Alien Archives - Vintage RPG

Colonial Marines Operations Manual (2021)

Stu Horvath — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Hot damn, what a fantastic book. This is Colonial Marines Operations Manual (2021) for Free League’s Alien RPG. Prior to this, published Alien adventures were designed for the cinematic side of the game — pre-generated characters, secret agendas, fairly linear plots — but this is the first in a series of open world campaign supplements (the plan, I believe, is release a book like this for every primary occupation in the core rulebook).

The player portion of the book is everything you wanted to know about the Colonial Marines for play. There’s stuff on unit structure, specialized roles (with slight mechanical tweaks), heaps of equipment. There’s a good deal of lore and rumors, too, which is an appetizer for the GM section, containing as it does a truckload of lore, details on swaths of the galaxy, the lowdown on the war that just broke out (between the United Americas and the Union of Progressive Peoples) and secrets galore. This section lays out the an open ended military-focused campaign, complete with a ship that serves as home base, NPCs and framing for particular sorts of missions. The final section supplement the open campaign with seven connected scenarios that build off the events of the seemingly unconnected cinematic scenarios and pushes the overall Alien RPG meta forward with some potentially big paradigm shifts.

The thing about this book, and the Alien line in general, that bowls me over is the lore. There is a lot of BAD material in the Alien franchise (Prometheus? Prometheus.). There is also some great stuff that is obscure (lots of comic book stories) or was unproduced (like Gibson’s Alien 3 script). Somehow Andrew Gaska has pulled those thread of varying quality into a tapestry that works as a compelling universe for roleplay. Initially, with the cinematic scenarios, there were big guardrails. Colonial Marines lowers them substantially and beyond them I can see the expanse of thrilling galaxy. More please.

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Colonial Marines

Stu Horvath — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 04:00:00 +0000

Game over, man! Actually, wait, no, as usual, we can’t always trust Stu’s first impressions. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at the Colonial Marines Operations Manual (2021) for Free League’s Alien RPG. This sourcebook introduces campaign play to the system and continues the metaplot established in the cinematic adventures along in a big way. Game on!

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Want a new Noble Knight discount code? We got ya covered: use VINTAGEHORROR to get 10% off your purchase online or in store. Good through November 18.Hang out with us on the Vintage RPG Discord!If you dig what we do, join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! Patrons keep us going!Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast!Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients.Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com.Follow Vintage RPG on Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. Learn more at the Vintage RPG FAQ.Follow Stu Horvath, John McGuire, VintageRPG and Unwinnable on Twitter.Intro music by George Collazo.The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter.Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

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Alien Post-Mortem

Stu Horvath — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 05:00:00 +0000

Back in October, Stu ran “Chariot of the Gods,” the cinematic scenario in the Alien Starter Set. Not once, but twice! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast we talk about how it went. Who survived? What was left of them? Well, we aren’t telling because that would spoil the fun. But we do dig into Stu’s general impressions of how the game works and the experience it delivers.

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Hang out with us on the Vintage RPG Discord!If you dig what we do, join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! Patrons keep us going!Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast!Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients.Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com.Follow Vintage RPG on Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. Learn more at the Vintage RPG FAQ.Follow Stu Horvath, John McGuire, VintageRPG and Unwinnable on Twitter.Intro music by George Collazo.The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter.Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

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Destroyer of Worlds (2020)

Stu Horvath — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 04:01:29 +0000

This one is a beast, a true monster. Destroyer of Worlds is an apt title. The number of horrible things that happen in this cinematic scenario might verge on comical, but to notice that, you’d have to stop concentrating on surviving, and then you’d be dead, so.

It starts with a manhunt for some marine deserters and quickly spirals out of control. Like, so wildly out of control. The moon you’re on is about to become a literal war zone as tensions between the United Americas and the Union of Progressive Peoples boil over. And, you know, this game is called Alien, so there might be some other problems looming too. The scenario plays out across three chapters, each progressively more effed up. By the end, your players are going to feel thoroughly frayed. I honestly have trouble picturing what the next scenario is going to be like. In terms of endless, compounding disasters, this one seems tough to top.

The box set is well done. There’s the scenario book and pre-gen characters and so, so many maps, all done in the monochrome green display style. There are more decks of cards for guns, character reference and personal agendas. There are also Story Cards, which are handed out during the game as secret cues that manifest in play, changing player behavior. Folks who chaff at “railroading” might hate these, but I kind of love the dramatic potential the Story Cards introduce.

