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Alien The Roleplaying Game
Alien RPG: Destroyer of Worlds
The mission was a manhunt, the objectives clear - track down four fugitives, recover any assets they may have made off with, and keep 'em all out of enemy hands. Go find them on a frozen moon full of hostiles and get it done on the eve of war.
Nothing you couldn't handle.
But what those bastards stole - and how the hell it got inside them - is another thing altogether. It's all above your paygrade, marine - but somehow you're the one who's got to deal with it.
Of course, now there's an invasion fleet incoming, and there's something else, too - something much worse. Something out there hates you - hate everyone. Something big and ugly. Something with metal teeth - and you're pretty sure it ain't alone.
Yeah, the mission was supposed to be a simple manhunt. Instead it turned out to be just another glorious day in the corps.
Destroyer of Worlds is a complete Cinematic scenario for the Alien roleplaying game, written by sci-fi novelist Andrew E.C. Gaska. In Destroyer of Worlds, player's take on the roles of Colonial Marines. The scenario is designed for 3-5 players plus the Game Mother, and it's gauntlet of one hell after another. Expect it to take at least three sessions to complete. This boxed set contains:
-The main Destroyer of Worlds scenario book
-A huge double-sided map (format 864x558mm) with Ariarcus colony on one side and the Fort Nebraska space elevator ground base on the other
-Seven pre-generated characters to choose from
-Custom cards for weapons, vehicles, and personal agendas
-Player maps and handouts
Note: The Alien RPG core rulebook or the Alien RPG Starter Set is required to play Destroyer of Worlds.
Nothing you couldn't handle.
But what those bastards stole - and how the hell it got inside them - is another thing altogether. It's all above your paygrade, marine - but somehow you're the one who's got to deal with it.
Of course, now there's an invasion fleet incoming, and there's something else, too - something much worse. Something out there hates you - hate everyone. Something big and ugly. Something with metal teeth - and you're pretty sure it ain't alone.
Yeah, the mission was supposed to be a simple manhunt. Instead it turned out to be just another glorious day in the corps.
Destroyer of Worlds is a complete Cinematic scenario for the Alien roleplaying game, written by sci-fi novelist Andrew E.C. Gaska. In Destroyer of Worlds, player's take on the roles of Colonial Marines. The scenario is designed for 3-5 players plus the Game Mother, and it's gauntlet of one hell after another. Expect it to take at least three sessions to complete. This boxed set contains:
-The main Destroyer of Worlds scenario book
-A huge double-sided map (format 864x558mm) with Ariarcus colony on one side and the Fort Nebraska space elevator ground base on the other
-Seven pre-generated characters to choose from
-Custom cards for weapons, vehicles, and personal agendas
-Player maps and handouts
Note: The Alien RPG core rulebook or the Alien RPG Starter Set is required to play Destroyer of Worlds.
88 pages, Box Set
First published January 1, 2020
6 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Andrew E.C. Gaska
29 books60 followersWith two decades of experience in the comics and video game industries, author Andrew E.C. Gaska is the Senior Development Editor at Lion Forge LLC. Having previously freelanced for Lion Forge’s Labs division as a script, pitch, and proposal writer, he now generates original IP for the brand, developing both comics and animation projects while working closely with creative teams to guide their vision to fruition.
He is founder/creative director of the guerrilla integrated-media studio BLAM! Ventures, and for the past three years has worked as a freelance franchise consultant to 20TH CENTURY FOX, writing series reference bibles, maintaining continuity, streamlining in-universe canon, and creating detailed timelines for the legacy franchises of ALIEN®, Predator®, and Planet of the Apes®. He was also a sequential storytelling instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York and for seventeen years served as a visual consultant to Rockstar Games on the Grand Theft Auto series, Red Dead Revolver, and all other releases.
Known as ‘Drew’ to his friends, his online sci-fi and sociopolitical essays on social media and at rogue-reviewer.com draw controversial debate and discussion from all sides. His graphic novels and prose works include Critical Millennium™, Space:1999™, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century®: The Draconian Fire Saga, Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes®, Tales from the Forbidden Zone: The Unknown Ape™, and the upcoming novel, Death of the Planet of the Apes®.
