeah I saw both of those and enjoyed them. Hell, I thought Shane Black's The Predator was fun, so I can be easy to please on occasion.

 

[Skywalker]

I think Predator 2 is a better movie than many give it credit. It’s visual look isn’t great and makes it look cheap especially as time has gone on, but I think there is much to like with the characters, plot and IP development.

 

[chuckdee]

I think Predator 2 is a better movie than many give it credit. It’s visual look isn’t great and makes it look cheap especially as time has gone on, but I think there is much to like with the characters, plot and IP development.

Same argument I make about Alien 3, but I just can't see it in Predator 2.

 

[AppleJax]

Aliens vs Predator vs The Terminator was a real comic. Ultimately the real reason for lack of crossover is because the IPs are owned by different companies. Also, Ridley’s dementia aside, the themes are completely different and not interchangeable. You need to rebuild it from the ground up and at that point it’s not the same IP anymore. It hasn’t been the same IP for decades.

So I decided to make my own. Over on my public domain settings thread(s) I sometimes mention my ideas for Bug Hunter 2177, my pastiche of Blade Runner meets Aliens vs Predator vs The Terminator. The PCs are slave replicants created to defend colonies from the bugs and robots leftover from a precursor war, while at the same time worrying about their alien game hunter counterparts who have their own ideas for tackling the problem.

No, my bugs weren’t created by eight foot albino humans because that’s obviously stupid. They were created by aliens archaeologists call the Shapers, who near as anyone can tell looked like those creepy statues from the original screenplay comic.

 

[EmperorNorton]

I really liked Predators. Also just confused at Adrien "The Pianist" Brody playing a jacked as fuck gruff special ops vet but he pulled it off.

I watched the first half of Prey but it was when I was like, working 50 hour weeks at work + helping my parents with renovations so I fell asleep and need to rewatch it, what I saw was good.

 

[chuckdee]

I really liked Predators. Also just confused at Adrien "The Pianist" Brody playing a jacked as fuck gruff special ops vet but he pulled it off.

I watched the first half of Prey but it was when I was like, working 50 hour weeks at work + helping my parents with renovations so I fell asleep and need to rewatch it, what I saw was good.

My favorite part of Predators was the appearance of Laurence Fishburne. That was like- that was random, but I like it!

 

[Toadmaster]

I think Predator 2 is a better movie than many give it credit. It’s visual look isn’t great and makes it look cheap especially as time has gone on, but I think there is much to like with the characters, plot and IP development.

Yeah, I thought Predator 2 was fine. I liked Predator better, but liked the idea that it was completely unconnected to the first beyond the Predator and vague mention of the events from the first film. Predators turning up in the middle of a drug war makes as much sense as a jungle with an active insurgency to me.

 

[CRKrueger]

I tried to rewatch P2 recently after reading some praise and remembering that I found it underwhelming, decided to give it another chance.

The first 5 minutes was an extended gunfight that I found so loud and boring I turned it off. Will give it another try sometime.

It was the 80’s. The big point of the firefight is to highlight why this young Predator on his first hunt becomes so focused on Harrigan. There aren’t any more firefights of that type in the rest of the movie.

 

[CRKrueger]

so I have made my peace with them

 

[CRKrueger]

So the new supplement's basic theme is colonial life, but especially colonies at the limit of human expansion. In the RPGs current year of 2185/2186 human expansion has been limited to 20 parsecs from Earth for around 75 years. Previously there were colonies beyond this limit, but the Network beyond it suddenly collapsed and all contact was lost with these colonies. Intense stellar activity prevented rescue missions and eventually the major political powers of the setting declare a halt on expansion beyond 20 parsecs. The lost colonies are known as the Far Spinward Colonies.

In terms of the book:

• Chapters 1-3 are lore, history and background information about the history of human expansion and the government bodies that currently deal with settlement.
  
  
• Chapters 4-5 are basically the Player section. New character careers, equipment, vehicles and so on.
  
