Alien RPG by Free League

[Hemnon]

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/images/11437/293976.jpg

Heyo everyone, just curious if anyone else has purchased the rules for Alien RPG made by Free League? I have a recruitment up with interest-seeking, but just wanted to also ask here if there was actually anyone else that got a hold of the rules as well, what they think of the rules, the setup, the lethality of the Xenomorph, etc.

Mödley Crüe: Image placed behind spoiler for mobile viewers.

[Hellpyre]

I haven't heard of it before this. Care to guve a brief overview? Is it GM as the Xeno, or some sort of split party? How long do sessions look to yake?

[Mutazoia]

I'm familiar with the original Aliens RPG by Leading Edge, but I haven't heard of this new one until now...

[Hemnon]

I haven't heard of it before this. Care to guve a brief overview? Is it GM as the Xeno, or some sort of split party? How long do sessions look to yake?


I'm familiar with the original Aliens RPG by Leading Edge, but I haven't heard of this new one until now...

It's set up system and function-wise in the same format as any other Free League RPG system I've tried. It's more rules-lite with a bigger focus on Roleplay atmosphere, while still holding enough rule-functions to ensure a smooth play format.
Dice rolls are done in an attribute+skill+potential-other-modifiers of d6s. Any 6s rolled means you succeed (additional 6s can be spent on specific stunts, all mentioned in the rules on what can be done depending on the skill attempted). if you fail to do something, you cannot try so again, but the GM is encouraged to still let the players succeed in some way, but with some heavy consequences.... for example, you manage to hack the pressure-hatch control panel, but your haphazard fiddling has shortcurcuited the controls so the door cannot be closed again, or maybe the hacking tool is damaged, or the door only opens 1/3 of the way so everyone needs to crawl through the opening one at the time.
It's designed to enforce events to flow without sudden deadstops, so even a failed roll doesn't have to mean 'you fail what you do', it just means you don't succeed in the way you want, and most likely on partially succeeds, or does it very badly. Of course missing with an attack means you don't hit.

Sessions are dependant on if it's cinematic play (one shots where the GM gives the players pre-made characters with special agendas, possible a hidden android that acts human, possibly already a revealed android like with Bishop) or if it's Campaign Play (make character, play campaign.... simple.... like with D&D and any other cmapaign-based RPG). Sessions usually irl takes like, I guess a 3-4 hours as per expectation.

and yes the GM roleplay the Xeno and any potential antagonistic NPCs. There's many ways it can all happen, it can be a group of space truckers meeting a colonial marine vessel for a supply run, but ends up with an Alien Covenant Infection of spores and Neomorphs going rampage through both ships. or go with a frontier Colony's Colonial Marshal helping some surviving colonists in keeping an alien outbreak on the planet from wiping them all out.
Or go with a starting adventure without an actual Alien, perhaps it's more of a bad android having an agenda to get the group to end up catching a certain Signal and THUS lead later events into Alien-esque movie events.
OR you can go full on colonial marine group that has been called in to deal with an uprising of giant space scorpions that are going rampage on a frontier colony world.

Here's a thing tho, if you experience stressful things and such, you gain stress and thus also stress dice that are rolled whenever you do anything requiring a dice roll. if you roll a 1 or any of the stress dice, your character might potentially panic and anything from just being a bit shook up, to going full on psychotic (temporarily, if course) or even totally catatonic for a while. The more stress you have, the higher your panic rolls tends to be since you roll 1d6 and adds your stress level to the roll.
You CAN lower stress through certain actions or just getting a chance to spent some time without constantly running away from spooky aliens.

Also, any damage taken lowers your health, but it's only bruises, bodily exhaustion and such up until you take critical damage which is a table for itself, which can be anything from being winded, to getting your head bitten through by a xenomorph, with some results being lethal, but not instantly so, requiring a medical roll to help remove the 'dying' condition, and a death roll needs to be made after a certain amount of time, repeatedly until healed, or dying from a failed roll.
Oh btw, many xenomorph attacks are quite lethal even if you are at full health, so just one damage from a headbite attack, after reduction from any armor and such worn, you still die.
Aliens themselves are also rather resistant to actually dying, having their own crit damage table ranging from just faking death until it's next initiative and then jump up and attack the nearest person, to getting wounded and flees, or, hopefully, getting blown into acidy chunks. They have a high level of armor (lowered against fire, so fire is good), getting shot also puts potential acid spray damage to nearby close-range people.

The game is, after hostiles are detected, put into two fases: Fase 1 is Stealth, where if the enemy hasn't noticed the players yet, the remain passive as long as the PCs keep hidden. If the PCs are detected, the Enemy will go Active and potentially try to hide and ambush the players. That's where stuff like motion trackers come in that'll help ping out movement, although as with anything, it only go so much power and any uses may potentially lower the remaining amount of power left in it, so over-use of it can potentially lead to a dead-device at a fatal moment when it'd be REALLY needed.


That's about the best I can explain it here without literally just copy-pasting from the rules. :smallbiggrin:

[lightningcat]

Not bought or read it, but that discription matches what The Effekt podcast has said about it. The hosts of which wrote the Hope's Last Day senerios. One of them also ran a "play as a Xenomorph" game which is on their feed as well.

[Hemnon]

Not bought or read it, but that discription matches what The Effekt podcast has said about it. The hosts of which wrote the Hope's Last Day senerios. One of them also ran a "play as a Xenomorph" game which is on their feed as well.

yeah, I sorta took their review and words into mind when I wrote my own experience from checking the rules. I've played Mutant: year Zero, Coriolis, Mutant: Mechatron, etc. So I know the basic format of their systems and I like how they work since it doesn't take 4 hours of constant rules-checking to create a character a la D&D 3.5e.

Although all the RPs I've seen so far very much looses out on what is important: Horror. And some Players SUCK at keeping real world knowledge away from the actions their PCs take. And inexperience with Roleplaying Games are not an excuse since it's a clear statement in the rules to create a CHARACTER that you take control over, not create yourself. No one knows about aliens, how they work, that they have acid for blood, how lethal they are, that they have a hivemind of sorts, which is much more pronounced when there's more of them in the same 'group', etc.
It's like with the example I gave earlier - If your overtly-curious Scientist character decides to NOT take a closer look to those leathery looking egg-form things and the reason for it is 'well I know as a Player that it is an alien egg, and I don't want to expose my character to the dangers of it', then you make use of future in-universe knowledge that the character should not have.
You need to very much think: what would my CHARACTER do in this circumstance. There's nothing wrong with having your character just go 'nope' and seal the pressure door with his supposed friends behind it, however doing so will of course make your character an antagonist and potentially should be handed over to the GM unless it was a momentary lapse of control, like if caused by stress or panic, for example. Also PvP should only ever be done if it's something that is enforced by the rules, or your character got an antagonistic hidden agenda that makes it FIT the play.

[Knaight]

They've got a solid house system, and this sounds like it has some interesting structural ideas, starting with not aiming at campaign play. There's also theoretically some good genre emulation.

That said, I don't have it and haven't read it personally.

[Hemnon]

They've got a solid house system, and this sounds like it has some interesting structural ideas, starting with not aiming at campaign play. There's also theoretically some good genre emulation.

That said, I don't have it and haven't read it personally.

Heh, I was thinking an easy way to emulate it into a The Thing setting without too much hassle.

Well have you read any of the rulebooks from any of Free League's RPG systems? cuz the baseline format is sorta the same. Kinda like if GURPS had varying genre formats, but kept to the baseline system no matter the setting. I really dunno if GURPS actually does that, but it was my best example I could give.

[Knaight]

Well have you read any of the rulebooks from any of Free League's RPG systems? cuz the baseline format is sorta the same. Kinda like if GURPS had varying genre formats, but kept to the baseline system no matter the setting. I really dunno if GURPS actually does that, but it was my best example I could give.

Forbidden Lands and Coriolis. There's a reason I'm confident that it's a solid house system.

[Hemnon]

Forbidden Lands and Coriolis. There's a reason I'm confident that it's a solid house system.

Ahh great.
They learned from their coriolis release. There's a lot less crammed-in lore and such, and there's a much easier format for the characters to work in, as well as a very unique way to handle the use of stealth and combat, and the fact that if an enemy spots you, especially if it's an alien, it'll try and stalk you first, move around and find the best way to strike.... Depending on the type of course.
With humans, or androids there's also a very functional way to make use of them, heck even allowing players to BE an android. pvp is also handled effectively in that if it goes to the point of infighting, the character with the ulterior motives should really be planned to be handed over to the GM, if worse comes to worst, thus allowing a PC to naturally transition into the role of an NPC without hard feelings between the players due to the fact that the game itself allows for such and it makes sense to be able to do so.
For example, take Burke, he'd be a Company Agent style PC that does his best to stay in the good graces of the rest of the group, but when a chance shows itself for massive profit, he takes it and sadly fails in his endeavor and from that point transitions into being an NPC. And it's much more impactful that way than just have 'bad guy NPC number 4' try and do such a reveal, cuz everyone'd expect it.