A jumpstart into Alien horror - a Mephisto review

The Alien RPG Starter Set provides an alternative approach to the Alien role-playing game and contains a rulebook, an adventure, and additional game material in the digital version. As is usual for the starter sets, the rulebook is significantly reduced compared to the Alien RPG Core Rulebook and only has a good quarter of the pages. Nevertheless, some chapters are completely taken over from the core rules. 

With Space is Hell, the booklet provides an introduction to the basic background, the timeline of Alien, and the core concepts of the role-playing game. 

The second chapter is about characters and is significantly limited in the Starter Set, as there are explanations of the game statistics and character concepts, but there are no further rules for character creation or the underlying archetypes. You can, therefore, only play a pre-made character with these rules, not create your own. 

The chapter listing the various skills and explaining how to use them is also taken completely from the Core Rulebook. The talents, however, are missing and are only mentioned for the individual characters that come with the set. 

The central rules chapter, Combat & Panic, contains the combat rules for Alien as well as the special rules that describe how panic affects the game and changes the dice pools. This chapter is essentially the same as the Core Rulebook, except that the vehicle combat aspect is not mentioned here. 

This reduction also applies to the equipment chapter, which is complete except for the topic of vehicles. All other chapters of the Alien RPG Core Rulebook, which provide more background and aids for the game master, are completely missing here. Nevertheless, the 100 pages of short rules are sufficient to play Alien without any problems, at least for the published adventures. 

The second booklet contains the adventure Chariot of Gods, originally included in the Cinematic Starter Kit and now available as a stand-alone adventure. It presents a space trucker scenario analogous to the first Alien film, in which a spaceship crew encounters a mysterious wreck, which is the prelude to a brutal fight for survival. 

The Starter Set also contains the large star map and the deck plans of the Cronus, the ship of the player characters from Chariot of Gods. The five pre-made characters from the scenario are also included with their character sheets, and a marker sheet completes the set. There is also a deck of cards consisting of initiative cards, equipment cards, character cards, and agenda cards. These must, of course, be printed out in the digital edition. The character and agenda cards are also tailored to the adventure. 

Like other starter sets, the Alien RPG Starter Set provides an easy and compelling introduction to the world of Alien. Although it lacks background material and tips for the game master, it is most likely the missing character creation rules that represent a gap here. 

With Chariot of Gods, the set offers an excellent and extremely tough introductory adventure to get a feel for the setting and mechanics. In the case of the digital PDF set, however, the markers and cards are more of an accessory, and basically Alien has the disadvantage of a layout based on black pages when printing itself. 

Whether the Alien RPG Starter Set is the right introduction to the game depends on the objectives of the game group. It is well suited for a first try-out because the relevant rules are presented in a compact format, and the introductory scenario provides a challenging showcase demonstrating how the game works. Unsurprisingly, however, you will need the Core Rulebook for the full gaming experience. The adventure alone is not a compelling argument for buying it, as it can also be purchased separately. 

So if you want to spend more time with the Alien role-playing game, go straight for the Alien RPG Core Rulebook and buy the Chariot of Gods adventure as a supplement. If necessary, the abridged rules can be used as a handout for players. What remains is an exciting and hard-hitting role-playing game in the world of Alien.

(Björn Lippold)

Printing out the cards is worthless. Whoever did the layout, didn't check to make sure the cards lined up. For example. Initiative card 10 front is on the top left corner. So is the back. The back needs to be on the top RIGHT corner. When you print them, they don't line up. None of the cards line up, they are worthless. They should have made as 1 file, with even pages being backs and odd pages being fronts. very poor quality. Since the box set is out of print, this is the only way to get them.

Contains what the physical version would (minus dice), descent adaption, no notes. The story of the included scenario "Chariot of the Gods" features a lot of ideas, some of which can feel out of place or crowded for what should be a haunted house type of scenario. Some of the forced events and circumstances can feel illogical, but will run just fine for most groups - my advice for GMs is to not overthink it. However, my main gripe is with the Chariot of the Gods .pdf, which has a weird issue of a lot of words becoming overlapped. Certain events require scouring the file for a reference, such as "power" in relation to "restore power": the pdf. finds dozens of spots which don't even refer to any visible text! This is exceedingly exasperating at the table. Please fix this!

Love the movies, love this game and love the system it uses. Made my own 3-part Halloween special one shot (well 3 shot). Loads of fun with great tools. Highly recommend it to anybody who just wants to cuddle up with some xenomorphs.

I have always enjoyed RPGs but have never really felt like the theme or experience was for me and it always seemed to be DnD fantasy or Cthulhu Detective that my friends would coherce me into playing. I had no interest in being the GM until i found out about Alien RPG... This game is amazing... There are one shot cinematic scenarios that can have death around any corner and the GM is responsible for ramping up the difficulty and keeping tension high.

There is loads of building blocks to create your own worlds and scenarios within an alien universe framework. Tonnes of lore and useful information throughout.

Having a more accesible book and all the dice and ,ap and character printouts required is definately recommend. Sure you can do it yourself and print this stuff but it is a faff and the quality of the starter set is worth investing in.

I absolutely love this game. I wish I was better at running it but it was the first game that I was even slightly interested in and got me hooked on Free League titles in general.