  
• Chapter 6 is a mix of player and GM advice for a colonial campaign
  
  
• Chapter 7 is a list of sample solar systems. These consist of the Weyland Isles and the Far Spinward Colonies. The Weyland Isles are a set of worlds at the edge of the twenty parsec limit owned by Weyland-Yutani and a source of hyperdrive fuel. They've featured in many recent comics and novels as they were an engineer stronghold thousands of years ago and various factions are fighting to control them. The Far Spinward colonies are depicted as they were at their financial height in 2071, forty years before contact was lost.
  
  
• Chapter 8 is a list of alien critters. This section actually gathers stats from a few supplements and tie-in novels, as well as some new aliens. Including the official stats for the Empress I statted earlier in the thread. I thought I was going overboard, but she's actually even more extreme than I thought!
  
  
• Chapter 9-10 are a sandbox campaign set in the Far Spinward colonies, depicting them in the current year of 2185 after decades of isolation. The overall plot ties in with the Heart of Darkness scenario.
  
  
• The appendix is the solar system generator and colony history and management system mentioned by @Baulderstone .

I'm actually going to cover the meat in chapters 4-8 and the appendix first, since that's how the supplement can be mined for your own games. I'll talk about the campaign after that, and finally a bit about the lore.

This wasn’t even on my radar, very cool. I’m still waiting for the “Space Trucker” supplement though.

 

[CRKrueger]

It's not so much losing them as losing them offscreen.

Yeah, if Hicks got to go out like a boss that would be one thing, but to die to a Deus Ex Bullshittina of “Oh the Alien Mother without her egg-laying apparatus pumped out an egg into the landing gear area, which hatched and as a facehugger, did enough damage to a Colonial Frigate to bring it down before latching on to Ripley.” was just unconscionable.

 

[CRKrueger]

I think Predator 2 is a better movie than many give it credit. It’s visual look isn’t great and makes it look cheap especially as time has gone on, but I think there is much to like with the characters, plot and IP development.

Hopkins was a better director in other movies (Ghost in the Darkness), but I liked a lot about the movie, especially the characters, and there was a lot of little glimpses into the Predator culture (not to mention the start of AvP). Danny Glover and Ruben Blades were great partners. King Willie was badass. Plus, I met the amazing stuntman Henry Kingi (El Scorpion) once in a restaurant in LA. He was a really cool guy to talk to.

 

[CRKrueger]

Chapter 6 is a general overview of Colonial Campaigns. It's directed to both GMs and Players (though it's in the Player Section). This chapter exhibits what I consider the biggest flaw in the ALIEN books. I'll get to it in the Colony Types section.

It's basic layout is:

• Types of Colonies
• Campaign Styles
• Mission/Expedition archetypes
• The Mining Mechanical subsystem

Colony Types:

These are paragraph length descriptions of each of the major colony types in the setting. Colonies in ALIEN are small single settlements, very few planets have cities, more than one settlement, or a population above a million.

Spoiler: Setting Detail

Just to reiterate 99% of humanity lives in the Sol System, specifically Earth. For example Earth has a population of 8 billion, Mars 20 million, Saturn and Jupiter's moons 7 million. The largest colonies outside of Sol are Alexandria and Thedus (the planet the Nostromo was returning from in the first film), with 30 and 2 million people respectively. Being hot and cold desert worlds respectively, they're effectively like Mars.

Earth has been restored to being a garden world by the use of terraforming.

Settlement Types given are:

1. Terraforming. Familiar from the second film, a small group of around 1,000-10,000 live in a base that runs a Terraforming station. One day the world will be one of the types below.
   
   
2. Research. These colonies are intended to study either local flora and fauna for medical application or stellar phenomena in local space, perhaps the world has an unusually active sun.
   
   
3. Prospecting. Small colonies of Prospector's drawn here because orbital surveys indicate valuable resources. Note "Mining" in ALIEN has a far broader meaning than in real life. These prospectors could be in deep sea diving suits drilling into volcanic vents, or climbing mountains to find locations optimal for collecting solar energy. Should they find something we transition to....
   
   
4. Mining. These are larger colonies built around discoveries of previous prospectors. Although the book doesn't say it directly here, if you read the novels the original Prospectors are often folded into being company managers. This is a massive incentive, since being a Weyland-Yutani manager is a very high status position in the setting. UPP prospectors just get a pat on the back as their Communist superiors bring in "socially indebted" labourers.
   
