AireCon 2026

Last weekend was AireCon, the three-day board game and ttrpg convention in Harrogate.

I couldn’t make it on Saturday this year, so instead I just attended on Friday and Sunday, running three TTRPGs.

Friday

Although my game didn’t start until 2pm, I arrived just after 11 and dropped off some games at the bring-and-buy. (My memory last year was that there was an early rush for the bring and buy, but leaving it until later was much more relaxed.)

I then wandered the trade hall, chatted to friends, and had a bit to eat from the food trucks (in their new position outside the convention centre in the grounds of the Hilton Hotel (which was used for ttrpgs and other events – a lovely new venue for this year).

ALIEN: Perfect Organism

I ran Perfect Organism, my five-player cinematic ALIEN scenario that focuses on a USCMC investigation into the loss of the Sulaco after Aliens. The investigation team have arrived at LV-426 and the W-Y station there. Things don’t go well...

I had five great players, and a higher survival rate than many of the games. (Although we burned through the NPCs at quite a rate.)

I had updated the scenario to the current ALIEN rules (Evolved edition) and was interested in seeing how it had changed. While there are lots of small changes (a full list here), the main changes as far as I was concerned were the new stress rules. However, having now experienced the new stress rules, I didn’t like them. Maybe they work in longer games (or where you are making lots and lots of dice rolls), but in a short game like Perfect Organism, stress was never a danger. I may go back to the first edition rules when I run it again.

Saturday

I didn’t make Saturday this year, which was a shame. If I had, I would have spent the day playing board games.

Sunday

Good Society

Good Society is Storybrewers’ Jane Austen game. After my experience at last year’s Furnace, I decided to bring my Wealth and Fortune playset to AireCon. The changes I’ve made are around character generation – I’ve created the base characters and links between them beforehand (just like a pregen), but letting the players create the minor characters.

After my experiences of Hillfolk not filling last year, I was a little reluctant to pitch Good Society, but I needn’t have worried – it filled up pretty quickly. 

I had a full table of five players, and after a slightly slow start, they soon got into the swing of the story and got up to all sorts of shenanigans (including a risqué scene in a lake). We reached a fine conclusion, which included a marriage proposal, so it was all as it should be.

(The slow start isn’t unusual with this kind of game. It can take a little while for the players to warm up properly.)

So I was very happy with how my playset worked. I’ve made a few tweaks and if you’re interested, you can download them here.

Thoughts on Good Society

With a second edition imminent, I had some thoughts on my experience.

Resource tokens: For a one-shot, we had an awful lot of resource tokens on the table. With two per main character and one each for the minor characters, that was 20 resource tokens on the table before we added any for the rumours. (And had I been playing strictly according to the rules, there would have been another 10 on the table – I allowed the minor characters only one resolve token each.) 

And as it happened, we didn’t use resolve tokens all that often. Maybe five or six times? So I think in future, just giving each player two resolve tokens to begin with will probably be enough for a one-shot. (And let them share the tokens between the main and minor characters.)

Reputation: While we used the reputation rules to assign new criteria, it didn’t have much impact on the game. I would be tempted to remove reputation completely from a one-shot, except that the players did adjust their reputation tags as they took actions they felt affected their reputation. 

(Technically, reputation tags can be traded for resolve tokens. As noted, we had masses of resolve tokens, so this was never an issue. Also, doing this removes the tag, which makes sense as a game mechanic but not in terms of character.)

Minor characters: With each player having two, we had ten minor characters involved. Not all of them became part of the story (many appeared only briefly). While I’m tempted to suggest just one minor character each, I think having lots of minor characters gives players more opportunities to find exactly the character they need.

Lunch

AireCon doesn’t leave a huge gap between the first and second sessions – just 45 minutes. I was slightly worried about getting back to the bring-and-buy to collect my earnings and unsold games, but it wasn’t crowded, and I had plenty of time to do that and grab something to eat.

Traveller: Calli’s Heroes

My last game was John Ossoway’s adventure for Traveller: Calli’s Heroes. The PCs are Imperial soldiers operating in a warzone during the Fifth Frontier War, and have the opportunity to loot an Ancient vault full of unimaginable riches.

I’d played Calli’s Heroes last year at Furnace, and so I knew it would be a solid con game. John was kind enough to let me have the files, and so at AireCon I took it out for a spin.

Calli’s Heroes was great. I had five good players, all happy to lean into the squad dynamics. They did appropriately soldierly things and ambushed Vargr mercenaries and Zhodani troops. They ended up with a handful of fabulously valuable Ancient artefacts – assuming they can figure out how to fence them. But that’s another adventure…

Next year

I’m already looking forward to next year. Hopefully I will be able to attend all three days…

Alien War

I stumbled across this video on YouTube recently, which brought back memories of a trip to London and a visit to Alien War in the Trocadero Centre in Leicester Square.

My memories of Alien War are a little hazy, which isn’t surprising given it was thirty years ago.

The conceit is straightforward enough – you take the role of VIPs being guided around a Weyland-Yutani facility by a colonial marine. It starts quietly enough, as you see eggs and things. But things go wrong when the alien critters escape.

I remember…

I was working on site, and was wearing a bright yellow high-viz coat. (I think it must have been winter, hence needing the coat.) High-viz was a novelty back then; there’s no way I’d wear something like that today.

