Let's Read the ALIEN RPG

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AppleJax said:
I think there’s room for distinct horror and action horror games.

An Alien game would basically be Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu in space, where most of the cast is expected to die and even a final survivor is no guarantee. Any survivors would be left with permanent psychological scars, maybe physical.

An Aliens game would be TSR’s Bug Hunters game. Maybe include Aliens vs Predator while you’re at it. Action horror where the PCs are a team of military or mercenaries, possibly combat androids or replicants a la Blade Runner. In the case of the later situations, cloning or backups would offer the means for PCs to recover from death by replacing the dead version with a clone or backup a la The 6th Day or Altered Carbon.

Corporate and legal banality would be omnipresent, character backgrounds would be largely working class, etc. Not quite cyberpunk but… starpunk? Spacepunk? Astropunk? Formicapunk?
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Fornicatpunk, I'd say - you're screwed already, might as well go down fighting...:tongue:
 
I'll elaborate on that a bit. The Alien game line incorporates a lot of stuff from later movies, including Prometheus and Covenant. It also incorporates some "Expanded Universe" things that were never in the movies, like the UPP from Gibson's un-filmed Alien 3 script. It does a really good job of reconciling and blending all of these often contradictory things together into a consistent universe. I don't especially like Prometheus/Covenant myself, but the rpg does a good job of pulling out the parts that could make for good adventures while leaving some of the sillier parts out.

The published adventures - Heart of Darkness, etc - do use some of the things introduced in Prometheus/Covenant.
The weird mutating "black goo," different types of aliens like the "neomorphs" from Covenant, etc.
It would be tough to edit those out completely with some sort of copy/paste approach alone as they're intertwined with the adventure. It is my understanding that they did this because it's more of a surprise than "you run into a xenomorph - which you already understand because you've seen the movies." ("Hi, Big Chap, good to see you again!") But if you aren't running those published adventures, it's all good, only use what you want.

And, again, none of that is mandatory. The basic core system is excellent and you can use it for an adventure that only uses the first movie alone as inspiration. Hell, you could use it for any sort of tense action/horror game with relatively few tweaks and additions; for example, a few threads over someone was asking about Vietnam war rpgs and I almost recommended Alien as the system because it does a very good job of dealing with stress and tension in combat situations.


tl;dr, Alien is a damn good game and you can use what you want.
 
AsenRG said:
Fornicatpunk, I'd say - you're screwed already, might as well go down fighting...:tongue:
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I need coffee. I read the above as Formicapunk. Stared at the screen and tired to imagine what that was as genre and came up blank. lol. A bunch of folks running around with formica wrapped around their body? Formica inserts? Who knows, I need more coffee.

Edit: Fucking hell, re-read and noted that A AppleJax went and planted that seed in my mind in an earlier post. Fuck, I need some caffeine. Thanks for that A AppleJax, evil bugger.
 
Acmegamer said:
I need coffee. I read the above as Formicapunk. Stared at the screen and tired to imagine what that was as genre and came up blank. lol.
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My art teacher in school used to pretend that our art room was also used by a society called the "Friends of Formica" as a running gag. Apparently they were a bunch of real Formica fondlers ...
 
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Cessna said:
I'll elaborate on that a bit. The Alien game line incorporates a lot of stuff from later movies, including Prometheus and Covenant. It also incorporates some "Expanded Universe" things that were never in the movies, like the UPP from Gibson's un-filmed Alien 3 script. It does a really good job of reconciling and blending all of these often contradictory things together into a consistent universe. I don't especially like Prometheus/Covenant myself, but the rpg does a good job of pulling out the parts that could make for good adventures while leaving some of the sillier parts out.

The published adventures - Heart of Darkness, etc - do use some of the things introduced in Prometheus/Covenant.
The weird mutating "black goo," different types of aliens like the "neomorphs" from Covenant, etc.
It would be tough to edit those out completely with some sort of copy/paste approach alone as they're intertwined with the adventure. It is my understanding that they did this because it's more of a surprise than "you run into a xenomorph - which you already understand because you've seen the movies." ("Hi, Big Chap, good to see you again!") But if you aren't running those published adventures, it's all good, only use what you want.