   
5. Giffy-Popped. A more extreme type of mining colony where the planet is cracked open to get at resources.
   
   
6. Prison. Obvious
   
   
7. New Frontier. A garden world, very little mining resources but a fantastic place to live.
   
   
8. Comms Relay. A small but crucial settlement intended as a Network node.
   
   
9. Military. Tend to be large shipyards and troop deployment centers, but also simply small "watch and alert command" forward bases.
   
   
10. Farming. Obvious.
    
    
11. Corporate/Government HQ. Colonies that give directives to others in this region of space.

Okay so my biggest problem with this book, and something repeated throughout the line, is that there is virtually nothing in these paragraphs that isn't an immediate implication of the word "Prison" or "Mining".

In my opinion they should have been fleshed out by actual details, such as how UPP mining worlds are often populated by mining specialists or other expert workers forced into semi-indentured labour so that they and their families can prove their loyalty to the state, descendants will be true UPP citizens. There's no real information on how a Giffy-Popped planet is really run day to day. What do you actually do from orbit with a planet whose mantle is spilling out into space. That Corporate HQ worlds contain massive Blade Runner style pyramids or towers impregnable to nuclear weapons, such as seen in the recent Dark Descent game:

View attachment 69392

Campaign Styles:

Basically some details based on whether the PCs are Explorers or Colonists. There's not really much to say here, most of it is obvious stuff such as you'll need a ship for the former, perhaps paying monthly rent to provide some pressure on the PCs, or that a colony game will focus on the single location of the colony.

A side bar does discuss how for a small colony the PCs could stat up a good few PCs to populate the colony and rotate among them from session to session, allowing them to see the colony from several angles.

My own experience is that the Entertainer career is the hub of a Colony game, since they're so well connected.

Expeditions:

These are basically archetypes for scenarios:

1. Supply Runs. The basic framework is bringing goods, but perhaps the cargo is dangerous, or on arrival the colony is a Mary Celeste.
   
   
2. Salvage Ops. Strip Mining abandoned old space hulks for the corporations.
   
   
3. Exploration. Fairly open ended, you've been sent to survey a world by the company. Could be for an archaeological survey or early stages of prospecting.
   
   
4. Search & Rescue. Either contact is lost with a whole colony or somebody goes missing outside of a colony. Patrons can be the rich parents of some idealist who headed out to the Frontier or a company running the colony without the manpower to spare for a search in remote space.
   
   
5. Prospecting. Here it mentions having a race against a competing team of miners or the company leaking false information so that the "potential mining site" is really something else. In-setting the most obvious case being an ancient Engineer base.
   
   
6. Scientific Field Trips. Both helping scientists survey native fauna, but also helping them protect native life when the company arrives to strip mine the planet.
   
   
7. Breakdown/Sabotage. This is where the PCs own base of operations, either their ship or colony, has a sudden cascade of system failures, possibly due to a hidden saboteur. The book doesn't mention it, but a pretty decent world for this is Shānmén since if the fences fail the world's Dinosaur-esque life will break in. Jurassic Park in ALIEN. I think this has to be done more carefully with a ship since ship's in ALIEN are not robust. Failures are either minor (busted lighting) or catastrophic (hyperdrive failure can lead to a catastrophic explosion).
   
   
8. Civil Unrest. Colonists rebel and you're hired to either help them or suppress them. The company hiring the PCs to crush a colonial rebellion, or the rebels hiring you to push the company back are workable, but the book's example of being UPP soldiers sent to punish managers mistreating the workers would be more difficult since it ties you pretty strongly to the UPP who aren't really given enough information in the books.
   
   
9. Political Infighting. Hired by one side in a colonial dispute.
   
   
10. Family Squabbles. PC's family call them for aid.
    
    
11. Raiders. Kill pirates attacking the colony.
    
    
12. Criminal Investigation. Help the local law enforcement.
    
    
13. Go Hunting. Native fauna is too big or lethal for the colonists to handle. Go in to blow up some critters.

Mining Systems:

View attachment 69393

So this section is the mechanical support for prospecting and mining.

