Ok I love Free League and I really love Alien the Game. I love the way the mechanic feeds the fundamental narrative and I suspect it'll will always have pride of place on the shelf. But this module is awful, its railroady beyond belief, the characters are given almost no agency, there are troupes that are apparently genius, but are just repeats of the past. Its far too long as a rail road adventure, and could have been perfectly setup as an actual sandbox, but that option was missed in the design. I have played it once and now have it as a copy, I will never run it and as noted I love Alien.

If Chariot of the Gods is Alien, this movie is Aliens. It's an awesome cinematic scenario with a great story and tons of great alien action. It begins with some good investigation and rp type stuff, but quickly escalates in intensity as the marines deal with trying escape a moon that is quickly becoming overrun with xenomorphs and an invasion by the UPP. One of the things that I like about this scenario is that there are tons of fun event ideas to spice it up, but a lot of them are optional, so the GM has a lot of freedom to control the pacing. It's a pretty long adventure split into 3 acts. At best, you could probably complete one act in a session, but with all the optional event content, you could easily extend it to 2+ sessions per act. The scenario has a number of great maps and the adventure location is very well detailed. As a nice bonus it's available for a couple of the big VTTs.

One caveat- I wouldn't recommend this for a newbie GM. It has a lot of moving parts, and I think you need to be an at least somewhat experienced GM to pull it off well.

Destroyer of Worlds

Destroyer of Worlds is the second part of the Alien role-playing campaign that began with Chariot of the Gods. This time, however, the players take on new roles, namely that of Colonial Marines stationed on Ariarcus in the Kruger 60 system. The base is located on a cold moon, far away in the frontier. Originally, Ariarcus was a successful oil production colony, but there was unrest that led to the military taking over the moon and adding a garrison. After the neighboring system is invaded by the Union of Progressive People (UPP), most of the troops stationed on the moon are sent out for a counter-offensive. Although a large part of the civilian inhabitants has long abandoned the colony, the remaining colonists now want to flee from a possible invasion by the UPP.

Against this backdrop, the player characters are sent out on a special mission to track down four deserted Marines who have stolen military secrets. But this is only the prelude to a three-act horror story. Finding the deserters in a colony full of disgruntled colonists who cannot leave the moon due to a blockade is no easy task. After locating the Marines, however, the story really picks up: not only does the war reach the colony, but dangerous alien creatures turn the mission into a brutal fight for survival.

Destroyer of Worlds, as the second part of the trilogy, has clear parallels to the second film in the original Alien series. Here, the focus is on a group of Marines, and the subtitle of Alien 2 “This time it's war” would fit Destroyer of Worlds perfectly. Chances are that one or more of the pre-generated characters will not survive the story. The personal goals of the various characters also help to increase the challenge through additional tensions. A new element, the story cards that come into play as the game progresses, complicating things even further. Similar to the personal agenda, players earn points if they follow the story cards.

The setting is extensively described and offers various maps of the major facilities. While there is an overarching story arc, there is a large number of optional scenes that depend heavily on the actions of the player characters. Included are various handouts in the form of maps, pre-generated characters, and equipment cards in the usual format for Alien.

Those who enjoyed Chariot of the Gods will find a fresh and even harder challenge in Destroyer of Worlds. Although the story is only vaguely connected to the first adventure from the player's perspective, this adventure confronts the players with an exciting conflict and a good dose of horror from the Alien universe. Moreover, the additional material such as the maps, the equipment cards but also the personal agenda cards and intrigues of the various players and non-player characters greatly enrich the story. Conveniently, all necessary information about the Xenomorphs is once again summarized in this adventure. From my point of view, Destroyer of Worlds is definitely worth a recommendation, provided the players are willing to let their characters suffer (and probably die) and the game mother is willing to spend some time to prepare the complex and multi-faceted setting.

(Björn Lippold)

This was a great cinematic scenario and can end as explosively as you can imagine. Some truly "cinematic" moments that I'll remember for a long time.

Unfair, really f-ing stupid at times, but what a ride.

I felt like I had to write up a heck of a lot compared to Chariot of the Gods because the force structure for the Colonial Marines is completely FUBAR even though they're all getting reassigned to Charlie Squad. Like, give me more context for this, and why it's so f-ked up that they're pulling Marines from all over to create a separate fireteam because it makes no sense.

You can make it make sense, but it's not inherently there. And a lot of the scenario feels that way because there's a lot of interesting mystery and a lot of stuff that seems just bonkers.

At least two of the pregens have really f-ked up secrets to them. If you play them straight up, then it's possible that those players are just f'kd from the start, which feels totally bonkers and unfair. You really have to structure the storytelling to make some of it not as fkd up, IMO... which you can do, but you really really have to commit to un-fking those characters in the scenes.

If your player won't react well to being fkd, then it can go fking badly. I totally love the concept as long as you're committed to the story and not just creating a TPK, but it's so easy to trigger a TPK in this one.

There are ways to stack the deck a little more in favor of the players, but there's so much where they can just be fkd. So if you like old school concepts where you have a million ways to fk your player, there's that in bunches here.

The other challenge is putting context to the Colonial Marine presence at Kruger 60 & 61-Cygni. IMO, it's better when you've got military structure around these guys, so filling out the organization helps lend more "realism" to it. You can tell this came before the Colonial Marines handbook due to the weird lack of organizational structure. I kind of made up my own stuff, combined with the US Marine Corps structure and the known structure of the US Colonial Marine Corps (like Marine Space Force Eridani in the USCMC versus the Marine Expeditionary Forces in the US Marine Corps, the use of Marine Assault Units in the USCMC versus Marine Expeditionary Units in the US Marine Corps, etc.) Adding quasi-military structure to the setting of Destroyer of Worlds helps make it feel less wrong, but also a lot more wrong in other ways (like, why are these dudes being detached from their MAU and embedded with a black ops Special Operations Regiment? There are many possible reasons, but nothing you ever really learn).

And, yes, the pregens mostly have boring Agendas that don't move like they do in "Chariot of the Gods". There's nothing in the Agendas that make me go, "AH HA! That is AWESOME." It's mostly just Colonial Marines getting fkkd into a sh!tty situation.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely LOVE "Dante", but it's not like her Agenda is anything amazing despite her backstory.

I'll recomend this if you spend the time to make it work for your players. I wouldn't play it straight up, especially now with the Colonial Marines handbook giving you more resources to work from. IMO, I'd prefer to drop in a whole second squad (to make up a full section)... and they can serve as backups to guard the APC while the main team does its thing. At least that can help justify a high body count rather than stick unlucky players with Iona or Zmiejewski as a replacement.

I'd avoid this if you're only looking to fk with your players. It's too easy in this scenario to be a d!ck of a Game Mother.

Group had some of the most fun with the scenarios in this adventure, but it is LONG. Expect this to be 3-5 sessions. Theres a lot for the GM to keep track of but worth a shot, for sure. Just be prepared for a slog!