Has anybody successfully run this game? Or I guess a better question is has anybody run an alien themed game?
Aliens RPG
Carter Watson
Logan Hughes
bump
Jason Gomez
Tangentially related, but I kind of liked how the original Space Jockey seemed to be some kind of biomechanical organism that was fused to its control station. I thought that made for some interesting possibilities on how their species developed and functioned.
If they had to expand on this setting, it might've been interesting for some human explorers to come across a large orbital structure or moon where we could see more of these things either fused to more control stations or silently stalking around and cultivating xeno eggs. There wouldn't even have to be a lot of monsters or jump scares, just humans walking around vast dark halls and tunnels and the Jockeys obliviously doing things beyond our logic for reasons we'll never fully understand. What was their relationship with the xenomorphs? Did they create them to be weapons or tools or were they an experimental life form? Or maybe something else entirely that has no human analogue?
For me, the way Ridley Scott made it so the Jockeys turned out to be "engineers" who looked more like humans instead of giant elephant-like creatures, and even created humans while David was able to decipher their language, fly their ships and even replicate their xenomorph experiments all felt a little too convenient and lacked a lot of the mystery of the original movie. Where before we were just a minor species that happened to stumble by freak accident on something we shouldn't have, now we're suddenly the star creation of the Space Jockeys/engineers who'd actually been looking for us with very clear but asinine and not particularly interesting or compelling motivations.
Does anyone else feel this way? I understand Ridley wanted to come back to this universe and explore it, but I feel like there was a way to do it without making the everything seem so small and limited and intentional. There's a way to leave audiences with questions without making them frustrated that they didn't get any answers.
Justin Young
Yeah scott ruined the franchise
Nathan Green
I liked the elephant people concept
Charles Moore
Bump
Mason Robinson
youtube.com
D20 Live did it once
Jose Cruz
Haven't run the aliens rpg specifically, but I did play and run 3:16 Carnage, which is heavily inspired by aliens. Its a colonial marines ptsd generator story game? There's only 2 stats, fighting ability and not fighting ability, flashbacks are narrative control, the combat map is a blip tracker based on Traveller range bands. The marine with the highest not fighting ability is the officer, everyone has to basically do what they say, but should also try and get the lt killed so they get promoted. Its a good time. Both campaigns were short though (4-5 sessions), not sure how well its suited to long term play.
Connor Lee
Care to elaborate on the game's story?
Jacob Perez
>avp.wikia.com
I did back in the early 90's.
Combat is chart heavy and brutal. It fits the themes.
It isn't great but it isn't bad. It is based on Phoenix Command
Aaron Miller
Was deeply disappointed how the Engineers turned out to be Übermensch and not much else. All the thoughts and ideas that came in to the mind when you first saw the first space jockey, gone.
Jaxson Hernandez
Its does a grimdark homage to aliens and early (1st/2nd) edition 40k's depictions of space marines as graffiti spraying convict troopers. There's not too much more story because it's mostly about shooting weird aliens. There's a decent set of random generator tables to making planets and bugs, a cinematic outline of missions, rules and explanation of the military hierarchy and eventually if they get promoted to commander of the whole thing they learn that earth sent them out to kill anything because it keeps violent shitheads off earth. Its pretty sweet, should be in the pdf share thread.
Jeremiah White
It actually bothers me a lot with how Ridley Scott gets all the credit for Alien, when I feel like it was Dan O'Bannon's baby. Like, don't get me wrong, Scott is a technically proficient director, but I think Prometheus and Covenant show he doesn't know or care about the core themes and inspirations that O'Bannon drew upon for Alien.
Hunter Cox
Grayson Lopez
bump
Eli Kelly
I will definitely have to check it out!
Owen Reyes
ive been working on adapting some spelljammer shit for 5e for my group here and there, and one of the ideas ive been toying with is introducing elements of AVP. Itd be modified from strict avp canon to fit the d&d universe, with shit like yautja mages and xeno-beholders and whatnot.
Pic related- i'll make the rest of the book some day
Dylan Moore
Have two Predator sub-races: Yautja and Hish.
Gavin White
good call, forgot about the hish
I was also toying with using space jockeys, but im not sure how to make them fit into a cosmology that already has a bunch of gods and creator races and whatnot
Julian Lewis
What are the hish?
Are there any other Aliens in the universe?
