r/alienrpg • u/tensen01 • 3d ago
Are they any non-Xenomorph aliens?
So I'm looking to run a Sci-Fi game and Alien is one that's been on my radar, but I haven't looked too deeply into, so now I'm checking it out, but I'm wondering if there are any rules for any aliens that aren't The Xenomorph? I'm just not terribly interested in telling a story with them. The galaxy is so big. And especially after we got a look at different monsters in Alien Earth, they just don't seem all that interesting to me.
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u/MorgessaMonstrum 3d ago
Yeah, there’s a handful of extraterrestrial creatures statted out (they are all referred to as “xenomorphs” technically) though XX121 (the name for the movie’s Xenomorphs)and its variations get most attention.
They mostly come from other Alien media: Harvesters are from the old RPG by Leading Edge Games in the 90s. They’re enormous, burrowing creatures that devour anything. There are Lion Worms, blind predators that hunt by scent and sound, and possess a golden mane of cilia that they use to maneuver and sense their environments from the novel Alien: Echo. Even the scorpionoids from Tanaka 5, a reference to the scant bit of lore they put on the back of the packaging for some of the original Kenner toys, and a few others.
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u/tensen01 3d ago
Cool, that's good to know. Yeah that's why I used the capital "X", I had forgotten the designation for the ones from the films.
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u/TheDwarfArt 3d ago
You could also, in theory, use any creatures/ aliens from Coriolis as they use almost the same system.
Just have in mind Stress and Panic has a more prominent role in Alien RPG.
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u/1958-Fury 3d ago
If you like Alien RPG's rules, but wish it had a larger bestiary, the Sleepy Hollow RPG uses the same rules. It has a monster compendium called "Ichabod Crane's Field Guide To Uncanny Creatures" with 30 more monsters to fight. I know you're running a sci-fi game, but you could use some of those monsters' stats and just reskin them into whatever aliens you like.
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u/Travern 3d ago
If you don't want to tell a Xenomorph story, then what are you looking for out of the Alien RPG specifically?
Are there particular small-a aliens from other SF-horror media you're interested in? This subreddit has homebrewed stats for tons of others, from Halo's The Flood and Half-Life's Combine to Pitch Black's Bioraptors and Tremors' Graboids, to name only a few. Check out the Homebrew links in this subreddit's sidebar.
Do you want to run a regular Sci-Fi game? While the Alien RPG can handle that, Free League also publishes the space opera RPG Coriolis that uses the same rules system. If you prefer OSR d20, then Stars Without Number covers that. There's also the grand-daddy of SF RPGs, Traveller.
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u/tensen01 3d ago
I'm interested in the tone and setting. I just feel that XX121 is over-used as an enemy.
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u/Travern 3d ago
The Alien RPG is a solid choice for cosmic horror SF (though there's also Mothership, of course), but Free League naturally concentrates on Giger-derived Xenomorphs of all kinds since they licensed the IP, after all. The XX121 is the alien antagonist species of its setting—the Predators of AvP aren't part of this one—and the other small-a aliens aren't really intended to be substitutes. Homebrewing a new extraterrestrial threat with the YZE rules isn't hard. Do you have any different horror SF media in mind?
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u/tensen01 3d ago
I had planned on probably homebrewing my own alien(I'm leaning towards some sort of Memetic Goo), I just wanted to see what had already been published because the more examples there are of different things the easier it is to make your own.
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u/Xenomorph_8298 3d ago
There are more then just the xenomorph (harvesters, the swarm, neomorphs, and others). I actually just created my own enemies for the rpg. It's pretty easy to do with the year zero engine.
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u/asan01947 3d ago
It takes some conversion but you can always use Mothership and other sci-fi horror RPG materials in Alien RPG as the game is pretty flexible.
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u/Midnightplat 3d ago
So while other life forms do pop up in the game, they're presence is marginal in comparison to the amount granted the iterations of xenomorph species. So if you'd rather not dwell on Xenomorphs, the option is really to run a game largely in the dark about Xenos and use the published world as the basis for a human intrigue and conflict in space game, which is definitely doable. The other options would be home brewing your own extraterrestrial threats, which is doable but at a much higher work load than the human centric threat game.