Prospecting Roll:

The core of the section is the prospecting roll for the Wildcatter career. A roll represents three weeks of work surveying 1000 square km and then do an Observation Roll. If successful they roll on the Prospecting Table, with each success on the Observation roll beyond the first adding +10 to the Prospecting Table roll:

View attachment 69394

The find itself nets
D6 x (tens digit of prospecting roll) x 10
Weyland-Yutani dollars.

The Wildcatter career has a Talent allowing it to reroll on this table.

Decompression risks:

EVA and other compression suits from the core get a new system describing when the decompress from faults. This takes the form of performing two armour rolls. The first is the usual roll to see how much damage the suit blocks, then you perform a second Armour roll. This second roll is to check for decompression. A success means nothing happens, but a failure means you must roll on the decompression table. Results are:

• 1-2. Nothing happens
• 3-4. Nothing happens, but you've +1 to the next roll on this table representing cumulative damage to the suit.
• 5. A breach that seal itself quickly. You lose one point of Air Supply and Air supply roll failures now mean a loss of two points, not one.
• 6. A Nasty breach causing an Air Supply roll every turn. +1 Stress to PC
• 7. Terrible Breach. Suit losses one point of Air Supply each turn, -1 to Heavy Machinery rolls to repair the suit, +1 Stress and immediate Panic roll
• 8. Ruined. Air Supply halves at the end of this turn and is lost at the end of the turn after that. -2 to repair rolls. +1 Stress and immediate Panic roll

This system is obviously intended for issues when mining in remote areas and underwater, but can equally be applied to combat during spacewalks.

New Mining Conditions:

We get three new status affects: Hypoxia, Heatstroke, Gravity Dyspraxia

Hypoxia can be mild, severe or extreme and causes a Stamina roll or else a point of health is lost. The extremity represents how frequently this roll must be made: a shift, turn or round.

Heatstroke makes rerolls/pushing cause +2 stress instead of +1. Being in a very hot environment calls for a Stamina roll, a failure results in a heat stroke.

Gravity Dyspraxia is disorientation and confusion caused by being in a gravitational environment different from your native one. It's +1 to Stress and a -2 to Mobility and Close Combat rolls. Every shift you roll mobility to check if you've acclimatised.

Zapper:

The big beasty above is a Harvester. A mammal from the planet Tartarus and famously destroyed the colony there. They're essentially the worms from Tremors with 15 health and 15 armour, just slightly tougher than a Xenomorph Queen. They've been used by humanity as living mining drills for over a century, but to control them you need the zappers seen in the image above. Essentially upgraded cattle prods. They're also fitted with explosive collars in case they get out of control.

The collars simply subdue the Harvester for 2D6 rounds, but the zappers have rules as both a weapon against human beings and part of mini-system for herding Harvesters.

When herding a harvester and equipped with a zapper you make a Close Combat roll. With a success you can direct the target to stay still or move one zone. All walls in the way are eaten, any human or alien in their path suffer an attack randomly generated from the Harvester's combat table on p.90 of the corebook. For reference rolls 5-6 on this table would kill any human or xenos. The lower rolls have a good chance to kill any non-marine career.

You have to make a Stamina roll when equipping the zapper to see if you can carry it and the Close Combat roll is made at -3 unless you have the Husbandry talent available to the Roughneck core career.

When turned on a human being the defender has a +1 to the Mobility roll to dodge, since the weapon is so unwieldy. A success causes a D6 random roll on the zapper's attack table. 1-2 is either no or very little damage, 3-4 are moderate damage blasting the PC into a wall and upping Stress. 5-6 will most likely kill a non-marine and most likely leave a marine on the verge of death.

Wait, so a huge vein of precious metals is worth 420W-Y?

 

[Séadna]

Wait, so a huge vein of precious metals is worth 420W-Y?

Yeah, the problem is prices in the RPG are in United American dollars, so you've no real idea what a W-Y dollar is worth. I've asked them about this.

 

[Séadna]

Okay so the last bit of mechanical support is the Appendix which contains rules for generating solar systems and colonies. The latter includes a sort of colony life path system.



Generating Solar Systems:

This system is an expansion for the generator in the core. The main new features are:

1. The new system generates the number of Stars and their Type (Blue Giant, White Dwarf, etc). The core listed star types on p.330, but there were no mechanics for them.
   