Have I talked about the art yet? I love it, how cold it is. I usually am a bit ambivalent about digital painting that dominates modern RPGs, but it works for me here. Makes things seem frenetic and unsettled, gives the environments a remote, isolated feel. Loads of atmosphere.

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Alien Starter Set (2019)

Stu Horvath — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 04:01:13 +0000

I was a little skeptical of the Alien Starter Kit. Still am, kind of. See, you get the basic rules — the mechanics chapters direct from the core rulebook — two sets of custom dice, a sheet of tokens, some reference sheets and a massive map of the known galaxy. The main attraction though, is Chariot of the Gods, a full example of the game’s cinematic style of adventure.

Broad strokes, the scenario resembles the original Alien film, though with some key twists and turns. This game loves the established Alien mythology, but also loves departing from it when it will most mess with the heads of players. There is a lot here that messes with the players. I don’t actually want to talk to much about it. I’d rather run it for some folks. Let’s leave it at: it ain’t what you expect.

The game’s hidden agendas work quite well, which are tied directly to the narrative and evolve over the three acts of the story. The agendas are delivered via a deck of reference cards (there are also cards for characters, guns and initiative), which is pretty good way of doing it.

This makes about a lot of the box good for one use — playing the intro adventure — and another 1/3 or so is redundant if you have the core rulebook. Despite all the bits and bobs you get for the adventure, I kind of want it in the core rulebook, actually, with the one that IS in the rulebook feeling more like a Starter Kit level scenario. I don’t know, I like all the stuff, I just think the configuration of it all could have been done a little better. Maybe.

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Alien: The Roleplaying Game (2019)

Stu Horvath — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 04:00:45 +0000

I really didn’t think I was going to love Fria Liga’s Alien. I didn’t honestly understand the point of building an RPG around the license — Alien movies end with just about everyone getting killed by an alien, to the point that recent installments of the franchise have resorted to grotesque contortions to mix up the formula. Even so, those films are pretty unimpressive. Do I really want to play an RPG set in a post-Prometheus Alien universe?

Shockingly, yes! The Alien RPG manages to take bits and pieces of every part of the larger franchise and synthesize them into something astonishingly and consistently cool. Remember how amazing the first Prometheus trailer was? All that promise? You get all that in the RPG, without having to be bound to the details of the movie’s execution. The specifics don’t matter at all, in fact. But the broad implications paint outer space as a hostile, howling void intent on murdering everyone who ventures out into it. It’s great. The look of the game, with its monochrome monitor graphics and dark art supports this well.

Under the hood, the game uses Year Zero Engine and bolts on a stress mechanic that can lead to panic — a quick and easy sanity system with immediate consequences. Similarly, the usual status damage system used by YZE is replaced with a health score, making combat far more deadly. While campaign play is supported (and there is plenty of source material in here to get one going, including a couple call backs to the Leading Edge Aliens RPG, of all things) the focus is really on “Cinematic” one-shots that match the dramatic arc of an Alien film. They play here is fast and deadly, made more complicated by personal agendas that almost inevitably lead to betrayals at crucial moments.

The one down-side here is that the scenario — a brief bid for survival parallel to the events of the film Aliens — doesn’t really show what the Alien system can do. It’s fine, but the real action is in the box sets.

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Alien

Stu Horvath — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 04:00:00 +0000

Space is a place that wants to kill us, be it with the vacuum, the cold, the hostile exo-environments, the hubris of humanity or a good old fashioned xenomorph. That’s right, this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at the Alien RPG. The latest permutation of Free League’s Year Zero Engine is refined to be even deadlier. It boasts frameworks for both traditional campaign play and more directed cinematic play. There’s a pretty excellent stress and panic system. It all comes together as a pretty excellent survival horror/sci-fi RPG!

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Here’s the current discount code from our pals at Noble Knight! Use LEGENDS at checkout online or in the store to get 10% off your order, from now till November 19!Hang out with us on the Vintage RPG Discord!If you dig what we do, join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! Patrons keep us going!Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast!Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients.Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com.Follow Vintage RPG on Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. Learn more at the Vintage RPG FAQ.Follow Stu Horvath, John McGuire, VintageRPG and Unwinnable on Twitter.Intro music by George Collazo.The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter.Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

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