I can clearly remember an alien appearing in a dark corridor beside us. It felt like it was pitch black, but I suspect we had all been blinded, and the alien appeared while our eyes were adjusting. It was very impressive – and surprisingly scary.

I don’t remember much about the lift sequence. The video talks about one of the VIPs being taken by an alien, but I don’t remember that – I think I was squashed in the far corner, away from where the victim was taken.

At one point, we all sat in a drop ship, all lined up in seats facing a central aisle. My brother and I were first in, and were against the wall, furthest from the door. Then an alien attacks through the roof (the queen, if I remember right), right above us! My brother was first through the door…

And other than it being really good, that’s about all I remember. It’s a shame it was damaged in a flood and closed. 

Anyway, here’s the AVP page on Alien War.

Airecon 2025

Ow. Ow. Ow ow ow.

So let’s get the bad out of the way first. Two days before Airecon 2025, I put my back out. Ouch! And to nobody’s surprise, spending three days at Airecon didn’t do it any favours. (I’m resting it now…)

But despite that, I had a great time. This is what I did.

Friday

Friday was my day for running tabletop roleplaying games.

Last year I left it a bit late and arrived at my table only a few minutes before we were due to start playing. I don’t like running late, so this year I set off from home in plenty of time (and this time remembering that driving into Harrogate during rush hour can be grim).

Anyway, I arrived at the convention centre at about 9:15 am. There was (unsurprisingly) a queue to get in, but that was okay. The doors opened at 9:30, and as most people ahead of me in the queue had checked in last night, it was only a couple of minutes before I was picking up my tickets and heading into the first of several cavernous halls.

I had plenty of time, so I got myself settled in and found the food hall, where I got a cup of tea.

10:15 to 13:15 The Aurors (Fate Accelerated)

At about 10:15, my players turned up, and we started playing The Aurors, my Wizarding World-themed Fate Accelerated investigation. (You can download it here for free.)

The players threw me an interesting curveball – during the minimal character generation, one of my Aurors developed a backstory involving Lidl and dark wizards. At our first location (the lovely town of Warkworth in Northumberland), he spent a fate token to add a story detail – Warkworth now has a Lidl in its centre. And so the players decided to check it out.

While one created a firework-based distraction in the front of the shop, the others went in around the back. So I mentally threw away the prepared start of the adventure and moved the first location to the Lidl storeroom, which the PCs investigated (while fire out front rapidly caught hold, drawing the fire brigade).

Anyway, the rest of the adventure played out (more-or-less) as expected, and our heroes defeated the villain.

I had a good time running The Aurors. The players were engaged and seemed to enjoy themselves. I don’t think any had played Fate before, but they certainly got into the swing of it.

I kept the pace up, as at only three hours, the first RPG session at Airecon is the shortest. Something to be aware of when deciding which game to run.

Lunchbreak

One thing to note if you’re running (and I guess playing) all day is that you only have a 45-minute break between session 1 and session 2. Given the food queues at previous Airecons, that might have been a problem, but luckily, it was fine this year.

Anyway, in my 45 minutes, I dropped some games into the bring-and-buy (which was extremely easy – it’s a very easy system to use – and by leaving it this late, I didn’t have to queue), and then picked up some sandwiches, which I ate back at the table.

14:00 to 18:00 Hillfolk

My second game was Hillfolk, and sadly, only two people had signed up. I really need at least three for Hillfolk (ideally four or five), so one of the other GMs (whose game wasn’t running) joined my table.

We had the Chief, the Curate, and the Captain, and this time, the game went in a very different direction. The tribe quickly became very weak (a raid on a neighbouring tribe went badly) and ended up merging with one of their rivals.

With only three PCs, I ended up running several NPCs. My favourite was Delight, the chief’s ex-girlfriend who deliberately undermined him whenever she was in a scene.

Two of my players had never played Hillfolk before – but the third had played in my game last year and come back for more!

Tea

We finished slightly early (which was always likely to happen with only three players), and so I had a leisurely hour for tea (a nice steak and ale pie with mushy peas) and chatted with old friends.

(And new friends. Someone smiled at me when I was walking gingerly through the halls, and although I smiled back, but didn’t recognise them. Our paths crossed again shortly after and they explained that they enjoyed my Cthulhu Dark adventure last year.)

19:00 to 23:00 Perfect Organism (ALIEN)

My final game was Perfect Organism, my ALIEN cinematic one-shot set a few months after Aliens and concerning the USCMC’s investigation into the loss of the Sulaco. (Download it here for free.)  

This went brilliantly. I created the characters to be deliberately antagonistic towards each other (lots of conflicting agendas), and for the first 45 minutes or so,, I did almost nothing but watch them roleplay. The players really leaned into their characters and it quickly got very intense. At one point I asked if everyone was okay, but they said they knew each other and were having a great time (but appreciated my concern for their wellbeing).

As ever with an ALIEN game, there were character deaths. We ended up with two dead and the other two in cryosleep tubes on LV-426 with no obvious means of rescue…

And with that over, I packed up and drove home.

Saturday

After a not-great night (bad back), this time I took the bus to Harrogate, getting there at about 9:45. I went straight up to the RPG area where I had signed up for a game of Slugblaster.

Slugblaster

I’ve reviewed Slugblaster before but this would be my first chance to see it in action. I signed up when Guy noted over on the Gaming Tavern forum that he was running Slugblaster at Airecon…

Unfortunately, Guy wasn’t well, and the session would have been cancelled – except the Airecon gods smiled on us. As luck would have it, we had a replacement GM, Iain, who not only knew Slugblaster but also had a one-shot session with him and wasn’t doing anything else at that moment. (As it turns out, Iain runs a game very much like Guy does.)