   
2. Planet's orbital position, i.e. is it the far moon of a gas giant, a planet close to its star, etc.
   
   
3. Axial Tilt to determine how different seasons are from each other.
   
   
4. Day Length 2d6 table, with further rolls. For example rolling a long day then requires a 2D6 x 2D6 roll for length in hours.
   
   
5. There is an Global Feature 2D6 table. This is a single unusual feature about the planet as a whole, entries include "Tidally Locked", "World spanning super canyon".
   
   
6. A radiation table, basically 2D6 table giving what intensity of radiation is found outside. 2-9 is none, with higher results giving values Weak, Strong, Extreme which are explained on p.110 of the core.
   
   
7. There's a Personality table indicating how the planet feels to somebody stepping onto the surface for the first time. It's a D66 table with results like "Serene, Brooding, Forlorn, Malevolent, Forgiving".
   
   
8. A planet is now split into seven regions with each having their own terrain type, rather than a single terrain for the whole planet. The regions are the North and South Poles, the Equator and the North and South Hemispheres split into East and West components.
   
   
9. You also roll on a D66 table for each region to decide what level of resources it has. I'll discuss this in the colony section below as it's more relevant there. The result is a modifier ranging from -2 to +2 that affect a colony's starting attributes.

There are 40 terrain types possible for regions, generated by a D66 roll. The core had 36 possible terrains for most worlds, ice worlds having a special 2D6 table of 11 results, but these were applied to the whole planet. Some of the terrain types are simply repeats from the core, but many are new, such as "Great beasts roam the landscape" and results that aren't really types of terrain such as "a giant moon dominates the sky" have been removed.

However there have been quite a few changes to tables that were in the core.

One minor change is that the Temperature and Geosphere tables are renamed Climate and Hydrosphere.

Beyond that there have been fairly extensive changes to how rolls modify subsequent rolls and the actual values associated with rolls. For example:

• A roll of 11+ on the Climate table now gives a Burning result defined as a temperature of 60C or above, rather than the 80C or above of the core.
• White Dwarfs are more likely to have gas giants (-3 to gas giant roll, rather than -4). Subgiant stars are now less likely to have gas giants with an extra -1 to the roll.
• Terrestrial planets are slightly less likely in general. A typical star has D6 - 1 of them, rather than D6. However Red Dwarfs are much more likely to have terrestrial planets as the -3 from their roll has been removed.
• A thin atmosphere causes a -2 to Climate as opposed to -4
• There is now a "No Atmosphere" result with a -4 to Climate
• Size has a more granular and less extreme effect on Atmosphere, i.e. going from -4 to +0 mod in steps as planet size increases rather than -6 for any planet the size of the Moon or smaller, then -2 for Mars size and finally +0 for larger than Mars.
• Planet position gives whole new modifiers to the Climate. It also modifies the Radiation roll

There are other little differences, but those are the big ones.

The overall effect is that these new tables give a result spread more typical of systems where humans establish colonies, where as the core book tables are more neutral.

Colony Generation System:

So this is a very large expansion of the system found on p.337-338 of the core.

The original system only determined what the colonies main mission was, what group owned the colony (e.g. Weyland-Yutani, UPP) what number and type of factions were in the colony, e.g. there is a scientist faction and military faction. This system did set up the basic colony layout of most Alien comics, games and novels where colonies are often established for the sake of one goal (e.g. mining, native fauna research) with there being some tension between two or at most three groups within the colony. Typically Workers and Corporate superiors or a scientific base with military superiors.

The new system however involves:

• Number of owners. So we now can have joint a Weyland-Yutani and United Americas colony
• List of possible owners. This is actually a smaller list than the core book, involving only the setting's big players and dropping the smaller megacorps like Gustafsson Enterprise.
• Colony Mission. This is pretty much the same as the core's table, just made into a D66 instead of 2D6 and some entries dropped like a Mineral Drilling colony
• Biggest difference. The colony is now statted with six attributes. Details below.
• The stats above feed into a life path system where every turn you follow the Colony through six months of development. The obvious goal being to make it a richer place with built in hooks for players.

So how do the colony stats and life path work?

