ALIEN Starter Set: Does It Pass the Acid Test?

The 1986 movie, Aliens, blew my mind when I first watched it. It was action-packed, stylish, thrilling, funny, and absolutely terrifying. I think there’s a strong case to say that the Alien xenomorphs are the most horrifying creatures ever spawned by the human imagination: monsters that violate us, impregnate us, eat us alive from the inside, until they are ready to burst out of our ribcages, and terrorise a whole new set of victims. The fact that you can’t even shoot a xeno without risking an acid bath is the cherry on the cake of their terrifying nature. Count Dracula seems cuddly by comparison.

Despite being a longterm fan of the franchise, ALIEN The Roleplaying Game had somehow totally passed me by until recently. But after stumbling across this highly entertaining actual play by Dice Times, I decided to get in touch with Free League Publishing. They have since sent me the new Evolved Edition Starter Set, and – after becoming a Game Mother for the first time last weekend – I’m ready to review this beautiful black box of cosmic horrors…

ALIEN Starter Set: What’s Included?

The starter set box is packed with goodies, specifically:

• Evolved rules booklet
• Hope’s Last Day adventure booklet
• 4 Maps
  • A huge double-sided map (the South Wing of Hadley’s Hope terraforming colony / chartered space in the year 2183).
  • A large double-sided map (Tannen’s casino / Starcub shuttle).
  • A small double-sided Game Mother’s map (South Wing /  casino + shuttle).
  • One page single-sided map (overview of Hadley’s Hope colony).
• Other Cards & Sheets
  • Five pre-generated player characters.
  • Playing cards for gear, combat initiative, personal agendas for Hope’s Last Day, and stress and panic responses.
  • Rules reference sheets.
• Other Tokens & Tools
  • Tokens for characters, aliens and motion detector readings.
  • Supply dial for keeping track of crucial resources such as air, ammunition, or time.
  • Plastic mini of a Xenomorph drone.
• Dice
  • Ten black base dice, engraved with success symbol (6).
  • Ten yellow stress dice, with success symbol (6) and facehugger symbol (1).

I’m not going to review every last token and tool in the box set, but here are my thoughts on the core materials:

Evolved Rules Booklet

This 25-page booklet presents the core rules you need to play the starter adventure, Hope’s Last Day; including running skill checks, exploration, combat, rules for stress and panic, and some basic equipment stats. (If you are looking for rules on creating characters, vehicles / spaceships, lore, campaign advice and full equipment list you will need to buy the Core Rulebook).

All the rules are clearly presented, and there are some handy examples and flowcharts to make things even easier to grasp. There’s some atmospheric artwork to break up the text, and overall the booklet serves its purpose well… after reading it through twice I was ready to run the game.

Reviewing The Rules Themselves…

OK, so the rules are well presented…. but are they any good? Well, while I didn’t play the original 2019 release of the game, the Evolved Edition claims to have improved those rules with the feedback of thousands of playtesters… I can’t attest to the success of that claim, but this blogger clearly knows what they are talking about, and there’s also this thread on Reddit if you want to delve into what’s changed. From my research, it seems there is a consensus amongst fans that the Evolved Edition is an improvement on its predecessor… (so no need to feel any FOMO for the previous incarnation of the game!)

My own experience was that the “Evolved” rules do a really solid job of enabling the horrors of the film franchise play out on the game table, with fast combat, suitably scary xeno abilities, and a well designed stress system.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how the rules work, so you can better judge for yourself:

– Skill Checks

Skill checks are pretty simple and easy to run, with just four attributes (Strength, Agility, Wits, Empathy) and three corresponding skills under each attribute (examples: Heavy Machinery, Piloting, Comtech and Medical Aid). To make a check you add your skill rating to your base attribute score to create a dice pool of d6s, and if you roll a 6 on any of the dice then you succeed the check (additional successes above the first, confer added benefits at the Game Mother’s discretion).

I wouldn’t usually advocate for such a system, because relying on 6s for success makes outcomes unpredictable, and, to balance the game, checks often require too many dice to be made quickly… but for a game based on horror and things going wrong, this system works well. Especially, because, as your stress increases, you add dice equal to your stress level to the pool…. yes, your adrenaline can help you succeed in tasks you might otherwise fail! But the flipside is that if you roll a facehugger (ie. a 1) on any of your stress dice you have to roll on the Stress Response table, which will likely give you an ongoing penalty you have to deal with.