I took The Heart playbook. My character was Solstice, and I rode a Hardlight BMX (whatever that is).

One of the things I really like about Slugblaster is the character beats – mini dramatic arcs. Iain had already started a couple of beats on each pregen, and on mine, the Heart Arc had started: Solstice had started a relationship (with a girl I named Luna) with a member of another gang.

Iain structured the game so that we started play at the the end of a run, then we got to play some downtime, then we played through a full run, and finished with a bit of downtime.

It was all great, and I worked through two more beats in the Heart arc – the rest of the gang learned about my feelings for Luna, and it almost tore us apart.

It was brilliant, and now I want to play Slugblaster even more… (At the very least, I need to re-read the rules!)

Saturday afternoon

I chatted with Dom over lunch (I think we should start some face-to-face gaming in Wetherby), and then parted – him to run his game and me to socialise.

I bumped into Paul of Cthulhu (who runs the Yog-Sothoth.com Cthulhu website), who I haven’t seen in years. He runs a podcast and took the opportunity to interview me about the origins of Tales of Terror, the little ideas booklet I produced in 1990. I have no idea if it was any good or not or if it will actually appear. (And as I was unprepared, I forgot to mention my co-editor, Garrie Hall, who was so influential. Oops.)

I also took my proceeds from the Bring & Buy – through some aggressive pricing, I had sold all of my games.

I had arranged to meet another friend, Philippa, but she was playing Blood on the Clocktower, so I enjoyed a quiet beer while I waited. When I caught up with Philippa, she needed something to eat, and after that, we tried a demo of Rallyman GT (which was fine but not special).

Phillippa had a game of Root booked at 6 pm, and my back was giving me gyp, so I headed home.

Sunday

If I hadn’t promised to take my daughter to Airecon, I probably would have stayed at home and looked after my back. As it was, I came into Harrogate for my third painful day.

Sunday was a day of board games and demos. We played several: Finspan, Spokes, Word Colony, Living Forest Duel, Flow, Wizards Cup, and War of the Worlds: One More Day.

My favourite was probably Finspan or Living Forest Duel. Megan liked Spokes (and really didn’t like Word Colony, as trivia isn’t her strong point).

It was a nice break from revising for A-Levels, and we headed home shortly after 3 pm.

Airecon mementos

Next year

So what about next year?

As usual, I will aim to run three TTRPG sessions. It’s much too early to decide which games, but I like running Hillfolk, but it struggles to attract players. I wonder if I should create a more geek-friendly playset – maybe something set in the ALIEN universe. (I dunno, the leaders of the colony on LV426? That might be fun. I’ll have a think.)

And this year, Airecon had a couple of rooms set aside for “social games” – things like Werewolf and Blood on the Clock Tower. They’d be ideal for a small freeform larp, so I may investigate that. (I will try and persuade Graham to find out more – I’m happy to be involved!)

This year, I also learned how the game finder worked (thanks, Philippa!) – if you want to run a game of something, you can add it to the system and say when and where you’ll be. And then people can sign up. (Or you can just trust the lightsabres – which indicate a game looking for players.) As I so rarely play Cosmic Encounter these days (it’s best with 4-5 and doesn’t appeal to Mrs H, so it rarely sees the light of day), next year’s Airecon may be an opportunity.

But that suggests I’m going to be extremely busy…

And hopefully, my back will behave itself!

ALIEN RPG Building Better Worlds: First impressions

On Alien Day this year, I treated myself to the Building Better Worlds supplement for the ALIEN rpg.

Building Better Worlds is a 300-page supplement focusing on exploration and colonies in the world of the ALIEN rpg. It has the same look and feel as the rest of the ALIEN, so while it looks pretty, it’s annoyingly difficult to read and hard to use at the table. (At least this time, I didn’t encounter the terrible organisational issues that plague the cinematic scenarios. See here, here, here, and here.)

To get the most out of Building Better Worlds, you need to buy into ALIEN’s “Perfected” story arc that started with Chariots of the Gods, continued with Destroyer of Worlds and ramped up with Heart of Darkness.

And while it’s nice to see the background unfold as the supplements come out (although that’s not without issues, as I explain below), if you’re not invested in the Perfected storyline, this may not be for you. 

For me? I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t like the Perfected, but it veers further away from Alien and Aliens than I’m comfortable with. Maybe the upcoming film and TV series will change that. We’ll see.

There are a couple of things I don’t like – such as synthetics being affected by black goo and turning into abominations. I guess that’s extrapolating from David in Alien: Covenant (why would you make an android with hair that grows?), but I don’t have to like it. But as I’ve said before, everything after Alien is fanfic.

What is Building Better Worlds about?

Building Better Worlds does for explorers and colonists what the Colonial Marines Operations Manual did for colonial marines. In other words, it gives the GM enough detail (worlds, organisations, careers) to run a campaign set on the frontier. Seven adventures provide a campaign with an arc that feeds into the main ALIEN rpg storyline.

And the difference between explorers and colonists? Explorers are well-paid teams looking for new resources and lifeforms, while colonists are under-resourced settlers of exoplanets.

History of colonisation

Building Better Worlds starts with its version of history, from 2023 to 2188 (now).