Colony Attributes:

• Economy. Overall health of the economy basically.
• Potential. A representation of the prospecting operations to utilise the world's resources.
• Productivity. Industrial output.
• Maintenance. Low scores here represent tin can colonies with processed food and metallic filtered water, higher scores represent a progressively better maintained and pleasant settlement.
• Science. Represents both research output as a market commodity and scientific understanding of the colony's world.
• Spirit. Colony Morale.

These attributes starts at 1 and have no upper limit. However when you sum them together you produce the Colony Development Score, that represents how large the colony is overall. 6-30 is one just starting, but 86+ is basically a self-sustaining settlement that's moved beyond being a colony.

The starting scores for a colony are rolled with a D3+1 and modified based on its mission type:



You also take a look at the resource modifier of the planetary region you've settled in. See point 10 of the Solar System generator section above.


Command Team:

Next you take a mix of NPCs and PCs to form the colony's command team. These are division lead roles that have to roll their Key Skill every six month cycle to help the colony progress. Basically there is one of them for each Colony Attribute and then an overall director who can affect everything.

I list them below with their name, the skill they use to roll and the colony attribute they affect:

Role	Key Skill	Colony Attribute
Colonial Supervisor	Command	All
Corporate Director	Manipulation	Economy
Civil Marshall	Command	Spirit
Prospector General	Observation	Potential
Union Steward	Heavy Machinery	Productivity
Chief Engineer	Comtech	Maintenance
Science Advisor	Observation	Science

With all of this in place you now start the Cycles. Each one represents six Terran months of time and you can stop whenever you want. It works as follows.

Colony Life Path:

1. First roll a D66 to see what major incident occurred this cycle. For example:



2. The command team all make a roll with their Key Skill to see how well they did their jobs. Failure means the attribute goes down by one, success means it stays level and more than one success means it goes up by one.
The Colony Supervisor works slightly differently as they decrease or increase the score of two randomly chosen attributes by two. Conditions for increasing and decreasing are the same as for the rest of the Command Team.

3. Finally you implement or resolve Colony Initiatives. These are projects, policy changes or new buildings. They're grouped over four pages based on which attribute they fall under. All have a common "cost" and the amount you can implement each Cycle depends on how large your colony is, i.e. its Development Score. For example here are the first three Economy inititatives of each type:



Overall it's a pretty decent system for creating a reasonably fleshed out settlement. My advice would be to stop around a score 50 or before, so that the colony remains small with some instabilities and pressures.

 

[Cessna]

It's not so much losing them as losing them offscreen.

This is an argument that has been going on for - geez, 37 years, and we aren't going to solve it here.

For my part, though, I'm fine with it. I can absolutely understand why it was a gut punch for many; Hicks and Newt were popular characters. But to me, the Alien universe isn't about happy endings.

 

[Séadna]

What are you on about? According to the phenomenal 2013 DLC "Stasis Interrupted", expansion to the equally phenomenal "Aliens: Colonial Marines" First Person Shooter, Hicks survived. Here he is packing boxes:



This is absolute canon, 100% happy feel good ending....




CURSE YOU GASKA!!!

 

[AppleJax]

Like I’d trust the idiots at Disney to have a coherent concept of canon.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

Like I’d trust the idiots at Disney to have a coherent concept of canon.

In this case were're in luck, because we don't have to trust Disney. We only have to trust Andrew Gaska to know what's canon or not.
So far it seems, he's pretty free to choose these things.

 

[chuckdee]

This is an argument that has been going on for - geez, 37 years, and we aren't going to solve it here.

For my part, though, I'm fine with it. I can absolutely understand why it was a gut punch for many; Hicks and Newt were popular characters. But to me, the Alien universe isn't about happy endings.

It's not even about the happy ending. It's show don't tell for a reason, and in a visual medium something like that is an unforgiveable error, IMO.

 

[AppleJax]

Alien 3 never needed to bring back Ripley. It’s an example of what I call “small universe syndrome.” The studios are full of idiots who refuse to let the universe expand organically so they force it to revolve around a recurring character and his/her immediate family. The new TV show in development (assuming the strike didn’t kill it) is finally trying to go the anthology route, but it’s too little too late. The IP is shit now what with all that engineer garbage and completely unnecessary Blade Runner callbacks. It’s called Alien, not Terminator. It needs extensive retconning or even outright rebooting by someone who actually understands it, likes it, and can write. Or just let it die and stop being stupid. Which isn’t going to happen, unfortunately.