You can also “push rolls”, which enables you to re-roll any non-facehugger failures in your dice pool. This is a really core part of the game, since succeeding or failing in a roll in Alien RPG often means difference between life and death, and – as I mentioned – rolling a success is swingy. Of course there’s a trade off though! Pushing yourself gains you an additional Stress Level. I tend to hate re-roll mechanics, for some very good reasons, but they work here in the context of a horror game, where using a re-roll also pushes you closer to the edge of breaking.

My main criticism of the system is that, with all these stress dice in addition to base dice, some of my PCs were rolling dice pools of 13, 14, or 15 dice towards the end of the game, which gets clumsy and annoying.

– Combat

Combat starts by drawing initiative cards to see who goes first… the kicker for the players being that most xenomorphs draw two cards, ie. act twice a round.

Players get a full action and quick action each round, the former of which can be used to attack, or do something else significant in combat (use a medkit etc); while your quick action can be used to move, aim, reload, or take partial cover…. or it can be saved so that you can take “an interrupt action” and defend against an attack.

Overall, it’s a pretty clean and clear action economy that allows the combat to move at a decent pace. No getting bogged down here.

Aliens function differently in that they have a number of signature attacks, and which they use is determined randomly. It’s a lot of fun to let the players roll a d6 to see which ability the xeno will use (that way it’s their fault if the xeno kills them… you’re just an impartial Game Mother!).

As in the films, xenos are deadly and tough to kill, and I felt like the mechanics got the balance right of making it possible but tough to fight them.

And of course, once the aliens are in close combat, they deal acid splash damage whenever they are hit. RPG heaven for sadistic GMs everywhere!

– Other Core Rules

The other core rules are the ones governing stress and panic, and they form the backbone of the game in terms of mechanically mirroring the terrifying situations the players find themselves in. I like the fact that stress and panic work more or less the same… the only real difference being that the Panic Response Table is reserved for more severe circumstances, and features more debilitating results.

As is often the case with these types of escalating mechanics, once players get to a certain level of stress they’re hopelessly f*cked. My advice to Game Mothers would be to hold back the stress at the start of a session. For example, I might only give the first player investigating a room with a mutilated corpse a stress level, rather than the whole party. In general, I think you want to give the players no more than 2 or 3 stress in the first half of an adventure, before letting things descend into anarchy in the second half. (Assuming you are playing a one shot with little chance to reduce stress).

Hope’s Last Day Starter Adventure

This adventure was originally included in the core rulebook of the 2019 edition of the ALIEN RPG, where it proved incredibly popular. From 2025, it’s no longer found in the core rulebook, but appears as its own separate book(let) within the Evolved Starter Set.

I’m going to write a separate post about running the adventure in the near future (do subscribe to the blog if you haven’t already), but I can say right now that it does a fantastic job of bringing the “classic” Alien experience to the table.

It’s set in Hadley’s Hope, the mining colony from the Aliens movie, but a little bit before Ripley and the marines get there. In other words, almost the entire citizen body of the unfortunate colony has been facehugged, killed, or captured and dragged to the xenos nascent hive. The players are actually members of the colony, but have been away on a surveyance mission and return to base to find it almost completely deserted.

The adventure plays out as a cross between a location crawl (the players need supplies and weapons) and a mystery (what happened here?), with of course some xenomorph run-ins and corporate duplicity. In other words, everything you want from your first Alien RPG adventure. It climaxes with a desperate rush to escape on the only shuttle on the moon, and potentially some PvP action… plus some “final horrors”.

My main criticism is that Game Mothers are not given enough back story and context to understand exactly what has happened on the colony while they were away on their survey mission. This made running the adventure harder than I would have liked, but I’ll touch on that in my full review and running notes.

Maps

You can see yourself the style of the maps from my photo below, but what you can’t see is that they are made of high-quality, thick paper, with a smooth finish that might even resist minor drinks spillages (I wouldn’t deliberately test that theory however!).

Personally, I like the art style and colour tones, and there’s the right level of detail for my tastes… enough to give players and Game Mothers something to go by, without cluttering the map or prescribing every last detail.

I would have preferred it, however, if the air vents were not displayed on the player maps, as it removes some of the mystery and danger from these areas which play the role of express highways for the xenomorphs. (Note: as the PCs are from the colony, you can display the maps openly throughout the adventure, as their characters are already familiar with all these zones).

Dice Sets

I love collecting RPG dice and these ones really augment the experience of playing the game. Sure, you could use some regular d6s, and determine which are base dice and which are stress dice by colour. But the jet black and hazard yellow of these rollers look sharp af, while the dedicated success and facehugger icons help set the right tone at the table.