Christopher Gonzalez
hish were a predator subrace from the old novels,
from what i remember, they were basically what regular predators referred to as "badbloods"- stronger and more savage than the yautja with none of the honor and ethics.
and most everything from spelljammer qualifies as alien races, so theres a bunch of aliens in d&d. I probably wouldnt put too much emphasis on predators and xenomorphs beyond a fun side quest but im toying with having the quest set on a massive floating space city that fell to a xenomorph infestation, complete with xeno-elves, xeno-orcs, xeno-beholders, xeno-illithids, maybe a xeno-dragon, etc
Carson Cook
Downplay the creator aspect and make them specialize in genetic engineering. Black goo, while a sort of silly movie concept, could be very interesting in an RPG.
Isaiah Long
i had considered that but i felt itll take away their grandeur and put them on par with various races that already exist in d&d like spellweavers or the arcane.
But i dunno, i may end up going with the genetic engineering aspect and make use of the various grafts that have shown up all over d&d
Adrian Jones
To me, a major part of the Alien lore as it stands today is about uncovering that 'grandeur' for what it really is - it's the classic example of science being magic to a simple enough culture.
I imagine a Jockey race fighting with infections and being able to spawn animal minions using genetic engineering, as well as changing 'forms' by engineering on themselves.
Colton Turner
Good concept, i think ill use that.
Maybe have the players eventually find an item or tome of knowledge that would allow them to attach any symbiote or graft to themselves with advantage...
Bentley Kelly
I will never not be salty over this. Prometheus would of been ten times better (if still flawed) if they had just used the original space jockey design. Idiot character decisions, plot holes, removing the analog look? Fine, fine. I could stand that.
What I coudn't? Completely removing every shared of mystery from the setting.
Damn you Ridley Scott, god fucking damn you.
I mean...just look at this fantastic creature design. It's vaguely humanoid, but so full of unknowns. Imagine this thing instead of albino squidward rising out of the stasis pod and speaking to the crew in a guttural tongue before ripping them to shreds? It would of been fantastic.
Jacob Turner
That sounds bloody awesome.
Logan Rodriguez
Have GMed it. Rather a clusterfuck with needlessly detailed combat and the Aliens are sadly only gunfodder unless played stealthily (and then use grab, other attacks are shit)
Character creation (Marine) was fun yet game lacks many essentials. Some kind of sanity / fear check mechanic would be awesome.
For true horror feeling, do not allow PCs to be marines / armed with pulse rifles. THEN the real fun starts... (also remember that the Company is really nice place for work)
3:16 is awesome for lighthearted marine game with slight backstabbery tendencies. Our campaing lasted roughtly 40 planets. Darn max level characters are tough - yet still killable. e-cannon for the win
Lucas Smith
This. Scott was a hired gun and to the extent that he contributed anything to the creative process, it was strictly limited to wrangling cameras and actors. The carp about how his storyboards doubled Alien's budget speaks less to his artistic vision, and more to the strength of O'Bannon and Shusset's script and Ron Cobb's art direction.
Ridley Scott doesn't have a single real writing credit to his name, save for the amateur film he made in the 60s where he followed his brother around on a bicycle. They've given him a "conceived by" credit for the two Covenant prologue shorts, but I'd honestly be surprised if that wasn't just the result of being in a meeting where they decided to do prologue shorts; or reframing disused film from principle photography. In an age before YouTube, both would've been deleted scenes on the DVD.
Grayson Flores
I've never seen the Jockey as elephant-like (any more than you'd consider a human wearing a gas mask as such), just a humanlike being hooked up to their workstation+bed+life support.
Does the original design confirm the elephantine imagery, or is it just something someone saw in it later and people ran with it?
David Rodriguez
Bad Bloods were just rogue Yautja, surely?
Asher Fisher
depended on the story, but bad blood was a catch all term for any predator who didnt follow the yautja code of honor. Bad blood usually referred to individual asshole predators or preds under human control, but the Hish were a whole race of assholes
Jaxon Ward
I..I made the mistake of going to the Xenopedia and spoiling myself.
Alien Covenant did THAT?
Jesus
Noah Barnes
Yeaaaah it was messes up the mythology even more sadly.
the novelisation at least tries to fix shit. In it David mentions that Xenos are a Engineer creation which he found
Ayden Collins
yes, i have. loved it, players loved it, but i suppose it would be too crunchy for most plebs today. and i never even had to have the aliens show up, ran it as pure dystopian sci-fi.
dysopian sci-fi is AMAZING
Angel Hall
Hoe did it go down? Story and gameplay wise.
Jaxson Campbell
To be honest, that change alone would've made the movie mediocre-tier, instead of Makes-me-wanna-jihad tier.
Thomas Campbell
>Space Jockey
Samuel Nguyen
>David mentions that Xenos are a Engineer creation which he found
Why not just put that In the movie?
Thomas Murphy
Noah Parker
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Jordan James
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