Alien RPG 1e Review

With Free Leagues announcement of a second edition of the Alien RPG I think it is time for me to get my first edition review finally done. So here goes! I will avoid spoilers for the adventure until the end as best as I can. I will give ample warning to those reading in case you are hoping to play!

My Experience with it

I ran Alien with a small group of students playing the Starter Set’s Chariot of the Gods. I ran the game for four students aged 14 - 15. We played in 45 minutes sessions after school once a week for about 8 weeks to complete the scenario. I played ambient Alien soundtracks from Alien, Aliens, and Alien Isolation throughout the weeks to add to the atmosphere (which was well received by the students)

So that was our set up. it went very well actually. Playing the game was quick for the students to learn and they greatly enjoyed throwing the official Alien dice that came in the Starter Set.

The students enjoyed the game. I have never had a group that focused nearly as much as this on the game at hand. Usually playing with students becomes a bit of a chore, with each student trying to outcompete one another and vie for the spotlight. Alien RPG pit them against themselves a bit but also allowed them to experience suspense as they waited to see what was coming form around the next corner. They even split the party! It was a wonderful experience for me, and I hope they will look back on it fondly for years to come.

Rules Overview

I don’t like to go through all of the rules for a game. this will not be any different. There are a lot of side rules that the game provides for you as a referee of this game. There are many pieces of information that make your life either easier because there is a rule already available for a situation, but at the cost of searching the book for the rules for any particular situation. This game has more rules than most I like to run. I found myself making rulings for a few things that I just didn’t feel i needed to look up, and as it turns out the game ran just fine and my students had an amazing experience doing so. I did have player reference sheets available for the kiddos to reference, but the basis for the game is really just roll a bunch of d6 based on your relevant stats and skills.

Stats and Skills are not bad here. There are four main stats for each character and three skills associated with each stat (that is a total of 12 skills and 4 stats that are available for the referee to ask for check from. The addition of hits and stress round out the pool of relevant pieces of information on the character sheet.

The students grasped the rules very quickly and enjoyed, at times, rolling upwards of 14 dice once their stress level got higher. You are looking for successes or rolls of 6 on your dice pool. Easy. additional successes give the players the ability to add to their narration of their success and either carry forward their extra successes, give extra damage on attacks, or a fan favorite doing the thing with style! My players often gave extra oomph for additional successes by expanding on how they accomplished their task with showing off or using extra style.

The rules were pretty straight forward, at least at the base level. There are a bunch of additional rules that are mostly unnecessary for an experienced referee. Things like stealth mode where the referee keeps track of where the monsters currently are (like dungeon turns in Old School play) it is nice that the rules exist but i did not find myself needing them as I was able to just keep track of the stuff on my own, this would be a great addition for a new referee who is not as experienced. and really most of the extra stuff is exactly that, just good practices codified into rules for those who may not be as experienced.

there was some small amount of resource tracking that happened, but was handled mostly through the stress mechanic like for ammo making it not necessary to track rounds of ammo. Good stuff, simplified and clean to work with.

I love d6’s and I love dice pools so this was a win for me. Free League’s Year Zero Engine shines here and I for one am here for it.

What products are available?

Free League is known for their product quality and the Alien RPG line is not an exception to this rule. There is a whole line up of products available

• Alien RPG Core Rule Book - Rules with a Mini Cinematic Scenario set of LV 426
• Alien RPG Starter Set - Box, Abbreviated Rules, a wonderful Scenario Chariot of the Gods, 20 Dice (10 base & 10 stress), Pre-gen Characters, Maps, Tokens, Item and Initiative Cards
• Destroyer of Worlds - Box, Scenario Destroyer of Worlds, Tokens, Item Cards, Map, Pre-gen Characters
• Colonial Marines Operations Manuel - Big ole’ book with everything you could ever want to know about Space Marines in the Universe, Series of Scenarios that could be linked as a campaign
• Heart of Darkness - Box, Scenario Heart of Darkness, Item Cards, Maps, Pre-gen Characters
• Building better Worlds - Big ’ole book with a whole lotta world building stuff to help you create and run your own open world campaign in the universe
• Official Alien Dice Sets (Yellow Stress and Black Base sets)
• Alien Official Referee Screen

These can all be obtained from Free League’s official Alien RPG site in physical, and available in digital from Drivethru (affiliate Link).

But Before you go spending your money it may be important to note that there is an “Evolved Edition” on its way, here is a link to the Kickstarter notification page. This edition will… well its best to just read what they have written about it, but the TLDR is that it should be compatible with everything currently available but they are just making a few corrections and clarifications and adding a few things here and there. Also a new Starter Set with scenario is also in the works, and a miniatures set. I’m sure I’ll get it but I don’t know how i feel about it at this point.

I recommend jumping in with the starter set if you are just looking to dip your toes in. It has everything you need to play your first game including those fancy dice. Then if you decide you want to expand from there the Core Rule book would be the next thing to grab i guess, or maybe just go straight to the next module Heart of Darkness.

Overall review of the game

I would say that Alien RPG is one of my favorite Sci Fi RPG systems, and while it is set in the Alien Universe (not a problem by my standards) it can easily be taken and used to run some Mothership modules is you run out of things to do with the materials available officially. I like the dice pool system better personally (d6’s instead of d100’s just feel better to me, YMMV).

I think the stress system is wonderful in the game. Adding a benefit to all of your rolls, but with a potential for even worse results for any stress dice that come up with a 1. Just adds to the tension that is inherent in the setting.

Lots of artifacts to play with at the table typically makes my players happy. All this while delivering plenty of stories to tell that have plenty of room for differentiation in the adventures.

There is a pretty good fan base out there for this one too. So there is a whole lotta fan made materials available including lots of virtual tools if you’re into playing that way.

it is a good game. You get a lot of bang for your buck, if you play with multiple groups a single Starter set could get you pretty far. Each play through can be vastly different based on what your crew does. There is a lot of Alien Universe to explore so get out there and get your players murdered!

Alternative Games Available

The price tag on Alien RPG for all in is well, a bit hefty, to say the least. So if you’re looking for something a little cheaper or at least freeer, then Mothership is the obvious go to, flavor the monsters into Alien’s Xenomorphs, run around and chase the crew through ventilation shafts and you’ll be good to go.

There is also so much more materials available to you with Mothership. Having run both of these games I think Alien is more my speed for rules base (once you get past some of the little fiddley bits), but Mothership’s catalogue of modules available is just so much more vast. The conversions between systems would not take too much to do and I think any MU/TH/UR worth their Weyland badge would be able to do so with minimal effort.

Derek Bizier, the Halfling “MU/TH/UR” Master