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In the Firefly thread Spinachcat said that he was surprised there hadn't been an Aliens RPG.

So then, luminaries of the RPGsite - how would you go about designing an Aliens game?

My first gut reaction was "seems a bit limited as a premise, surely a board game is a better idea?"

My thinking is that there's two main models for an Aliens game. One is where you play the Marines, in which case it's just "a bug hunt", and probably quite boardgamey. The other is where you play everyday people in the future, in which case the players are all sitting around wondering when the Aliens are going to turn up.

At this point I thought "that's a bit like a reductive description of Call of Cthulu",  and the lightbulb went off.

So my version of Aliens the RPG would be similar to Call of Cthulu (or at least the common perception of that game) in that it would be geared more about a scenario mode of play rather than a campaign. In other words - it would be set up as a game where you shouldn't expect all the PCs (or even any of them) to live through the whole game. I'd focus on producing a lot of adventures for it to emphasise this way of thinking, and fill the adventures up with maps and handouts and stuff so people felt they were worth paying for.

System wise I'd focus on making it a fast system, so that if you die in the first attack you can either roll up a new PC and jump back in, or alternatively not have to sit around too long before the game ends. You'd also want to make sure that you're tracking things like ammunition etc. to keep the survival horror tension. You'd need rules for weapons breaking too.

Quote from: Grymbok;631934My first gut reaction was "seems a bit limited as a premise, surely a board game is a better idea?"

My thinking is that there's two main models for an Aliens game. One is where you play the Marines, in which case it's just "a bug hunt", and probably quite boardgamey. The other is where you play everyday people in the future, in which case the players are all sitting around wondering when the Aliens are going to turn up.

At this point I thought "that's a bit like a reductive description of Call of Cthulu",  and the lightbulb went off.

So my version of Aliens the RPG would be similar to Call of Cthulu (or at least the common perception of that game) in that it would be geared more about a scenario mode of play rather than a campaign. In other words - it would be set up as a game where you shouldn't expect all the PCs (or even any of them) to live through the whole game. I'd focus on producing a lot of adventures for it to emphasise this way of thinking, and fill the adventures up with maps and handouts and stuff so people felt they were worth paying for.

System wise I'd focus on making it a fast system, so that if you die in the first attack you can either roll up a new PC and jump back in, or alternatively not have to sit around too long before the game ends. You'd also want to make sure that you're tracking things like ammunition etc. to keep the survival horror tension. You'd need rules for weapons breaking too.

Nice. I like your thinking young man.

Did someone not do that already based on the Phoenix Command system, or am I thinking of something else?

Quote from: One Horse Town;631933In the Firefly thread Spinachcat said that he was surprised there hadn't been an Aliens RPG.

It's been done.

http://www.amazon.com/Aliens-Adventure-Game-Barry-Nakazono/dp/0945571976/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361887455&sr=1-3

Played this back in the day, wasn't thrilled with the system. I'm also not that big a fan of the movie series either so I might not be the best reviewer of it.

You know, with a new system and some fresh writing, it might be worth while to reboot that game.

The Colonial Marines Technical Manual + Hero System = best Aliens RPG.

What about the Cold & Dark (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/107624/Cold-%26-Dark?term=cold+%26+dark) RPG? It's basically the Aliens and Dead Space RPG with the serial numbers filed off.

I haven't played it yet, but it seems to use a dice pool system with d8s - just to be a little bit different from WW's Storyteller system, I guess... ;)

A similar themed rpg was Bughunters from TSR. Xenomorphs weren't the primary threat you could face, plus it had an interesting take on the marines (they were clones who retain some memories of the original they are cloned from).

Quote from: Grymbok;631934My first gut reaction was "seems a bit limited as a premise, surely a board game is a better idea?"

There was a board game too. It was a decent little game to play at the end of a long day's RPGing.

The Aliens RPG was indeed a slightly stripped down Phoenix Command IIRC, and therefor too crunchy for me and I quite like crunchy.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;631942The Colonial Marines Technical Manual + Hero System = best Aliens RPG.