Drew resides in Gulf Breeze, Florida with his affectionately glutinous feline, Adrien. Find out more about his upcoming projects at www.blamventures.com
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 13, 2020
I may have written it, as well...
October 25, 2021
I'm a big fan of the Alien franchise (since seeing the first film in the theater as a kid) and a big fan of the Alien RPG. My group of 3 players (plus myself as GM) just finished this adventure, which took 5 sessions and over 20 hours to complete. We all had a great time playing it.
The adventure would probably be a bit difficult for a new GM, as it is very sandbox, and there are a lot of moving parts and NPC's to keep track of. The GM definitely needs to read and be very familiar with the adventure before running it.
The box contents are all top notch and all add to the fun. Maps, cards, secret agendas, etc.
The adventure can be played using the Core rulebook, or the Quick Start rules from the Starter Box set. If you own Chariot of the Gods, I do recommend running that adventure first.
A very memorable adventure that is well worth the price. I highly recommend it to any fans of the films and rpg.
The adventure would probably be a bit difficult for a new GM, as it is very sandbox, and there are a lot of moving parts and NPC's to keep track of. The GM definitely needs to read and be very familiar with the adventure before running it.
The box contents are all top notch and all add to the fun. Maps, cards, secret agendas, etc.
The adventure can be played using the Core rulebook, or the Quick Start rules from the Starter Box set. If you own Chariot of the Gods, I do recommend running that adventure first.
A very memorable adventure that is well worth the price. I highly recommend it to any fans of the films and rpg.
Read
October 4, 2022This cinematic adventure is a continuation of the adventure in the starter kit, but you don't need to play that one to get through this one -- and of course, there's very little expectation that the PCs will get through this because it's in cinematic mode. Which means that the authors are free to make this a meat grinder, which it is.
(Quick note: there's a lot of books titled "Destroyer of Worlds," which at first I thought was too generic, but now it looks like the three adventures in this line -- "Chariot of the Gods", "Destroyer of Worlds", "Heart of Darkness" -- are all named after classic/known books/lines. So: still generic, but at least there's a clear intention there.)
Here's the story: There once was an oil-rich moon with prosperous people who owned their own factory; but due to security concerns and/or corporate greed, the moon got taken over by the colonial marines. So now you have an ex-prosperous people caught between the capitalist country and the socialist country, which is good tinder for a rebellion and a coming invasion by the socialist army.
Add to that the fact that someone in the marine base was experimenting with alien DNA weapons, and that four marines got infected and have now gone AWOL. Which means that the evacuation of the moon before the invasion has to stop.
Your (disposable) PCs are marines tasked with finding these four (Act 1), dealing with an invasion (Act 2), and trying to get off world from a fortress now crawling with aliens (Act 3). And I guess one way to view this is to say that the danger ramps up from "investigation in a mostly friendly land" to "traveling through land contested by human forces" to "alien-infested claustrophobia-fest with corporate and android betrayal, and also rain of poison goo that seems totally unnecessary."
It's that last part that really gets me: narratively I understand why the adventure wants to push the PCs into the fort (to access the space elevator), but it just feels so grim.
As with the other Alien books, it's nice looking, though the art tends towards being dark and muddy -- though now I feel like I'm critiquing this for being an Alien work: yes, it's grim, yes, the art is dark, yes, the read-aloud scripts are purple to the point of being campy. Or let me put it this way: the ~80 page booklet starts with a description of the setting that the PCs will be going through, and each area is described as how it would appear in Acts 1, 2, and 3 -- and every place gets so unimaginably worse, that it really makes the PCs' actions seem futile or even just selfish: is saving yourself the only thing worth doing?
Basically: much like a screenplay, an adventure is a blueprint, but the actual artistic experience is playing it, and I've never played this so I don't know how it plays. But it reminds me a lot of the Mothership sourcebook/adventure A Pound of Flesh, which similarly featured an unescapable location being driven into chaos and madness, and yet... was that version more hopeful that the poison could be drained?
