Killed in the medbay trying to locate a keycard for the shuttle. Heroically body tackling a xenomorph into the roaring engine of the shuttle prepping for planetary take off. Onboard the shuttle as it loses control without a pilot and crashes into a mountain. Unceremoniously kicked off the closing ramp by ex-colleagues as the shuttle approaches the upper-atmosphere. In orbit and stabbed in the back by the only other survivor to escape the alien horrors. Finally getting ready for cryosleep, to be fatally embraced by those alien horrors. All of these events have happened in the Alien universe; they have all happened to the same group of more-plucked-than-plucky colonists while trying to flee that same infamous, cursed moon from Alien and Aliens: LV-426.
For Alien Day this year, I have spent the past couple of weeks preparing to run a session of the tabletop roleplaying game Alien RPG: Evolved Edition, a revised edition of Alien: RPG (2019) published by Free League, which released in November of last year. With a slight hint of “Am I a synth?” paranoia, a corpo associate of mine confided that I looked exactly like someone who would have done this sort of thing before, but at the age of 44 – in real or implanted years – this is my first foray into being a GM (Game Master or Game Mother) for a TTRPG. Like a xenomorph in a high school swimming pool circa. 2004, I have very much gone in at the deep end.
Designed as a three-act cinematic prequel story to Aliens, ‘Hope’s Last Day’ is from the all-in-one, shake-and-bake Starter Set, and this is where, with an extra GM screen in hand, I have chosen to seal the hatches, plant my sentry guns, and make my stand. In having learnt absolutely nothing from Lieutenant Gorman and his 38 simulated drops, I was quite easily pulled down the black rubber-and-mucus-lined ‘rabbit’ hole of seeing how play-throughs of this one-shot scenario (designed for single-session play) panned out for other groups. Not well, if the metric by which we measure success is to please our Weyland-Yutani benefactors with saved samples to study, to save the universe from encroaching alien infestation, or to simply save ourselves and survive. The subjects that sign up for Alien: RPG have different priorities. All other considerations secondary.
Watching videos and reading about those other play-throughs, I felt as though I was accessing the data logs of a crew that had disappeared before I even arrived, comparable to Prometheus where a holographic parade of Engineers discovers the grisly consequences of “goo-around and find out.” Their inevitable demise, a familiar haunting story in the same shared space, separated only by time, motivation, unlucky rolls of the dice, and the soft murmur of “I would have definitely handled that differently.” Thanks to Alien: RPG, now you can!
In fact, it was in watching one such video where I first had the series of muzzle-flash shaped light-bulb moments that not only could I run a TTRPG, but Alien: RPG was the one that I had to start with. The YouTube channel Oxventure, which specialises in off-beat and distinctly British playthroughs of D&D, ran ‘Hope’s Last Day’. In the role of GM was Mike Channell, who has played engaging characters for years, but is not exactly known for ever being serious, aware of the rules, or being a GM. With Mike’s loose space jockeying on the reins, and leaning hard into the tropes of the cinematic universe, with something of a space-cockney spin, a protruding Giger-esque backbone was formed for 3+ hours, giving everyone around the table the (Class 2) license to have a blast. Sometimes literally. That’s when my eyes rolled into the back of my head, synth-style, and I suddenly had access to hidden truths that whispered for me to have a go myself. After all, idle hands are the devil’s workshop…
The full 1,900 word version of this article is published at Fanbasepress.com, where you can read the rest of the article for free.
Carl Wilson 