I would agree with this. True of many settings IMO, just change the reference book.

My approach.
Ever since Ressurrection, there are at least 2 more kinds of "people" that can be played:
Rogues/ bounty hunters and hybrids.
Oh, and Synthoids (whatever they are called), may be human-like enough to be played, as well.

There is also the tendency of the "Company" to screw their own employees over, if they think it is profitable.
A verrrry good example is several things that Burke does in ALIENS.

So, it may result in a Corporate people vs corporate people, even while most people are scrambling to not get killed by the aliens.

Depending on how one wants to expand it, it may go into the AvP-area, and/or the SPECIES area, as well.

The Phoenix Command version was a crunched up nightmare.
Good setting info. Ripped that right off and restatted everything for D6 and Savage Worlds.
Both systems were a pretty good fit.

Quote from: gleichman;631963I would agree with this. True of many settings IMO, just change the reference book.

I was bitching about Hero System not having a Newtonian physics "model" for acceleration and deceleration in Star Hero (5e) but I was totally wrong - it does and they explain how to do it.  So couple the CMTM with Star Hero + Hero System and you've got a Hard Sci-fi/Military Sci-Fi/Horror game with all the trimmings.

Just use Traveller as the base ruleset. A past issue of the Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society even had the Reticulan Parasite as a creature.

Aliens

using DREAD

Cthulhu Rising, for which D101 Games apparently is doing an OpenQuest version, would probably be all you need to do Alien(s).

I would definitely go the AvP route. Helps keep it fresh. I suppose I would have to mix in some tentacle point, er excuse me, Prometheus, too.

Quote from: Grymbok;631934My first gut reaction was "seems a bit limited as a premise, surely a board game is a better idea?"

My thinking is that there's two main models for an Aliens game. One is where you play the Marines, in which case it's just "a bug hunt", and probably quite boardgamey. The other is where you play everyday people in the future, in which case the players are all sitting around wondering when the Aliens are going to turn up.

At this point I thought "that's a bit like a reductive description of Call of Cthulu",  and the lightbulb went off.

So my version of Aliens the RPG would be similar to Call of Cthulu (or at least the common perception of that game) in that it would be geared more about a scenario mode of play rather than a campaign. In other words - it would be set up as a game where you shouldn't expect all the PCs (or even any of them) to live through the whole game. I'd focus on producing a lot of adventures for it to emphasise this way of thinking, and fill the adventures up with maps and handouts and stuff so people felt they were worth paying for.

System wise I'd focus on making it a fast system, so that if you die in the first attack you can either roll up a new PC and jump back in, or alternatively not have to sit around too long before the game ends. You'd also want to make sure that you're tracking things like ammunition etc. to keep the survival horror tension. You'd need rules for weapons breaking too.

yeah, gotta go with this, too.  character lethality is a bit of a must in this situation.  

"LV486-vietnam" so to speak?  instead of "fantasy fucking vietnam" (and whatever the planet was, that's the first think that leapt to mind).  big guns, big damage numbers, hope you have backup characters ready.  hint--use templates to speed up the BRP/CoC character generation for this meatgrinder.

I think I'd use OVA as a freeform style system, just so I didn't get bogged down in minutiae.  I think that;s the word I'm looking for anyway.

That way I could focus more on the story and less on trying to emulate things.

Hulks and Horrors was pretty much designed with Alien in mind, among other classics.  

Between the Soldier class, the armor, the pulse rifle, the living weapon, and the hiverbugs, running Aliens stock would be pretty trivial.

I had the Leading Edge Aliens Adventures rpg. I think we played it once, but it did make much on an impression. I also have the LEG boardgame which I've kept because it took so long to find (eventually stumbled upon when I was in Brussels of all places).

Overall I think "aliens" more of a scenario than an entire game. I'm sure most of us have, eventually, found ourselves in an Aliens-style scenario as part of an ongoing sci-fi campaign regardless of system (the same can be said for "Assault on Precint 13"). On the other hand if you wanted to run a colonial marines style campaign you'd probably want a wider range of things to do than just shot bugs week in week out, like rescuing colonist daughters from their virginity.