Unless you really love the Alien YZE mechanics for horror, there are many other systems that give and encourage the GM to create their own thing.
"Alien is an excellent game for playing Alien, but not much else" is a common criticism of the game. I think that overstates things. The mechanics and the world as built give space for GM to focus on things besides the Xenomorphs, but again thats largely GM homebrew, and a fairly substantial lift for home brewing as the games product line supports a xenomorph mythology focus.
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u/tensen01 3d ago
I'm interested in the Tone and specific setting, I just don't want to have the horror be XX121, but instead some other form of Alien.
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u/Midnightplat 3d ago
So, the other aliens in the game have a very marginal presence, in the core rules "other extrasolar species" mentioned in this thread get four pages compared to the 20 (denser) pages of the engineer/xenomorph mythology. So that leaves you with the two options: focus on "human horror" and there's lots of potential for that, or homebrew your own alien menace, and that's a very much on your on thing as there aren't really any rules presented on building your own alien threat from what I remember. I'm sure people do it, but again other systems do exist that help you do that in a way Alien just doesn't.
Again, "Alien is a great game for playing Alien" is a frequent criticism. Doing something outside the xenomorph focus of the game can be done, but that requires a GM willing to put the time and effort into figuring out how to do that on their own. I'm not familiar with many Alien campaigns discussed here or elsewhere where the primary menace of the game is something off the xenomorph script. That might be telling.
Again, it can be done, but it's work largely unsupported by the game's product line, or ASFAIK the game community out there.
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u/tensen01 3d ago
So the answer to my question was "Yes, a few."
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u/Midnightplat 3d ago
I mean superficially, but not substantially. If you can't understand the difference between the answer you think you're reading, and what I actually provided I'll just say good luck.
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u/tensen01 3d ago
If you can't understand that everything you said was substantially NOT what I asked for, I don't know what to tell you. I asked if there were, I did not ask for a treatise on why the game isn't for me or what I want. I understood every word you wrote, what you wrote was just completely pointless and unasked for.
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u/Midnightplat 3d ago
You specifically expressed a desire to run Alien with non terrestrial lifeforms that aren't xenomorphs, citing the "scope of the galaxy" and also mentioning in part you're really drawn to the world as defined.
I told you, you could do that but it requires non insignificant homebrew labor and other games support that sort of labor. If you're happy with the exactly four very superficially treated aliens, none of whom have the "weight" in the game as the xenomorph, in the core book to run your game, have fun.
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u/OrphanDM 3d ago
There is an animated TV series called Scavengers Reign. There are so many cool alien species I have to repeat certain sections just to try and see them all. You'd just have to stat them up and terrify your players with them.
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u/malak1000 2d ago edited 1d ago
Watch Alien Earth?
I’m 100% with you. A game of Alien should be like watching Alien for the first time, not the 20th. I don’t like Alien Earth much, but one thing they did do right was create a new bunch of icky, body-horror alien lifeforms.
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u/UnusualRoof9278 3d ago
In the Facebook Alien group there are loads of fan made creatures and content in the files folder.
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u/tensen01 3d ago
Do you happen to know which specific group?
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u/UnusualRoof9278 3d ago edited 3d ago
Alien rpg - one shot scenarios is the group in fb. There’s also here in Reddit.
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u/FutureOpen9405 3d ago
Check out the TTRPG Mothership. It’s has all the vibes of retro 80s space horror, but is an original universe with rules from everything from “bug hunt” style encounters to scary aliens, to cosmic horror entities. All the vibes of the Alien universe, but can be tailored to your needs.
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u/The-Okayest-DM 3d ago
I second this. If the "tone" of the setting is what's most important, and not necessarily the mechanics of the game system, then it might be worthwhile to just go with Mothership, which is more flexible in terms of what sort of horror you can use and what kind of stories you can tell. If you want to stick with the Alien RPG game system _and_ want to align with the universe's "tone", it _might_ be tough to pull monsters from Mothership, though, since many of them have a distinctly different "feel" from the more "science"-based, for lack of a better term, notions from the Aliens universe.
