Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece Alien resonated with pop culture in a way few films do. The xenomorph designed by H.R. Giger instantly became an icon of movie monsters. Sigourney Weaver’s performance turned her into a star and shot Ripley into the pantheon of great characters in science-fiction. The franchise was lucky enough to get another classic in James Cameron’s Aliens in 1986. While the films never quite made it to those lofty heights in the subsequent entries, fans of the series can now try their own tales of terror in the ALIEN RPG released today by Free League Publishing.
This new RPG uses the base system Free League first started using with Mutant Year Zero. Players assemble a pool of six-sided dice based on their skill and attribute and roll the dice looking for sixes. In most cases, a single success is all that’s needed, though more usually offer add-on elements like more damage or more information. The key to the system is pushing; the player can pick up the dice and reroll them if they come up empty. In exchange, they usually take some sort of damage or give the GM a resource to be used later.
In the case of the ALIEN RPG, the resource is stress. Stumbling around in a dimly lit spaceship with a thing in the dark is a double edged sword. It might cause you to panic but it also sharpens your focus and gets your adrenaline pumping. Whenever a player rolls dice, they add a number of dice equal to their stress level. These dice should be somehow different from the players regular dice because what they roll matters. If the dice come up as sixes, they count as normal successes. If the dice come up as ones, they trigger a panic roll. The results of the panic roll are at best mixed. A character might freeze in front of an alien or let out a bloodcurdling scream. That scream lowers the stress level of the character who lets out their stress, but it increases the stress level of anyone who hears them.
This isn't stressful at all.
Combat is also effectively brutal, with Health levels that deplete into a critical injury table sure to satisfy the fans of a hard-R franchise. Some of the results offer instant death, though most offer the injured player a last gasp action or two for a possible heroic sacrifice. Sometimes, being injured is a crueler fate than death. A player in one of our playtests suffered three rolls on the table when attacked by an alien and survived. That just made them a burden to the other survivors, none of whom was willing to fail an Empathy roll to put the poor wretch out of their misery.
The book offers two modes of play. Cinematic mode focuses play on intense one or two session games where the implication is that nobody is getting out alive. Cinematic games give players agendas to play that drive them against each other. They take inspiration from games like Fiasco where character drama is more important that survival. The two cinematic games released for the RPG, Chariots of the Gods and Hope’s Last Day, feature elements that fans of the movies will recognize like secret android identities and corporate double agents looking to make sure nobody else is alive at the end of the game.
Campaign mode is the more traditional RPG structure featured in the game. Confrontation with acid-blooded aliens takes a backseat to corporate intrigue and survival horror. There are three campaign frames, each featuring opportunities to get screwed over by orders from long-distant masters or damaged space equipment. Players can take on the role of space truckers, colonial marines or colonists in this mode. Further guidance for each campaign frame will be part of successive releases. The classes included in the game can be mixed between all three frames.
"I admire its purity. A survivor. Unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
The art in the book is dark and beautiful. It feels like the concept art for an as yet unseen movie or TV show in the franchise. Much of the setting detailed is implication and suggestion; if a group doesn’t want to deal with the events of Prometheus, for example, that information can be ignored or repurposed. The game includes monster stats for the Alien in its various stages of development, the neomorph and a few monsters from expanded media like comics and games. There are a few references to elements from Alien Vs. Predator but anyone looking for write-ups of Fox’s other great space monster will have to seek them out on the internet.
In addition to the core book, Free League has released a few accessories such as official dice, a deck of equipment/NPC cards, a screen and a map set for use with the adventure in the core book. Fans of the franchise disappointed with the old licensed RPG will find a lot to love in this version. This version will have players jumping at shadows and locking their friends in airlocks in no time.
Want to see this game in action? Check out Rob running it for his livestream group Theatre of the Mind Players along with guest stars Lysa Penrose, Amy Vorpahl and Matthew Lillard at GameHole Con:
