A Non-Review of Fria Ligan’s Alien RPG

Rather than review the new Alien RPG from Fria Ligan (Free League), I’d like to highlight new mechanics and other stealable content.

Stress

The most notable new mechanics in Alien, (and the reason I ponied up $25 for the PDF) are Stress and Panic.

The game uses two distinct sets of six-sided dice, Base Dice

and Stress Dice:

(Images from the Free League Store.)

I’d just use off the shelf dice in two colors, but I’m cheap.

Under most circumstances, players and GMs roll Base Dice. On a skill check, the number of dice is the sum of an attribute (usually from 2 to 5), a skill (0 … 5), and modifiers for gear and circumstances. As in other Year Zero games, a 6 on any die denotes success.¹

The player may choose to “push” a skill roll, or reroll once, if they take a point of Stress. Every point of stress adds a Stress Die to all subsequent rolls, including the pushed roll, so the adrenaline surge of stress makes success more likely. Stress comes from other sources, like physical damage, deprivation, seeing other people Panic, shooting a rifle with full auto fire², being attacked by a supposed ally, and various scenario-based stressful situations.

However, if any Stress die shows a 1, or in other fear-inducing circumstances, the player must make a Panic Roll. The player rolls a single d6, adds their PC’s current Stress level, and checks a table for effects, which range from a twitch or case of the shakes to involuntary Panic Actions like flight, fight, or freeze. (A total of 6 or less means that the PC keeps their cool, barely.) Note that a Panic Action supersedes the action that triggers it, even if that action would have succeeded.

Some time in a safe, quiet space reduces Stress, as does a “signature item” like a photograph to strengthen the characters resolve, the use of certain skills and talents, and a shot of tranquilizers.

NPCs don’t track Stress; they Panic when dramatically appropriate.

Some people don’t like “fear mechanics”. “But what about player agency?” I imagine these people saying. One notable figure in the hobby suggested GMs should “just scare” their players. But consider:

• Creating any mood, let alone horror, is hard. It’s even harder if, like me, you play in a busy game store that’s closer to all your players than you are to each other. Mechanics can bridge the gap between imagining yourself in a scary situation and knowing you’re actually safe in a living room (or noisy store).

• Humans aren’t always rational actors. (Some days it seems like they almost never are.) Consider a person trapped in an enclosed space with a rabid, hungry animal. A player sitting at a table might rationally decide to fight, since there’s nothing to lose. A real human would most likely panic, scream, and run for it. Now imagine the enclosed space is in a space station and the “animal” is an extraterrestrial super-predator that shouldn’t exist.

• For some people horror isn’t fun. Some players want to be in control at all times. And that’s fine. For those of us who like horror, though, part of the experience is the point at which all plans fall apart, when the tiny light of rationality flickers and fails in the vast unknown. In Aliens well trained and heavily armed marines meet monsters and are slaughered.

• The “player agency” argument also kills me because the GM is ultimate arbiter of what players encounter. The GM can drop the players in a nega-dungeon like “Tomb of Horrors”, where unanticipated and nigh-undetectable traps can slaughter the party, and that’s fine. But a Fear spell is “too far”. I’ve read about players who are incensed when their characters are captured and stripped of their gear, which just baffles me.³ A horror GM, like any other, must balance challenges and rewards. Horror may tend toward not enough rewards and too many challenges, but if victory comes too easily the game isn’t so interesting.

• Stress and Panic – like Fear Checks, Sanity Tests, etc. in other systems – are in principle no different than physical damage or other adverse die rolls. Like Health Points, they’re yet another resource to manage. (Along with food, water, and in Alien air and sometimes power.) While one can accuse the GM of bias (or sadism), dice are presumably without malice or favor.⁴ Yet somehow – maybe this is cultural – mental and emotional limits are more controversial than physical ones.

Cinematic Play

While many Free League games are geared toward campaign play, Alien has a “Cinematic Play” mode tailored for one-shots.

