2026 Reviews - Building Better Worlds: Part 2
Welcome back to the continuation of the Building Better Worlds review that I began here! This will include my thoughts about the other expeditions that my group completed, and some final thoughts about the campaign as a whole.
***Second Expedition: Home Sweet Home
Elevator Pitch: The only surviving colonists of this world are two feuding families, living in close quarters. Shortly after the PCs arrive, there's a storm and one of the family members is murdered. Drama ensues.
This was probably the most unique and interesting adventure included in the campaign, as it was heavily NPC driven and focused a lot more on interpersonal intrigue and tension rather than alien monsters. There was one, of course, but it was a beast of burden that simply escapes from its pen during the storm rather than the threat of a xenomorph. There were elements of investigation as the PCs tried to determine who did the murder, followed by negotiation as the feud prevented the two families from being willing to cooperate, each trying to convince the PCs to abandon the other on the deserted world.
The main challenge in getting this one to the table was that even with a relatively small number of NPCs, the GM had some work cut out for them when trying to prep their personalities and interactions in a conversation heavy adventure. You are given very little from the book, with just a paragraph for each NPC along with some other details scattered throughout the rest of the text. I already struggle with handling more than a couple of NPCs at a time, and it was easy for the players to get a little lost with a big pile of names and relationships to remember. It was a nice change of pace compared to the other adventures, but if you don't enjoy doing the work to make a mystery adventure really sing, you might not dig it.
*** Third Expedition: Against a Sea of Troubles
Elevator Pitch: The PCs receive an emergency message from the convoy that one of their sister ships has gone missing. They discover it adrift with most of the crew dead or missing, with evidence that the one (almost dead) survivor purposely overloaded the reactors to thwart intruders on the ship; said intruders include both normal humans and some abnormal humans, all of whom are dead already. The PCs must then locate the two lifeboats that fled the ship and landed on the two moons the ship was surveying.
This adventure introduced two new creations of the Building Better Worlds campaign-- a cult known as "The Children of the Two Divines" and the "proto-xenomorphs", a variant of the typical alien creatures that exhibit an ability to infect mechanical devices and feeds on radiation.
It was definitely a little more "standard" Alien RPG, with exploration of a derelict ship, piecing together the events that occurred before the PCs arrive, and finding a way to deal with the threat of the proto-hive that has infected the missing ship. Then, it became a search-and-rescue operation with obstacles to overcome on both moons-- one of which is a proto-hive that has nearly covered the entire surface of the moon, and indicates a serious threat in this system. More clues to the metapuzzle can be found as well, as there is another ancient Engineer ship to explore. Unfortunately, the exploration of this ship is almost identical to that from "Leave All Else to the Gods"-- lots of empty rooms leading to a room that gives a clue when the PCs play with the controls, and there's an alien threat in there too. At least in this case the threat is mobile, providing a little tension as they explored.
*** Fourth Expedition: The Devil Lives in Still Waters
Elevator Pitch: The PCs discover that this colony is still very much active, with a huge population of people. They learn that the colony was recently taken over by a military force that left their own failing world, and the current situation is that of martial law, with political prisoners being regularly "fed" to strange glowing creatures that emerge from the lake near the city, presumably originating in the ancient pyramid that is partially exposed on the opposite end of the lake. The pyramid is another Engineer structure, and there is a nest of another xenomorph variant deep within.
This one was a very big challenge for me to prepare-- there are a huge number of NPCs to keep track of, with very sparse details about their personalities, wants, needs, relationships to other NPCs, etc. In essence, we're given a very complex situation with very little information to go on, so the ideal approach seemed to me to be for the PCs to not really interact with it very much, unfortunately. Full disclosure, this was the point where I ended the campaign, partly from the frustration of trying to prepare the NPC interactions with inadequate information, and partly from the anticipation of another few sessions exploring an ancient Engineer structure that does not have much to interact with until they either find the Clue Giver™ room or the room with the xenomorphs.
What Worked?
- A couple of non-standard Alien RPG adventures, with good opportunity for NPC interaction rather than just getting killed by xenomorphs.
- New xenomorphs are cool.
- Colony management minigame procedure would be a nice addition to any long-term campaign, if applied in a way that works for your group.
What Didn't Work?
- Not enough info! A big portion of each expedition was devoted to providing information about regions of the world where the action doesn't happen, which was good for the colony minigame but not so much for making the adventures feel deep and engaging.
- Not sandboxy enough. Despite being labeled as such, a lot of the campaign felt pretty "on rails". This could be chalked up to personal preference on my part, and I will concede that sometimes games that are written around a particular IP are intended to be a little more directed than your standard OSR dungeon crawler game. If you've got a group of players who want to follow a story path through the world of Alien, this would probably work great for you.
Final Thoughts
I think, for my taste, a lot of the first party Alien RPG that I have encountered lean too heavily into the lore of the prequel films like Prometheus and Covenant. I would much rather play games that focus on the feel of the first two or three films, and I really don't care for the Engineers and the lengthy explanations of the things that were only hinted at in the original films. Too much exposition and explanation of the backstory detracts from the mood that was so expertly created in the originals, and so much of even the core rulebook seems to focus on replicating the new films instead of the originals.
In conclusion, Alien RPG doesn't work for me in campaign mode-- playing Hope's Last Day in cinematic mode where it was all about ramping up the tension and getting a bunch of PCs killed worked so much better, so I think I'm going to stick to that from now on.
You can get Building Better Worlds from the Free League web store, and look at that, the only one that's up anymore is the "Evolved" edition which presumably fixes the page references and such that I mentioned in part 1.
Thanks for reading!