It’s written from the players’ perspective rather than the GM’s, so is easy to share. And while you can work out when the movies take place, I wish they were referenced explicitly – especially if the novels or comics (which I haven’t read but potentially might like to) were referenced.

Anyway, I imagine that at some point, this will become known as “the ALIEN rpg universe,” as I expect the upcoming movies and TV series to contradict key parts of the timeline.

The main issue I have with the ALIEN rpg’s history is its archaeological nature. Bits of history are present in different supplements (books and adventures). But it can feel like the supplements assume you know all the history – otherwise, some bits don’t make sense. Worse, sometimes you need the later supplements to make sense of the adventures. For example, Heart of Darkness talks about “Perfected Space”, but we don’t learn about that until Building Better Worlds.

Lists and lists

Inevitably, a book like this has lists. There are lists of organisations (United Americas, Three Worlds Empire, the Union of Progressive Peoples, Weyland-Yutani, and so on), lists of gear and ships (suits, weapons, vehicles, spacecraft), lists of monsters (new aliens and old), and lists of systems and colonies (thumbnail sketches of a dozen or so colonies).

If you have previous books, there are familiar faces (monsters and equipment) here – particularly from Chariot of the Gods and Heart of Darkness. I would have liked to see more new monsters, but most are from earlier adventures. (There is a xenomorph “Empress,” the next stage after a Queen. There had to be a next stage, didn’t there?)

New careers

In addition to notes for using the core careers, Building Better Worlds introduces two new careers: Wildcatters and Entertainers.

Wildcatters are blue-collar prospectors, surveyors, constructors and so on. Entertainers are performers, croupiers, waiters and the like. Each comes with talents and signature items, like any other career. Personal agendas are treated slightly differently, as nobody becomes a colonist for no reason, and there is a table of additional agendas to choose from.

The Lost Worlds campaign

This is Building Better Worlds’ sandbox campaign – and it’s pretty good. The PCs are members of the United Nation’s Great Mother Mission, a small fleet of ships going to reestablish contact with the spinward colonies (lost for 75 years following massive solar ejections, gamma bursts and waves of radiation). 

While the Great Mother Mission might be a United Nations project, it is manned by members of various factions – who soon fall out. The PCs must navigate this tension while taking their ships and exploring some of the lost colonies. Along the way, they will discover what is really going on.

Structure

The structure of the campaign is that the PCs are sent on their ship to survey the abandoned colonies. There are six colonies to survey, which can be done in any order. Campaign clues scattered among the colonies unlock an exciting final level, er, campaign finale.

Home Sweet Home: The PCs face feuding families, a powerful sandstorm and space locusts.

To Go My Own Dark Way: Feral colonists, a failing terraformer, a crashed ship and the Children of the Two Divines. Suffers a little from events-happening-while-the-PCs-are-present syndrome (but not as bad as Mysteries of the Ancients, thankfully).

Leave All Else To The Gods: The PCs must start a colony on a paradise planet. But is it really paradise? (Go on, take a guess.)

The Devil Lives in Still Waters: A warlord, insurgents, and a mysterious pyramid.

Against a Sea of Troubles: The PC’s sister ship gets into trouble, and the PCs must go to the rescue.

Let Sleeping Gods Lie: The PCs explore a dead colony, with automatons mindlessly following their programming.

In the Shadow of Perfection: The final adventure is set inside a massive Engineer artefact and puts the fate of humanity in the PC’s hands!

During these adventures, the PCs will explore abandoned Engineer cities and juggernauts, new and old xenomorphs, and the Perfected.

Is it any good?

I’ve not played or run these, but they seem pretty good on a read-through. Most adventures seem straightforward to run, and I can imagine each taking no more than a session or two.

The finale, however, feels ambitious. It’s the climax of several plot strands coming together, and on a brief read-through, it feels like it will be challenging to run. However, it brings in characters from earlier adventures, so I suspect that it will be easier to run than it currently feels.

It’s difficult to judge the lethality of the adventures, but given that the PCs are playing members of the Great Mother Mission, replacement characters will be easy to create.

Will I run it? I don’t know. I’m not currently planning to, but I’m much more likely to run this than the missions in the Colonial Marines Operations Manual.

A few observations

Geography: It’s not clear where the expedition is when the mission arrives at the spinward colonies. The star map, while pretty, isn’t very useful – several star systems used in the campaign aren’t mentioned on it. (There are lots of unlabelled stars to pick, so it’s not a critical issue, but it seems to be a basic oversight.)

For all their 2D abstracted goofiness, Traveller’s subsector maps give a much clearer idea of geography and travel times. Speaking of travel times…

Travel: Travel times could be clearer. The colonies are about 30 parsecs from Earth and spread across an area about nine parsecs in diameter. The PC’s ship has an FTL rating of 10 (10 days per parsec), so they’re about 10 days away from each other (although taking three months to cross from one side to the other). But it’s not clear to me how long a journey needs to be before putting the crew in cryosleep. Maybe it’s a decision by the players based on how much they want to risk rolling on the core book’s NDD (neurological distortion disorder) table.

Maps: There are few player-facing maps. The book has lots of maps, but often they have features marked on them that only the GM knows about – making them hard to share with players. I don’t know why this is so hard for Free League to get right - a pdf of handouts would be so easy to do, yet be so helpful.

