ALIEN: Perfect Organism design notes

 I have written a scenario for Free League’s ALIEN roleplaying game, called Perfect Organism. 

Knowing how my brain works, that probably means I’ve scratched that itch, and I may be done with ALIEN. If so it will join Achtung! Cthulhu, Liminal and The Dee Sanction in the pile of games I’ve enjoyed but am unlikely to run again. We’ll see.

Anyway, here’s how the scenario came about.

More investigative, less shooty

So far I’ve run Hope’s Last Day, Chariot of the Gods and Destroyer of Worlds. (The links go to my reviews and reflections.)

I found Destroyer of Worlds too heavy on combat for my liking and knew I wanted a more investigatory game.

But an investigation into what?

Tied to the movies

I wanted to do something tied to the movies—more than simply reusing the xenomorphs and Weyland-Yutani. And of the movies, only Alien and Aliens interest me—I was disappointed in all the films after that. I’ve seen them, of course, but they never caught my imagination the way Alien did. (And Aliens, to a lesser extent.)

I’ve often wondered what happened after Alien. My impression is that the company diverted the Nostromo to intercept the distress call. (I am unsatisfied by the explanation that every company ship contains special order 937, and encountering the beacon was just chance.) So how did they know, and what did they do when the Nostromo disappeared?

So there’s a scenario there. But I didn’t want to stray too far from the canon, and the ALIEN rpg is set after Aliens and Alien3. 

But what about the Sulaco?

What did the USCMC do when the Sulaco didn’t return from LV-426?

And that gave me the basis for the scenario.

Perfect organism

The title came from Ash’s “Perfect organism” line in Alien (repeated by David in Alien: Covenant). For an android, the xenomorph really could be a perfect organism—it predates humans and leaves synthetics alone. And the line made me wonder if there was a secret android rebellion. (Is David recreating it to overthrow his human masters?)

And if there is a secret android rebellion, maybe that’s motivation for one character. (This is probably where I’ve gone furthest off-canon, certainly regarding the movies.)

(Perfect Organism is also the name of a wonderful podcast dedicated to the Alien saga. If you’re an Alien geek, it’s heaven.)

A room full of facehuggers

Back in 1979, before I saw Alien (I was too young to see it at the cinema the first time around), most of the pre-publicity photographs showed the facehugger, but nothing else. The facehugger is creepy—and elegant. It’s wrapped around Kane’s head, doing something. The camera dwells on it; we have plenty of time with the facehugger.

(Later movies don’t do the facehugger justice. Aliens showed them moving, yes, but we’ve not spent time with someone who has been facehugged since the first movie.)

As I was developing ideas for the scenario, I had a vision of a room full of bodies lined up on operating tables, each with a facehugger. While I didn’t use that exact vision, I kept the idea of bodies with facehuggers—only I put them in cryotubes instead.

Characters

I decided on five characters: two members of the investigation team (a USCMC major and an ICC lawyer), their company minder, the captain of the spaceship they’ve hired, and the scientist in charge of Kathar Station. 

(Oh yes, Kathar Station. I found Kathar Station in the ALIEN rpg book—although it is called Odobenus at one point.)

All the characters have conflicting agendas. While the published scenarios so far normally have one or two characters with very secret agendas, all my characters will rub up against each other. Hopefully, this will bring them into conflict. If I’ve done my job right, the players will proactively drive the action as they react to events.

(In many ways, this is almost a tiny freeform. A freeform-tabletop rpg hybrid?)

Events and Acts

Cinematic games have acts, so tension can’t only come from the PCs. It also needs external events—in this case, a combination of escaped xenomorphs and a hostile spaceship.

The acts in ALIEN drive characters’ agendas—as events unfold, the characters’ objectives can change. I found that in writing these, they were more focused versions of the original agenda—adjusted, given the new information.

The Coyote approaching LV-426 by Steffan Guldevall 

As for events, I realised that I needed to inject some outside interference to create the acts. So while I hope the players will create much of the drama, I’m adding tension in the form of a hostile ship on approach and a planetside facehugging operation that has gone wrong.

I find the events in the published scenarios somewhat overwritten and hard to improvise around. So the events in Perfect Organism are bullet points for the GM to expand as they see fit. (I know this isn’t for everyone—it’s already been suggested that I should flesh the bullet points out.)

Making it easy to run

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about how published adventures aren’t easy to run (see here for the summary), so I’ve tried to make Perfect Organism easy to run. At least, easy for me to run. So I’ve repeated a few essential rules, such as:

• The radiation rules (because of the radiation cloud created by the explosion at the end of Aliens)
• Fire rules with the incinerator units
• Synthetic rules for the secret android.
• Story points and Stress for each player.

If you play a lot of ALIEN, you can ignore this. However, if you play a lot of systems as I do, it helps to have relevant rules to hand when you need them.

I also worked out the base to-hit rolls for anyone with a weapon to save me from working them out in the heat of battle.

Rules and layout changes

There are a few things about the standard ALIEN rules and layout I don’t like. So I made changes.

Stat blocks: The standard ALIEN stat blocks omit key information, and don’t make it clear which skill works with which attribute. I’ve talked about this before, and I’ve made it clearer in Perfect Organism. (Again, if you play ALIEN frequently, it’s not a problem. But I don’t understand why Free League penalises new players.

NPC stats: I haven’t given the NPCs the “proper” stats. Instead, I’ve given them “Scientist: 7 dice” or “Starship Captain: 8 dice”. So when the technician NPC does something technician-y, the GM just rolls their dice. All NPCs have an “Other” rating (usually three dice) for rolls outside of their speciality. I find that simpler and easier.

Story points: I am more generous with Story Points—players can earn up to two by either having a refreshment scene with another character or by taking actions to further their agenda. (A refreshment scene is roleplaying—I took it from Lady Blackbird.) Players can spend story points to change the result of a single die they have thrown or reduce their Stress Level by two.

Rivals and buddies: I dropped rivals and buddies for Perfect Organism—the character backgrounds explain everything they need to know about the other characters.

Format and layout

I asked for feedback on Reddit, and as a result, Jonathan Pay helped me with the final layout—it looks much better now. In addition, Jonathan created the cover image using Wombo.art.

I used Steffan Guldevall’s Hepatica class deckplans for the Coyote, which I found on the ALIEN RPG Facebook group. I contacted him and he kindly allowed me to include them in the game—he also created an image of the Coyote approaching LV-426 that I’ve used.

And a playtest?

And at some point I will run it myself, possibly at Furnace.