Today, pre-orders for Free League’s new Alien RPG go live. To inspire you to buy it, I will start a “Where I read…” going through the Starter PDF that will be free to everyone who pre-orders. (Yes, I know I haven’t finished the Where I Read … Liminal, but I will return to that when I am done here. Sorry.)
Effekt co-host Dave and I have been asked to run taster sessions on the Free League stand at UK Games Expo, so we have had access to a not-quite-finished version of the Starter PDF to prepare. When I say not quite finished, I mean, missing a few illustrations, the text is there, all 168 pages of it. I wouldn’t rule out there being a few tweaks between this version and the final one, but I am pretty sure they will be minor.
Anyhow, let’s crack on with Chapter 1. This serves as an introduction to the world, and introduces us to the ships log of Captain Charlize, for whom I fear, things will go badly wrong by the end of the book.
We will be playing among “the rough and tumble colony worlds on the Frontier of known space.” There are three “great powers” in space, the dominant being the United Americas. The largest, not not the most successful economically is probably the Union of Progressive Peoples. I have a soft spot for the Three Word Empire formed from a formal alliance between Britain and Japan, and the merger of Weyland and the Yutani corporation. Weyland Yutani plays well with both the Empire and the United Americas, but it hedges it bets, also owning outright some independent worlds. These and other privately owned planets reject the three super powers and band together as the Independent Core System Colonies. Other companies, BioNational and Seegson being two examples, are also manipulating the national governments and, really, driving colonisation.
The game is set roughly three years after the events of Aliens, and Alien 3. Something of what happened on the prison planet in the third film is known publicly, because of of the prisoners published an ebook, that also implicates Waylamd-Yutani in bioweapons research. Some people argue that Wayland-Yutani may be working with a rouge nation to assume control of the frontier colonies. The chapter includes a timeline, from “Peter Weyland’s infamous TED Talk address of 2023” to the publication and subsequent banning of “Star Beast.”
The rest of the chapter is written for both newbies and experienced players. It starts with what you can play, adding Company Reps to the triad that pre-publicity had already mentioned: colonists, Marines and space truckers. Then there is a description of what the Gamemaster does, and the two different modes of play, saying in cinematic mode “In fact, most of your PCs probably won’t live to see the end of the scenario.” Whichever mode, the key themes of the game are: Space Horror; Sci-fi Action; and A Sense of Wonder. In its last few pages the chapter runs through the tools of the game, character sheets, dice, and cards, before finishing with “What is a Role Playing Game?”
Right at the end of the chapter? Well, if they didn’t know by now …
fictionsuit.org 