And, again, none of that is mandatory. The basic core system is excellent and you can use it for an adventure that only uses the first movie alone as inspiration. Hell, you could use it for any sort of tense action/horror game with relatively few tweaks and additions; for example, a few threads over someone was asking about Vietnam war rpgs and I almost recommended Alien as the system because it does a very good job of dealing with stress and tension in combat situations.


tl;dr, Alien is a damn good game and you can use what you want.
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Yeah, I have all the books for the rpg line so far. I wouldn't try to rewrite, say, Heart of Darkness in it's entirety to conform to the original Alien alone. That seems like a fool's errand (and I'm already rewriting Street Fighter for no good reason). But I believe I've already reconciled myself to cutting scenes out of the cinematic scenarios to use in their associated campaigns anyway.

But once my Lost Worlds campaign is over, unless my players beg for The Frontier War, I am tempted to design a colonial campaign with only the original movie as it's basis. It might be a hard(er) sell, since for a good chunk of the campaign the players won't see an alien creature. Then again, after the Lost Worlds, they might appreciate that.
 
Chaotic Wooster said:
But once my Lost Worlds campaign is over, unless my players beg for The Frontier War, I am tempted to design a colonial campaign with only the original movie as it's basis. It might be a hard(er) sell, since for a good chunk of the campaign the players won't see an alien creature.
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I thin xenonomorphs - or any other type of Alien - are best used VERY sparingly.

In my game
the PCs work for the Company and the current main adversaries are radical ecoterrorists out to kill colonists and destroy terraforming equipment. The name of the ecoterrorist group is "the LNs." After a couple of sessions they found out the group is named after their hero Ellen Ripley, who managed to destroy a gigantic space refinery and a whole planet's worth of terraforming equipment single handed.
 
Cessna said:
I thin xenonomorphs - or any other type of Alien - are best used VERY sparingly.

In my game
the PCs work for the Company and the current main adversaries are radical ecoterrorists out to kill colonists and destroy terraforming equipment. The name of the ecoterrorist group is "the LNs." After a couple of sessions they found out the group is named after their hero Ellen Ripley, who managed to destroy a gigantic space refinery and a whole planet's worth of terraforming equipment single handed.
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"Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be environmentally responsible."
 
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Is there anything in the Aliens RPG that says what kind of critters the Sulaco Marines meant when they said "Just another bug hunt"?
 
Stumpydave said:
Is there anything in the Aliens RPG that says what kind of critters the Sulaco Marines meant when they said "Just another bug hunt"?
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Not definitively. There isn't a "bug" monster entry if that's what you're asking.
 
I was just interested if there were common pests and vermin colonists might need help dealing with. Keep hitting players with terra-formed 'roaches until that's what they expect.

Then hit them with a xenomorph.
 
Stumpydave said:
I was just interested if there were common pests and vermin colonists might need help dealing with. Keep hitting players with terra-formed 'roaches until that's what they expect.

Then hit them with a xenomorph.
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You can absolutely do that. Even though (lie I said above) there isn't a definitive "This is the 'bug' the Marines were talking about" creature, there are other nasty little monsters in the game you could do this with.
 
Yeah, much has been made of the marines' dialogue from Aliens over the years. Whether a bug hunt implies some fight against hostile native critters or not, whether Auctarians/Octarians were another species or some strange human off-shot, etc.

The novel for Alien specifically states NO alien life above the most basic bacterial level has been encountered to that point. And given how immense and drearily routine the shipping in Alien appears to be, that suggests humanity has been out there for some time and found nothing. Of course, the novel isn't a superior source, but the movie also seems to lean towards the notion that alien life is rare enough to be dismissed and scoffed out.

To my preferences, I'd have there be alien flora and fauna, ecosystems humanity can easily disrupt or fall foul of. But nothing more advanced than apes. Nothing to threaten that essential notion. We, alone, in the universe. Gotta let humanity have it's ego.
 
Chaotic Wooster said:
Yeah, much has been made of the marines' dialogue from Aliens over the years. Whether a bug hunt implies some fight against hostile native critters or not, whether Auctarians/Octarians were another species or some strange human off-shot, etc.

The novel for Alien specifically states NO alien life above the most basic bacterial level has been encountered to that point. And given how immense and drearily routine the shipping in Alien appears to be, that suggests humanity has been out there for some time and found nothing. Of course, the novel isn't a superior source, but the movie also seems to lean towards the notion that alien life is rare enough to be dismissed and scoffed out.