This is just par for the course for IPs now. I hate copyright law.

 

[Cessna]

I'm okay with bringing back Ripley for 3 because it was a good ending.

But everything after that? No thanks.

 

[Séadna]

completely unnecessary Blade Runner callbacks

What do you mean here?

 

[AppleJax]

I'm okay with bringing back Ripley for 3 because it was a good ending.

But everything after that? No thanks.

Because screw Newt, Hicks and Bishop, I guess. Nevermind they were only killed off because the actors couldn’t return. I wonder what your tune is in the timeline where Gibson’s draft was turned into a movie instead.

What do you mean here?

Ridley is/was trying to turn Alien into an unofficial sequel to Blade Runner by shoehorning all this evil AI crap.

 

[Cessna]

Because screw Newt, Hicks and Bishop, I guess. Nevermind they were only killed off because the actors couldn’t return. I wonder what your tune is in the timeline where Gibson’s draft was turned into a movie instead.

I know I won't convince you here. If you don't like it that's fine!

 

[EmperorNorton]

Ridley is/was trying to turn Alien into an unofficial sequel to Blade Runner by shoehorning all this evil AI crap.

Because "evil" AI hasn't been a thing in Alien from the beginning...

 

[Séadna]

Here is the lore-minimal description of the campaign in Chapters 9-10. I'm doing this before the "lore" posts so I can sum up the book from the perspective of buying it. I have a player part and a spoiler guarded part if you want a GM centered overview.

The campaign sees the PCs part of an international mission to reunite the lost Spinward Colonies with the rest of humanity. The colonies are to first join as part of UNISC (the future UN), but the mission has Three World Empire, United Americas and UPP crew, as well as crew from Weyland-Yutani and other megacorps. The PCs are also to recover the colonies' logs to get a detailed overview of their history since contact was lost.

You will conduct the campaign from a UN supplied three story Magellan class ship, roughly speaking a standard moderately tough, moderately fast ship (Hull: 6, Armour: 6, FTL: 10). This ship is one of four being towed by the Ìyánlá, a colony ship very similar in design to the Covenant from Aliens: Covenant.



The Ìyánlá, like most UNISC ships, carries a name from a "neutral" nation not in one of the superpowers (the name is Yoruba).

Spoiler: GM description

The campaign is heavily based on Engineer lore and the developments in Heart of Darkness concerning the full potential of the black goo. See here if you are willing to read spoilers for Heart of Darkness.
Essentially the Spinward Colonists woke up the Fulfremmen, the super evolved feminine Giger gods that are the ultimate form of life produced by the black goo. They'll learn it was the Fulfremmen that wiped out the Engineers thousands of years ago and that the Engineers worshipped the Xenomorphs. Although the campaign begins as a diplomatic mission to contact the lost colonies, it escalates into an attempt to stop the Fulfremmen using an ancient Engineer hypergate to reach Earth. However this is just a ruse as they actually want to use the Ìyánlá to reach Earth.

This campaign is split into seven scenarios that are triggered on various worlds once a previous scenario has been completed. Each are about the length of a Cinematic Scenario like Chariot of the Gods and are very similar in layout. Namely they give a bunch of locations with paragraph length descriptions and then various events that could occur and then a finale event that occurs under a loose set of conditions of the GM's choosing. They simply lack the three act structure of the cinematic scenarios.

I will say the supporting NPCs are good: stats make sense and their descriptions are well written enough for a GM to easily get into their head without involving massive backstories. Although all these details aren't just in their intro box, but often seen in their actions during the scenario. Many are survivors of the colonists' struggle against the Fulfremmen.



The campaign is written as a fairly linear sequence of these Scenarios, but with some advice on how to make a sandbox around it. This sandbox would really take the form of an extended intro of the PCs simply exploring the Spinward Colonies before any of the Fulfremmen stuff starts, using the Colony Generator to flesh out the sandbox. The Spinward colonies are underdeveloped compared with settled space and lack the vibrant interstellar traffic.

