Hope's Last Day - Alien RPG - Solo Play
Episode One - Commentary
More and more, as most who are already aware, I’m finding Free League’s catalogue of games a complete pleasure to not only play, but to read and enjoy the artwork and universes they’re presenting.
Alien RPG is definitely one of those games. But the only issue, when looking at finding the time, and a group to play with, is that there is no solo-play rules for it, and thus, one may consider it unplayable solo, and therefore finding no way to actually play the game.
But as I have been been playing Blade Runner RPG, it itself based on a modified version of the Year Zero Engine, I asked myself, “Why not Alien?”
Now, Alien is definitely a game one should at least try and play with a group. The Universe and it’s inhabitants, ie. Xenomorphs, are extremely dangerous and deadly to encounter, especially without the appropriate numbers. And the various in game mechanics such as the Push and Panic Rolls, and not to mention, Personal Agenda’s to role-play out, really lends to a great time around the table.
I asked myself however, how would I play it solo? The mechanics, like Blade Runner, leads itself just fine for solo-play without the use of any modifications. At least so far. The dice pool system and the fact you don’t have to roll all the time for a task really leads you to not be blocked by some puzzle or event in the game story. Also, any roll attempt is possible, but odds are you’ll fail more often than not for skills and attributes that provide you with a pool of dice that’s limited to 2-3 to roll. Still, I feel at no modifications are necessary.
I thought of then some ideas of a story and character concept, and after a little time, came up with one. I’d try the Hope’s Last Day cinematic scenario, and instead of going with one of the pre-generated characters, I’d create one, a Hadley’s Hope Colonist. Thinking a bit more and looking through the career options, I landed on one, and just like that, the concept came to life.
I’d create and play a Kid, Chip, a friend of Newt’s brother, who along with Newt, survived the initial invasion of the Xenomorph’s into the colony. Chip agenda aside from shying away from overbearing adults, is to find a way to the shuttle on the landing pad, with Newt, and escape off planet safely, and away from LV-426.
So off I went to play out this first session.
First, lets discuss how I went about to play the first session. I really hadn’t read the adventure prior to playing it out, aside from the initial couple pages and the pre-gen characters. Nothing really to spoil. We know there’s Xenomorph’s, and a handful of Face Huggers everywhere in the colony, Aliens (1986) showed us that! I’ve yet to decide if I’m going to introduce in full the pre-generated characters into this solo-play, I’m still debating. After this first session, Chip has not come into contact with them. So, we’ll leave them on the back burner, and we may, or may not encounter them somehow during the next series of sessions (pending the survival of Chip of course!).
Second, was the chosen location to start. I figured, that we’d start off essentially where in the movie Aliens, Ridley and the Marine’s found Newt, in a ventilation hiding place on the second floor of D-Block.
Third, I set out to create Chip. I made no adjustments to the character creation process, as I think, at this point, as I have found with Blade Runner so far, no need to make adjustments for Solo-play.
Here’s Chip’s starting character sheet:
Now that we have Chip (essentially making him look like the art accompanying the entry in the CRB), I started to write down his starting agenda’s. Find the keycard to the Shuttle, safe passage to it, and bring himself and Newt there to operate it and fly away. Simple. So off I went, selecting the starting location on the map being the 2nd floor of D-Block and off I stealthily went.
(As some know, I write a narrative around my characters actions and roll results. But unlike my The One Ring game where I write a fully flesh out and detailed story, like a novel, I’m playing this similar to my Blade Runner game, where it’s short dialogues, set to a particular scene, and then so on.)
Here’s an example of how I’ve written the initial few scenes. Forgive my spelling and grammatical errors, it’s just my notes after all lol!
As you can see, what translates from paper to the “screen” isn’t exactly how I initially written it down. It’s close, but considering the limitations I have for pulling some images (like set scenes from Aliens movie itself) and the software I use to make the videos, it’s close. I think anyway.
You can see where I made rolls, and where I’ve added in the key interactive elements from the adventure. (This is how I’ve played Blade Runner so far as well). What’s different here, versus my play with The One Ring solo-play videos, is that for TOR I had played and rolled out each event or skill, with minor notes and then sat back and wrote a narrative around it. Here, I’m playing and writing at the same time.
You can also see, how I’ve kept track of the dice rolls, and outcomes. Get’s messy and eye crossing when a fight scene comes into play, especially with multiple rolls and attacks! I’m still trying out new systems to keep the record, so any tools out there for your play, share them!
You’re now wondering what the entry, “Is the Xeno in room 1? Yes on a 1” this is where I have pulled the idea of the telling table from The One Ring and adapted it to use for Alien. Essentially you ask an open ended question, such as the one I asked. The entry in the adventure states that a Xenomorph is on B2 level, but is passive. So asking the oracle as it were, to see if the second room/area/zone that Chip enters have a Xeno morph present, with a 1 on a d6 meaning Yes, you roll the d6 and find the result. 2 to 6 meaning no, it’s not present, 1 meaning yes. Simple. So far that is the only adjustment, giving some randomness to the placement of an adversary rather than me with some bias placing accordingly.
Like both the The One Ring and Blade Runner plays so far, each 1 hour session translates to about 10-15 mins of video as seen on the channel. Which considering most actual plays, really is on par I think. It’s also been manageable for me to play, edit and produce the videos and post on the YouTube Channel.
That is it for now. I’ll continue to play and make notes and inform you here of that experience (along with creating the video!)
Again, leave a comment on the channel, like and share and if you haven’t considering subscribing to help the channel as well as this substack grow!
Stay Frosty!
Ryan of the North