To my preferences, I'd have there be alien flora and fauna, ecosystems humanity can easily disrupt or fall foul of. But nothing more advanced than apes. Nothing to threaten that essential notion. We, alone, in the universe. Gotta let humanity have it's ego.
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The Alien universe absolutely has inconsistent canon about things like the existence of other, er, aliens. But for gaming purposes I'm completely fine with this, as it keeps out-of-character knowledge from being reliable.

Personally one of the things I believe for my game is that
there is no xenomorph homeworld, or at least not one that could ever be found by humanity. The xenomorphs are more like a plague that has ebbed and flowed across the galaxy for an incredibly long time, and it's just our bad luck that we happened to run into them.
 
Formicapunk is another name for cassette futurism. It’s a retro scifi aesthetic characterized by the presence of roughly 80s era analog and digital technology. CRT monitors, magnetic tape storage, general bulkiness, etc. Nowadays it’s only used by indie creators for artistic value
 
For those of you who have read or played through the official Free League adventures, how would you rank them? And, if possible, a quick pros and cons of each adventure? Muchas gracias !
 
They are all very good though they are quite different. My favourite is Destroyer of Worlds as it’s an Aliens riff but has so much new ideas in the set up with its Black Hawk Down vibe. Chariot of the Gods is also good but a very classic set up like Alien with not much deviation. Heart of Darkness is the busiest. It good but I struggled to really use everything in contained in play.
 
I'd agree that the pre-written scenarios are pretty good. Broadly speaking, they suffer from demanding a lot of the referee in terms of cohesive structuring and narrative flow. As-written, they tend to provide a lot of essential scenes and optional events, but it's up to the referee to decide exactly when to implement them. For an experienced referee, this shouldn't be too hard, but it still requires some good judgement.

I'd also argue that even the shortest of them (Chariot of the Gods) is more like a mini-campaign than a cinematic scenario you'll whiz through in a couple of sessions. Though if you dispense with most of the optional scenes, they likely move more quickly.

To their credit, they form a pretty decent trilogy not too far removed from the movies. Chariot of the Gods is mostly inspired by Alien and Prometheus, Destroyer of Worlds by Aliens, Heart of Darkness by Alien 3 and Alien Isolation. I suppose it's worth mentioning that they all lean heavily into the lore established in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, so if you hate those movies, you might need to do some work rewriting them.

I'd honestly say the two campaigns in the sourcebooks are far superior to the cinematic scenarios. The Frontier War (in the Colonial Marines book) satisfying the bug hunting instinct and The Lost Worlds (in Building Better Worlds) leaning into exploration and discovery. However, the cinematic scenarios are tied to these (and thus far ALL of the books could be considered part of the same overall storyline) there's value in either playing them or mining them for material.
 
Stumpydave said:
Is there anything in the Aliens RPG that says what kind of critters the Sulaco Marines meant when they said "Just another bug hunt"?
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Well Hudson said “Is this gonna be a stand-up fight, Sir, or just another Bug Hunt.” When Gormley references a “Xenomorph may be involved“, Hicks answers, “A Bug Hunt”.

So I always took that to mean that they had faced several Alien Encounters where it wasn’t sentient troops ( a stand-up fight) but more like dangerous alien lifeforms that they had to hunt down and dig out of wherever they were hiding (a Bug Hunt) Hicks knew Xenomorph meant “alien form” and so figured it was another “find the weird looking alien thing”, ie. a Bug Hunt.
 
So as Alien GMs, what the fuck do you do with the “Prometheus and Alien are mutually exclusive” problem.
 
CRKrueger said:
So as Alien GMs, what the fuck do you do with the “Prometheus and Alien are mutually exclusive” problem.
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The game does it's best to accept both as true, as well as drawing from other sources that make it all even more crazy... Hive Empress, The Perfected, etc.

I still suspect my next (homebrewed) game is going to be based upon the original Alien as it's sole source, but right now I'm refereeing The Lost Worlds campaign and that draws from all sources.
 
Chaotic Wooster said:
I'd agree that the pre-written scenarios are pretty good. Broadly speaking, they suffer from demanding a lot of the referee in terms of cohesive structuring and narrative flow. As-written, they tend to provide a lot of essential scenes and optional events, but it's up to the referee to decide exactly when to implement them. For an experienced referee, this shouldn't be too hard, but it still requires some good judgement.

