Those Dark Places

Space is a hell of a thing but you need to be sure that this is what you want. Like, what you really want.

The idea of space exploration to further the frontiers of mankind is noble, but let's not kid ourselves - it's really all about furthering the profit margins.

There's money to be made and out there is the place to make it, but you hear all kinds of stories: equipment malfunctions, strange discoveries, crewmembers going insane...

You'll be out there in the reaches, alone, for months or years, breathing recycled air and drinking recycled water, with nothing but a few feet of metal and shielding between you and certain death.

Are you sure this is what you want?

- Crew Orientation Briefing

Those Dark Places is a new "industrial science fiction roleplaying" game, coming from Osprey this November and written by a big fan of the Aliens franchise who happens to share a surname with one of its main protagonists: Jonathan Hicks.

Due for release on November 26 in the UK, the game is described as "a rules-light, story-focused roleplaying game about the darker side of space exploration and the people who travel the stars in claustrophobic, dangerous conditions".

The atmospheric description goes on:

"Starships, stations, and outposts aren't havens of safety with clean, brightly lit corridors - they're potential deathtraps, funded by budget-conscious corporate interests and running on stale, recycled air and water. The stars may be the future of humanity, but they are also home to horrors and terror the human mind cannot comprehend."

Author Jonathan Hicks blogs at Farsight Blogger and has recently launched his own podcast.

You can find some of his other gaming material here at DriveThruRPG.

As you may have guessed I've already pre-ordered my copy of Those Dark Places from Amazon.

What's In A Name?

Despite taking a tone that is both patronising and slightly condescending, this old article on Ars Tecnica raises an important point: the creatures faced by Ripley, the colonial marines et al are not actually called "xenomorphs".

That is simply another way of saying "alien life form"... or, as Hudson would have it, "bug".

The dialogue in Aliens also strongly suggests that that "Ripley's bad guys" are not the only alien species in the universe, it's just these are a previously unknown - and therefore unnamed - lifeform.

So, what do you call these creatures in your own headcanon? How are they referred to in your games?

"The species' binomial names are given in Latin as either Internecivus raptus (meant as "murderous thief") in the Alien Quadrilogy DVD or Lingua foeda acheronsis (meant as "foul tongue from Acheron") in some comic books... In The Weyland-Yutani Report, the Alien encountered by the Nostromo was specifically referred to as "Xenomorph XX121"."

- from Wikipedia

Fifty Percent Off Core Rules PDF Price

At the moment, the PDF of the core rulebook of Alien is being offered on DriveThru for half-price.

Free League has slashed the cover price by 50 per cent in response to the current global lockdown.

Comics: Alien - Original Screenplay #1

Cover by Guilherme Balbi

Originally due to land in comic stores on April 22, just in time for Alien Day on April 26, Alien: The Original Screenplay #1, is a comic book adaptation of Dan O'Bannon's original 1976 screenplay - putting a fresh spin on an old favourite.

En route to back to Earth, the crew of the starship Snark intercepts an alien transmission. Their investigation leads them to a desolate planetoid, a crashed alien spacecraft, and a pyramidic structure of unknown origin. Then the terror begins . . .

Written by Cristiano Seixas, with art by Guilherme Balbi, Alien: The Original Screenplay is a five issue mini-series from Dark Horse Comics, that offers an alternate sequence of events to those we know so well.

Of course, the current coronavirus pandemic has shut down distribution of new comics, so the immediate future of this title remains up in the air.

Variant cover by Walter Simonson

Preview pages:

Ataegina

click to emiggen

From Scott Sigler's Aliens: Phalanx

Original Alien Concept Art By Ron Cobb

Click to embiggen any of the pictures.

More of Ron Cobb's Alien work can be found here.

Cobb contributed to the exterior (miniature) look of the Nostromo, while designing many of the spacecraft's interior sets, for the original Alien film.

You can read a short piece he wrote about his work on the Nostromo here.

GM IDEAS: Planet Of Iron Rain

Astronomers have discovered a tidally locked exoplanet with an atmosphere where it rains of molten iron.

WASP-76b orbits a star in the Pisces constellation, 640 light-years from Earth, and an article on Popular Mechanics explains:

"The day side is constantly bombarded by radiation and can see temperature spikes of over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 2,204 degress Celsius)— hot enough to split open molecules and vaporise metals like iron."

However, the nightside is much cooler, about 1,482 degrees Celsius, and so when:

"...the atmospheric winds carry the vaporised iron over to the night side, they begin to condense and fall to the surface as rain."

It's The Only Way To Be Sure

The Beauty Of Stress

Well-respected games' writer Andrew Peregrine shares his thoughts about the elegance of the core mechanics in Alien in this Game Design Masterclass article on EN World.