Introduction
The local convention that got me started GMing publicly decided to do a "mini-con" at the start of 2020. Normally I have GMed Conan 2d20, but with the release of Alien RPG by Free League I jumped on board to GM the introductory adventure in the core rule book, "Hope's Last Day". I thought it would be a great intro for new players as well as myself, and require less prep for myself, at least in terms of adventure design. It being a short adventure should lend itself to running in the shorter 4-hour game slot of the convention as well.
Having a look through the rules, I liked the maps in general but didn't think they would lend themselves to miniatures. I could do a strict theater of the mind game, it's not really how I work. I needed a way to combine the in book maps with miniatures.
Since Alien basically works between two basic modes; stealth, and combat, I thought I could use this to get a cool game presentation. Using the maps of Hadley's Hope for interaction in Stealth Mode, and then zoom in to a more miniature heavy version of the colony when we were in combat mode or exploring a room more thoroughly.
Prep & Play
Stealth Mode
My first task was to get the maps from the book into a fairly playable format. Step one was to grab the PDF and bring them into GIMP. Once there I broke down each floor into a separate map and then cleaned up the background. This would allow me to display one large format map at a time to the players. As I type that, let's hope the PCs don't split the party onto multiple floors.
One of the reasons I wanted to be able to place one map out at a time was due to space constraints, I always struggle with the size of the tables we play on, not that they are too small, just that I use a lot of stuff.
My plan was to blow up each floor's map to decent enough size to allow miniatures to represent where each player was even if it wasn't a 1:1 scale. To do this and to keep costs down I decided on 2'x2' for each map. This left them at a pretty decent size, but also allowed me to have them printed at VistaPrint during a 50% off sale and get all 4 maps for about $25cad printed as a 4'x4' poster.
In the end, this provided a good interface to allow the players to see where they were in the colony, but after running the game I would provide each player with a copy of the map as well, so they were more able to see the entire layout of Hadley's Hope, including the levels they were not on.
Visually I would grab some kind of markers or blips to represent their location on the map. I would probably use blue or green for the PCs, one for each player and a group icon allowing the PCs to split the party if they desired. For the Aliens, a nice red marker. In the end, I used a small blue d6 for the PCs and a red die for the Alien. Using the actual miniatures on the map and moving them back and forth from the map to the 1:1 scale representation would have been a little clumsy.
Combat Mode
I still wanted to use a more true scale representation for combat and in-depth exploration of areas. For this, it was pretty clear that I wanted to use a sci-fi version of the "Ultimate Dungeon Terrain" or UDT. I would just need a way to represent walls and such.
Having used UDT for Conan I knew I needed some basic scatter terrain as well as some walls. Foam dungeon walls are pretty easy to put together, but when it comes to sci-fi things can be a little more difficult. I spent some time scouring Thingiverse for something that would work, but in the end, I didn't find a solution that I wanted to use.
A little while ago I had an idea where I would model some wall ends for 3d-printing and then use straws to connect them giving us some nice pipe walls. I decided to adopt this idea, but with foam-core instead of straws. I modeled some wall ends that allowed the insertion of foam core, giving me modular 45-degree walls. I was pretty pleased with the overall design.
Then I watched Aliens and re-designed the wall ends to be more in line with the colony. These new ends allowed a vertical piece of foam core to be used. Despite this redesign I ended up only using them to frame a door.
These worked well in play as a concept, but I could have used a few more lengths of them, all of the ones I built were around 5" long, to really fill things out and allow wall runs that didn't extend past the UDT edges.
Other models and props I found on Thingiverse: desks, computers, eggs and facehuggers. The only thing I couldn't find on Thingiverse was an actual Xenomorph. There was a few of them, but nothing that stood out as a cool
gaming mini.
I looked around and found a piece of software called
Xara Posing Studio AND a model for it for the Xenomorph. Being pretty confident in the new Elegoo Mars, I set out to give it a pose and added a based and some misc parts, rocks, and a pipe, to make the pose make sense. I added these to the model in "3D Builder" and exported the whole model as an STL. After a couple of tries, I got the pose and model to work on the printer, and I had a pretty cool Xeno miniature. I added this to Thingiverse, so now all the models I used (minus the PCs) are on Thingiverse.
To make a set of PCs for the adventure I ran over to
Desktop Hero 3d and put together a few characters. I did this mostly with their free assets but ended up paying a little extra for a few of them. I grabbed a few props from Thingiverse and added them to the models in "3d Builder" again, giving me a fully custom set of figures designed for the adventure. At this time I can't make the .STLs for the characters available, but they should be pretty reproducible if you want.
Model Links
Notes
Like all adventures, the GM has a notebook or similar with, at least, key elements for the adventure. This is normally pretty simple to accomplish as you write the adventure. Since I don't normally run pre-written adventures I wasn't sure where I wanted to go, especially since this adventure is pretty directionless for the players, giving them the entirety of the colony to explore and die in.
In the end, I built a
Google Slides presentation with interactive maps to allow me to move around and have some key tables at my disposal. So much for running a pre-built adventure because it would be easier!
This presentation worked excellently, but as it was my first time running something like this on a new platform, I think I would try and do things a little differently: Keywords and descriptors for each location as well as a basic mapped layout for the area using UDT. This would allow me to do better with area descriptions and not need to think about how I want to layout each area on the fly unless I choose to.
Conclusion
The game went well, and even if everyone died, fun was had by all. There were a couple places I was a little weak in the rules, but for my first time ever running the game, it was a pretty easy system to get your head around. Running it again I would have more preparation done on describing the offices and other areas of the colony that aren't really fleshed out in the adventure because they aren't key locations.
Overall I was pretty happy with the collection of Sci-Fi bits I came up with to work with the combat mode. I was doubly pleased I got them all painted up, but if I had had the time I would have used a slightly lighter color scheme on some of the parts, just to break up the overall terrain, which was pretty monochrome.
Since the game ran I have modeled a few more bits, including a sloped wall panel joint with a built-in computer terminal. I am also working on a set of wall ends that can be linked and some new doors. Expect to see some videos in the future on sci-fi terrain.
In the end, the experience with RPG Alliance has remained a positive one. Everyone around the various tables has fun, I am glad to be part of this convention in my small way. If you are in Calgary or planning on coming by drop by the Rpg Alliance on
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Special Thanks
I would remiss if I didn't say a HUGE thank you to
Free League, publishers of ALIEN, who sent the convention special edition copies of the RPG to give away as door prizes (which I sadly didn't win.) Generosity from these companies is incredible. Thank you again to a great company making some great games (Alien, Tales from the Loop, Forbidden Lands, Coriolis, the upcoming Vaesen and numerous others I've not even looked at!)
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