Hello hivers and RPG lover friends!
On my previous post, I told that I will start to write reivews for RPG products, which are provided me from their companies. And I wanted to start it from the ones I'm currently using, and ALIEN RPG is one of them.
You probably heard about ALIEN franchise, started with the movie. It's basically inspired by Hans Ruedi Giger's artworks, and also the cosmic concept of Howard Philips Lovecraft. It has the weird technology concept with the ambient of cosmic horror. It also gives a fictional answer to mankind's most ancient philosophical and existential question:
Are we alone in this universe?
In ALIEN's fictional universe, civilization evolved into a disaster, and people started to colonize on other systems and starts to grow their communities there. There are mega technology/militarized corporations and they are racing each other to discover more and colonize more. And this rivalry brings lots of hypocrisy, espionage and dangerous missions with it. I guess this is the best summarize of the setting, right?
Free League Publishing's award winning game ALIEN RPG has won 2020's BEST RPG golden award. Also FLP has lots of products which have won some sort of awards every year. I believe this is an important detail, because their works are always promising.
ALIEN RPG uses Year Zero Engine I mentioned in my previous post. Characters have Strength, Agility, Wits and Empathy as attributes, and every attribute has 3 skills related with themselves, total of 12.
When you want to take an action, it's a skill test and you roll d6 amount of skill's value _plus _related attribute's value. If you ever have a 6 on any of your die, your action is successful. If you have more than one success, that means you have a "stunt point" which you can spend to get extra effects mentioned in skill's description.
The game also has a Stress mechanics, which is the game's actual mechanics. You start game with zero Stress, but it's a bar raising with the tension of the game. When you have increasing stress rate, you additionally roll a die (or dice) equal to your current stress rate. The good thing is, when you roll your stress pool, all 6 results on that pool also counts as success. But, if you roll any 1 on your stress pool, you will have to roll a panic roll, which is a d6 + your current stress rate. You have yo check the panic table result corresponding your result from the panic roll.
As you see on the table above, your stress amount and panic value raises in time. You have to take care of your character's psychology, or you can even enter a catatonic state, which also means dying.
The game also encourages players to manipulate each other, dividing as a mini-groups, and enter social conflict even against the captain or general in the environment. This is also a stress element which builds up the pool.
Another thing is, android. A player can be an android with a secret agenda, undercover mission, or just to help crew. If you're hidden, you can mimic and act exactly like a normal human, until a specific occasion occurs, like taking damage and bleeding. Because of androids bleeding white, this shows you're exposed. Androids have special rules and configuration, like they don't get stressed, they have inhuman strength, etc.
ALIEN's combat logic is pretty similar to D&D. First, participants _decide their initiatives by drawing an initiative card _(it's a deck numbered 1 to 10) or simply roll a d10, and roll again if there's the same result with another participant.
Actions in the game divides as "slow action" and "fast action", and you can use two fast action, or one of each. For the movement, GM (also called Game Mother, which is also a movie reference like how characters talk to mothership's system) divides the combat area into zones, and decide if the range is close or long.
Stealth and searching is kinda "mini-combat" sequence, which is mostly depending on skill tests. And actually, combat is also a skill test.
Never mentioned above, but the game has two play method. One is cinematic play, other is campaign play. Cinematic play is actually a one-shot scenario which has a huge similarity to ALIEN movies. It has little interaction with the setting, it has alien action, tension building sequences and mostly ends up the whole crew (or most of them) are dead. I think it's a brilliant aspect to give people what they want to feel. With the campaign play, you interact more with the setting, companies, and other settlements.
I am currently playing this system and still learning about it. I'm not the GM but working on the rules to help him. We will start to broadcast an actual play series of Destroyer of Worlds campaign scenario on my YouTube channel, in Turkish. I don't think so, but if you're interested in what I'm doing on my channel, here's the link. I still couldn't have a chance to experience the manipulation and roleplay-based stress environment. Also, still couldn't have a chance to experience the stealth action part. But other than that, the game gives you all the vibe.
That's all for now. Next time, I will introduce and review another game. Hope you'll like it!