Pedant’s corner: One adventure has two lifeboats – but the lifeboats seem to be too big to fit in the space on the deck plans for their parent ship… 

Structure: I really like the overall structure of the campaign. A mission to explore an area of space, with six independent but thematically linked adventures leading to a campaign climax. Traveller’s disappointing Mysteries of the Ancients campaign (my review here) could have learned a lot from this. Building Better Worlds has a huge advantage over Mysteries by assuming the GM is running this as a standalone campaign with the players bought into the premise.

Building your own better world

Along with enhanced systems and planet tables (building on those in the core rules), Building Better Worlds’ appendix has a hidden gem – rules for a colony minigame. These let you track the growth of a colony as it struggles from its initial start to become a healthy, sustaining colony.

These rules let you choose policies (low taxes, collectivism), installations (AI upgrade, workshops), and projects (supply run, orbital mapping) to give a colony its own flavour. And if the PCS are colony leaders, they may even get to choose.

Overall

So overall, Building Better Worlds seems pretty solid. I prefer it to the Colonial Marines Operations Manual, but then exploring ancient alien ruins is much more my thing than a military game.

However, the ALIEN rpg seems to be moving even further away from the original movies and doing its own thing – concentrating mostly on the black goo and leading to the Perfected. This is probably exactly what the line needs if it is to continue to grow, but I’m not sure I need to be part of it. 

So am I finished with the ALIEN rpg?

I don’t know. ALIEN supplements come out so infrequently that it’s not hard (or expensive) to keep up with them. The question will be whether I can be bothered, and I think the answer to that will come down to two things:

• Whether the next supplement (a cinematic adventure) appeals.
• Whether I run/play more ALIEN – currently, it’s not on the horizon, but that may change.

But never say never.

AireCon 2023

So last weekend was AireCon 2023 in Harrogate. This year it was even bigger, which meant it was in the larger halls. I was there for three days. On the Friday, I ran two roleplaying games; on the Saturday I popped in to play games and catch up with friends; and on the Sunday, I was there with family. (Previous AireCon reports here.)

At the entrance to AireCon with Megan on Sunday

Friday

Friday was exciting because of all the snow that had arrived overnight. It didn’t last long but caused some travel chaos. I caught the bus, so I just had to contend with some slippery pavements, which I navigated with care.

I ran Perfect Organism (for ALIEN) and The Bone Swallower (for Fate Accelerated) and had time to wander around.

Perfect Organism (game files here)

Perfect Organism is my ALIEN cinematic set in a W-Y station in orbit above LV-426. The USCMC are investigating the loss of the Sulaco (from Aliens), and, well, things don’t go according to plan… Perfect Organism sold out before AireCon, so I knew I had five players. This would be my first time running it with all five players – my previous runs each had three. I was interested to see how the additional characters changed the scenario. I had expected everything to take longer, but to my surprise, we took less time than before.

This time, the players never made it out of orbit. That’s because one of the new characters shut down any suggestion that the PCs head down to LV-426 itself. Had they gone down to LV-426 (as earlier groups had), the game would have lasted longer.

It didn’t matter – the players seemed to have a blast. They leaned into their conflicting agendas – for much of the time I just sat back and watched them.

My favourite moments were the number of excuses the lead scientist had for keeping the investigators from looking at anything too deeply. She was so inventive – “There’s always a reason,” said one of the others.

Me and most of my Perfect Organism crew

Finishing earlier than expected gave me time to chat with Graham (the organiser and someone I know from Furnace), grab some lunch and a pint of beer, and buy Ivan Brett’s two books, The Floor is Lava and Bored? Games!

The Bone Swallower (more info here)

The Bone Swallower is the adventure in my Other London: Desk 17 setting book for Fate Accelerated. Again I had five players. (I’m normally wary about running games for five players, as I find it difficult to ensure everyone has enough spotlight time. But from what I can tell, I think I got it right at AireCon in both games this year. Although I may not be the best person to judge.)

My players knew of Fate, even if they hadn’t played it before. Except for one – for whom this was their first time roleplaying! While they were hesitant at times, they soon got stuck in and played along with the rest of them.

Five players is a bit much for an investigative scenario (it can feel like the players are going in mob-handed at times), but we split the party when we needed to, and their investigation took a different route to previous runs.

(It also changed one scene dramatically. Previously, there’s one scene where I’ve seen players be a little tentative. This time, convinced they had found the suspect, they went in hard and fast and quickly overpowered the bad guys.)

My favourite bit was tracking where the missing Iona had gone – using an eyewitness and traffic cameras to find the van. Nobody’s tried that before, so I was thinking on my feet.

Again, it felt like a successful session, and I felt pleased.

With my Friday duties finished, I headed back to the bus station.

Over tea, after telling Mrs H about the convention, we played Licence Plate Sentences from The Floor is Lava (but we grabbed some random letters as we were in the kitchen rather than in the car). Mrs H is so much better at it than I am!

Saturday

Overnight, I dreamt that Taylor Swift had written a song about an unpopular D&D setting she really liked. I think it was pretty good – but I can’t remember anything now. Mrs H suggested it meant I had had a good time yesterday, which was hard to argue with (although I don’t play D&D…)

Anyway, I hadn’t originally planned to be at AireCon on Saturday. However, the snow prevented the planned visit from the in-laws, so I was free to brave the bus into Harrogate again and I was there by about 11.

Saturday was a day of catching up with old friends and playing boardgames.

Games played:

Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game: A Star Wars-themed Star Realms, with a few twists. Maybe if I didn’t have so many Star Realms cards, I would be interested in it.

