ALIEN RPG Launches New Kickstarter

Free League Publishing has launched a Kickstarter for a new edition of ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game, complete with a new starter box and a box of miniatures. Launched today, the Kickstarter raises money for an Evolved edition of the popular licensed horror RPG, which uses the Year Zero Engine. The Evolved Edition contains improved version for stealth mode, stress and panic, and a new zero gravity system. The edition also includes content from ALIEN: Romulus, the hit 2023 movie, including a setting guide for Jackson's Star, and a solo mode.

The ALIEN RPG uses a dice-pool system where rolling a 6 guarantees a success. Players can add stress for additional rolls with specially-colored dice, although rolling a 1 on these dice causes the chance of panic setting in. The game comes with a campaign mode and a cinematic mode in which players are more likely to get killed by an alien or a different terror in space.

As of the time of this writing, the Kickstarter has already raised over $650,000, putting it well on the pathway to the fabled $1 million mark.

 

[jhallum]

I'd give it a solid B. I wasn't completely disappointed but it didn't wow me. Just a decent workhorse of movie that didn't really break any new ground but handled itself with competence.

I would agree. It is better than the last...four alien movies which is admittedly a low bar.

 

[Jahydin]

I backed the original Alien, and bought the colonial marines book, but have never actually played it, and honestly it's hard to foresee me playing it in the future.

And I'm STILL tempted to get at least the new core rulebook....

I'm in the same boat.

The new rule changes have to be 1) more substantial than a page of errata I can just print out and tape to the inside cover and 2) markedly better to get another purchase from me.

 

[mamba]

It is fairly insubstantial for the first few weeks of release. It's the reason why the prices for concessions are so high as they keep about 40% of the ticket sales.

if you consider 40% insubstantial…that is the difference between 50M profit and the 190M profit that you claimed, but yeah, insubstantial… please send me that insubstantial difference if it makes no difference to you

 

[Superchunk77]

My only beef with this campaign is that the starter set is just expanding Hadley's Hope. Pretty boring adventure right there, that's not even interesting from a fan-service perspective. You know what happened to the colonists, ultimately, so filling in those gaps always seemed pointless to me. And unlike some other Starter Set adventures from FL there's no room to potentially use it as a launchpad for a longer campaign. You can't stitch it together with other Alien adventures, since the die is cast—you're going to fight and run around, pointlessly, then die.

I'm excited to see some of the corebook rules updates, though. And that layout does like pretty!

That was the reason I opted out of backing this one. I get that starter set adventures are supposed to be for brand new players and GMs, but the adventure should at least have an option for continuing the campaign. I'm hoping it does, and in that sense, breaks away from the movie canon, but I'm gonna assume it doesn't.

I already have money sunk into Coriolis 2e (never got the first one) and I have PDF's of the first Alien RPG already. Need to cinch up the belt this year with these games so I opted to move this money into backing Shadowdark's Western Reaches KS, which has a much higher chance of actually being used by me

 

[Fredrix]

We are just about to ship our, much smaller, KS, and I can tell you shipping costs are much higher than we estimated last summer. Especially to the US, where European shippers have to take into account increased tariffs, both those we know about and those that might come up…

But these are only estimates, by the time the book actually ships. The cost might have come down (or more likely, gone up).

I'm really interested, but shipping for the physical book at $15-30 within the US seems incredibly high

 

[Morrus]

I'm really interested, but shipping for the physical book at $15-30 within the US seems incredibly high

Free League isn't based in the US, so that would presumably include shipping to the US (and then onward from a local hub). International shipping can be wild, and there are tariffs on things from China right now, so if they're printing there that's going to be affected. That said, I can't speak for them--I'm just speculating.

 

[Reynard]

Free League isn't based in the US, so that would presumably include shipping to the US (and then onward from a local hub). International shipping can be wild, and there are tariffs on things from China right now, so if they're printing there that's going to be affected. That said, I can't speak for them--I'm just speculating.

I wonder if it is too extreme to speculate that tarriffs may push TTRPGs even more into the digital space that they already are.

 

[Morrus]

I wonder if it is too extreme to speculate that tarriffs may push TTRPGs even more into the digital space that they already are.

Depends how long they last. It’s impossible to predict right now. Hopefully there will be no US tariff on books made in the EU, but who knows?

 

[Bill Zebub]

My plan is to drive a Cybertruck to Mexico, load it with contraband RPG books, and smuggle them back across the border.

I'm calling it "Operation DeLorean".

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'm in the same boat.

The new rule changes have to be 1) more substantial than a page of errata I can just print out and tape to the inside cover and 2) markedly better to get another purchase from me.

As I mentioned in another post, the readability issue is a big one for me. The first edition made my eyes bleed.