Let's Read the ALIEN RPG

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Torque2100 said:
The "Aliens as Psychic Parasites" concept is probably the most interesting interpretation of the Alien mythos.
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I don't get the reference. What does the statement in quotes mean?

Cessna said:
I personally envision them as a sort of interstellar virus or plague, infecting any space-faring society they encounter. (Like the Space Jockey from the first movie.) And given that humanity is starting to move out into space, they're running into them.
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It looks pretty obvious to me that the derelict and the alien are parts of the same techbase. It doesn't look like the aliens were an external infection.

TSR's old Bug Hunters game I think is the best take on the premise. The galaxy is full of leftover autonomous weapons from an ancient galactic war, human colonists stumble upon it, then space marines are sent in to clean up the infestation. This allows you to have space marine adventures without having to worry about the logistics of bugs being transported by idiots en masse or spacefaring bug hordes waging galactic war.

I think it's played out, though. Writers keep introducing increasingly bizarre plots in an attempt to keep the aliens fresh and new, but it keeps falling into the same problems as the Borg and the Zerg: they lose their menace.

chuckdee said:
It's not so much losing them as losing them offscreen.
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I definitely agree with that. The plot was a nonsensical mess due to the dozen rewrites the script went through (when the hell did the alien even lay eggs on the Sulaco? that's physically impossible). I think it was a fundamentally stupid idea to bring Ripley back and torture her forever. The franchise became the Sigourney Weaver torture hour because the idiots executives at Fox thought it wouldn't turn a profit without her.

It's fucking stupid. Let Ripley have her happy ending after the Hadley's Hope disaster. There's billions of other people in the galaxy you could throw into the grinder instead of her.

The fan-made anthology with Fox approval is probably the only decent live action aside from the first two movies. It has plenty of death.
 
Alien vs aliens is sort of a one trick pony, though I dearly love the aesthetic and have been using it and Outland as my go to Traveller chrome since the 80's.

ripley and the plan.jpg
 
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AppleJax said:
I don't get the reference. What does the statement in quotes mean?


It looks pretty obvious to me that the derelict and the alien are parts of the same techbase. It doesn't look like the aliens were an external infection.

TSR's old Bug Hunters game I think is the best take on the premise. The galaxy is full of leftover autonomous weapons from an ancient galactic war, human colonists stumble upon it, then space marines are sent in to clean up the infestation. This allows you to have space marine adventures without having to worry about the logistics of bugs being transported by idiots en masse or spacefaring bug hordes waging galactic war.

I think it's played out, though. Writers keep introducing increasingly bizarre plots in an attempt to keep the aliens fresh and new, but it keeps falling into the same problems as the Borg and the Zerg: they lose their menace.


I definitely agree with that. The plot was a nonsensical mess due to the dozen rewrites the script went through (when the hell did the alien even lay eggs on the Sulaco? that's physically impossible). I think it was a fundamentally stupid idea to bring Ripley back and torture her forever. The franchise became the Sigourney Weaver torture hour because the idiots executives at Fox thought it wouldn't turn a profit without her.

It's fucking stupid. Let Ripley have her happy ending after the Hadley's Hope disaster. There's billions of other people in the galaxy you could throw into the grinder instead of her.

The fan-made anthology with Fox approval is probably the only decent live action aside from the first two movies. It has plenty of death.
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Burke escaping after being implanted, and ending up on the prison planet would have worked just fine for Alien 3 and been a fitting end to a pretty slimy character.
 
AppleJax said:
I think it's played out, though. Writers keep introducing increasingly bizarre plots in an attempt to keep the aliens fresh and new, but it keeps falling into the same problems as the Borg and the Zerg: they lose their menace.
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It's a similar problem to the Jurassic Park series. The dinosaurs were scary when you had a small group of people stuck on an island with them, but the threat of them getting off the island was never really frightening. Human beings are a species that evolved to murder megafauna. We have to make a conscious effort to stop ourselves from driving animals extinct.

Prometheus had the right idea in exploring the wider setting behind the aliens, but they hired the wrong screenwriter. In theory, that movie could have created a background capable of supporting a whole cinematic universe rather than continuing with endless bug hunts.
 
AppleJax said:
It looks pretty obvious to me that the derelict and the alien are parts of the same techbase. It doesn't look like the aliens were an external infection.

TSR's old Bug Hunters game I think is the best take on the premise. The galaxy is full of leftover autonomous weapons from an ancient galactic war, human colonists stumble upon it, then space marines are sent in to clean up the infestation. This allows you to have space marine adventures without having to worry about the logistics of bugs being transported by idiots en masse or spacefaring bug hordes waging galactic war.

I think it's played out, though. Writers keep introducing increasingly bizarre plots in an attempt to keep the aliens fresh and new, but it keeps falling into the same problems as the Borg and the Zerg: they lose their menace.
Click to expand...

I've got a different read on it. I don't think the derelict and the xenomorphs were from the same technology/system/etc. Of course, they're both coming from the same source - H R Geiger - but they're very different expressions of Geigerism. Space Jockey's ship has a mix or organic and mechanical:

space-jockey.jpg


But when the xenomorphs build their own hive under the reactor on the colony, it looks a lot rougher. It's not as neat, it's irregular:

untangling-aliens-complicated-timeline_2zyn.1200.jpg


I think what's shown in the first movie is pretty clear. The Space Jockey encountered xenomorphs. They impregnated him (it, whatever) and tore out through it's chest. A colony formed, eggs were laid to wait for whatever shows up next. Then the Nostromo shows up and continues the cycle.

I guess I'm okay with the idea of xenomorphs being deliberately carried by the Jockey; maybe they broke loose out of whatever was holding them and killed the Jockey. The film is ambiguous here, probably intentionally so.

(And, no, I haven't seen Prometheus, it's not for me.)
 
Baulderstone said:
Prometheus had the right idea in exploring the wider setting behind the aliens, but they hired the wrong screenwriter. In theory, that movie could have created a background capable of supporting a whole cinematic universe rather than continuing with endless bug hunts.
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Both it and covenant are beautiful movies, though the lore is crap; truthfully even Resurrection is good for what it is.
 
dragoner said:
Ron Perlman is a favorite actor of mine. Resurrection is almost a perfect Traveller party, with the crew of the Betty. Bad sci-fi doesn't offend me though, I like Riddick also. There was another with Klaus Kinski, Creature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_(1985_film)
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I didn't think Riddick was bad Sci-Fi. The movies were definitely in different types of Sci-Fi though.
 
dragoner said:
Both it and covenant are beautiful movies, though the lore is crap; truthfully even Resurrection is good for what it is.
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Yes, while I criticized it above, Prometheus is beautiful, and its perfectly fine as dumb sci-fi/horror movie. I didn't see it until it hit cable, so I went in with low expectations and enjoyed it well enough. However, it completely dropped the ball as a movie that could be used to expand the franchise.
 
Baulderstone said:
Yes, while I criticized it above, Prometheus is beautiful, and its perfectly fine as dumb sci-fi/horror movie. I didn't see it until it hit cable, so I went in with low expectations and enjoyed it well enough. However, it completely dropped the ball as a movie that could be used to expand the franchise.
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I saw it in the theater a couple of times, granted I had a few pints at the pub next door and it was a cheap matinee ...

chuckdee said:
I didn't think Riddick was bad Sci-Fi. The movies were definitely in different types of Sci-Fi though.
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Nor did I, though I have mentioned them in the SFRPG groups and seen people get livid about him having "magic" powers.

Both Riddick and Alien are great to steal bits from for games.
 
I think Alien3 (especially the Assembly Cut) is pretty great and works well to cap off the original trilogy.

In Alien, Ripley is the victim. In Aliens, she is the hero. And in Alien3, she is the monster.

The Gibson script for Alien3 is not great except as a sequel to Aliens and would have spun off the franchise into a new direction. A lot of the concepts in that script ended up in Alien Resurrection.

Alien Resurrection is kind of its own thing and has its own tone. Given it’s set over a hundred years from the OT, I am OK with it as an outlier.

Prometheus and Covenant are a mess as movies. I do think the Alien RPG does a good job of redeeming them for use in the overall chronology, so I have made my peace with them though generally do not rewatch them.
 
AppleJax said:
It's fucking stupid. Let Ripley have her happy ending after the Hadley's Hope disaster. There's billions of other people in the galaxy you could throw into the grinder instead of her.
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I think Alien 3 gave Ripley the perfect ending.

The movies are extremely cynical and nihilistic. In Alien the company callously sends the crew into a hazardous situation they are completely incapable of handling, so they all die. In Aliens they send her back with all of the firepower a Reagan-era military budget can buy - but again, it doesn't matter, so almost all of them die. It's hopeless. And Alien 3 makes the first two movies look downright sunny in comparison to its bleakness.

But somehow despite all of that Ripley turns her own inevitable demise into something meaningful and heroic; she sacrifices herself to save humanity.

(And that's why I hated Resurrection so much, it undercuts and cheapens that ending.)
 
Cessna said:
I've got a different read on it. I don't think the derelict and the xenomorphs were from the same technology/system/etc. Of course, they're both coming from the same source - H R Geiger - but they're very different expressions of Geigerism. Space Jockey's ship has a mix or organic and mechanical:

space-jockey.jpg


But when the xenomorphs build their own hive under the reactor on the colony, it looks a lot rougher. It's not as neat, it's irregular:

untangling-aliens-complicated-timeline_2zyn.1200.jpg


I think what's shown in the first movie is pretty clear. The Space Jockey encountered xenomorphs. They impregnated him (it, whatever) and tore out through it's chest. A colony formed, eggs were laid to wait for whatever shows up next. Then the Nostromo shows up and continues the cycle.

I guess I'm okay with the idea of xenomorphs being deliberately carried by the Jockey; maybe they broke loose out of whatever was holding them and killed the Jockey. The film is ambiguous here, probably intentionally so.

(And, no, I haven't seen Prometheus, it's not for me.)
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The layer of glowing blue gas that reacts when broken is pretty obvious evidence the eggs are supposed to be in the cargo bay.

I’ve seen theories suggesting the eggs were produced by conveyor belts on the walls of the cargo bay and the alien hive on the reactor was slowly growing into a new ship. That sounds more interesting to me than anything else. The aliens being capable of sapience, as O’Bannon initially suggested, makes them more dangerous and unpredictable.

But the ship being a deliberate bomber has a few inconsistencies. (I know this is originally due to budgetary reasons.) Why would it broadcast a public biohazard message? Is that standard procedure for military bioweapon bombers? I’ve seen one theory that it wasn’t a bomber, but a civilian transport that was tricked into ferrying eggs before containment broke (somehow?). Of course, that doesn’t explain what made the hole in the bridge floor, since it’s way too big to have been made by a facehugger from the cargo bay. Although the Aliens novelization has the Jordans come across the mummified corpses of crewmen and aliens, showing the infestation got fairly advanced before it ended.
 
AppleJax said:
I don't get the reference. What does the statement in quotes mean?
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In the Aliens sequel comics by Dark Horse, usually collected as the Earth War series, the Alien Queens are revealed to have psychic abilities. I should point out that the Aliens comics all came out before Alien3 and Alien3 contradicts basically everything that happens in them. Newt and Hicks in the sequel comic are having dreams and visions of the Alien Queen which turn out to be psychic imprints from the Queen herself. These visions are so extreme they land Newt in a mental hospital and Hicks in a Military prison. It's revealed that a new Megacorp are capturing Alien embryos and bringing them to Earth. It's not just Hicks and Newt having visions either. The psychic Siren's song of the Alien Queen is affecting a whole bunch of people in the general population who have formed a cult and are trying to break the Aliens out of containment. They succeed and the Aliens overrun the Earth.

The big reveal for the Earth War series is that this has happened to every single species that has encountered the Aliens so far, including the Space Jockeys. It's how the Aliens live. When encountered, the Alien queens influence the more vulnerable members of a population to bring a Queen Egg back to major population centers, then the Aliens use the population as breeding stock. They're interstellar, species-level parasites.

It's the most interesting (IMHO) possible answer to the question that the original Alien movie posed. I think on some level Ridley Scott is salty that a mere comic book writer like Mark Verheiden came up with a more interesting answer than he could. The Earthwar comics are also where a lot of this "the aliens are the Great Filter" "the Aliens were created by the Space Jockeys as bio-weapons" stuff comes from. He (and the Fox executives given the continued popularity of the Earth War comics in Trade Paperback sales) keep trying to reverse engineer what made the Earth War story work so they can re-introduce it without admitting that Verheiden got there first.
 
Those comics sounds interesting and I’m not even a big Alien fan.
 
Torque2100 said:
It's the most interesting (IMHO) possible answer to the question that the original Alien movie posed. I think on some level Ridley Scott is salty that a mere comic book writer like Mark Verheiden came up with a more interesting answer than he could. The Earthwar comics are also where a lot of this "the aliens are the Great Filter" "the Aliens were created by the Space Jockeys as bio-weapons" stuff comes from. He (and the Fox executives given the continued popularity of the Earth War comics in Trade Paperback sales) keep trying to reverse engineer what made the Earth War story work so they can re-introduce it without admitting that Verheiden got there first.
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That's an odd accusation to make against Scott. He didn't even have a story or writing credit on either movie. Accusing creative people of plagiarism shouldn't be done lightly. I've seen an interview where Scott said he made what he considers three comic book movies: Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator. That doesn't strike me as something someone with sneering contempt for comics would say.

In any case, the aliens as bioweapons stuff goes back to the original Alan Dean Foster novelization.
 
Torque2100 said:
In the Aliens sequel comics by Dark Horse, usually collected as the Earth War series, the Alien Queens are revealed to have psychic abilities. I should point out that the Aliens comics all came out before Alien3 and Alien3 contradicts basically everything that happens in them. Newt and Hicks in the sequel comic are having dreams and visions of the Alien Queen which turn out to be psychic imprints from the Queen herself. These visions are so extreme they land Newt in a mental hospital and Hicks in a Military prison. It's revealed that a new Megacorp are capturing Alien embryos and bringing them to Earth. It's not just Hicks and Newt having visions either. The psychic Siren's song of the Alien Queen is affecting a whole bunch of people in the general population who have formed a cult and are trying to break the Aliens out of containment. They succeed and the Aliens overrun the Earth.

The big reveal for the Earth War series is that this has happened to every single species that has encountered the Aliens so far, including the Space Jockeys. It's how the Aliens live. When encountered, the Alien queens influence the more vulnerable members of a population to bring a Queen Egg back to major population centers, then the Aliens use the population as breeding stock. They're interstellar, species-level parasites.

It's the most interesting (IMHO) possible answer to the question that the original Alien movie posed. I think on some level Ridley Scott is salty that a mere comic book writer like Mark Verheiden came up with a more interesting answer than he could. The Earthwar comics are also where a lot of this "the aliens are the Great Filter" "the Aliens were created by the Space Jockeys as bio-weapons" stuff comes from. He (and the Fox executives given the continued popularity of the Earth War comics in Trade Paperback sales) keep trying to reverse engineer what made the Earth War story work so they can re-introduce it without admitting that Verheiden got there first.
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Oh, that. Having the aliens compensate for their lack of intelligence by psychically tricking other species into helping them proliferate only delays the problem. If humanity doesn't get wiped out (which isn't an option because this is an IP and IPs aren't allowed to end, even though at this point I wish it would die), then they'll develop countermeasures like mass deployment of synthetics or anti-psi technology. Then you have the same problem: how do you keep justifying further alien encounters and outbreaks without humans being terminally stupid all the time? If the aliens are intelligent and capable of growing their own ships or engaging in complex subterfuge and adaptation, then the problem isn't so big. Starship Troopers: Roughnecks Chronicles is a good example.

On another note, Gibson's Alien 3 and the Earth War storyline could feasibly occur on the same timeline. Of course, the problem IMO is that continually involving recurring characters shrinks the universe. It's pointless fanservice that arbitrarily restricts the storytelling. This IP works best as an anthology series imo.

Bringing back Ripley as a consultant in Aliens is fine, but after that it's become pointless fanservice and fandisservice. Bringing back Hicks, Newt and Bishop repeatedly is unnecessary and it stretches coincidence to the breaking point. They've gone well past plausibility and straight into "these people are cursed" territory more appropriate for generic schlock slasher films. Gibson's draft and Earth War are certainly more respectful treatments of the characters, but they're still unnecessary fanservice that shrinks the universe. We don't need to keep revisiting LV426.

Even Alien: Isolation (which even has its own movie cut for non-gamers), which I count among the few good entries in the franchise, is pushing the fanservice angle by having Amanda Ripley encounter an alien outbreak to get closure over her mother's disappearance.
 
AppleJax said:
Oh, that. Having the aliens compensate for their lack of intelligence by psychically tricking other species into helping them proliferate only delays the problem. If humanity doesn't get wiped out (which isn't an option because this is an IP and IPs aren't allowed to end, even though at this point I wish it would die), then they'll develop countermeasures like mass deployment of synthetics or anti-psi technology. Then you have the same problem: how do you keep justifying further alien encounters and outbreaks without humans being terminally stupid all the time? If the aliens are intelligent and capable of growing their own ships or engaging in complex subterfuge and adaptation, then the problem isn't so big. Starship Troopers: Roughnecks Chronicles is a good example.

On another note, Gibson's Alien 3 and the Earth War storyline could feasibly occur on the same timeline. Of course, the problem IMO is that continually involving recurring characters shrinks the universe. It's pointless fanservice that arbitrarily restricts the storytelling. This IP works best as an anthology series imo.

Bringing back Ripley as a consultant in Aliens is fine, but after that it's become pointless fanservice and fandisservice. Bringing back Hicks, Newt and Bishop repeatedly is unnecessary and it stretches coincidence to the breaking point. They've gone well past plausibility and straight into "these people are cursed" territory more appropriate for generic schlock slasher films. Gibson's draft and Earth War are certainly more respectful treatments of the characters, but they're still unnecessary fanservice that shrinks the universe. We don't need to keep revisiting LV426.

Even Alien: Isolation (which even has its own movie cut for non-gamers), which I count among the few good entries in the franchise, is pushing the fanservice angle by having Amanda Ripley encounter an alien outbreak to get closure over her mother's disappearance.
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It is a real problem that movies and TV shows have the books have an easier time getting around. Authors can summon and dismiss characters at a whim, while movies and TV shows are dealing with actors, their agents, contracts, and studio executives. You can never have a compelling consistent fictional history develop in a corporate entertainment environment.
 
Baulderstone said:
It is a real problem that movies and TV shows have the books have an easier time getting around. Authors can summon and dismiss characters at a whim, while movies and TV shows are dealing with actors, their agents, contracts, and studio executives. You can never have a compelling consistent fictional history develop in a corporate entertainment environment.
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It can be a problem in non-live action too. Starcraft comes to mind. The writing is terrible and the two or three main characters are unlikeable but the entire universe revolves around them to the exclusion of anything else. Even though it’s an RTS where you’d think the civs would take center stage. Nope! The civs got demolished to prop up the main characters!
 
AppleJax said:
I think it was a fundamentally stupid idea to bring Ripley back and torture her forever. The franchise became the Sigourney Weaver torture hour because the idiots executives at Fox thought it wouldn't turn a profit without her.

It's fucking stupid. Let Ripley have her happy ending after the Hadley's Hope disaster. There's billions of other people in the galaxy you could throw into the grinder instead of her.

The fan-made anthology with Fox approval is probably the only decent live action aside from the first two movies. It has plenty of death.
Click to expand...
Toadmaster said:
Burke escaping after being implanted, and ending up on the prison planet would have worked just fine for Alien 3 and been a fitting end to a pretty slimy character.
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I just want to state my unequivocal support for these two posts (or post and part of a post, at any rate:thumbsup:)!
 
Toadmaster said:
Burke escaping after being implanted, and ending up on the prison planet would have worked just fine for Alien 3 and been a fitting end to a pretty slimy character.
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Burke's character arc (if that's what you can call a race to the bottom) is kind of done when we last see him in Aliens. so I'm not sure reusing him adds much beyond 'hey, cameo!' Also, he'd have to run rather fast to escape the reactor blast (which was big enough to destroy the colony base some distance away).

Important note: the derelict ship was well outside the blast radius and probably has plenty of unhatched eggs in it. It's something a lot of people, including maybe the Alien 3 script writers, seem to overlook.
 
The Guild said:
Burke's character arc (if that's what you can call a race to the bottom) is kind of done when we last see him in Aliens. so I'm not sure reusing him adds much beyond 'hey, cameo!' Also, he'd have to run rather fast to escape the reactor blast (which was big enough to destroy the colony base some distance away).

Important note: the derelict ship was well outside the blast radius and probably has plenty of unhatched eggs in it. It's something a lot of people, including maybe the Alien 3 script writers, seem to overlook.
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Corporate extraction team that was shadowing the Marines. Burke was supposed to contact the team if he was able to get any of his group implanted (he tried with Ripley and Newt), but when the Marines were overrun the team went in to grab whatever they could get and found Burke...

See easy :thumbsup:
 
Toadmaster said:
Corporate extraction team that was shadowing the Marines. Burke was supposed to contact the team if he was able to get any of his group implanted (he tried with Ripley and Newt), but when the Marines were overrun the team went in to grab whatever they could get and found Burke...

See easy :thumbsup:
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Not bad at all.
 
I love the behind-the-scenes of how that scene was filmed, and how
Veronica Cartwright's reaction to having six gallons of blood sprayed through the room was genuine.
 
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