ALIEN RPG Heart of Darkness: First impressions

TL;DR Heart of Darkness is a cinematic scenario for the ALIEN RPG written by Andrew EC Gaska. It has some monstrously huge ideas hidden behind a frustrating layout and opaque design decisions. It will require a lot of work to run, thanks mainly to the incoherent layout, but it will probably win a ton of awards.

This is my first impression of Heart of Darkness. I haven’t run it yet, and when I do, it will take a lot of work to get it (and myself) ready for the table. At first glance, it looks less daunting than Destroyer of Worlds, but I suspect it will be a stronger experience at the table.

As ever, spoilers ahoy!

What’s going on?

The PCs are a group of scientists contracted by Wayland-Yutani to investigate an unknown alien lifeform living in the accretion disk around a newly-formed black hole. When they get there, they find things have spiralled out of control. Erebos station is being turned into a biomechanical lifeform, the survivors are at each others’ throats, and there’s a new alien threat: the Perfected, who are the next stage (sort of) following an abomination.

Heart of Darkness expands upon the 26 Draconis Strain plotline that starts in Chariot of the Gods and continues (to an extent) in Destroyer of Worlds. It explains in more detail what happened to the Cronus at 26 Draconis.

There’s loads of stuff crammed in:

• Two sets of monsters—the creatures from Prometheus (squid-baby, the giant trilobite, the deacon) plus an evolution of the abominations from Chariot of the Gods.
• Neurological Distortion Disorder – a new thing to make you go crazy. (Well, an old thing as it’s in the core rules, but you probably had forgotten it was there. I had.)
• The heart of darkness itself – an old lifeboat turned into a terrible beating heart.
• Correction androids and their marshall—and escaped convicts.
• Project Ironfish (a mysterious secret project).

What you get

Physically, Heart of Darkness consists of one 76-page book, seven character sheets, handouts, maps, and a deck of cards (equipment, weapons, story cards, agendas).

It looks lovely with an elegant look and stunning illustrations. However, while the green-on-black text looks great, it’s not annotation friendly, and I will probably copy some of it from the pdf and pasting into a word document so I can annotate it.

Unfortunately, my book is already falling apart, and I’ve only been looking at it for a few days.

The Erebos

Stuff I liked

I like the overall concept—scientists investigating strange alien life is the sort of thing I want to see in an ALIEN adventure. (I’m not missing the classic xenomorph, as we have creatures from Prometheus instead.)

Physically I like the maps—they have a great presence on the table. And even though I’ll probably run this online, they’re good for that as well.

The seven characters (scientists, a company minder, and an android) are all the strongest I’ve seen so far from the cinematic scenarios, with agendas that will drive player conflict. Having played many convention games, I’ve always said that if you can get your pregens right, that’s most of your game done. The same applies to cinematics, and it’s nice to see here.

I like the big ideas:

• Erebos is harvesting plasma from the black hole. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds (and looks) fabulous.
• Nearly 80 years ago, the Cronus triggered an Engineer star crusher, turning a star into a black hole! That’s great – although I wish we saw more of this.
• The Perfected are a variant abomination, but after the ravening monster phase, they metamorphose into the Perfected – an intelligent Giger-esque alien race.

Stuff I didn’t like

Unfortunately, there’s plenty I didn’t like. Heart of Darkness feels like a movie—one where you enjoy the experience but when you leave the cinema, you say, “hang on, what about…?” Some examples:

• Heart of Darkness expands on the Neurological Distortion Disorder table (Core rulebook p.151). However, thanks to the proximity of the black hole, the PCs roll once every shift, adding one each time. Rolls of 6+ have a mental impact, and rolls of 12+ mean PCs attack each other. So why aren’t all the NPCs mad? After three days, everyone is rolling at +9. After four days, they should all be psychotic. And the station has been there for ten years! (To be fair, p6 mentions an “uptick in psychological problems”, which sounds like the NDDs increased when the new lifeforms were discovered [it’s not clear why], but that’s still over two months ago.)
• Why aren’t the PCs given a clear briefing on the Erebos station, with a staff roster explaining whom they can expect to meet, and the details of the life form so far observed?
• If the Engineers have the technology to turn 26 Draconis (a “red star”) into a black hole, and they want to destroy humanity, why don’t they use that rather than messing around with black goo or xenomorphs?
• If the 26 Draconis Strain (created by the science team aboard the Cronus) created the Perfected, then what is in “Perfected Space”? (p.44). Elsewhere, eg p.14, the Perfected want more of the 26 Draconis Strain so they can breed. Except someone can become Perfected by becoming an abomination – so why do they need the 26 Draconis Strain?
• Clerke, a dead NPC, works out what’s going on. But instead of leaving a clear record, he leaves clues around the station. Even his reports are super cryptic. Why? (One thing I’ve learned from running investigative games is to give the players the information they need; otherwise, they will be confused.)
• What’s going on with the hieroglyph notebook? It’s mentioned in Clerke’s reports on p.29, and Clerke presumably uses it to decode the Engineer hieroglyphs (see p.26). This came from the 26 Draconis expedition, and Clerke knows about it because it’s in the Cronus data files (otherwise, he wouldn’t know where to look – although we also know that the computer doesn’t decode the files until after the PCs arrive). So that means W-Y knew about the notebook – in which case, why weren’t they sending someone to recover it? I would have thought that would be worth a fortune – and would give a character an excellent motivation.
• Why doesn’t anyone use the FTL communications to Gateway station to report what’s going on? And why weren’t the PCs warned? (We know there are FTL communications because Clerke  tries to access the W-Y Network files on the Cronus. My preference would be for Erebos not to have any FTL communication – things are scarier when you’re on your own, and there are few FTL communications in the movies. However, FTL comms in the ALIEN universe is a bigger discussion – I’m not convinced the RPG gets it right.)

Some situations seem to wait for the players:

• On p.38, six Corrections Androids throw two convicts into “fire-choked cells (Intensity 12)”. Are they doing that all day? And what is a “fire-choked” cell anyway? Is it supposed to be on fire—if so, why are the androids chucking prisoners into it rather than trying to fight the fire? Does the marshal know?
• On p.42, a convict lurks, waiting to attack the PCs. Why? (Because he’s mad, presumably?)
• On p.44, the computer is only now finishing decrypting the black files on the Cronus. This was presumably set up by Clerke, who is “long dead” (p28). Why is it taking so long?

One thing missing is a countdown clock – what happens if the PCs don’t intervene? What do the androids do while they are offscreen? What about the convicts? Have the Perfected contacted either of them to get the 26 Draconis Strain?

Structural issues

Unfortunately, Heart of Darkness is riddled with the same structural issues I had with Chariot of the Gods and Destroyer of Worlds: it hasn’t been designed to be easy to run. Here are my problems this time:

• I took ages to work out who NPC Wicks was. She’s a convict, but her bio starts with her convict number rather than her name. Worse, the details you need to know about her are in three places: in her character bio (p.22), the bit where you encounter her on the map (p.41) and in warden Stykes’ character bio (p.21).
• What happened previously? While there’s some backstory, there’s no detailed timeline of recent events. How long ago was the lifeboat brought aboard? Why was it not mentioned in the message that brought the scientists here? How long ago did Clerke die? When did the prisoner revolt take place? (I will try and figure all this out and put it in one place—it will be in a future post.)
• There are prisoners and wardens, and it seems the prisoners escaped, but we don’t know why or how. Warden Stykes’ character bio explains that Wicks led a prison revolt just as Erebos was overrun with monsters, but this isn’t in Wicks’ backstory or anywhere else. It’s information I expected to be in a timeline, not hidden in someone else’s bio.
• And how many convicts are left? (16 with Wicks, but how many others?) And how many wardens? (Unclear.) Or androids? (Also unclear.) Page 5 tells us how many were aboard originally, but how many are still alive?) The PDT data on page 30 helps, but is incomplete; it would be nice to have everything in one place.
• Why isn’t the Cronus history presented as a handout? The PCs can get this information in two places (via the computer, p.44 and NPC Lavigne, p.50). However, what happened to the Cronus is hard to find – there’s a frustratingly vague summary on page 10 and hints elsewhere. You’d think that as this is the trilogy’s final part, we’d get the answers to everything!
• Some points on the map would be better as events: the p.42 convict attack mentioned above and the starfish mark on the glass in the Observation Deck p.31. The latter, particularly, would be best encountered early, before meeting the creature that made it – that’s how a movie would do it.

Speaking of the maps, while the player-facing maps are lovely, the GM-facing maps are just smaller duplicates. Annotated GM maps showing fire, radiation, and other hazards would be much more helpful. And as ALIEN doesn’t do printer-friendly maps, I can’t easily annotate the maps for my own use.

Typical GM map - no different to the player maps

I want to know more

The Cronus crew triggered an Engineer star crusher, deciphered hieroglyphs, developed the 26 Draconis Strain, and abandoned half their crew. I want to know more! This sounds like a cinematic scenario on its own – and I want to know what happened. As I said, this should have been a handout – an end-of-trilogy payoff. But another cinematic scenario would have been even better!

What happens if the Perfected win? It’s unclear – p.14 says, “…Erebos will go FTL and begin infecting colonies.” But it would be nice to have that fleshed out as a proper ending, in case it happens.

What are the Star Teachers? Page 26 says, “Anyone with Geholgod training [and that’s at least two PCs] will recognize the pictograms from Star Teacher artifacts discovered on Arcturus.” There’s no mention that Star Teachers are explained in the Colonial Marines Operations Manual, nor is there a short description for the GM to answer curious players.

What’s going on with the black hole? It appears to be singing, and Wicks blames it for everything. Is there something going on there?

Jumping the shark

Heart of Darkness has a couple of atmosphere-killers that feel out of place.

• First, a player can play the station cat. I’ve seen some GMs post excitedly about this, but I can’t imagine this doing anything other than ruining the atmosphere. To me, this is a jump-the-shark moment for ALIEN.
• The terrifying, giant starfish thing that the PCs encounter is nicknamed “cuddles”. (This is the trilobite – the huge thing that takes out the Engineer at the end of Prometheus.) Why give it such a silly name?

How would I do it?

What I dislike about Heart of Darkness is how it’s structured. I like the adventure itself, but I wish it were better presented. The issues I have with Heart of Darkness aren’t hard to solve – and they seem so obvious I wonder how they were missed in development and editing.

(I’m trying not to think that the problem is with me, of course. Am I being unreasonable in expecting clarity and logic? I don’t think so, but maybe I am.)

Here be monsters...

So, the changes I would make:

• Give the PCs a proper briefing with a more detailed crew roster.
• Annotate the GM maps to show areas of radiation, fire, etc. I’d highlight key locations, such as the actual heart of darkness.
• Add printer-friendly maps to the pdf bundle.
• Create a complete timeline of previous events in one place.
• Make the NPCs more dynamic. Add their actions to the Acts, so things change even if the PCs do nothing. (I would have Stykes take some androids and move against Wicks, while Wicks changes the course of the Erebos and sends it into the black hole.)
• Where it makes sense, move events from the map to the acts.
• Add a handout for the Cronus encrypted files.
• Add the hieroglyph notebook – and a PC looking for it. (And maybe an NPC—such as Wicks, who could have the Cronus files that Clerke later finds.)
• Get rid of the cat as a potential replacement PC.
• Tone down the NDDs – or at least make them more plausible.

What next?

After all this work, the next step ought to be running Heart of Darkness for my group. After all, I’m in a great position right now. But we have other games planned first.

And while I’m waiting, I will figure out what the timeline should look like.