Letters from Whitechapel: I played this twice, a hidden movement game along the lines of Scotland Yard where one player tries to avoid capture by the others. Three of us hadn’t played before, but we picked it up pretty quickly. I was an investigator in the first game, and we caught Jack (the villain) before he murdered his second victim. As that was over fairly quickly, we played a second game, and this time I was Jack. I won on the last turn, but goodness, it was stressful! I was exhausted at the end. (One of the other players, who’d played before, said it was one of the best games of Letters that he’d played.)

I found this game by spotting a lightsabre – the system AireCon uses that lets players know that people are looking for more players. It’s a great system – and along with the area where you can linger if you’re looking to play a game means nobody should be looking for a game for long.

King of Tokyo: I entered the AireCon King of Tokyo tournament at the last minute. (I was nearby as it Cwas setting up.) I was knocked out in the first round – the winner of our table obviously loved the game and was a worthy winner.

Other moments of note included chatting with gaming pals and telling Ivan Brett (author of The Floor is Lava and Bored? Games!) about Freeform Games. I cursed myself for not having a business card with me…

Sunday

Over breakfast, we played the gloriously silly Brian? Brian! From The Floor is Lava. 

Anyway, Sunday was family day for me. I had deliberately avoided the demo and playtest areas so far as I knew I would likely spend time there today with my family (my daughter Megan, brother Phil and nephew Jack). And that’s what happened.

Megan at the AireCon sign

We had a lovely time – games played included:

7 Wonders: An Asmodee demo (some cards removed, I think). I knew how to play, but it was new to the others. However, they all liked it, and Jack won. I like 7 Wonders, but I don’t own it because it needs 3-7 players, and I won’t get it to the table often enough. (Lots of my friends have it, though, so I get to play it when I see them.)

My shelfie: Build a point-scoring bookshelf. I won this. It was okay, but nothing to write home about.

Silly selfie while playing My Shelfie

In the footsteps of Darwin: I played this with Megan and came last. Megan was pleased to beat me. Gorgeously illustrated tableau-building game. Not too heavy. A game I’d happily play, but not one I need for my collection.

Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza: I was terrible at this – a crazy loud snap variant. Jack won, and I definitely lost. Megan wanted a copy as she knew her friends would enjoy it. Unfortunately, the copy she bought was the FIFA version, which she wouldn’t have chosen had she realised. So she’s going to tailor it.

Cobra Paw: Roll dice and take the matching dominoes. I thought I’d be rubbish because Megan’s so good at pattern-spotting (she thrashes me at Dobble and Panic Lab and Set). But Phil won, and I came second. Not too bad for the old folk.

Scout: Phil was looking for a game to play at restaurants, and after asking around, we tried Scout, an intriguing trick-taking game. It fitted the bill, so he picked up a copy. (I often put Timeline or Red 7 or No Thanks or some dice for Perudo in my pocket for those situations.)

It was then time for us to head back, so that’s what we did.

Loot

I was fairly restrained at AireCon—my loot is shown below.

Airecon loot - small by many standards

I’m very happy with the books and counters, and Megan is happy with Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza (despite the FIFA branding). The freebies are fine:

• The extra card for Dixit reminded me to get it to the table more often.
• I’ll give the Ticket to Ride promo cards to someone who has TtR: Europe.
• Megan and I played with the Dobble, Time’s Up and Cortex cards when we got home. Dobble was fine—she beat me as usual (we have a set), and she’s taken the cards as a portable set to play with her friends. She also beat me at Cortex (which neither of us liked). Time’s Up might have been fun (like Articulate but with some twists), but we only had the two of us, and there were too many pop culture people that neither of us knew.
• The King of Tokyo character was a freebie for playing in the tournament, and Megan has taken that for a friend who has the game.

Gloom of Kilforth tempted me—but I need to do some research first. Megan was more interested in the upcoming version, Call of Kilforth (pirates!), so I may get that when it comes out.

I was also tempted by Earth Rising, a new cooperative game about making the world a better place (fighting poverty, solving climate change, reversing biodiversity loss and so on). It’s a great message, and the game seemed interesting. Maybe if there had been a copy to buy, I would have walked away with it. But only maybe – I don’t know how much overlap there is with the upcoming Daybreak (which focuses on climate change).

I was also tempted by the journalling RPG Be Like A Crow, which looked beautiful. But I already have (and don’t play) Thousand Year Old Vampire and I don’t suppose Be Like A Crow would be different, and I don’t need more games on my shelf to sit unplayed.

(Isn’t it interesting that the games that tempted me are all solo or cooperative? I think that’s because I know I can get them to the table. If I buy a multiplayer game, I’m relying on it appealing to my family.)

AireCon 2023 - final thoughts

Overall, I had a wonderful time. Megan was sorry she could only go on the Sunday – next year, she wants to go on Saturday and Sunday.

I thought the new halls were good. While the smaller halls are much nicer (the large halls are rather industrial - not that anyone notices when they have their heads down, studying the board), AireCon never felt overcrowded, even with the obvious increase in attendees.

AireCon 2023's industrial vibe

And although I would love to do AireCon every weekend, as an introvert, I did find it exhausting. Time to recharge the batteries!

Perfect Organism: the premiere

As mentioned in this post, I ran Perfect Organism, my ALIEN cinematic scenario, for the first time at Furnace in October. (And here are my design notes for Perfect Organism. And the game files.)

