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- Опубліковано 21 сер 2024
- Good, but could be better. The Alien RPG by Free League suffers from being crammed into a genericised system.
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"See... I can get you what you want, I can. I can get you anything, you just have to talk to me, you have to trust me. You can trust me, 'cause I'm your priest, I'm your shrink... I am your main connection to the switchboard of the soul. I'm the magic man... Santa Claus of the subconscious. You say it, you think it, you can have it."
- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
I’m not blaming you but it so happens I had two accidents during the first five minutes of this video, in the second of which I was struck in the eye by the leg of a stool that had capsized when I sat on it, falling flat on my bottom. This may make me more sympathetic to the concept of stress dice, which increasingly appear to rule my life.
'Soldier' (w/ Kurt Russell) I think it was called could also be part of that universe.
Free League does a good job. As you point out, it's best suited for what they call "Cinematic" play (i.e. non-sandbox, limited-lifespan games with a very specific story backbone). The longer-term "Campaign" play has some tables in the Core rulebook to extend the lifespan, but the question often is, "Well, now what?" And the Core rules don't really answer this.
Like, Free League's Coriolis RPG takes the slice of the "Space Trucker" campaign, and gives it more of a narrative backbone for longer-term sandbox play. Forbidden Lands, Mutant - these have exploration, base building, and so on. Twilight:2000 is a warsim sandbox.
The ALIEN RPG just suffers from what to do in the sandbox, especially since getting close to the xenomorph can end the sandbox game rather quickly.
The Colonial Marines book does do a LOT for the Colonial Marines concept of Campaign play. It helps flesh out the sandbox for the Colonial Marines fireteam group of players. At this point, Colonial Marines are THE way to do Campaign play in the ALIEN RPG, in my opinion. (And almost all based out of the one Career type, the Colonial Marine.)
I have hope that future rulebooks for Colonists and for Space Truckers will likewise expand the sandbox concept & give us more of a backbone of "Well, now what?" for those Campaign types in the ALIEN universe.
It's not a bad game but it's not a campaign style game.
Zozer have done a superb job.with the offering and so much cheaper.
Rather intrigued with Free Leagues L.o.t.R Think they have done a cracking job from what I've seen.
Would love to hear your thoughts on it. If you are planning on picking it up.
Alien, Blade Runner, and Soldier are unofficially set in the same universe. There are a lot of combination timelines out there. If you go with that, there is a lot more you can do with the setting than simply focusing on the xenomorphs. The trained/brainwashed humans from Soldier, genetically engineered humans from Blade Runner, and androids from Alien, combined with space trucker stories, planetary colonization, and other factors all work well together in one big setting, regardless of what ruleset you choose.
This one is very interesting in play. It oddly runs itself. I felt like the game had a lot to say, and it really pushed it. It was a novel experience. As a result, I'd rate it pretty highly. I don't think the game works for anything other than a one-shot, but it was fun. The game is very slapstick in a good way, I don't know if that reminds me of alien, though. It's more evil dead.
I'm more of a high fanasy kinda guy, but I've got some friends who will LOVE this! Thanks for posting.
"There are no other sequals." LOVE it!!
I'm experimenting with importing the Stress Mechanic into my Grim Dark Pendragon game.
To be fair, Free League does a pretty good job of adapting YZE to different IPs, so each iteration feels rather organic.
I’ve watched a couple of your Y0E reviews, and I have point out that the dice system seems to make sense mathematically, but you always seem to say that “failure is the default state.” I don’t agree with that. If we take a scientist that is fairly well rounded with 3 in Wits and 3 in observation, using a tool to help with their roll they will get 7 dice (assuming they are not stressed). That gives them a 72% chance of success. If they push it ups the success rate to 90%. Is their math wrong in the book or do you believe that a character should succeed more than 72-90% of the time?
A professional, especially with the right tools, should be succeeding virtually all the time at a basic task. Your example rather makes the point.
@@PostmortemVideo I would say if I was game mastering and I felt this was a task the character should be able to do then I would not have them roll. For instance a pilot landing a craft. If it was landing a craft under enemy fire then I believe a 72-90 percent chance would be appropriate.
Stressful situations are better represented by additional difficulty, and that's also where the system falls down hard. On any given d6 you have a 5/6 chance of NOT getting a 6. That's about 83% fail rate, even for the simplest task each additional dice reduces the chance of failure, but even with our expert with equipment we're looking at a 27.9% fail rate. You have to get to over 20 dice before a success is effectively guaranteed on a regular task.
I've run the first cinematic adventure and am running the second one now. This game is really fun and my players love it, but the horror aspects do get watered down because, as you say, everyone is familiar with at least the first two films. The game works if everyone just agrees to have fun play acting in their own Alien movie. Not sure how the game would fair in campaign mode, however. I haven't tried it yet.
A third Alien movie would have been just as bad as sequels to Highlander. Glad those never happened either!
I quite enjoyed this for just being a system I can run a scifi campaign in. Lancer and Starfield just dont do it for me.
1:55 and here Truth is spoken. Same with The Crow and Highlander, too bad they only got one Movie apiece.
How can 'badass' colonial marines fail mostly? That sounds so silly... It sounds like this might be a game for idea mining. I'll stick to Zozer's Hostile RPG.
Shame, a wasted license.
It is also not exactly true. There is a significant amount of hyperbole in this video. When rolling for some thing your character is trained at you’ll likely have a 70%-80% chance og success. If you are willing to push that roll, that’ll increase to above 90%. But I guess the “flaw” described here is that you are basically never guaranteed to succeed a skill check
@@simonagnerholm9328 Hi Simon, well, if that's the case, that would change everything and sounds cool to me. So GJ is wrong on this one then? Ta', R.
Agree with the contraries on this video. Treat the world as a setting. Just like other games. D and D needn’t involve a dragon or a dungeon in every campaign. The One Ring rpg, you aren’t fighting Sauron. I have found the idea of horror games to generally be more complex to run because the horror revealed is only briefly a surprise and jump scares don’t really work. The Aliens here can absolutely be a backdrop enemy you meet rarely in a campaign. Free leagues games are pretty free running.if you come for a Pathfinder type background the slightly more open rules may seem too loose at first.
Gimmick dice, Boardgamey Gimmick system, IP license for cash that will last like 4 years and limited support over game lifetime, no campaign potential. Free League in a nutshell
Eh, gimmick dice aren't needed.
@@PostmortemVideo Why sell ‘em? More style (and cost) over substance? I bet they Kickstarted this too, *after* paying bank for the license that they won’t renew, having grabbed their cash.
Game was released in 2018, and the last expansion was announced in April of this year.
Do try to keep up 😄
Also it was not kickstarted. As to the dice, I find that the Stress dice specifically do help though they are not needed as such.
I have run this game multiple times since it came out. Most of my groups are more than happy with it, though the Marine Campaign I ran they found a little limited in scope (and I wasn't using Xenomorphs yet). Apart from one player who kept rolling rubbish and refusing to use the push rules (which are a core mechanic), my marines did quite well. As to lethality, though you have a limited pool of health it is not an extremely lethal game (unless you are running cinematic games with Xenomorphs) as even when you run out of health you are only dead if you get a lethal critical and there are only about 3 on a D66 roll. I do appreciate that it is not everyone's cup of tea though. Although I don't mind it, I think that the Blade Runner version is better since you roll one dice for skill and one for stat with level of ability based on dice type (D6 to D12) 6+ is a success still and 10+ is two successes. When I get the chance I will try to mod this version onto Alien.