• Characters have “Agendas” which may work against the group’s survival. (Most of the movies revolve around a character backstabbing the others: Ash, Burke, David.) Players keep these secret from each other. When an agenda creates an open rift, the GM declares “PvP”, players finish out the scene, and then the antagonist PC becomes an NPC and their player gets a new PC.

• At each of two(?) “act breaks” during play, a player that followed their character’s Agenda earns a Plot Point. A player can spend a Plot Point for an automatic success later in the game. Players may carry Plot Ponts from one Cinematic Play scenario to the next, even if their characters die, as they often do.

Considering how deadly Xenomorphs are, Cinematic Play provides a one session experience similar to the movies. Characters die, one by one; rivalries and betrayals pose as much danger as an alien monster.

In contrast, Campaign Play implies a stable cast, session to session. As in other games they earn Experience Points. The authors recommend that in Campaign Play, Xenomorphs remain rumors and off-stage threats⁵ until the very end.

Space Combat

In the Alien RPG, space combat is less Star Wars, more Firefly. It assumes that ships are moving too fast to maneuver in “dog fights”, and have only a short window when they’re close enough to fire weapons. (It also presumes only two “sides”, usually just two ships.)

The “map” for ship-to-ship combat tracks only how close the ships are, along nine zones from +4 to -4, which also reflect maximum radar range. Each side start at one end. Unless the ships accelerate or decelerate, they’ll approach at a constant speed – typically two zones per turn – and then zip past each other.

Every turn of space combat progresses in four phases: Sensor Ops, Pilot Actions, Gunner Actions, and Engineer Actions. Sensors have to acquire a Target Lock so the Gunner can fire; the Pilot can Accelerate or Decelerate which changes range, a Gunner can either fire weapons or deploy defenses countermeasures, and then the Engineer does damage control.

In each phase, each ship’s crew pick actions secretly, reveals them simultaneously (!!!)⁶, and then players and GM resolve the actions in initiative order. Typically each player manages actions during one phase on the PCs ship; the “captain” can give orders, but PCs may not always obey. (The GM controls the NPC ship, naturally.)

I’ve always thought that space combat resembles submarine combat more closely than air or naval combat. In space not only can no one hear you scream, nobody can see a damn thing without instruments or a nearby sun. This system, particularly the simultaneous orders, keeps the tension and second-guessing of sub combat … and fits the larger themes of uncertainty and ever-present danger.

Advice for the “Game Mother”

The Alien RPG calls its GM the “Game Mother”, after the not entirely trustworthy computer of the original movie. Cute names for the GM aren’t unheard of – Keeper of Forbidden Lore, anyone? – but I wonder if it’s more than just a play on the series’s mythology.

Like Call of Cthulhu’s Keeper, and the namesake computer, the goal of the “Game Mother” is to dole out just enough information to keep players and their characters moving but not enough that they realize what they’re facing and lose all hope. The “Game Mother” section even offers advice, however brief, to keep players on the knife edge, neither entirely safe nor so Stressed that they can’t function, and still with a faint hope that they can win. Cinematic Play, particularly, almost seems like a game of Fiasco: characters jockey for position, play out their agendas and goals, and bicker about the “Bonus Situation”, even as they move closer to their doom.

Likewise Campaign Play consists of several missions or jobs, possibly randomly generated, where the major dangers are unscrupulous humans and environmental hazards. While cyberpunk antiheroes have the consolation of “sticking it to The Man”, in the world of Alien you’re always working for The Man. You’re a space trucker or a marine or a colonist in deep space or on a harsh and unforgiving planet, and you depend on some version of The Man for the very air you breathe. The “Game Mother”, like the computer, represents the setting’s corporations and colonial governments. Like those entities, the GM must encourage players to think they’re getting ahead by doling out XP and slightly better stuff so players keep playing. As in any dystopia, though, PCs will see little if any advancement from their hard work. Meanwhile – if I’m reading the game right – the PCs become the pawns in some corporation’s next attempt to acquire and tame the dreaded Xenomorphs or some related organism which, as always, will end badly.

Whether this is a feature or a bug is a matter of perspective.