One of my long-standing ideas is to run a game or two in the Aliens universe using a Barbarians of Lemuria hack, or rather Dicey Tales/BotA/DOGS of War hack.

Aside from the bugs the other big theme is "The Company will screw you over." - so Dicey Tales for PI/Noir influence, Barbarians of the Apocalypse for Vehicles and androids, and DOGS for Marines/Special Ops/Mercs. PCS would be deniable hired hands basically dealing in industrial espionage to the power of 11. A bit like Shadowrun in Space without the magic, or Sam Spade being used by very shady clients indeed. "We need you to locate a secret scientific base and guide our team of recovery experts to it. Oh...it's just a frozen alien lifeform, it was ours originally, but they stole it and the planetary government is in their pocket."

The cyrogenic cylinder is damaged during the heist and guess what pops out. Hilarity ensues.

You just need to develop the colonies more, some might be quite developed, other far less so. The use and misuse of barely understood alien tech and the corporate struggle for power could provide for more than a one shot. A CoC style bughunt also sounds fun though.

3:16 Carnage among the Stars (http://gregorhutton.com/boxninja/threesixteen/files/316desktop1280x854.jpg)

Its a nice little game heavily inspired by Aliens.

Thanks for all the system recommendations, but really, that wasn't in any way what my opening post was about.

You'd need to build out a lot of setting before it could really be used as an RPG, to the extent that it would no longer really be about Aliens. To me it screams 'cyberpunk in space', you've got your giant soulless corporations and government departments, the little man being squeezed, outlaws playing between the lines, so that's how I'd create the setting.

Really it would do better as a drop-in for another game.

My experience with Leading Edge's Aliens game seems to be atypical.  I actually really dug the system once I wrapped my head around it.  Yes, it was ridiculously tactical for an RPG of that time - that comes with it being stripped-down Phoenix Command.  The thing was... it worked for us.  I liked the "learning roll" for experience, I liked the unified skill system.  I enjoyed the character creation where the job-specific skills you were being trained in got "Professional" if you made the learning check and "Certified" if you did not.  It felt kinda like graduating Starfleet Academy with Honors in the old FASA Trek game.

  The background was awesome.  You could actually do a lot in the world they described.  There were other types of alien to fight, like the Harvesters, but aside from xenos there were tons of hooks for human versus human conflict.  Colonists, mercenaries, the five habitable worlds that decided to seceed from the ICC and garrison some "fortress worlds" that would eventually need to be assaulted by Colonial Marines...

  The one thing I would have liked to make this work better was a way to import new equipment.  Everything was chart-based, but that did tend to make the game work the way it worked, with aim times, accuracies, penetrations, etc.  The downside to all that was that it was nigh impossible to create new starships, new APCs or ground vehicles, or even new firearms without making some guesses about how things were supposed to work...

  Anyway... I really dug it.  But then, I'm apparently a mutant.  I liked Living Steel, too...

Quote from: colwebbsfmc;632417There were other types of alien to fight, like the Harvesters, but aside from xenos there were tons of hooks for human versus human conflict.  Colonists, mercenaries, the five habitable worlds that decided to seceed from the ICC and garrison some "fortress worlds" that would eventually need to be assaulted by Colonial Marines...

I remember seeing the mini-bestiary of other ET creatures and finding that rather cool. That's what I'd need to actually want to play a game like that. But then the question becomes: "If you aren't fighting the xenomorphs, are you really playing an Aliens game?"

Quote from: Grymbok;631934My first gut reaction was "seems a bit limited as a premise, surely a board game is a better idea?"

