Alien RPG - true to the source material

In space, no one can hear you scream...

Image by Free League

[9 min read]

I managed to buy Free League's Alien RPG starter set, core rulebook, and Destroyer of Worlds adventure module for half price during Black Friday sales in 2023, and I am glad that I did. Not only are they beautiful products, they have really scratched that Alien itch that re-watching the movies gave me. As this is a strong candidate for running with my local tabletop role-playing group, I decided to give it a test drive, solo.

My play experience

The starter set came with maps, dice, useful cards and physical tokens, so I decided I would attempt to play through the short adventures from the core rulebook and starter set completely analogue - no digital tools to aid me, no laptop at the table, just a physical notebook to record my experience. 

I did skim read both adventures and used Mythic Emulator 2nd Edition to resolve questions. One happy side effect of a poor memory is that I forgot most of what I read when actually playing, and if I did manage to remember a detail, I would use Mythic to see if my character would have known it. 

I played full parties of pre-generated characters (five different ones in each scenario) that covered the gamut of typical space trucker arch-types such as the Pilot, Officer, Scientist etc. Despite Free league's Year Zero engine fitting the relatively light ruleset onto one page character sheets, juggling five of them at once was a challenge.

You can see the pros and cons of these choices above in my article on solo roleplaying - but ultimately I halted mid-way through the second adventure. Playing five characters in a new ruleset and without digital tools was a time sink, and I found a level of frustration at my poor handwriting that I could not overcome. But, this decision had nothing to do with my enjoyment of the system or the adventures! 

BELOW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR TWO OFFICIAL ALIEN RPG SCENARIOS 

Hope's Last Day

Image by Free League

In this short adventure included in the core rulebook, I played as a party of five colonists on the planet that Ripley (protagonist of the Alien films) landed on and first encountered the Xenomorphs. When the group returns from duties outside the colony to the base itself, sure enough, it is deserted. Realising the colony has been infested by murderous lifeforms, they seek out the key card that would allow them to access the corporate shuttle and leave the planet.

In this short scenario where I was learning the rules, I made some tactical errors in building up too much stress early on, causing my characters to panic and most of them getting killed in my first encounter with a Xenomorph. While this felt fitting to the setting, and reminiscent of the first movie, it did make it difficult to try and escape with only one character left. My plucky scientist almost made it off the base with a clutch of alien eggs and would have been set up for life if a roaming drone hadn't found her by the airlock, and well, bitten off her head!

Chariot of the Gods

Image by Free League

Armed with more knowledge on just how deadly the game could be, and with a party positively bristling with weapons compared to the first, the second scenario went quite a lot better. In the classic 'we have to respond to a distress signal or we don't get paid' situation, my group of cargo freighters space-walked on to a dark, seemingly abandoned ship with some very interesting samples aboard. 

The party was doing well on the USS Cronus - repairing engines, cleaning air filtration units and restoring med bays until the original crew thawed from cryo-sleep and, well, let's just say that one of them was suffering from severe chest pains...

I played through Acts 1 and 2 before ultimately stopping for the reasons outlined in my play experience above. I'd like to come back to this, and also the longer adventure, Destroyer of Worlds, either using Foundry VTT for smoother solo play, or better yet, to the table of my local group.

Free League's premium Foundry VTT modules are reportedly very good
Image by Free League 

What I liked

Alien lore

Aside from the incredible presentation that I have come to expect from Free League, I was very happy to find that the core rulebook does a great job in laying out the history and setting from the Alien universe. Only ever having watched the films, my first exposure to the series' canon was not overwhelming, and gave me just enough lore to help me set the scene at the tabletop.

The core combat rules

Alien RPG features the robust d6 dice pool resolution mechanic and the four Attribute plus twelve Skill character builds that show up in Year Zero engine games, but also a very tactically satisfying combat system. Featuring a card draw initiative system, fast and slow actions, zonal movement, rules for sneak attacks and ambushes, and of course brutal critical injuries, the system provides just enough crunch for my taste, but is still a little more streamlined than D&D 5th Edition.