Synthetics

Synthetics (androids, artificial people, whatever) are mostly like human characters, with a few key differences: they have higher basic attributes and never suffer Stress, but they can’t push their rolls. Also, synthetics use a different (and shorter) Critical Injury table, which makes them paradoxically tougher – only 2 of 6 results incapacitate them – and more fragile – easily broken legs, arms, and necks. Which does fit the movies, particularly the original.

I’m a huge fan of treating synthetic and artificial entities differently from (conventional) living beings. Years ago I put together rules for “Constructs in BRP” (Basic Roleplaying, also usable in Mythras, OpenQuest, RuneQuest, and other variants.) One notable element is a Major Malfunction table, named after the Major Wound table in BRP/OQ/etc. Despite interest from two parties has never seen the light of day. (In all honesty, though, I never playtested it, so it may be hot garbage.)

Simpler Creature Stats

Xenomorphs (and other extrasolar creatures) don’t have base Attributes, only Skills for the few things they need: Close Combat, Mobility (running or evasion), Observation. Those and a few other numbers – Health, Armor, and Speed⁷ – pretty much define the mechanics for aliens. The rest is behavior, attack modes, special defenses, special immunities or vulnerabilities, and the effects of acid blood or embryo implantation on humans.

Other Year Zero games reduce “monsters” to Strength and Agility, with no mental abilities or skills. Listing which skills a non-verbal, non-technological creature would use in its actions or reactions speeds up play and demonstrates that designers have thought through what each skill covers. (It helps that there are only 12, or three for each of four Attributes.)

Setting Elements

The entire setting of the Alien RPG, without the Xenomorphs and maybe with a few tweaks, might make a decent “early interstellar empires” campaign. Colliding corporate and governmental interests, the loneliness of being on the very edge of the frontier, the dangers of being a hull’s thickness away from death … all useful material for conflict and “adventure”. It’s not too far from Firefly, actually, except for Alien’s handwaved FTL and darker tone.

That said, some of the details, especially the retro-future history, don’t quite make sense. Maybe it’s supposed to be an “alternate future” that diverged in the late 1990s. Two of the political factions are essentially the U.S. and Soviets with some handwaving about political alliances. The third, origin of corporate villains Weyland-Yutani, only makes sense if their Earth territories – Japan and the U.K. – are essentially outposts and the bulk of their political power rests in Mars and Titan.

Certainly if you’re running a gritty science fiction Year Zero game, the stats for tech and NPCs will prove useful. GMs running other systems might be able to use some of the plot hooks in the setting material. The Year Zero System is admirably lightweight, but that means there’s not a lot of crunch to mine. (Assuming one had some sort of mechanical conversion to begin with.)

Final Salvage Report

While I might want to run (or play?) one Cinematic Play adventure, just to see what it’s like, I doubt I’d want to run a campaign. The setting is just too depressingly similar to real life.

As I said at the top, though, there are things I’d like to steal:

• The Stress mechanic might work well in another horror or high-tension game. Specifics may vary depending on the host system, but in another Year Zero game like Coriolis it would port right over.

• The Space Combat system, likewise, would work in a near future or “hard sci-fi” setting. Some or all of it may already be in Coriolis, which I don’t have yet.

• The “Game Mother” advice on running a game applies to other horror games. It really is less like being a “master” and more like being a manipulative authority figure, encouraging them when they’re about to give up then cutting them off at the knees when they’re too confident.

• While Alien’s treatment of synthetics isn’t too far from my own, it has kindled my interest in my “Constructs in ${system}” notes. I’ll probably revise the Major Malfunction Table, delve into the Mental Trauma of being deactivated, and (further?) separate system-dependent and system-indifferent rules.

• Whether in a homebrew system or house rules for another, I’m definitiely boiling down creature abilities to a small set of specific skills and resistances. (I actually did that somewhat in “Constructs in BRP”, but readers complained.)

• Some setting elements, as said above, might inspire other campaigns in Coriolis or dark, near future settings.

If this were a real review, I’d conclude that Free League / Fria Ligan did an admirable job given that they had to remain consistent with five flawed movies⁸. But it isn’t. I’m just here to break it down for parts.