If I was being greedy I’d say it would be nice to have another set of both the base and stress dice, given how big the dice pools can get in the game. We lost a bit of time, passing the dice around between players.

Other Resources

I don’t think I need to go into too much detail about the other resources, like rules reference sheets etc. But a few observations from play:

The motion tracker tokens really come in handy to build tension, as you can place them on the map and the players can never be sure what’s heading in their direction, or if it’s even on their level (the South Wing maps feature two floors).

The pack of physical cards added more to the game than I was expecting. The initiative cards speed up play and are fun to use, and the personal agenda cards add some tension to the game when you hand them out… as players can metagame a bit that not everyone they’re working with necessarily shares the same goals.

Finally, the weapon cards look really cool, but mostly feature guns that don’t appear in the starter adventure. It probably would have been more useful, in the short term at least, to have equipment cards that matched the equipment on the character sheets, or available to find during the adventure.

Conclusion & Rating

All things considered, I think the ALIEN Starter Set does everything a starter set should do.

It not only gives you everything you need to play the game, in as short a time as possible, but liberally sprinkles in fun tools that elevate the Alien experience and make it feel like a “premium” RPG experience.

That makes my Hipster Rating: ★★★★★

Acid test passed.

You can buy the ALIEN Starter Boxed Set on the Free League Publishing website for 438 kr (about $50).

Or you can pick up the PDF version of the Starter Set for just $20 on DrivethruRPG (obviously you don’t get the dice and props with this cheaper option, and you will have to print off maps and cards yourself).

Starter Set vs. Core Rulebook?

If you’re really serious about ALIEN The Roleplaying Game you might want to save some money and invest in the Core Rulebook right away, which will enable longer and deeper gameplay.

But, given that ALIEN RPG is ideally suited to one-shots and short “cinematic” adventures (there’s a limit to how many times you can face off against the same foes!), you could make a case that the Evolved Starter Set is actually the best buying option for many new Game Mothers. You can always supplement the set with further Free League adventures, like Rapture Protocol, if you want to keep playing… as each adventure comes with pre-gens (if you want to be able to make your own characters, you will need to buy the Core Rulebook at some point, so bear that in mind!).

Full Transparency: I was given a free copy of the starter set by Free League Publishing. All opinions are my own.

My RPG News

Apart from playing ALIEN RPG, I’ve been busy speaking to more cool folks in the industry about The Creative Game Master’s Guide to Extraordinary Locations. The latest chat I had was with the awesome Jason and Joey at The Adventure Archive podcast.

They are usually an actual play stream / podcast that play Dragonbane (also by Free League!), but they were really interested in using my book to generate new locations for their campaign(s) and we had a fantastic chat about how to do that… and also about loads of other RPG related stuff. Check it out if you have time…. they are even giving away a free copy of the book! (Watch the video’s intro for how to get involved).

Meanwhile, after contributing an epic post on designing great combat locations during January’s RPG Blog Carnival on locations, DnD Lounge made an accompanying video, and it’s definitely one to bookmark. It’s absolutely jam-packed with stealable ideas, with a little cameo of my Bone Dragon Pyramid as an example of how to create an interesting battlemap.

If you haven’t picked up Extraordinary Locations yet, and don’t have time to enter The Adventure Archive’s competition, it’s available to buy on Amazon and all the usual places.

And if you are based in the UK it seems like you can pick it up at Forbidden Planet! My friend just sent me this photo today… seems like I’m always the last to know!

Finally, a fellow Dungeon Master got in touch with me this week to ask about a sequel to DRAGONBOWL, my epic gladiatorial adventure… he was also kind enough to say that it was probably the best adventure he has run in 40 years of playing Dungeons & Dragons!

Sadly, no such plans exist right now, but if a few more people pick it up I will start to consider if it’s possible… you can read more reviews on the DMs Guild.

What’s Next?

As mentioned, I will post a full review of the ALIEN RPG adventure Hope’s Last Day very soon (update: it’s live)… and, thinking back to D&D, I am brewing up an exceptionally simple crits and fumbles table. My current gaming groups have stopped bothering consulting larger injury tables etc., so I’m going for something super stripped down this time.

I’ve also got a bunch of new RPGs on my bedside table that I’m reading through, including more ALIEN RPG material. How much time I dedicate to ALIEN and other games will be partly down to popular demand, so if you’re digging this conversation please say hi in the comments, or share this post with some potential Game Mothers!