 

[Séadna]

Well ignoring discussion of the lore, that's it. I'll summarise why you might/might not get this supplement before I go onto them.

I think the major reasons to buy this are:

• The two new Careers. The Entertainer fills a gap for long term campaign play and the Wildcatter is a fun addition to Cinematic scenarios, but is set up to have a major role in colony campaigns considering how they can add to the colony by finding new resources and so on.
• The Empress as a campaign level "boss" or serious threat. Quite good for colonial marine games.
• The expanded Planetary generation system.
• The colony life path system.

I don't think the descriptions of types of colonies in Chapter 6 and the list of worlds in Chapter 7 are major draws. The chapter 6 descriptions can be a bit obvious/lacking in content and the worlds in Chapter 7 are so sparsely detailed in most cases the GM would be essentially creating them themselves, except Shānmén, which you need to buy Inferno's Fall to fully use anyway. This Inferno's fall content will never appear in the RPG products as per the agreement between Free League and the publishers.

As for the campaign:

Spoiler: GMs

That'll depend on how much you think your players would like a campaign based around the resolution of Engineer and Black Goo plot points, with an existential level threat to humanity. Even you plan on sandboxing it, think about whether a sandbox in the smaller struggling Spinward colonies is preferable to a game in well-developed space.

Good luck Colonist!

 

[CRKrueger]

Whose bright idea was it to give the Perfectly Evolved human specimen an Anglo-Saxon/Germanic name?

 

[AppleJax]

I know I won't convince you here. If you don't like it that's fine!

I have similar feelings about Gibson’s draft too. It keeps dragging out the same cast. I can forgive Cameron for bringing Ripley back as a consultant to the marines, but after that it was just Fox admitting “we have no idea what to do with this IP!” While Dark Horse was right there, making stories that didn’t involve Ripley at all.

Because "evil" AI hasn't been a thing in Alien from the beginning...

Ash was obeying orders like a good little robot slave. He wasn’t trying to exterminate humanity because he was going through his whiny “I hate you dad!” emo teen phase.

 

[Cessna]

One of the things I really don't like about the game - and, look, I love it otherwise - is the way it takes on what I can only call some of the excesses of the expanded canon universe.

For example, the Colonial Marines are a big part of the armed forces of the United Americas.

The what?

The United Americas. See, in 2103 (years before Aliens) the nations of North, Central, and South America all merged into a single polity. Here's their flag:

Okay, cool, I'm okay with changes to the background. But the problem is that this directly conflicts with what we see in the movies. Look at the flag on Lt Gorman's uniform:

I'm not up on all of the comics and books, but from what I can pick up secondhand they made a lot of changes to the world and went in a lot of different directions, and the rpg took these in. But it's not what we see on the screen and I don't really see what it adds.

 

[hawkeyefan]

One of the things I really don't like about the game - and, look, I love it otherwise - is the way it takes on what I can only call some of the excesses of the expanded canon universe.

For example, the Colonial Marines are a big part of the armed forces of the United Americas.

The what?

The United Americas. See, in 2103 (years before Aliens) the nations of North, Central, and South America all merged into a single polity. Here's their flag:

Okay, cool, I'm okay with changes to the background. But the problem is that this directly conflicts with what we see in the movies. Look at the flag on Lt Gorman's uniform:

I'm not up on all of the comics and books, but from what I can pick up secondhand they made a lot of changes to the world and went in a lot of different directions, and the rpg took these in. But it's not what we see on the screen and I don't really see what it adds.

Maybe local flags are still used in military dress? Seems easily explained away.

 

[Cessna]

Maybe local flags are still used in military dress? Seems easily explained away.

Vasquez is subjected to an "illegal alien" joke. If it is all one nation, how would that work?

This is just one example. There are many other changes like this.

Sorry, it just seems unnecessary and inconsistent to me.

 

[Endless Flight]

I think that number of countries becoming one unified country is more of a sci-fi fantasy than an alien bursting out of the chest of John Hurts’ character.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Vasquez is subjected to an "illegal alien" joke. If it is all one nation, how would that work?

This is just one example. There are many other changes like this.

Sorry, it just seems unnecessary and inconsistent to me.

Oh, that's fine... I get it, and you're entitled to your opinion. I just think it could be explained away.