My take on ALIEN RPG: Evolved Edition (having enjoyed 1e’s cinematic one-shots but bounced off it in preference for Mothership).
The engine is familiar with nicer knobs. It’s still Year Zero: d6 pools, 6s are successes, push to reroll and gain Stress; Stress dice can trigger Panic. That core “do a scary thing → roll more dice then get shakier” loop remains the spine of tension. New this time is Resolve (≈ your mental steadiness = (Wits+Empathy)/2), which gates resisting Stress/Panic and can be dented by lasting trauma; it gives the fear game a clearer stat to lean on.
Cinematic vs Campaign. Looks like campaign got real support. Cinematic play is still “pre-gen cast in a meat-grinder act structure; not everyone lives.” Campaign play expands with three frames (Space Truckers, Colonial Marines, Frontier Colonists) and practical tables: typical jobs, employers, suggested ships, even weekly pay -actual procedures you can point at when you’re not running a pre-written scenario.
Stealth, clocks, and mapping got sharper. Evolved formalizes Stealth Mode in “stretches” (5–10 minutes), clarifies zones/LOS, and adds “Countdowns” that literally tick down with die results. Time as a consumable is baked into the crawl. In 1e the same idea used “turns” but felt looser; here it’s explicit and ready-to-run.
Guns, grenades, armor, ammo are cleaner & deadlier. They’ve reworked armor/ammo/stuns and calibrated vehicle/ship armor. A concrete upgrade: ammo capacity exists now (absent in 1e), with guidance to convert old weapons; xeno and body armor convert via simple tables. Weapon write-ups are more tactile (aim requirements, AP, stun, etc.), which reads faster at the table.
Space combat finally feels like a scene, not a spreadsheet. Dogfights run on Objective vs Danger timers: you roll to advance your goal while the enemy’s clock advances toward “now.” It’s cinematic, brief, and gives you clear beats to narrate fires, hits, boarding, or getting left for dead. Not sure starship action is how I imagine this kind of game but this is a big step up so may be worth trying?
Solo is officially a mode now. Last Survivor gives you mission starters, oracle tables, stress/panic tweaks, and objective/danger timers for one-player runs. It’s explicitly “brief & brutal,” perfect for Ripley-style on-the-run stories between sessions. I’m woeful at solo play (just can’t get motivated) but I could see this being good for low player count 1v1 or 1v2 type sessions.
Setting: lots on the menu, with a clear playground. You still get the franchise’s “Space is Hell / Sci-Fi Action / Sense of Wonder” tone piece, but Evolved folds in a Tartarus Sector campaign region with named systems/planets to go exploit/suffer in. It’s a nice backbone if you want to roam rather than sit inside a single published op.
Table tools got friendlier. There’s explicit safety tools guidance; miniatures support if you want skirmishy scenes; and a life-path character creation option that spits out PCs with history baked in. These don’t change the core feel, but they ease prep. I’m a big fan of Traveller’s life path character creation so this is a nudge in the right direction for longer play.
What playing it read like it will feel. Tight scenes of problem-solving under pressure: a crawl in the dark (stretches ticking down), a panicked burst of violence, then regrouping as the countdown keeps chewing. You can absolutely do “blue-collar sadfuture” trucking and colonist drama now, not just bug-hunt tragedy. The fear economy (Stress/Panic/Resolve) keeps the spotlight on human frailty rather than heroic resource spins.
Crunch vs fluff. Medium-light in play: a thin layer of modifiers/talents over straightforward pools, but with meaningful sub-systems (stealth procedure, countdowns, ammo, armor conversions, ship timers, trauma). It’s more “directed” than freeform- there are rails for tension, not for story outcomes.
Comparing ALIEN: Evolved Edition to Mothership
Mothership’s vibe is “player-driven industrial horror toolkit” whilst ALIEN is a “licensed survival-thriller”. Mothership’s lighter on the rules, d100 roll under vs dice pools, with the stress/panic system having a stronger curated drama loop in that system.
Mothership’s Warden Manual is a treasure trove of tables and scenario seeds to improvise a campaign whereas ALIEN:Evolved narrows in on one sector, with specific jobs, set pace.. basically, you lose the freedom of Mothership for the licensed tone reliability.
Mothership is super swingy and gorey. ALIEN: Evolved is still deadly but toned down, more a pressure cooker than limb-lotteries.
Campaign play in ALIEN: Evolved is really the evolution of the game and closes the gap with Mothership’s “live in the universe” competency, albeit in a narrower lane.
Long term play with both these systems is still about keeping the horror at a distance for as long as possible as the stress/panic downhill ride will lead to a climactic end to the PCs without regular downtime.
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