Free League Publishing Announce Alien: The Roleplaying Game

[[cancerblack]]

I can respect that, that approach just isn't for me.
It's also part of why seeing the RPG make wacky offhand references to obscure silly shit has me cackling like a crazy person. This is some of the most fun I've had with the franchise in ages.

I think the best way to sum up my attitude is that I'll argue heatedly about why something fairly reasonable is shit and should be ignored, then spend hundreds of hours making the whole damn Kenner range as 28mm game pieces, then probably argue for the thing I argued against a week prior because it tickles my fancy today.

But as I said:

I'm not overly worried about making it all fit or unpicking a "coherent truth"

[Xiggz456]

It doesn't reference anything from "Labryinth". But some new things I noticed were that it included Bowen's Landing, LV-492 and LV-422 from the Tongal Shorts. It also mentions the swarm from Dan Abnett's short story in "Bug Hunt" and lion-worms from the  "Echo" novel. The world building has been a real treat and the events from "Chariot of the Gods" scenario is certainly going in my canon.

[Xenomrph]

What are the Tongal Shorts?

[[cancerblack]]

What are the Tongal Shorts?

The short films from early in the year.

[Xiggz456]

Ya what CB said. Specifically The planetoids are from Ore, Specimen, and Nightshift.

[HuDaFuK]

If they aren't sure eggs are there, and there's a quarantine in place preventing them from accessing the planet, it could very well have been easier to clone Ripley "under the radar".

So get some pirates to do it "under the radar", like they literally did to acquire live human hosts despite that also being illegal as f*ck.

The film makes it pretty clear the cloning project was immensely difficult, and if you throw in the novelisation as well, it took decades to get it even half-right. The idea they'd go to all that effort when there were eggs lying about is nonsensical.

Not to mention Perez saying for all intents and presupposes Ripley wiped the Aliens out strongly implies their cloning project is the only option left.

[SM]

And if you throw in the novelisation again it entirely removes the implication and outright states the Derelict was destroyed, along with the eggs with the AP Station destruction leaving a crater just a little smaller than Nebraska.

[HuDaFuK]

That too.

But some new things I noticed were that it included Bowen's Landing, LV-492 and LV-422 from the Tongal Shorts. It also mentions the swarm from Dan Abnett's short story in "Bug Hunt"...

I missed the short film nods!

I dug that the creatures from Abnett's Reaper got a mention though, as that was perhaps my favourite short from that book.

[Xenomrph]

If they aren't sure eggs are there, and there's a quarantine in place preventing them from accessing the planet, it could very well have been easier to clone Ripley "under the radar".

So get some pirates to do it "under the radar", like they literally did to acquire live human hosts despite that also being illegal as f*ck.

The film makes it pretty clear the cloning project was immensely difficult, and if you throw in the novelisation as well, it took decades to get it even half-right. The idea they'd go to all that effort when there were eggs lying about is nonsensical.

Not to mention Perez saying for all intents and presupposes Ripley wiped the Aliens out strongly implies their cloning project is the only option left.

Cloning may very well have been an easier and more viable opportunity than acquiring eggs, no matter who they tasked with doing it. If the planet is under some kind of quarantine or whatever, maybe hijacking a ship and kidnapping people is the easier option.

At this point there are more sources saying the Derelict could have survived than those saying it didn't, and the ones saying it didn't are really easy to work around.
The point is that the RPG is intentionally ambiguous about it, and rightly so as it offers an interesting story hook for RPG players if they want to use it. If you want to believe that it was destroyed then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

And if you throw in the novelisation again it entirely removes the implication and outright states the Derelict was destroyed, along with the eggs with the AP Station destruction leaving a crater just a little smaller than Nebraska.

The Nebraska thing was hyperbole to emphasize how shitty their situation was - we know how big a 40 megaton blast is.

[Local Trouble]

If they aren't sure eggs are there, and there's a quarantine in place preventing them from accessing the planet, it could very well have been easier to clone Ripley "under the radar".

So get some pirates to do it "under the radar", like they literally did to acquire live human hosts despite that also being illegal as f*ck.

As I stated earlier...

I guess that all depends on how a quarantine is enforced in this scenario.  Maybe the hypothetical picket drones that I suggested before are also armed with military-grade weapons, thus preventing any violators from even approaching LV-426 without being fired on and potentially killed.

Pirates may be willing to risk it.  Then again, maybe they did and never came back.

[Samhain13]

I like where this is going.

[Xenomrph]

Express elevator to hell, goin' down.

[Local Trouble]

And who would be crazy enough to go looking for them with all the risks involved?  Your next RPG party, that's who.

[Xenomrph]

Not just that, let's think about how an Auriga-contracted egg-hunt might shake out:

Auriga contracts some mercenaries to do an off-the-books job. Grabbing eggs is dangerous without some kind of preparation, so the Auriga tells the mercs vaguely what they're dealing with so they don't f**k it up - the Auriga doesn't get their eggs if all the mercs are dead, after all.

Who knows if the pay is "good", or maybe the mercs start to think they've got a goldmine on their hands and double-cross the Auriga and try to find a higher bidder - assuming the details of the job haven't already leaked and someone on the Auriga flips for the opportunity for a payday, or one of the mercs opens their mouth and corporate interests find out about the job ahead of time and sabotage/intercept it. There's a lot of ways the Auriga could get f**ked, and they'd have no recourse. Shit, maybe it already happened "off screen" and it's not brought up in the movie.

And since you're dealing with Aliens, the mercs could still drop the ball and get themselves killed at any point despite having an idea of what they're getting themselves into. And all of this is irrespective of a hypothetical blockade or quarantine or whatever.

Or you send the mercs in blind with minimal instruction, and hope they don't pull a Nostromo and get themselves killed, or that they get clever and sell out anyway.

Telling a bunch of mercs to capture a bunch of warm bodies and not tell them why is likely to raise less questions and decrease the chances of something going wrong, and that's probably a big factor in why the Auriga did what it did.

[Local Trouble]

There's also the question of territoriality during the era of Alien Resurrection.  Is LV-426 even located within USM-controlled space?  Maybe the old corporations fled Earth and made homes on far-flung colony worlds where they maintain control over their territorial holdings with military power of their own.