Alien is one of the staples of the Sci-fi horror genre and its influence is felt in many movies even today. The franchise has made its way over to many types of media, with varying degrees of success, but it had minimal impact on the tabletop. However, the Alien RPG is one such game that captures the feel of the movies in a myriad of ways.
The Alien RPG was originally released in 2019 by Free League Publishing. The main book contains two different styles of play: cinematic play which focuses on shorter immersive gameplay, and normal campaigns. Cinematic play makes use of pre-designed characters and there is one pre-written campaign called “Hopes Last Day.” The cinematic mode is designed with player death in mind, but both it and the campaign honor the mainline series in several ways.
One of the most important parts of getting an Alien RPG right is to make sure that the emotion and atmosphere are optimal. One of the main ways the game achieves this is that the provided map for the cinematic campaign is designed to resemble the technology shown in the film. The map’s art and layout both resemble the maps of Hadley’s Hope, the location from the first film. The cinematic version also uses music to keep up the ambiance and diegetic sounds to keep the player on edge. However, even if none of this affects the player, it will affect the character.
The stress meter is one of the most interesting aspects of the game, and it can have numerous effects on the character. Essentially whenever the player makes a roll or interacts with something horrific, they have a chance of increasing their stress meter. Each increase can make the character react differently. This can range from nervous twitches to completely freezing up in the face of threats. The meter and reactions manage to fit with events that you can see in the films, especially when characters appear to freeze up while facing one of the Xenomorphs.
The Alien RPG also manages to get the Xenomorphs themselves right, and it can not be understated how important this was. The Aliens have had a somewhat diverse representation in the movies regarding their physical threat. For instance, in the first movie, a single Xenomorph was able to quickly dispatch the entire crew with no damage being done to the creature. Meanwhile, scores of them were shot down by the colonial marines in the second movie. This makes their damage output and defenses hard to translate into a tabletop setting, but the Alien RPG manages this using a few different methods.
First, the Xenos in this game always have an idea of where the player is, and the Game Master will slowly move them towards the humans rather than having them spawn into locations. This makes the Alien’s movements feel natural and allows them to ambush unaware players, which is the Xenomorph’s preferred hunting method. The Alien is also a considerable physical threat and will easily manage to take down survivors and marines if they get too close. Even the chestbursters and facehuggers can be a massive threat, with the facehuggers being able to take down players in one hit and their acid blood being enough to kill unarmored characters. When it comes to the larger versions of the creatures, there are few options other than running and hampering its ability to chase after the player or doing enough damage to make it retreat.
Finally, the campaigns are laid out in such a way that combat is never the point of the game. Players do not enter the maps with the end goal of exterminating the Xenomorphs. For instance, the cinematic campaign in the main book focuses on the players trying to find out what happened while they were away and then escaping the colony. This allows the campaign to continually move, and the players need to make decisions on the fly, as the Xenomorphs are always moving, and getting trapped in one place becomes incredibly stressful.
Alien is a series that has a lot to offer the Tabletop world and Alien RPG is making great strides at realizing the vision of the franchise. The fact that the game and its developers care about the series improves the experience for everybody. The main game offers both fans and newcomers something to enjoy and is an interesting change for many seasoned D&D players.
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