I'd also argue that even the shortest of them (Chariot of the Gods) is more like a mini-campaign than a cinematic scenario you'll whiz through in a couple of sessions. Though if you dispense with most of the optional scenes, they likely move more quickly.

To their credit, they form a pretty decent trilogy not too far removed from the movies. Chariot of the Gods is mostly inspired by Alien and Prometheus, Destroyer of Worlds by Aliens, Heart of Darkness by Alien 3 and Alien Isolation. I suppose it's worth mentioning that they all lean heavily into the lore established in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, so if you hate those movies, you might need to do some work rewriting them.

I'd honestly say the two campaigns in the sourcebooks are far superior to the cinematic scenarios. The Frontier War (in the Colonial Marines book) satisfying the bug hunting instinct and The Lost Worlds (in Building Better Worlds) leaning into exploration and discovery. However, the cinematic scenarios are tied to these (and thus far ALL of the books could be considered part of the same overall storyline) there's value in either playing them or mining them for material.
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The above two highlighted parts of Chaotic Wooster Chaotic Wooster 's post nails two main issues with Aliens rpg when I ran it as some one offs. Also due to how the books are artistically designed their hard on your eyes, add to that you need to definitely do prep in order to make the game flow better when actually played.

I found myself doing a lot of page flipping and squinting at pages. I should have written up 5 by 8 index cards of information when I ran it due to the books layout. Glare is a thing with the books as is smudges which make it hard to read.

I think this is where Twilight 2000 is much, much better as is The Forbidden Lands. Blade Runner also suffers from this issue to a lesser degree as an aside. Great books truly but I could do without those issues and better organization of the mechanics info you will constantly need.
 
I got through Chariot of the Gods in about 8 hours of play (4 online sessions) skipping the last optional plot twist.
It could have gone longer but I mainly just used key scenes as I was running it as a mini-arc.
One great bit of advice I saw on a video was to read the book from the back (well not literally) but from
I think p29 when they start discussing scenes/events. Before that there is a bunch of pre-loaded
stuff/floorplans that does not actually tell you about the adventure is about. Once you understand
that it is easier to digest the other stuff.

I think it would have been fun to have longer to spend on it and I think it is a fairly open situation
with lots of options for the players, but it does all tend to point in one direction. Especially with the
PC agenda cards in Act III.
 
CRKrueger said:
Well Hudson said “Is this gonna be a stand-up fight, Sir, or just another Bug Hunt.” When Gormley references a “Xenomorph may be involved“, Hicks answers, “A Bug Hunt”.
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I always took "bug hunt" to be Colonial Marine slang that meant the same as "wild goose chase." So Hudson was basically saying "is there actually an alien this time or is this another pointless mission?" Now I'm wondering if I was the only person who made that assumption?
 
NinjaWeasel said:
I always took "bug hunt" to be Colonial Marine slang that meant the same as "wild goose chase." So Hudson was basically saying "is there actually an alien this time or is this another pointless mission?" Now I'm wondering if I was the only person who made that assumption?
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I've always understood it as you have.
 
I took it that they had missions that faced aliens before- but not like this.
 
NinjaWeasel said:
I always took "bug hunt" to be Colonial Marine slang that meant the same as "wild goose chase." So Hudson was basically saying "is there actually an alien this time or is this another pointless mission?" Now I'm wondering if I was the only person who made that assumption?
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I always took it to mean this. With bug hunt meant to be the same as a "snipe hunt".
 
CRKrueger said:
Well Hudson said “Is this gonna be a stand-up fight, Sir, or just another Bug Hunt.” When Gormley references a “Xenomorph may be involved“, Hicks answers, “A Bug Hunt”.

So I always took that to mean that they had faced several Alien Encounters where it wasn’t sentient troops ( a stand-up fight) but more like dangerous alien lifeforms that they had to hunt down and dig out of wherever they were hiding (a Bug Hunt) Hicks knew Xenomorph meant “alien form” and so figured it was another “find the weird looking alien thing”, ie. a Bug Hunt.
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Regarding Bug Hunts - guys, why do you think that the marines mean that they've ever found anything before:gooseshades:?

"The higher-ups are seeing bugs, we need to check whether there are higher lifeforms...a.k.a. bugs. Shoot them if they're a threat".
"Have we ever found anything?"
"Negative. It was always some moron being incompetent and causing the death of people, then trying to pass it as Hostile Aliens. Thus, bug hunts".