I had three players (one dropped out just before we started, but that was fine, as three is a good number for me). We took about three hours to play through the scenario, which was just the right length for the slot. With more players, I suspect it would have taken a little longer.

While I had a few preflight nerves, they vanished as soon as we started playing, and the players leaned into their agendas and the conflicts.

Extra prep needed

While preparing Perfect Organism, I realised I had forgotten to include agendas for Acts 2 and 3, so I created those.

I also realised that I might need some backup PCs. In the original scenario, the NPCs are mere shells—I hadn’t created full stats for them (having played a fair bit of ALIEN, I don’t believe full NPC stats are needed). However, that would be different for replacement PCs, so I picked five NPCs and fleshed them out.

I also created a key rules summary (basic tasks, stress, panic, combat) as I know I don’t find the ALIEN ruleset easy to remember.

I’ve added the backup PCs and amended files to the website.

Open secrets

Perfect Organism requires the players to separate what they know from what their characters know. This works two ways:

• The scenario takes place shortly after Alien and Aliens, but not everything that happens in those movies is known by the characters.
• The way I’ve set up the characters’ secret backgrounds means that the game could lead to note-passing and private conferences. I didn’t want that, so we agreed to play everything up front.

The players were happy to play this way—I think playing with all the secrets hidden wouldn’t have been as much fun.

Acts 1, 2 and 3

So how did it play? Within the first five minutes, the ICC lawyer started accusing the Weyland-Yutani executive of negligence and conspiracy while the USCMC major in charge of everything tried to calm everyone down.

I played all the NPCs passively – they mostly reacted to what was happening. As I had anticipated that I might run this with fewer than five players, I had prepared events in each Act for what their characters would do.

So it played really well. I’m not going into details (to avoid spoilers), but some key moments were:

• The PCs took their ship, the Coyote, down to the surface of LV-426. I hadn’t expected that, but in hindsight, it seems obvious.
• At one point, a facehugger attacked one player. It was an instant-smothering, with no chance to avoid—except the player used the Personal Safety talent to put an NPC in the line of fire instead. Nasty.
• I had one full-grown xenomorph attack the group. They killed it as it played with one of the NPCs—but then that NPC died from acid burns.
• The PCs blew up Kathar Station, which was cinematic, but I hadn’t expected it.
• We had a nice, downbeat ending. The PCs all survived, but most of the NPCs had died by xenomorph or explosion or had been abandoned by the PCs.

Overall I was happy with how the game ran. The players seemed to enjoy it and suggested they might run the scenario themselves.

Post-game amendments

I made a few amendments to the game after Furnace, but they were typos and clarifications rather than radical changes.

One of the other GMs at Furnace used standees for characters and NPCs, and I thought that was a good idea, so I’ve created table tents for all the characters. I took faces from Stefan Isburg’s wonderful ALIEN Character Compendium (no link, but you can find it on the ALIEN RPG Discord server) and created male and female table tents for each PC and single-gender tents for the NPCs (and some for the xenomorphs).

I’m now looking forward to the next time to run it – maybe at GoPlayLeeds or Airecon. Or both.

Heart of Darkness timeline

As I mentioned in my review of ALIEN Heart of Darkness, I believe it needs a clear timeline of past events for the GM. It’s fine for players to have to puzzle out what happened, but the GM should have that at their fingertips.

So I’ve created one.

Italics are my comments, as occasionally things don’t make sense. Page numbers refer to where I found the information. I may have missed something – if so, let me know.

Spoilers ahoy!

2111

USCSS Cronus visits 26 Draconis and discovers an Engineer facility. They trigger a device that collapses a red star into a black hole which then starts devouring the other two stars in the system. As a result, Colonial Administration put a travel and exploration ban on the system. [p. 5 – What did Colonial Administration know about what happened with the Cronus? And why didn’t W-Y follow up, as I would expect them to be all over 26 Draconis given what the Cronus found (Engineer star forge, bioweapons, translated hieroglyphs? And why didn’t anyone else want to investigate the mysterious new black hole – even if only in the name of science? UPDATE - this lack of follow-up may be explained by the 20 Parsec Limit, imposed in 2112 and detailed on p21 of the CMOM. Bad luck if you only have the Starter Set (and I can't see it in the Core Rulebook either).]

2173

“Twelve years ago, a company probe flyby catalogued the young singularity, reporting the system’s breakdown and its high-energy output. Weyland-Yutani won the exploitation contract from Colonial Administration and set up Erebos station to harness the plasma flow in energy trawlers.” [p.6]

2175

Erebus established, with Wicks as station manager [p.22] and Stykes as Colonial Marshall.

2177?

After her shuttle was stuck in a decaying orbit around the black hole for eight hours, Wicks returned changed… somehow different. She blew up a plasma tank and set fire to the station. Stykes claims she led a company revolt that resulted in 67 roughnecks dying trying to extinguish the fire. (However, Skykes killed them when he vented the airlocks.) Erebos is converted to a maximum-security prison, with Stykes its warden and Wicks one of its prisoners. [p.11]

Wicks continues to claim that the black hole made her blow up the plasma tank and wants revenge on Stykes and to destroy Erebos. [p.22]

6 to 12-month staff rotation implemented. (Crew rotation ship visits on a six-monthly basis.)

2178?