(Or put this way: in a haunted house/horror movie, like Alien, the goal of the protagonists is to survive; only in Aliens and Alien 3 is there some notion of something beyond survival, like "doing the right thing" or "helping other people." God, we need some sort of community-building Alien game/movie...)
OK, pause: I've talked before about how the Alien RPG has almost a resource/strategy management boardgame style, but is there something we can swipe or be inspired by for other RPGs? Well, I love the idea that characters can have secret agenda cards and even that those cards can change in different sections of the adventure. (In general: I really like the idea of cards to give to players rather than scraps of paper with notes or taking them out to the hall.) In such a meat-grinder scenario, I like the notes on replacement PCs and really, I might want to run this as if you were assembling allies more. (There's one note that says, sure, the NPCs in Act 3 now want to be friends; and one encounter with possibly friendly ex-enemy androids. But I want more explicit moments of connection possible.)
(Quick note: there's a lot of books titled "Destroyer of Worlds," which at first I thought was too generic, but now it looks like the three adventures in this line -- "Chariot of the Gods", "Destroyer of Worlds", "Heart of Darkness" -- are all named after classic/known books/lines. So: still generic, but at least there's a clear intention there.)
Here's the story: There once was an oil-rich moon with prosperous people who owned their own factory; but due to security concerns and/or corporate greed, the moon got taken over by the colonial marines. So now you have an ex-prosperous people caught between the capitalist country and the socialist country, which is good tinder for a rebellion and a coming invasion by the socialist army.
Add to that the fact that someone in the marine base was experimenting with alien DNA weapons, and that four marines got infected and have now gone AWOL. Which means that the evacuation of the moon before the invasion has to stop.
Your (disposable) PCs are marines tasked with finding these four (Act 1), dealing with an invasion (Act 2), and trying to get off world from a fortress now crawling with aliens (Act 3). And I guess one way to view this is to say that the danger ramps up from "investigation in a mostly friendly land" to "traveling through land contested by human forces" to "alien-infested claustrophobia-fest with corporate and android betrayal, and also rain of poison goo that seems totally unnecessary."
It's that last part that really gets me: narratively I understand why the adventure wants to push the PCs into the fort (to access the space elevator), but it just feels so grim.
As with the other Alien books, it's nice looking, though the art tends towards being dark and muddy -- though now I feel like I'm critiquing this for being an Alien work: yes, it's grim, yes, the art is dark, yes, the read-aloud scripts are purple to the point of being campy. Or let me put it this way: the ~80 page booklet starts with a description of the setting that the PCs will be going through, and each area is described as how it would appear in Acts 1, 2, and 3 -- and every place gets so unimaginably worse, that it really makes the PCs' actions seem futile or even just selfish: is saving yourself the only thing worth doing?
Basically: much like a screenplay, an adventure is a blueprint, but the actual artistic experience is playing it, and I've never played this so I don't know how it plays. But it reminds me a lot of the Mothership sourcebook/adventure A Pound of Flesh, which similarly featured an unescapable location being driven into chaos and madness, and yet... was that version more hopeful that the poison could be drained?
(Or put this way: in a haunted house/horror movie, like Alien, the goal of the protagonists is to survive; only in Aliens and Alien 3 is there some notion of something beyond survival, like "doing the right thing" or "helping other people." God, we need some sort of community-building Alien game/movie...)
OK, pause: I've talked before about how the Alien RPG has almost a resource/strategy management boardgame style, but is there something we can swipe or be inspired by for other RPGs? Well, I love the idea that characters can have secret agenda cards and even that those cards can change in different sections of the adventure. (In general: I really like the idea of cards to give to players rather than scraps of paper with notes or taking them out to the hall.) In such a meat-grinder scenario, I like the notes on replacement PCs and really, I might want to run this as if you were assembling allies more. (There's one note that says, sure, the NPCs in Act 3 now want to be friends; and one encounter with possibly friendly ex-enemy androids. But I want more explicit moments of connection possible.)
