Alien RPG Evolved Edition
Originally created by Tomas Härenstam
Space is no place for the faint of heart. Gamma rays and neutrino bursts erupt from dying stars to cook you alive, black holes tear you apart, and the void itself boils your blood and seizes your brain. Try to scream and no one can hear you—hold your breath and you rupture your lungs. It's not as empty as you’d think, either. Rival governments wage a cold war while greedy corporations vie for resources. Colonists reach for the stars and gamble with their lives—each new world tamed is either feast or famine. And there are things lurking in the shadows of every asteroid—things strange and different and deadly. Things alien. This is updated, expanded, and revised edition of the official Alien tabletop roleplaying game—a universe of body horror and corporate brinkmanship, where synthetic people play god while space truckers and marines serve host to newborn ghoulish creatures. It’s a harsh and unforgiving universe and you are nothing if not expendable. The new edition includes life path character generation, to create a character's entire history from scratch, new rules for stealth, stress, and panic, updated combat rules and new weapons, items, ships, and armor, several modular rules for dangerous situations, a full campaign setting, and rules for solo play. Based on the acclaimed science-fiction and horror film series, the ALIEN RPG is built for both tense, dramatic, deadly single-session adventures in cinematic play and longer, slow-burn continuous expeditions in campaign play. Experience the thrill of your own personal alien nightmare for a one-shot, or explore the terrors of ALIEN universe over the course of a full campaign. Stay alive if you can.
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How to Play Alien RPG Evolved Edition
Before you begin your game of Alien RPG Evolved Edition, you'll need to choose a game mode: a cinematic, three-act one-shot session, or a campaign, a longer-term multi-session affair telling a continuous story. Given that Alien is a horror game, it's also a good time to discuss safety tools. Cinematic games typically use pregenerated characters, while players will often create their own characters for a campaign.
Alien RPG Evolved Edition uses pools of six-sided dice, or d6s. These pools include dice from a character's relevant attribute (Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy), the dice from their relevant skill, plus any Stress dice they have. When your character attempts something difficult or dangerous, roll them all together, and if you roll any 6s, you succeed. 1s on Stress dice trigger a stress response, which may reduce your character's effectiveness. Characters accumulate stress through the high-pressure situations the game often puts them through, giving them extra dice, but increasing the risk of stress response. If you roll extra 6s, you might gain extra benefits; if you roll none, your character fails. You can take Stress to "push" your roll, rerolling all your dice and taking the combined result (including all the Stress you accrued).
As you explore derelict spaceships and doomed colonies, movement, stealth, and combat may all become important elements of your game. In Stealth Mode, characters must balance how quickly and quietly they can move with how much they can observe around them as they go. If you get into a fight, against other humans it's your weapons and armor against theirs. But against alien xenomorphs, the GM secretly rolls on a table of their behaviors to find out what inhuman attack or monstrous weapon it might use. In extreme circumstances, this can trigger stress or even panic, an extreme response that can incapacitate an entire party of humans. You'll need to manage stress, oxygen, power, and ammunition if you hope to get out alive.
How to Create a Character for Alien RPG Evolved Edition
To create a character for Alien RPG Evolved Edition, start with a career; this is what your character does, and serves as a basis for their skill set and advantages. Then you'll put 14 points into your attributes: Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy. Each attribute needs at least 2 points, and have a maximum of 4 points. Your key attribute, determined by your career, can have 5 points. If you're playing an Android character, you also get a bonus to two attributes. The attributes let you derive your Resolve, which helps your character deal with stress, and Health, for physical damage. Next, you can choose and add 10 points to skills. Your career suggests a few skills which can be raised to as high as 3; any other skills can only start with one point. Each attribute has 3 associated skills. To make your character special, you'll start with a talent, which is typically chosen from three options given by your career. There are also general talents anyone can take. Characters can gain new talents and skills as they advance.
Next, you can flesh out your character by giving them a name and appearance and choosing their personal agenda, which is a source of bonus experience points in campaign play or success-guaranteeing Story Points in cinematic mode. You can also choose which other member of your party is your character's buddy, and which is your rival, to help create a web of interconnected relationships. With starting credits, you'll then purchase your character's gear, as well as choose a signature item, a special bit of gear from their history or backstory.
After that, your character is ready for the cold void of space, to live or die by the choices they've made!
Alien RPG Evolved Edition community artists
Martin Grip
Martin Grip is an artist and illustrator for Free League Publishing, frequently featured in their tabletop roleplaying game books.
Explore ArtJohan Nohr
Johan Nohr is a Swedish visual artist and graphic designer best known for eye-popping illustrations with vibrant colors and bold blacks in games like MÖRK BORG and Into the Odd.
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