Review 8: Hope's Last Day
Over the past few years as I've jumped back into running games frequently, I've been lucky enough to try out a lot of systems that are new to me-- some of them have clicked, some haven't. One of the ones that didn't was Alien RPG by Free League Publishing. Now, the Alien films are perhaps one of my absolute favorite IPs out there, and this sort of blue-collar sci-fi horror is my bread and butter-- by all rights, this game should have been right up my alley. And it is, at least from the perspective of taking stuff from the films and putting them into gameable terms; the thing that didn't click for me entirely was the system. Many of the Free League systems feel very board-gamey to me, and require a certain amount of system mastery from the players to really shine. That said, this review is about the introductory adventure included in the core book, "Hope's Last Day". Writing credits in the book for "Scenario Design" include Dave Semark, Matthew Tyler-Jones, and Andrew E.C. Gaska. The premise is that this is a "prequel" to the second film (Aliens) and details the events leading up to the ruined state that the marines find the colony in when they reach LV-426. It is presented as a "cinematic" scenario, which in the parlance of the game, is designed to be a structured experience with a clear beginning, middle, and end. They are also designed to be one-shots, with a high risk for PC death as they all work to complete their individual goals.
Getting it to the Table
"Hope's Last Day" is designed as an introduction to cinematic-style play, and is thus on the shorter side-- the book suggests that it can be completed in about 2 hours. In practice, this took a little longer for my group, as there was a fair amount of caution and discussion amongst the players. It is also giving us a glimpse into what the "standard" format for Alien adventures will be; it begins with a section for the GM, giving an overview of the situation, and follows with a section titled "What's the Story, Mother?" which is intended to be read to the players. It then lists the pre-generated characters for the PCs to select, and includes all of their relevant stats, equipment, and biographical details (including information about interpersonal relationships and their personal goals for the adventure). Next is more guidance for the GM to escalate the tension as the adventure progresses, with information about the dangers hidden in the colony, and how to handle them. Unfortunately, this marks the end where the adventure is set up for ease of use.
The maps of Hadley's Hope are presented in the retro monochrome monitor style that matches the look of other things in the book, but in practice they are kind of hard to read. The map legend appears next to one of the levels, but the others are on a different page, which will required the GM to flip back and forth to look up any of the tiny symbols that indicate map features. The area keys are also organized in an odd way-- the colony itself is spread over three levels, with designations like "A1" to indicate a section on the first level, and "A2" for the second. In the key, these are grouped by letter rather than by level, which can be get confusing for quick reference. Another critical blow to usability is that there are no stat blocks for the xenomorphs that the PCs will encounter. Granted, this is an adventure that is included in the core book, but the book itself is not the easiest layout to quickly reference (which is a separate thing, I know), and having to flip back through an entire letter-sized hardcover book to get to the title creature for the adventure is a little inconvenient. The area key itself is a little bit inconsistent in how it presents information as well-- while some of the areas consist of some bullet points of the key features, the others are mostly paragraphs of text with page references and important info hidden amongst set dressing and description. Actually getting this adventure to the table, for me, involved quite a bit of note taking and the creation of reference pages for the xenomorphs so that I did not need to flip back and forth through the book.
What Worked?
- It's pretty. Free League always kills it with their production quality, even if the usability suffers a little bit
- GM recommendations for running the adventure. Surprisingly absent in many adventures, this gives you some clear guidance for how to ramp up the tension and how to insert events to move things along. From the "Events" section:
At no point should the PCs feel safe. If they stay for too long in one place or start to get complacent, one or more active Drones or Scouts arrive from the nearby hive and start to stalk them.
What Didn't Work?
- No monster stat blocks :(
- Information not clearly presented in the area keys in some cases
- Maps are hard to read
Final Thoughts
With all of these things considered, when I ran this adventure, my players had a great time and the tension was palpable, even if we struggled a bit during the combat and remember all of the rules and actions. Alien RPG does what it sets out to do pretty well, in terms of bringing the mood of the Alien films to the game table. I definitely plan to borrow stuff from this system and GM advice for my own games, just with a less crunchy system.
The only real way to get "Hope's Last Day" is to get the Alien RPG core rulebook. Thanks for reading!