Alien: Heart of Darkness - RPG Review

Free League's Alien: Heart of Darkness is a solid one-shot horror adventure... but GMs can run it a lot more smoothly with my tips and tricks. Take a look and help your players enjoy their time with a proto xenomorph. Enjoy!
You can buy Alien: Heart of Darkness here: preview.drivet...
Download my Heart of Darkness Banter Cards along with a professionally-voiced audio introduction:
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[@Cyryvy]

Dude, thank you for the extras! I’m about six months off from starting my players in Chariot of the Gods, all these things will be invaluable!

[@FugueNation]

Was waiting for this one! Thanks so much! your other video on the Starter really helped me get so many hours of fun

[@afBeaver]

Awesome! I’m looking forward to running this one.

[@hankb9682]

Great review and tips! I also zeroed in on the Perfected hunting for the accelerant as a potential hang up. I’m considering changing it to being the Perfected asking the PCs to repair their ship’s FTL drive so that they can escape. Now fixing the ship will actually be helping the bad guys and they need to find another way off.
Have you looked at Destroyer of Worlds? I’ve been loving your alien content - your advice video on Chariot of the Gods was extremely useful, and wondering what your thoughts are on the middle child of the scenarios. Thanks for a great video!

[@1ShotJC]

Funny enough I started as a player in Destroyer of Worlds, but didn't get much the way through it before the GM got distracted. So I've been meaning to run it next myself - stay tuned!

[@Grumble7908]

Great advice. Thanks! I love this system

[@MurphyC3030]

Great advice as always! Thanks!

[@larsmoller9722]

Very helpful, thanks a lot!

[@JeffreyEgan]

Just finished playing it. I think some of your tips are pretty spot on. This campaign feels like it can go all over the place (from the warden/prisoners, iron fish, varied alien species, "resuce ship", fixing the PC ship, etc.... coupled with the internal conflict from the player agendas and black hole paranoia... it's a lot.... It's honestly too much for a good GM to incorporate it all in one play through. Best to let the players kinda pathfind a route early and mitigate the others to keep some cohesion / focus as a GM IMO

[@1ShotJC]

That's a great way of putting it - it is more of a GM sandbox that requires some planning ahead vs just throwing everything at the players at once, which will lead to chaos. Funny, because I'm getting ready to run Destroyer of Worlds and have the same thoughts.

[@jonjonsson4762]

This was help full

[@omegaomtv]

Took us 10 sessions to finish this cinematic scenario. I do not know how you did it in one.

[@1ShotJC]

I think it was a combination of highly efficient players who don't dawdle, the fact that the adventure is a sandbox that lets you avoid a lot of its content (e.g., my players never went into the heart -- they were like "screw that") -- and the fact that it was a longer session (6 hours I think). But I can easily see how with other groups, this adventure could last many, many sessions.

[@CaptainPerfect]

Ten sessions. wow. We played the earlier ones in 3 batches, when act 1 or 2 ended we ended that session. We havent played this one yet so dont know how long it will take.

[@ishmiel21]

Awesome video, but I ahve some thoughts of the name of the bad guy in this adventure.
Ok, full freemen (or however you spell it) is a very bad name for a sci fi creature. One, it just sounds lame. Two, I'd be willing to bet that there's not anyone playing the Alien RPG who hasn't seen or read Dune. A name like that would instantly pull me out of the adventure I was in and plunge me into the Dune universe. I'm guessing that'd be true for a lot of fellow sci fi nerds.It seems like such a lazy name for a bad guy.

[@1ShotJC]

Haha somehow that never occurred to me. Technically “fulfremmen” is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “perfected” but I agree it could baffle scifi fans. Funny enough, when I ran it I didn’t really use their names - they were just the “scary psionic evolved things” to my players.

[@hankb9682]

I feel like the name Fulfremmen fits for the scientists who like naming things, but everyone else (and themselves) calls them the Perfected. I think the Perfected has some nice sinister undertones to it.

[@ishmiel21]

@@hankb9682 That's cool, but it just doesn't work for me. As soon as I hear Freemen in a sci-fi game, I'm instantly thinking of Dune.

[@JasonHauser125]

Nice review. I ran Chariot and Destroyer for my group some time back and really enjoyed them. I have the PDF for Darkness and I'm thinking about running it, BUT, and this is a big but, I might swap out the Alien RPG rules for Mothership. They look slightly simpler, and although we enjoyed the Alien rules, we all had a hard time remembering them. Do you think Mothership would work just as well as the default? (I'm sure it would, just looking for another opinion).

[@1ShotJC]

It definitely would. I’ve run some of the Alien adventures with other systems just because my player group preferred something they were already familiar with. Mothership would work great for these.

[@kirillt9009]

Nice.

[@neurohack9038]

Why are you dressed like a park ranger? I half expected to see Yogi Bear stealing picnic baskets in the background.

[@andrewcardenas1314]

I think he’s trying for a burke look lol

[@1ShotJC]

I was going to say park rangers hardly ever get killed by xenomorphs, but upon reflection that may not even be true....

[@josephgarcia9076]

Dead space anyone

[@1ShotJC]

My players would have killed for one of those cool dismembering plasma cutters...