1 Alien (1979)
2 Aliens (1986)
3 Predator (1987)
4 Predator 2 (1990)
5 Alien 3 (1992)
6 Alien Resurrection (1997)
7 Alien vs. Predator (2004)
8 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
9 Predators (2010)
10 Prometheus (2012)

And then many have argued that Blade Runner (1982) is also part of the franchise.
(http://bitcast-a-sm.bitgravity.com/slashfilm/wp/wp-content/images/prometheus-blade-runner-spin-off1-550x412.jpeg)
(http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/alien_vs_blade_runner-260x160.jpg)(http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/zzz-bladeandalien-260x160.png)

Then tons of novels and comics as well.

I'd say there is plenty for an RPG.

Quote from: silva;6323943:16 Carnage among the Stars (http://gregorhutton.com/boxninja/threesixteen/files/316desktop1280x854.jpg)

Its a nice little game heavily inspired by Aliens.

Well you sure do kill bugs by the score but the tone of 3:16 I think leans too much on the satirical/black comedy to really do Aliens right. It's more on th e lines of the Starship Troopers movie.

Quote from: Mistwell;6325001 Alien (1979)
2 Aliens (1986)
3 Predator (1987)
4 Predator 2 (1990)
5 Alien 3 (1992)
6 Alien Resurrection (1997)
7 Alien vs. Predator (2004)
8 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
9 Predators (2010)
10 Prometheus (2012)

The questions was about Aliens, not Predator. Sure, there's definitely a sci-fi game to be made in the joint Alien/Predator universe, but I think that anyone selling "Traveller with stats for Xenomorphs in the bestiary" as an Aliens game would not meed a good reception.

The main canonical Alien movies (with the possible exception of Resurrection, which I haven't seen) all follow the same plot - a bunch of people in an isolated location get eaten by the titular Aliens. Whilst a big universe you can do lots in is certainly implied, the core experience that people familiar with the franchise is that their PCs are going to be threatened with being eaten by Aliens.

Also - although I didn't explain this as well as I could in my first post - what I meant was that a Colonial Marines based Aliens game seemed rather limited to me. It was when I then hit on the idea that an "ordinary people" game might be a better idea that the rest of the thoughts flowed through.

Quote from: One Horse Town;631933In the Firefly thread Spinachcat said that he was surprised there hadn't been an Aliens RPG.

So then, luminaries of the RPGsite - how would you go about designing an Aliens game?

I have the original one, but that was in ancient times. I am really surprised there has not been another Aliens game since then considering how popular the franchise is among gamers.

I personally would go the boardgame route.

I am shocked there has not been several Aliens boardgames over the years as the movies have come and gone. And I don't mean crapass Milton Bradley shit games, but something kickass from FFG.

If I were to design an Aliens RPG, I would just get Mongoose to buy the license and put it out using their Traveller sytem. Why? Because that's how I always ran Aliens and it worked rock solid. Fast / Easy / Brutal

Quote from: Catelf;631990So, it may result in a Corporate people vs corporate people, even while most people are scrambling to not get killed by the aliens..

I run Aliens games at conventions at least once every year or two. I've definitely done the Corporate vs. Corporate teams and that's great fun. It gets nuts because unlike Colonial Marines, there is little in the way of stopping PvP as corporate goons are trying to be The Big Guy when they get back to earth.

The blood spilled is just glorious.

And there are a LOT of one-shot stories in the Aliens-verse. I don't know how much of a campaign there would be in the sense that PCs may not last too many sessions and such a campaign would see lots of new faces.

Quote from: One Horse Town;632396Thanks for all the system recommendations, but really, that wasn't in any way what my opening post was about.

It's kinda what mine was about though.  H&H may be about more than just Alien, but Alien was definitely on the top of the list for what I wanted it to be.

One of the 5 detailed scenarios presented in Gnomemurdered is "Aliens vs. Gnomes".

RPGPundit

Quote from: silva;6323943:16 Carnage among the Stars (http://gregorhutton.com/boxninja/threesixteen/files/316desktop1280x854.jpg)

Its a nice little game heavily inspired by Aliens.

3:16's great, but the TEF massacre planets, not individuals. The system's just wrong for a tense, survival horror atmosphere.

"You hear the ceiling panel drop behind you, and the hideous clicking of xenomorph against grating... okay, switch to combat time. One token on the board... Hutton, roll your FA, you hit, kills? Right, so you kill the xenomorph 15 times, note that down, probably worth a medal. Short planet tonight..."

I'd be tempted to go for reasonably heavy crunch for an Alien game. Though the science in the films isn't exactly perfect, there's more than enough verisimilitude to justify using a heavy-realism modelling system. I'm thinking of something closer to Transhuman Space style crunch, though, than anything else.

Combat should be lethal, quick, and prone to unexpected outcomes. Setting should be broader than just LV-426 or related planets from the films, though, since the Alien universe is rather broad. I'd be tempted to have the xenomorphs as a stand-by adversary, and arrange most of the monsters as variants or outgrowths from the xenomorph species, but have a few other adversaries (of whatever kind) to explore in campaigns.

I'd actually not put the character focus on the colonial marines, either. I think the game would benefit from having a focus on more "regular people doing their regular jobs thrown into an unpredicted and horrific situation" type groups of PCs.

Quote from: Ladybird;6329163:16's great, but the TEF massacre planets, not individuals. The system's just wrong for a tense, survival horror atmosphere.

"You hear the ceiling panel drop behind you, and the hideous clicking of xenomorph against grating... okay, switch to combat time. One token on the board... Hutton, roll your FA, you hit, kills? Right, so you kill the xenomorph 15 times, note that down, probably worth a medal. Short planet tonight..."

3:16 works best in an Aliens game if you assume that the roles are reversed, and to the various civilizations you are destroying...you are the Xenomorphs.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;6329863:16 works best in an Aliens game if you assume that the roles are reversed, and to the various civilizations you are destroying...you are the Xenomorphs.

Okay that's a pretty awesome premise right there. I'd play that.

Quote from: Brad J. Murray;632987Okay that's a pretty awesome premise right there. I'd play that.

Heh, if I can ever find my copy, I'd run it.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;6329863:16 works best in an Aliens game if you assume that the roles are reversed, and to the various civilizations you are destroying...you are the Xenomorphs.

Ooooh. Now that is the good stuff. I like it.

I had a notion to use Dark Heresy once upon a time.

I've had a plan for a scenario, wherein my most trusted player would have been an android instructed to aid and abet the xenomorph, ala Ash.

Quote from: LibraryLass;633098I had a notion to use Dark Heresy once upon a time.

Makes sense given that the original Space Hulk was a blatant rip off.

@ the OP:

Agree with Grymbok.

Additionally if I were designing an Aliens game, I'd have these elements:
- fast system, weapons that break, etc. That's fairly easy.
- characters are all military, so there's no reason to differentiate on combat skills too much. Instead, differentiate on allegiances, ability to handle stress, and ability to influence others.
- tactics will be all about the "level design" rather than skill sets--you need to account for closed in spaces, environmental hazards as a result of weapons discharge, etc.
- equipment resource management.
- a stress mechanic.

As others said a system where characters die and are replaced is good, although the assumption that "I will die and just roll another character" cheapens the characters in the same way as in CoC and doesn't provide the isolation that Aliens provides.

Aliens has 3 distinct phases:
1. The marines are predators, assuming they can sweep the location and defeat anything. They are on the offensive, and feel optimistic about their situation. Their prey is unknown.
2. The marines are prey. They are now cut off and need to manage resources. Their  enemy is still largely unknown.
3. Marines are still prey but they have built a defensive position, and know about their enemy. The situation is still horrible, but now they've built a plan and at least some of them may survive.

If you want to capture the horror of Aliens you need to string out the second phase pretty effectively, and use this bit to amp up stress levels (maybe a Sanity mechanic) with some sort of consequence of stress. When you get into phase 3, the effects of stress remain and can still upset the carefully crafted plan.

Last comment--and this is true for marines or colonists--the horror comes from characters being ordinary humans, so they need to be 3-dimensional with ties back to family, earth, etc. Otherwise it's just two sets of pawns armed to the teeth going around fighting each other.