IMO, that would explain the behaviour of the marines. They were acting as if they didn't expect to find anything, remember? Vasquez behaving as if Ripley was just crazy...and then having to admit she was wrong:thumbsup:?
 
AsenRG said:
Regarding Bug Hunts - guys, why do you think that the marines mean that they've ever found anything before:gooseshades:?

"The higher-ups are seeing bugs, we need to check whether there are higher lifeforms...a.k.a. bugs. Shoot them if they're a threat".
"Have we ever found anything?"
"Negative. It was always some moron being incompetent and causing the death of people, then trying to pass it as Hostile Aliens. Thus, bug hunts".


IMO, that would explain the behaviour of the marines. They were acting as if they didn't expect to find anything, remember? Vasquez behaving as if Ripley was just crazy...and then having to admit she was wrong:thumbsup:?
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It's tricky and I think depends entirely on your preferences. A lot of the established lore for the universe comes from throwaway lines in Aliens. The "Company" being Weyland-Yutani, the existence of (genderless, genderfluid, etc.) people known as Octarians, nearly everything about the alien creatures themselves, including the name "Xenomorph".

That last point seems significant, since the grunts don't know it, and Lt. Gorman uses it to their amusement. Non-movie sources, including the rpg include various non-sapient, non-Xenomorph alien critters. While Alien 3 includes possibly mutated bull-things and parasites that might be transplanted rather than native to Fury. Ripley's hearing discusses the possibilty of indiginous life on Acheron, suggesting that such life has been found before.

All this leaves it reasonably possible the marines have been out hunting native/transplanted nuisance creatures before.

Now personally, I prefer the vastness and emptiness of space suggested in the original Alien. Nothing but the very smallest of microscopic life having ever point found before.
 
CRKrueger said:
So as Alien GMs, what the fuck do you do with the “Prometheus and Alien are mutually exclusive” problem.
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In what way?

Is this the
"David created the Xenomorphs" thing? Because I don't think that's how it worked. If anything, David found out about Xenomorphs and reverse-engineered one, but he didn't create them as a species.

That's my take on it, anyway.

And, yes, the game takes from the Prometheus/Covenant mythos. But, in my opinion, that's a good thing. I didn't particularly like those movies myself, but in-game the weird stuff, especially the
mutagenic black goo,
opens up a lot of unpredictability, which I think is desperately needed. As it is, every player out there is going to know what the Xenomorphs are and what they do. ("Oh, look, an egg, should I stick my face into it?") Having a weird wild-card available makes the game more interesting.

I think it's also worth remembering that the Alien franchise has ALWAYS played loose with "canon." There's no way that, say, the Alien v. Predator franchise works in the universe of Alien/Aliens/Alien 3 (I live in Colorado, I think we would have noticed Xenomorphs in Gunnison), there are all kinds of inconsistencies in the comics and novels when taken as a while, etc. If you're demanding consistency the Alienverse is not for you. Instead, take what you like and build from there, ignoring the parts that don't work for you.
 
Cessna said:
I think it's also worth remembering that the Alien franchise has ALWAYS played loose with "canon."
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Exactly so. Even if you only go by the movies, aside from the creature(s) being pretty consistent from Alien-Alien Resurrection, they add or ignore elements to suit the films. The moment you step into the comics, novels, crossovers, etc.... Yeah, then there really is no way it all makes sense.

Alien Romulus doesn't (from the teaser) look like it's going to be massively change anything established in Aliens. We've got facehuggers and a big ol' xenomorph again (possibly even the big chap himself), but any surprises might well be kept out of such early promotional footage.
 
Cessna said:
This is a great way of putting it, agreed.

Don't like the stuff from Prometheus? Don't use it.
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Of course, that's essentially what Scott did with Prometheus, dismissing the aliens and big bugs in a hive for something else. Then doubled down on it in Covenant by giving a possible origin for the creature that flies in the face of what's presented in Aliens.

Not that David's creation is exactly the same creature, nor is his work presented as the absolute certain truth. But it can certainly be read as an effort to move away from the big bugs presentation, which I can only approve of.
 
Relevant to the topic, Noah Hawley, the creator of the TV shows Legion and Fargo, is making an Alien series, and he has already announced it is purely an Alien series. It's only drawing on the first movie for its setting. I've very interested to see what he does with it.
 
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