Building Better Worlds
Building Better Worlds is a campaign supplement for the military sci-fi horror RPG Alien, written by Andrew E.C. Gaska, Dave Semark, and Tomas Härenstam and published by Free League Publishing.
By Aaron T. Huss
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Building Better Worlds is a campaign supplement for Alien The Roleplaying Game, focusing on an expedition into colonial territory. It is comprised of three distinct parts – a character/player supplement, companion, and sandbox campaign. The first two parts align with the third, creating a cohesive supplement that really expands on the theme of exploring, colonies, and how the two work together. The sandbox campaign puts the supplemental material to good use along with providing a lot of great content for the campaign itself. It also establishes a great baseline for Game Mother’s looking to put their own campaign together and need a little direction.
First, a look into the character/player supplement. This part of the Building Better Worlds delves deeper into the history/timeline associated with the Alien franchise setting, presenting players with a better understanding of what colonization means within the context of the setting. It then moves to the character types that best fit this style of campaign – Explorer and Colonist, expanding upon both and providing new rules and options. To go along with the theme, it also includes new gear and spacecraft for pushing the boundaries of the setting (as in, expanding the setting outward).
Second, the companion part of the book provides lots of new items for the Game Mother in the form of locales and adversaries. The locales include the Far Spinward Colonies which feature prominently in the sandbox campaign. The adversaries explores the depths of the possible alien encounters, but not just xenomorphs. There are new species provided here, but unfortunately there is little artwork to show what they look like. I point this out as a big miss on the development side as these species can be completely foreign to the gaming group and words simply do not do enough to create a visual reference. There is lots of artwork in the book, but it focuses more on the human aspects of the supplemental material and not on the alien aspects of it.
Finally, Building Better Worlds includes a sandbox campaign that exhibits a format I like to call a playground instead of a sandbox. I saw this years ago from Rite Publishing’s Coliseum Morpheuon where the campaign includes an open sandbox setting for exploring while here are milestone events that occur at predetermined times (for Building Better Worlds it is predetermined locations) to move the overarching storyline forward, bringing the campaign to its climax. This is a favored design of sandbox campaign for me as it provides direction only when necessary while giving the players the freedom to make their own decisions about how the rest of the game moves along. The sandbox aspect is a combination of missions playable in any order (effectively different locales within the setting) and the possibility to fill time between with your own creations. This last item is made easier with a detailed appendix of tools/tables to create your own worlds and settlements.
I can’t really say much more about the sandbox campaign as it would quickly give away valuable information that could ruin the players’ experience. Just know that this campaign includes exploring, colonies, and aliens wrapped inside a beautiful book that follows the same presentation themes as the rest of the Alien line.