Played the Alien RPG

Years ago I bought the Alien RPG, based on the enthusiasm for it on this site. I enjoyed reading it, never thinking I'd actually get to play it. And for years, I was right. Last July we got the idea to try it, and a friend read the rules and prepared to run the cinematic adventure in the starter set. Fast forward to last night, when we actually get people together to play it. Yes, it took 6 months to make it happen. :/

The rules are pretty straight-forward, and only one of us had never played a tabletop RPG before. He's a board gamer so he caught on with no trouble.

Each character has a secret agenda, and mine was to find money or stuff from the derelict ship to sell. This involved me going off on my own a couple of times, but it surprisingly never worked against me. Once the shit started popping off, it was pretty funny because one player got his characters killed so much that he burned through 3 of them. Ultimately I was the only player who had a character survive until the end. Not that it would have bothered me to die; I think RPGs are more fun when people don't treat their characters so preciously. It's not like we will probably ever play again; and if we did, it would be a different cinematic adventure with new pre-generated characters.

Overall it was a lot of fun. It took 5 1/2 hours but we completed the adventure. I was worried it would take two sessions so I'm glad it didn't. Hopefully we do something like this again.