There are also rules for vehicle and ship combat in the core rulebook, welcome additions for the setting (but not used by me in the starter missions). There aren't a huge amount of different weapons to choose from, but iconic pulse rifles, flamethrowers, cutting torches, and even a cargo lifter exoskeleton can be available, if your Game Master is kind enough to let you get your hands on them.

Stress and panic

In many Free League games using the Year Zero engine, there is a push your luck mechanic when you can re-roll your dice if you didn't like the outcome. This always comes at a cost - and in Alien RPG, pushing a roll (along with other stressful encounters as determined by the Game Master) will add one point of stress to your character. Early on, adding stress is beneficial - the extra focus and adrenaline that comes from stress grants you an extra die for each stress point to your dice pool, adding a higher chance of success on  future rolls. But if you roll a one on any of those stress dice (depicted by an alien symbol on the bespoke dice included in the starter set), you panic.

Panicking has it's own table to roll on to see the outcome, using 1d6 plus your current stress level, with higher rolls having more adverse effects. Rolling under six means you keep it together (barely), but at seven plus these effects range from a nervous twitch (increasing stress levels by one for you and those around you) to losing control of your character and fleeing, randomly attacking others, or dropping into a catatonic state!

Seeing the Facehugger symbol show up on the yellow stress dice was always panic-inducing
Image by Free League

The titular Xenomorphs

The missions I played in felt much more like the original Alien movie, than the gun-toting, marine-heavy sequel, Aliens (I love both these films, by the way!). Meaning that even encountering one alien with a full party led to incredibly tense and lethal skirmishes where it was likely that one or both parties would flee, playing a cat and mouse game through the location. Incredibly thematic, and tough!

Image by Free League

Concerns I had

Death spiral

Since the scenarios actually had multiple events which caused stress, and with using the push mechanic being an attractive option, I found myself with six or more stress on my characters regularly. At those levels, any one on the stress die creates panic, which led to even more dire circumstances. In my first adventure, this led to a death spiral which eliminated most of my party very quickly. With careful management of stress (rest, drugs etc) you can avoid the spiral, but if you ignore it, it gets out of control very quickly.

Campaign mode

The game outlines a mode of play using pre-generated characters in written scenarios based loosely on the films, aptly named cinematic mode. They even come complete with a three-act structure! 

This is what I played, and is in contrast to campaign mode, intended for longer campaigns with player-generated characters who advance with experience. Given the brutality of the setting, I wouldn't want to get too attached to my characters, nor am I sure I could play a long campaign of survival horror. Without having tried this second mode of play, Alien RPG seems to me to be perfect for one-shots or a mini-series.

That said, I do applaud Free League for having published campaign books & adventures for three different styles of play - Space Truckers, Colonial Marines or Colonisers - and imagine these would vary the content considerably when compared to your standard survival fare.

Building Better Worlds - the latest campaign expansion 
Image by Free League

What I would bring to other systems

I really liked the Stress and Panic rules from Alien RPG, and would consider implementing something in a grim dark D&D campaign, like a re-skinned critical fumble table or something similar. 

I have already adapted the resource usage abstraction seen in Alien (where you roll a number of d6s equal to your supply rating, and each one reduces the supply by one, until you run out). In my Curse of Strahd D&D 5E campaign, I have hacked up rules for the resource die, where you start fully equipped wth a d10 food & drink, and for each short or long rest for each of the characters, you roll the die. A roll of a one or a two steps the die down (e.g. d10 to d8, d8 to d6 etc), increasing the chance you've consumed those resources, until you run out. It abstracts resource management, adding a random element to increase tension.

Lastly - befitting the movies, the starter set characters each came with a hidden agenda (e.g. stealing an alien egg). I used these to help decide the actions of my party in my solo adventures, but these could be used effectively in any campaign with multiple players to spark some conflict and make for some interesting roleplaying.

Final thoughts

The Alien RPG is an Golden Ennie award-winning product that really delivers the quintessential Alien experience. If you like your brand of space exploration mixed with horror then Alien RPG is a strong recommendation and the starter set comes packed with a lot of value. The Year Zero engine really shines in this incarnation, adding enough crunch in combat and survival mechanics for my taste. I look forward to playing some more! But in the mean time... 

This Is Ripley, Last Survivor Of The Nostromo, Signing Off.