January 30, 2022
I will give this 3 stars - reason being that it's a fair price for the package of materials we get while buying it and it still can be salvaged by our own imagination. By now you probably know Andrew Gaska wrote it - it's hard to miss because Gaska won't stop telling people he wrote this on ANY possible platform - which is strange because there is hardly anything to be proud of.
1) Story 2/10: Really insulting to our inteligence, author packs everything in it to make it explosive but it needs severe adjustments unless your PC's don't mind idiocity and unanswered questions. I reckon he would put in predators but thanks God they can't due to licence.
2) Maps, quality 9/10 Can't fault the company here, everything is tip top.
3) Pregen characters. 6/10 Some are more interesting that others. Zmijewski is a nice touch and seems to be a riot among people unable to pronounce Polish names.
4) As a part of the bigger picture : there is no bigger picture. This is part 2/3 of the cycle they're releasing and other than one items there seems to be no connection other than poor stories.
5) Don't bother asking the author or his fanboys on Discord/Fb about some inconsistencies in this module. You will get banned, reminded that they love it and so should you.
I would only buy this if you want the materials for your own Story. They're really great quality.
1) Story 2/10: Really insulting to our inteligence, author packs everything in it to make it explosive but it needs severe adjustments unless your PC's don't mind idiocity and unanswered questions. I reckon he would put in predators but thanks God they can't due to licence.
2) Maps, quality 9/10 Can't fault the company here, everything is tip top.
3) Pregen characters. 6/10 Some are more interesting that others. Zmijewski is a nice touch and seems to be a riot among people unable to pronounce Polish names.
4) As a part of the bigger picture : there is no bigger picture. This is part 2/3 of the cycle they're releasing and other than one items there seems to be no connection other than poor stories.
5) Don't bother asking the author or his fanboys on Discord/Fb about some inconsistencies in this module. You will get banned, reminded that they love it and so should you.
I would only buy this if you want the materials for your own Story. They're really great quality.
October 3, 2024
This was a disappointment. After an hour of setup and reading through the intro chapters, we couldn't find a starting point. The book talks about act 1, act 2, and act 3, but when you get to that, it's just events you can sprinkle in. There is no actual story to help guide the players.
There is so much exposition, 53 pages of places, characters, and background information before you get to anything.
The two positive things was the cards, we got so excited for the secret agenda, but without a starting point or a guide to direct us, we had no idea where to go or do first. And the map was amazing looking.
And for a 50-60 dollar box game, I kind of expected figures inside, too. Aliens aren't exactly the easiest character models to find (unless you get them custom-made) and very specific to these campaign games. Serious disappointment.
There is so much exposition, 53 pages of places, characters, and background information before you get to anything.
The two positive things was the cards, we got so excited for the secret agenda, but without a starting point or a guide to direct us, we had no idea where to go or do first. And the map was amazing looking.
And for a 50-60 dollar box game, I kind of expected figures inside, too. Aliens aren't exactly the easiest character models to find (unless you get them custom-made) and very specific to these campaign games. Serious disappointment.
February 4, 2021
As I havent tried the system, its hard to say how good this cinematic adventure is. In many ways its two adventures put together with a decent enough background to why. And its very sandboxy which is good. But it also has so many places for the players to go that I really think the GM might need to have an idea of where and how to nudge them the right way.
I would not like to run this as an early adventure in my GM career, and not with unexperienced players either for that matter. But a good GM with some mature players (and that does not need to mean old...) will probably have a lot of fun with this adventure.
I hope to be able to run it some day.
A 3+ adventure in a 4+ box of production value. Free league is relly putting a high bar for production. Very nice indeed.
I would not like to run this as an early adventure in my GM career, and not with unexperienced players either for that matter. But a good GM with some mature players (and that does not need to mean old...) will probably have a lot of fun with this adventure.
I hope to be able to run it some day.
A 3+ adventure in a 4+ box of production value. Free league is relly putting a high bar for production. Very nice indeed.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews