Battlegrounds

[icycalm]

Battlegrounds will be comprised of many different but ultimately interwoven seasons. We've already started Pathfinder Season 1, and that is the biggest season in all of roleplaying, indeed in all of art, since it takes at least an irl decade to play out (and that's if you run multiple teams; if you run a single team, forget about it, it takes a lifetime then).

Alien Season 1 is the second season that's on the table for us, and we're about to launch it with the introductory 1-Act scenario contained in the core rulebook, Hope's Last Day. This is the ideal entry point into both the rules and the setting, so this time we won't be repeating the mistake we made with Pathfinder, where we jumped straight into the megacampaigns (and 4 of them simultaneously!) instead of playing the "Pathfinder Beginner Box" first, lol.

The next scenario after the introductory one, Chariot of the Gods, is a full 3-Act scenario and GMs report that it takes about 7-8 hours. So again basically one session, two at the most. Since there are only a handful of scenarios for the setting so far, we could theoretically knock them all out within a year if there is enough interest, and then just play new ones as they are published. In fact a new one just came out in October and it sounds awesome. It's a freakin' colony-builder! I've only skimmed a few details yet, but it sounds like an Alien mini-Kingmaker lol.

So let me show you the scenarios that exist. I want you to see what cool stuff your money's buying us. And btw I am buying print, PDF and VTT versions of everything. I want to be able to read the books in bed, then prepare the scenarios in the VTT while referring to the PDFs during play. We're talking about over 1,000 pages of material I'll have to digest to run the entire Alien Season 1—assuming there's enough interest—so I want to do it properly, and in maximum comfort and utility.

So check out how awesome this stuff looks. Note that Hope's Last Day is included in the core rulebook, and Chariot of the Gods in the "Starter Set".











Unlike the previous scenarios, Colonial Marines is a sandbox campaign! It's a much larger book, half of which details the Marines and their command structure and how to run them in the game world, and the other half offering SEVEN linked scenarios. Each of these 7 isn't quite as long as the standalone ones, but they're still 130 pages in all, compared for example to the 48 pages of Chariot of the Gods in the "Starter Set". Here's the official description:

ALIEN RPG: Colonial Marines Operations Manual is a complete campaign module for the award-winning official ALIEN roleplaying game. This massive 352-page book gives you all the tools you need to run a full open-world campaign as the iconic Colonial Marines. Contents:

• History & Organization – the inside story of the illustrious Colonial Marine Corps.
  
• Creating Marines – expanded character creation rules for grunts of all kinds.
  
• Weapons & Vehicles – an extensive chapter with new gear, gloriously illustrated.
  
• The Frontier War – the framework and backstory for a Colonial Marines campaign.
  
• Factions on the Frontier – the powers that be and their dark agendas.
  
• Marine Missions – six thrilling missions for your Marines, playable in any order.
  
• The Endgame – the showdown against a deadly enemy, finally revealed.

Here's how a GM describes this campaign:

The thing I was expecting the least from this release is the giant campaign that is planned for you, if you choose to run it. It's a sprawling adventure that will take your players over many worlds, encountering all sorts of threats—from human, to alien. Your players will have an opportunity to uncover conspiracies, and choose their sides. Each mission contains a list of Events to amp up the drama, and while the campaign is designed to not kill player characters as easily as the previous cinematic scenarios, death still lurks for those who are unlucky or careless. The book even has suggestions on how to handle inevitable player character deaths.

It HAS to be less lethal than the standalone scenarios for the same reason Pathfinder campaigns, which are even bigger, are even less lethal: because otherwise no one would survive to get anywhere near the end. (I have analyzed this issue at great length in the Ultimate Edition chapter Ultimate Balance, for those who want to learn more.)

Nevertheless, just look at this ridiculous award it won: https://roguereviewer.wordpress.com/202 ... -die-award



And here's a preview from inside the book, I just skimmed it and can't wait for it to be unlocked so I can place it in the world. This image will give you a good idea of the kind of action it contains:



The colony-builder that just came out seems to be crafted in the same vein, being the second sandbox campaign planned for the setting:

Building Better Worlds is a complete campaign module for the award-winning official ALIEN roleplaying game, giving you all the tools you need to run a full open-world campaign as a pioneering explorer or colonist. This book includes:

• History of Colonization – the story of humanity's reach for the stars.
  
• Creating Explorers & Colonists – expanded character creation rules for life on the frontier.
  
• Gear & Ships – an extensive chapter with new gear and spaceships, gloriously illustrated.
  
• Extrasolar Species Catalog – new Xenomorphic creatures to encounter.
  
• The Lost Worlds – the framework and backstory for a frontier campaign.
  
• Expeditions – six thrilling expeditions into uncharted space, playable in any order.
  
• The Endgame – the final showdown with everything at stake.
  
• The Appendix – create your own frontier and colonize it.

"Building Better Worlds" is the Weyland-Yutani motto by the way. There are plenty of sites online selling t-shirts you can buy to wear while playing the game: https://www.etsy.com/es/listing/9099491 ... ing-better



All these scenarios have been crafted to make you feel like you're playing in movies, and their short running time contributes to that. It's very different from traditional D&D/Pathfinder where there are lengthy downtimes and side-stories and even utterly superfluous scenes and interactions to help immerse you in the world and give you the feeling that you ARE there, and LIVING there as a character. In Alien there's none of that stuff: there is dramatic event after dramatic event after dramatic event, all leading to the climax and taking you on a wild ride while you kick your legs frantically to stay afloat and try not to drown.

Every one of the books pictured above is a new movie in which you can be one of the stars. These books are movie books. There are no invisible walls in these movies, and you can go wherever you want and say and do whatever you want.

Are these movies connected? Maybe some of them are. Maybe all of them. Maybe none. Unlike Pathfinder, where I tell you in advance that you're playing in a campaign, I'll let you figure if that is the case here by playing. To be honest, I am not even 100% sure myself at this time. Is there a giant metaplot threading everything together as there is in Pathfinder? We'll find out.

The twist here is that, even if some of these scenarios are thematically connected to form a campaign, the protagonists are unique for each scenario. There is never the same protagonist taking part in multiple scenarios (apart from the ones you create in the two sandbox campaigns, that is). This does track with the movies, because beyond Ripley there are no other recurring protagonists, and Ripley was only in the old films; the new ones are all made with unique casts every time. But this does hobble the RPG in the sense that it hobbles the motivation to play along with the Agendas that each pregen character comes with. Why bother following your Agenda if your character will be tossed at the end even if he survives? It's a real issue, and the designers were fully aware of it, so how did they deal with it?

They introduced Story Points which players earn by following their character's Personal Agenda. These points can then be expended in future scenarios that players participate in. So the Story Points are metapoints that belong to the player, not the character. That's basically the same thing as my Epic Points system for Battlegrounds—which I have however trashed.

Why did I trash it? I will explain that elsewhere. But for the same reason, I am inclined to trash Alien's Story Points, and replace them with... real campaign continuity. Let me explain how that MIGHT work, if I decide to do it after reading the core rules in full and running a couple of scenarios to see how they work.

My idea is the following. IF your character manages to survive a scenario, then MAYBE he can take part in the next scenario you play, IF it makes thematic sense that that character could conceivably find himself in the next scenario. So there must be enough time between the two scenarios for the character to travel between them, and he must be thematically appropriate for the second scenario. Say he's a scientist who was hired by the company due to his earlier experience with xenomorphs. Or maybe he's just unlucky and, like John McClane, ends up wondering how "the same guy finds himself in the same shit twice". And because of his earlier experience, I will give him bonuses when dealing with the stress mechanics etc.

Ultimately your character could survive several of these scenarios to rise to a position of power within a corporation, or organization, or academia etc. Maybe he can even become part of a cult, as there are cults in the setting. The point is that survival here is EXTREMELY HARD, but with my added continuity mechanics, once you have survived ONCE, continued survival becomes EASIER, and your character gets a real chance to rise to an influential position in the setting. Some of the agendas for example tempt the pregen characters with money, so your character could become rich, and get cool gear to help him out in subsequent scenarios. Maybe if he gets rich enough he can even buy a home on Earth, where more GMRPG settings will be unveiled soon, so he can potentially transition between them, all seamlessly in-game in-engine of course since this is Alex Kierkegaard's Battlegrounds we're talking about: The Ultimate Roleplaying Metaverse! I think all these possibilities are terribly exciting, and I look forward to exploring them, and to facilitate players exploring them, to the best of my abilities and our collective imaginations.

For me there is a lot of conventional RPG wisdom you need to leave at the door with Alien. Typically in most games a group A) need to survive B) generally support/pull in the same direction and C) try to move the plot forward in a meaningful way.

Alien RPG is at its best (IMHO) when characters die suddenly and violently, PCs have secrets/conflicting agendas and ultimately the players experience the terror/horror in just surviving the xenomorphs. This is a very different approach from most RPGs I've run personally.

In Alien the players know the hammer is coming down on them, you embrace it, it's the mystery/puzzle you put in front of them that helps build anticipation. Why is the spaceship derelict? Why did the colony comms tower suddenly go offline? What is this strange cult doing with these giant leather egg looking things? Give them an important stake in solving that puzzle.

This is a similar vibe/genre to a horror film. You start watching them knowing bad stuff is going to happen to people but you don't know when, how or who.

The Alien universe is dystopian sci-fi writ large across the galaxy, as the hubris of humanity and its corporate greed brings it to encounter things that it can neither understand nor control. You need to embrace that if you want an Alien campaign to go anywhere. Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, terrible monsters versus corporate influence with the main characters stuck in the middle. That's Alien.

And don't forget that, on top of all the material pictured above, we also have the newest Alien novels which, as I explained in the Alpha 1.5 patch notes, contain 1-Act scenarios at the back!





Free League and Titan Books Announce RPG Tie-Ins With New Novels!
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/2022/03/10/fr ... new-novels

Free League Publishing and Titan Books today announced a collaboration to publish a unified storyline set within the ALIEN Universe. For 2022 and into 2023, the editorial and writing teams will share assets and coordinate plotlines to form a cohesive narrative across three original novels and the multiple award-winning ALIEN RPG.

As I understand it, the players and GM are supposed to first read a novel, and then play the scenario at the back, then move to the next novel.

Will there be any player willing to read a 350-page novel (lol) in order to play a 2-hour RPG scenario? Will there be FIVE players? (because we need 5 to play). I have no idea, but if there are, I am committed to running this thing for us, and connecting on the overworld all the dots with all the rest of the material listed above, plus as much material from the movies all the way down to comic books and even... videogames as we can be bothered to.

On the subject of videogames btw, note that recoil, dan, Jameson and I have already finished and fully streamed the 4P Aliens: Colonial Marines game, and that will be going on the overworld at the appropriate time and place. The whole playthrough is one 5.5-hour session that can be viewed here:

Aliens: Colonial Marines (Ultimate Badass) with icycalm, recoil, danjiro and Jameson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Y3LfzzvjA



Is this game canon in the Alien universe? Not exactly. It's barroom canon, defined as "This stuff should be thought of as tall tales told in bars. The events may or may not have happened as described, but the locations exist." So perhaps when one of your characters goes to a bar, he'll be told a tale which will be... recoil's, dan's, Jameson's and my stream. And that's when the video will go on the overworld!

The subject of canon is a huge one in massive multimedia franchises such as Alien because, unlike native RPGs like Pathfinder, there's no central authority directing everything throughout the years. In Pathfinder we don't have to worry about whether everything is connected, or precisely how; everything IS connected, because that's how the whole thing has been planned all along, and every step of the way. But the Alien franchise ping-pongs between creators, businesses and even artforms throughout decades, so utter confusion basically reigns. In this case, the main document I will use to guide me is the following (though there are more, and I am consulting those too):

DEFINING CANON IN AN ALIEN WORLD
https://roguereviewer.wordpress.com/202 ... lien-world

As a franchise consultant to 20th Century Fox on ALIEN, Predator, and Planet of the Apes, I often had to take a long hard look at a number of long-beloved franchise stories and try to figure out how exactly they could still fit into canon. If I couldn't, I had to recommend they be tossed. I proposed a third option–what I've come to call barroom canon. These are stories overheard in a bar (or read in a comic, or played in a videogame, or even posted on Facebook) that may or may not have some truth to them. This allows canon to have some flex in regards to including stories that otherwise could no longer count in a franchise's development.

This is the same guy who writes all the Alien RPG scenarios and sourcebooks, so he's the world's premier expert on this stuff, and he has used EVERYTHING for his game. My challenge will be to keep pace with him and present his world to the Battlegrounds players as closely as possible to his vision.

Note that the Aliens: Fireteam Elite videogame is regarded quite highly in terms of canon; this IS proper canon, unlike Colonial Marines, so I am definitely playing it with people when the time is right, and it's going on the overworld etc. (It is moreover supposed to share continuity with the RPG, but exactly in what ways we'll have to figure out ourselves by playing everything.)

Would I be playing Fireteam Elite if I wasn't running the Alien RPG? Would I be planning to read Alien novels?

No, I would be playing more Star Citizen and reading Kafka or some other classic because they are better games/novels. But when I play Fireteam Elite and read Alien novels in the context of me running the Alien RPG, I am not playing this shooter videogame and reading these novels solely for the pleasure they give in themselves, but in order to immerse myself further in the setting so that I can understand it better and represent it better when we're running the scenarios. In this case, this material is PROPS we use to enhance the REAL game, which is of course the RPG.

That said, I have no idea how good any of this stuff is, and if it isn't very good I won't offer it on the overworld. But I have liked what I have seen so far, so the project's going forward for the foreseeable future, and assuming players will be interested in it, of course.

So to sum up, ALL the above-mentioned and -linked material comprises the Battlegrounds Alien Season 1. When does the season end? When they release Alien RPG second edition. That's roughly how GMRPGs work, by rule editions. There are exceptions, but this is the general rule. If they never release a second edition, there will never be a second season.

Actually I think there has already been an earlier Alien RPG, in the '80s or something? I haven't looked into it, and the material seems hard to find. In that case, and provided the game is good and it has good scenarios, then THAT would have been Season 1, and THIS would be Season 2 (we can easily switch the numbers around later, it's not a big deal, if this is the case, and we can play the seasons out of order). But it would also depend on the timelines of the scenarios. The earlier RPG might not even have had any official scenarios (many short-lived RPGs don't, and they expect the GM to make some), in which case it won't concern us at all beyond perhaps cribbing some of rules from the rulebook, if it has any good ones. At any rate that's something to look into far into the future. I am not interested right now in playing an old Alien, I want to play the new one that everyone's raving about.

I'll wrap this opening post with some links to cool stuff you can buy. You don't have to buy anything, and I already have everything we need, but if you want to enhance your experience and have something in your home that you can hold in your hands related to the game, these links are a good starting point.

First off we have the hardcover rulebook: https://freeleaguepublishing.com/shop/a ... e-rulebook



Just make sure to not look into the GM section if you buy this (the entire first scenario is in there). I'll have a link with the edited PDF for you soon, so you can read the player sections on the Battlegrounds site, but maybe you want to start sooner and read it in bed or something.

Also, you can watch (or rewatch) the first movie of course (but just the first movie, the rest will be unlocked during play). A trailer for it is already up on the overworld, and eventually I'll have the entire movie there.



And then there is a bunch of cool physical stuff that can be bought on Etsy—there's an entire industry churning out stuff about the franchise, I never realized how loved it is before seeing this stuff—starting with the handy stress/health tracker I linked in the Alien RPG review:

Alien RPG Premium Stress/Health Tracker by schoonerlabs €11.42
https://www.etsy.com/listing/935132815/ ... th-tracker


Alien Jar €39.87+
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1248431854 ... facehugger

Aliens NOSTROMO Embroidered Patch Flight Jacket €158.16+
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1118716779 ... tch-flight

Alien Ring €176.33
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1277566920 ... ring-alien

Alien Newborn Ring €75.00+
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1005401827 ... wborn-ring

Alien Facehugger Ring €80.00+
https://www.etsy.com/listing/960509539/ ... ugger-ring

Alien Ripley's watch twin custom - movie watch complete replica €45.00
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1553145813 ... stom-movie

Alien Mug (can holder) €29.39+
https://www.etsy.com/listing/992289792/ ... can-holder

Door Mural €32.91+
https://www.etsy.com/listing/859272074/ ... red-bunker

Use this link to search Etsy for more items: https://www.etsy.com/search?q=alien&ref=search_bar

If you come across any other cool merch, especially stuff you've bought or plan to buy, post it here to let everyone know (otherwise use the Alien RPG thread [ > ] for stuff you don't intend to buy). Also feel free to post your desk setups, or yourself in your Weyland-Yutani suit or whatever. I'll be posting stuff like this myself once I am back in a stable residence, it's part of the joy of roleplaying. And do let us know if you order the rulebook. It's nice to know when players go out of their way to get engaged.

How far can all this physical stuff be taken?

Well, this far, for starters:

Call of Cthulhu Classic RPG | The Auction with Becca Scott
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEj6KrxqRy4



This isn't some lame fruitcakes pointlessly adding their talking heads over VTT graphics and obscuring all the action, this is full-on improvisational theatre layered on top of Call of Cthulhu RPG mechanics. It's freakin' awesome. This is in-person RPG streaming DONE RIGHT.

Will we ever take it this far? Who knows, maybe some day. But right now we're already taking it further than anyone else INSIDE THE GAME/WORLD, and that's ultimately more powerful than what the peeps in the video are doing (they can't make it rain or snow on their table, for example, among a myriad other things we can do that they can't). The outside shenanigans can be fun too though, and I encourage players to pursue them as far as they want and use this thread to let us know.

So that's what I have for today. Any questions, post them here, and more is coming soon.


P.S. There is a new Battlegrounds Discord text channel, #lv-426-crew, and a new role to go with it, "LV-426 Crew". These will change as the scenarios and campaigns progress, and the role will be redistributed depending on which players are playing at any given time.

P.P.S.

[icycalm]

ALIEN RPG Maps & Markers Pack €19,99
https://tesorosdelamarca.com/producto/a ... rkers-pack

• A large full-colour, double-sided map, with one side depicting chartered space in the year 2183 and the other floor plans for the Hope's Last Day cinematic scenario.
  
• Game markers for keeping track characters and motion tracker pings on the game map.

Very cool product. It's out of stock in that store but it might be possible to find it elsewhere, if you get drawn into this campaign and want a physical map in your home somewhere.

I think this map is really beautiful. Fully interactive digital version here: https://akbattlegrounds.net/w/multivers ... 1effd269e9

It took me a full week to make so I am really proud of it.

[icycalm]

https://www.reddit.com/r/alienrpg/comme ... ion_so_far

The collection so far



The making of movie books and Dark Horse comics are great reference material for the game.

The game books and boxed sets are on the left. You can make out Free League's circular logo at the bottom.

The comics can be seen in the middle, they're the thin ones with almost no spine in their protective slip cases. Don't read them until you unlock them in the game.

[icycalm]

Lots of new content in the Alien section of the overworld today that I was inspired to add by the recent release of the "Building Better Worlds" expansion. I was able to have a look at it thanks to Exiled who secured for me an advance preview copy, if you know what I mean. I fully intend to buy the book, but I want the hard copy bundle which I can't receive right now because I don't have a stable address. So advance preview it was for now.

The book is very popular by the way, it has been the #2 bestseller on DriveThruRPG for days now (DTRPG is the Steam of roleplaying games, I spend a lot of time there now, rarely going to Steam anymore, or if I do it's mostly to laugh at midwits): https://www.drivethrurpg.com



If you're wondering what the #1 is, it's an expansion for Exalted, a game that dan likes (though quite a few people seem to downright hate it, as covered to some extent in the Exalted thread a while back [ > ]). This is what its 3rd edition core rules look like lol:



I'll definitely be looking into it for inclusion in the Battlegrounds.

But back to "Building Better Worlds" (which I often misabbreviate to BBB, for "Building Back Better" I suppose lol). I was primarily interested to see if the colony-building material could be used to add a Strategy Layer/Master of Heroes mode to the Alien setting, and the short answer is, probably. I'll need to read the book carefully, and possibly add some adapted material to it, but it looks like it can be done.

So I was very happy about that, and about the ton of new lore content and sandbox campaign included in the book, so I was inspired to add ALL the remaining Alien RPG products on the overworld. And here they are:

(P.S. Read my latest post in the akbattlegrounds.net thread [ > ] for how to use the overworld for maximum immersion effect; TL;DR hit F11 for your browser to go full-screen and, before reading any entry, start the music that's usually included with it or watch any embedded trailers etc. Also always read the entries on the sidebar by clicking on the markers instead of trying to read the pop-ups.)

Stars of the Middle Heavens
https://akbattlegrounds.net/w/multivers ... 1effd269e9









If you take your time reading all the scenario descriptions and review-quotes I have provided, plus listening to all the music, you could spend 15-20 minutes on the new content. It will give you a great overview of the type of scenarios and challenges you can expect to face in this setting. This is ALL the content that exists for the game right now, and though it's nothing compared to PF/D&D standards, it's quite a bit compared to typical roleplaying game settings, most of which are lucky if they get a couple of short adventures. I think if Free League keeps up this rate of publication, they will soon pass Cyberpunk in scenario content at any rate. (I've been researching Cyberpunk recently and most of its content seems to be sourcebooks. It has very few scenarios, and very brief ones too, I haven't seen anything like an epic campaign for it yet.)

And btw, the three Cinematic Scenarios are part of a trilogy, the Draconis Strain Saga. I had meant to keep their connection a secret for the players to uncover, but since it's the only trilogy in the game and the review-quotes spoil it anyway, I decided to just reveal it. It's more attractive for players if they know they have a trilogy to play instead of three unconnected scenarios, and it might motivate them to stick with the setting to see the trilogy through.

The number one thing that struck me while researching these scenarios and campaigns I just added is that all 4 of them can be played with more than the standard 5 players! The Cinematic Scenarios specifically can be played with 7!!!

It's crazy because the official site and the backs of the boxes still list them as 3-5, but if you read the sections on the pregen characters, the game gives you 7 and says that the players can choose from them, and the remaining 2 should come along controlled by the GM! But why tf would I bother to control 2 extra characters—especially in a game such as this where tons of GMs are complaining how complex the scenarios are to run—when I can just hand them to 2 extra players and not have to worry about them. The book doesn't even mention that you could bring in 2 extra players at all! They could at least have put a little sidebar explaining that option! I suspect that the writer wanted more characters for more plot complexity but the publisher didn't want to scare off more casual groups that are only comprised of 4-5 people, or sometimes even fewer. That big bad "7" on the box would have scared them off, even if it was merely a 3-7, which is the truth.

In any case, I can't overstate how unusual it is to see a modern scenario written and balanced for 7 players, it's basically unheard of. Last time this type of player number was common was in the '80s; already by the '90s we were down to 4-6, and today a straight-up 4 like Paizo's is common (though they have a very good reason for the 4, read Pathfinder's Unique Balance to understand it). So when I saw the 7, I shit my pants! I can't imagine how wild a full-length Alien scenario with 7 characters with conflicting Agendas will be. I thought to myself, this scenario will be a hell of a time! And then I looked at the other Cinematic Scenario, the last of the trilogy, not expecting anything special from its setup in terms of player numbers—figuring that the previous one was an exception, perhaps due to the Colonial Marine focus—and I realized THAT TOO is for 7 players!

From Destroyer of Worlds:



From Heart of Darkness:



Note that 7 players is almost 2 Pathfinder parties! These scenarios are only about 3-5 sessions, but that's the fun part, they're like a movie, and now there'll be 7 not 5 characters to get killed one by one while you're watching and wondering if anyone will survive, and who it'll be. Not to mention the chaos with the 7 Agendas!

By that point I was ecstatic and started suspecting/hoping that the Sandbox Campaigns too would be written for more than the standard 5 players, so I raced to take a look in them and find out. But no matter how long I searched, I couldn't find any mention of player numbers! Not even on the official site! I got so frustrated I started a Reddit thread about it! And no one there knew either!

https://www.reddit.com/r/alienrpg/comme ... mpaigns_in





(There's more garbage in the thread if you're in the mood for it. I see a ban there coming soon too.)

At length I realized what must be going on. The Sandbox Campaigns are comprised of basically 7 main scenarios sprinkled with as much content in-between them as the GM wants to add using the 100-200 pages of rules and lore content the books contain. Remember, half these books are the campaign (about 150 pages), the other half is the sourcebook material. So the writers maybe don't even expect that a single group will tackle all this material. You could bring a different party for every mission, as far as they're concerned. And since there's not a hell of a lot in terms of stat progression in Alien, the scenarios will still be roughly balanced, especially since they're written to be playable in any order (hence the "sandbox"). So the books do roughly expect that a single party will go through all this material—especially given that there's a giant metaplot to uncover and someone has to play everything to piece it together—but they don't care about the exact number of players/characters you bring along. One GM on Reddit even suggested that you roll an entire platoon and bring it along in the Colonial Marines campaign so that when a character dies the player can immediately get a replacement.

Bottom line is I put "5+" as the player number in the Sandbox Campaigns, and I am willing to accommodate quite a range of numbers above this. 6 or 7 will be easy to do, and if we get more than that we can form multiple fireteams/squads/sections or whatever they're called, and give them different objectives or approaches to the objective, with a leader above all of them receiving all the info and trying to piece the metaplot together. In short, these campaigns are so large and multifaceted, that if a player wants to take part in them, we should be able to find a place for him, for at least part of the duration. He doesn't even have to come in from the very start, at any time he should be able to post in the campaign thread and say that he wants to play, and we should be able to accommodate him. And that's what the "+" means, and what it will mean from now on, when you see it on the overworld in the context of number of players. (Which btw is exactly how West Marches campaigns work, including Kingslayer).

A more pertinent question though is, can we get 7 players to sign up for the Cinematic Scenarios at all? I have no idea, but I hope so. At any rate, we won't be playing with fewer. If we can't get together 7, the scenarios will simply stay available on the overworld until at some point we gather the necessary team(s). We have plenty of other stuff to play anyway, if this proves a roadblock, without ruining two of a handful of 7-player scenarios to be released in the last few decades.

Some further notes on this update:

• Why did I decide to put all the products on the overworld? In larger games like Pathfinder I don't, both because I simply can't lol, but above all because it's fun for players to unlock content as they play instead of seeing it all from day 1. However, in smaller games like Alien, I feel like I have to do some work to "sell" the game and the setting to the players. I don't need to sell Pathfinder, everyone who's interested in fantasy is interested in that, but smaller games have more limited appeal (which is why they're small), so an attractive overworld filled with as much cool stuff as possible helps to attract players (who will moreover have to learn a brand-new rule system, after all). Putting just a single scenario on the overworld, while certainly maximizing immersion and discovery, doesn't generate too much excitement I am afraid. I am certainly 10x as excited for Alien now that I've had some extra info on the type of content it offers, and the GM/player reactions to it, and I can't wait to see what they publish next. I would love a corporate warfare/espionage expansion with a full blowout of all the different companies and a Sandbox Campaign of a struggle between them. After the Colonial Marines and the colonist campaigns, a corporate campaign would make a lot of sense. But they'll probably put out one or two more Cinematic Scenarios before more setting expansions, so I am wondering if they'll be connected, and what kind they will be, and where they'll be set. I can't wait for the next announcement, and I'll put whatever they announce immediately on the overworld from now on.
• Added a new review-quote to Chariot of the Gods:
  "The players told me they found the game tense, and even when they weren't onscreen (the players split up a lot), they were happy to sit and watch. I think because the system is so brutal, everyone kept watching (rather than being distracted by the internet) because they knew things could turn nasty in a split-second." -Steve Hatherley
• Added a line for the 2020 ENNIE the Alien RPG won (WINNER OF THE GOLD ENNIE FOR BEST GAME 2020!), and a new review-quote that's quite illuminating: https://akbattlegrounds.net/w/multivers ... 18af5aa878
  "All that said, if you're looking for a more tactical experience, Alien would not be a good fit. It doesn't revel in the planning stages or the climactic shootout, but rather, the moments between when you're tiptoeing down a dark hall toward an unknown destination." -BurlyOrBust