Project Ironfish implemented, known only by Stykes and Clerke. [p.11]

2185

April to July 2185: Hellassian lights identified swarming around a meteoric mass. Clerke requests permission to anchor Erebus to study the new lifeform. An uptick in NDD symptoms recorded. (p.6 – presumably, the increase in NDD symptoms is related – but how? And why?]

Early August 2185: Green light is given to anchoring the Erebos to the “meteoric mass” (the Cheiron) to the Erebos. Team of scientists rapidly assembled. [p.9 – The “green light” indicates FTL communication between Erabos and Gateway Station, although nobody seems to use this to communicate anything of importance after this, such as what’s going on.]

7 August 2185: USCSS Cetorhina leaves Gateway Station for 26 Draconis, carrying the PCs. Bishop records his message. [p.9] 

12 September 2185: The Cheiron lifeboat is brought aboard the Erebos (although it is not recognised as such until two days later). [p.29] This disturbs the accompanying meteor swarm, and Proto-Hive Nodules start slamming into the station and begin to grow. [p.10]

15 September 2185: Clerke tries to find out about Cronus on the Network but is locked out by MU/TH/UR. [p.29]

16 September 2185: Clerke reads files from Cheiron – learns about Engineer stellar farming facility, 26 Draconis Strain, Lavigne and the hieroglyph notebook. [p.29 - note, I've updated this. Originally I thought Clerke got the info about Lavigne from the Chronos Network files, which didn't make sense.]

18 September 2185: Clerke learns about Perfected and their plan to infect other star systems. [p.29 – it’s unclear if this is from the Cronus files or if Clerke has now encountered the Perfected. If the latter, they’ve probably made him the same offer they make the PCs.]

Late September 2185: Clerke warns Skyes and Webb about the Living Proto-Hive. Webb was sceptical (at first). [p.19]

October 2185: The first protomorphs appear. Wicks leads a prison revolt. [p.21]

October 2185: Webb starts designing a virus to kill the monsters. [p.19] Webb and Clerke begin reconstructing the 26 Draconis Strain so they can create a virus that will kill the Living Proto-Hive. [p.28]

October 2185: The last thing Webb and Clerke need is a living sample. But before they can get one, Webb loses his mind (to the NDDs) and Clerke starts turning into an Abomination. [p.11]

October 2185: Stykes kills Clerke in the Deck C MU/TH/UR station while he (Clerke) was becoming an abomination. [p.32]

Early November 2085: Now 

PCs arrive in-system aboard USCSS Cetorhina.

DA/UT/UR decrypts the Cronus black files [ p.44 – although what this contains is a mystery as Clerke had already learned everything about the Cronus.]

Feedback

Was that helpful? Let me know if so.

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.

Furnace 2022

Last weekend found me in Sheffield for Furnace 2022. 

Furnace runs over a weekend – three games on Saturday and two on Sunday. It takes me about an hour to get there, so I don’t play the Saturday evening game (slot 5).

One of the nice things about Furnace is putting faces to names that I see on The Tavern. Anyway, on with my games.

Slot 1 Saturday morning: The Raven Stone (AD&D, GM: Simon)

A proper, old-school game of AD&D. We had six of us trying to figure out what was causing the dead to rise (the eponymous Raven Stone) and then putting it back where it belonged.

We nearly had a player-induced TPK when our mage decided to kill a room of kobolds by drop-kicking bottles of ‘nitroglycerine’ at them. We cleared the kobolds, yes, but sadly (or, deservedly) our mage perished in the inferno.

Although I’ve been roleplaying since 1981, this was my first proper game of AD&D. I never played it back in the day (it was Traveller and Call of Cthulhu for me), and I rarely play D&D now. I found the system confusing – it lacks a modern consistency (sometimes you need to roll high, sometimes low). Luckily Simon had all the modifiers in his head, and I just needed to roll the dice.

Slot 2 Saturday afternoon: The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory (They Came From Beyond the Grave! GM: Tom)

This was delightful fun with lots of hammy fun with five of us investigating a mystery in the style of a 70s Hammer Horror movie. 

The system was simple (although we had the usual business of finding that the skills don’t quite work for the situation you want) and I really liked the quips – each character has several catchphrases that give them extra dice when they say them. So we did that often, and the system rewarded us with more dice.

A great, light-hearted con game – although I can’t imagine playing this as a campaign.

Slot 4 Sunday morning: Perfect Organism (ALIEN, GM: me)

My turn to run something. I had a few preflight nerves, but I always get that with a scenario I’ve not run before. I had one player drop, which was fine - the other three were awesome and really leaned into the conflict and agendas I’d created.

The scenario worked well (phew!), and I didn’t even kill any of the characters (although there weren’t many NPCs left alive by the end.) 

Some lovely moments: All the character banter, particularly the ICC lawyer and the W-Y executive. The players gamely ignoring what they knew and playing their characters. One player throwing an NPC into the path of an attacking facehugger. Kathar Station blowing up.

Slot 5 Sunday afternoon: Mischief Night (Liminal, GM: Sue)

Four P-Division agents tracking down some missing cream for a Halloween-themed adventure. Very irreverent, with some great banter around the table and trips into Northampton’s medieval tunnels and a creepy fairy realm.

I really like four-player games – it gives me space to develop a relationship with the other players and their characters, which I don’t find so easy with higher player counts. However, I appreciate the difficulty at conventions as it means you need more GMs.

Furnace 2023

I’m already looking forward to Furnace 2023 – but next for me is Retford freeforming in November and then Airecon in March.

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.