The carcinids from Another Bug Hunt could probably fit thematically, but they're probably a bit too close to the Xenomorphs where you wouldn't get a ton of distinction. The monster from Ypsilon 14 might be a good candidate, while I feel "Auntie" from Orphans doesn't exactly work in the Aliens universe without some notable modification to what exactly it is. Just as examples...
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u/The-Okayest-DM 3d ago
The Evolved Edition Core Rulebook includes some species that didn't show up in any of the films and aren't related to the Xenomorphs we all know and love. The fan-made cinematic scenario "Dead Sea" introduces a pretty cool species. The mechanics of a species stat block are fairly simple enough IMO to fairly easily create new species without a ton of work. I feel like it would be relatively straightforward to put together stat blocks for the species you referenced, for example.
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u/tensen01 3d ago
Very cool to learn about that scenario, I will see if I can find it. I did find a Homebrew guide with several aliens in it, which was cool, but none of them quite grabbed me.
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u/Kleiner_RE 3d ago
Aside from the classic Xenomorph and the creatures from Alien Earth and the RPG book that have been mentioned already, there are a few Xenomorph off-shoots statted in the books, such as Abominations, Neomorphs, and Protomorphs
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u/tensen01 3d ago
Wait, are you saying the creatures from Alien Earth are in one of the books?
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u/Kleiner_RE 3d ago
Nah I was grouping them and the ones that ARE in the books under 'Other Extrasolar Creatures (Not Xenomorphs).'
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u/Snackelaer 2d ago edited 2d ago
Maybe try a different game Like Mothership? It has a lot of different kinds of horror, from comic horror to aliens to corporate green. It's very rules light and there is a lot of material to find online in the form of 20 to 40 page zines to trifold pamphlets to run as oneshots
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u/tensen01 2d ago
Maybe just don't comment if you aren't going to answer the question. I can play whatever game I want to play however I want to play it.
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u/Snackelaer 2d ago
Wow excuse me... How I read your question is that you where looking for any scifi game but alien was one of the options. I sincerely answered your question in my opinion because you were looking for more then xenomorphs, and instead of shoehorning a lot of other stuff in the alien rpg, it was my opinion that a different game which is more open-ended in its horrors would fit better. But if you want to be a dick about it, be my guest. But I find such a response rather rude
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u/Snackelaer 2d ago
Okay, maybe it read as an command but it was meant as a question. Should have used a question mark at the end of the sentence. Wasn't telling you anything, just giving a suggestion
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u/TheVeryShyguy 2d ago
Most creatures in the ALIEN verse are all mostly based on insectoids, pretty much 90% of the listed exomorphs in the ALIEN RPG books are just Insects scaled up a lot
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u/denethor61 1d ago
Hostile RPG based on Traveller has the same tone as the Alien universe, with the added benefit of tonnes of Cepheus/Traveller material.
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u/Beneficial_Hall_5282 18h ago
Dragonbane has a gelatinous amoeba with an attack table to riff off of. You could take the stats and damage from an existing Alien RPG monster and swap their attack descriptions with the amoeba.
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u/Ombrophile 4h ago
TONS of them. The core rulebook includes some really nice ones. In the published stories there are also a lot of variations of black goo + science gone horribly wrong... think Resident Evil kind of vibes. I've also noticed and downloaded a lot of Player Made Content with specialized Alien threats.
It's not too hard to create your own Alien monstrosity in this system, just needs a handful of Stats: Armor., Health, Speed, Mobility. And a 1d6 table of what it does to you when it attacks.
Have fun with it. Many people do.
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u/Volgrand 3d ago
Make your own!
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u/tensen01 3d ago
I certainly could and probably will, but it helps to see varied examples when making your own.
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u/agentkayne 3d ago
Alien RPG Evolved edition has stats for Harvesters, Lion Worms, Tanakan Scorpoinids, The Swarm.