“A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!”—Blade Runner
Building Better Worlds is a book that will take you out—far out—into the Alien universe to the Outer Rim Territories as far as the frontier of the Weyland Isles Sector, and then quite literally beyond, that is, ‘Beyond the 20 Parsec Limit’ where there is little hope of help or rescue if an outpost or colony gets into trouble or needs rescuing. Building Better Worlds is a book about the future of humanity and finding new worlds, living on worlds and settlements far from Earth not always best suited to colonisation, about making the lengthy journeys between them, and surviving some of the deadliest of secrets and dangers in the galaxy. With Building Better Worlds, the Game Mother can run campaigns that focus on searching for and discovering new planets—hopefully suited to settlement or exploitation, if not both; on settling, working, and developing colonies; and on transporting goods and passengers between them. It is designed to be used by both player and Game Mother and so is book of two halves. The first half includes an explanation of the fundamentals of exploration and colonisation, the colonisation timeline, a mix of governmental non-governmental organisations, guidelines to creating suitable Player Characters as well as two new careers, numerous weapons, vehicles of all types, and other equipment, and some ideas around which campaigns could be based. This half, roughly a third of the book, is for the player, whilst the longer second half is for the Game Master. That half includes two catalogues, one of the systems and colonies of the frontier, the other of the parts of the Weyland-Yutani Extrasolar Species Catalogue that Weyland-Yutani does not want you to see, ‘The Lost Worlds’, a complete sandbox campaign beyond the frontier, and the expanded means to create new worlds and colonies, and for running a colony.
The supplement opens with the facts of colonisation and space travel. That it is heroic, that it is dirty, that it is dangerous, and that it is expensive. That explorers need to be hardy and well-trained and that the pay is invariably good, whilst colonists need to be even more hardy, prepared for life on another world, and expect to be paid little, if at all. Both are likely to need to pay back for their training, though this is easier for explorers who make more income, and both exploration and colonisation expeditions are going to be funded by wealthy corporations, governments, or institutions. The history of colonisation runs from 2029 CE and the Weyland Era to the 2190s and the Black Gold Rush following the terrorist nuclear bombings of petroleum supply colonies, the Colony Wars, and the Great Mother Mission launched to contact lost colonies. However, the explanation of events is organised by category and the timeline crammed into a two-page spread, so it is difficult to get a proper feel for the flow of events.
The organisations chapter includes descriptions of positions on Scientific Exploration Vehicular (SEV) Expeditions and the Extrasolar Colonization Administration (ECA), useful as potential roles for both Player Characters and NPCs, whilst the governmental organization and corporation descriptions are a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the Seegson Corporation, United Americas, Colonial Marine Corps, Union of Progressive Peoples, and more will be familiar, expanding upon the information in both the Alien: The Roleplaying Game corebook and the Colonial Marines Operations Manual. The less familiar includes the Central Confederation of Africa, which is a minor, but rising interstellar power, and the New Albion Protectorate, a former colony located in the Weyland Isles, which seceded from the Three World Empire (3WE) and is prompting other colonies to follow suit in an effort commonly called ‘3WExit’ (you can tell that the author is British).
In terms of character options, Building Better World offers two new Careers as well as discussing how the different Careers from Alien: The Roleplaying Game can find their way onto exploration missions and colonisations expeditions and why they might join both, along with a table of possible personal agendas, which is very good. Each is also given two new Frontier Talents and two items of Frontier Gear. For example, the Frontier Talents for the Colonial Marshal are ‘Menacing’ and ‘Tough’, whilst the items of Frontier Gear are a ‘Bounty hunter/Investigator licence’ or ‘Handcuffs’. The two new Careers are the Wildcatter and the Entertainer. The Wildcatter is a prospector or surveyor who explores new worlds looking for resources or suitable sites for colonisation. The Entertainer is suggested as being a performer, croupier, unofficial club owner, waiter, barkeep, or other profession, which is less useful for most campaigns. It would need a static set-up—a base or a colony or a space station—to be a logical character option, and when things go sideways as they should, would also be the basis for a replacement Player Character.
There is a good selection of new gear and ships which can be found all across the frontier and beyond. New weapons, armour and suits, other equipment, vehicles, and spacecraft. The other equipment ranges from items as simple as a Folding Spade and Digging Fork (which of course, can be sued as a weapon) and as complex as the ‘Omni-Tech SDDG Sonic Deterrent Defence Grid’ designed to deter indigenous wildlife and pests from getting inside a perimeter. It is effective against humans though, inducing stress. The vehicles are typically large, multi-wheeled, and rugged, the COBB-C/D ‘Grasshopper Multivector Helijet’ an exception. The spaceships include the Lockmart Model 439SL Class 7 Excavator which has a heavy mining drill in its prow; the Weyland Heliades-Class, the first FTL-capable spacecraft; and colony vessels such as the Lockmart Model TB22C Borrowdale Class Transfer Vehicle and W-Y Model CY78.3 Affiance-Class U Colony Ship.
Surprisingly, the advice and suggestions for campaigns is in the half of Building Better Worlds for the player rather than in the section for the Game Mother. There are rules for surviving new environmental conditions, but the most interesting content here is the discussion of campaign types, set-ups, and expedition types. There are some colony classifications described too, including the ‘Shake and Bake’, ‘Extra Crispy’, ‘Giffy Popped’, and ‘Armed and Hammered’, that will give certain colonies similar feels. The two types of campaign discussed are Explorer and Colony Campaigns and together with the list of potential expedition types, such as supply and cargo runs, salvage ops, prospecting, scientific field-trips, and more, gives the Game Mother a decent range of ideas around which to base campaigns and plots. These are solid prompts, but as much they give the Game Mother some good starting points, the reader is left wanting more as each is worthy of further expansion and discussion.
For the Game Master, Building Better Worlds is also broken into two halves, one more general in nature, the other specific to the campaign, ‘The Lost Worlds’. The more general half begins with details of eighteen new systems located in the Outer Rim Territories, the Frontier, and Beyond the 20 Parsec Limit. Each has a description that gives its history and current status, plus list of stats and details that includes affiliation, classification, climate and temperature, terrain, notable colonies, population, and key resources. There are no hooks given so the Game Mother will need to work hard to develop these into fuller adventure locations with reasons why anyone would visit them. At half a page, they are underwritten and perhaps point towards the need for a world guide for Alien: The Roleplaying Game – Evolved Edition.
The second section is the ‘Weyland-Yutani Extrasolar Species Catalogue’. From Abominations and Fulfremmen (Perfected) to Protomorphs and and Xenomorphs, this is an expanded bestiary of your worst nightmares that nobody wants to meet and this being for Alien: The Roleplaying Game, unfortunately will. Many of these have been taken from the film Prometheus and the cinematic scenario, Heart of Darkness. Some also appear in the campaign that follows, but this still expands the options available to the Game Mother wanting to surprise and unnerve her players and their characters.
The second half of the section for the Game Mother is ‘The Lost Worlds’, a campaign that takes up just under half of Building Better Worlds. It builds off the timeline given earlier and set in the 2190s, concerns the Great Mother Mission. This is a combined multi-national, multi-corporation humanitarian, recontact, and recolonisation expedition launched by the United Nations Interstellar Settlement Corps to discover what happened to the settlements and peoples of the Far Spinward Colonies following their isolation from the Outer Rim due to a series of massive solar ejections, gamma bursts, and waves of radiation. It has been seventy-five years since contact was lost and numerous vested interests want to know what has happened to the millions of people who settled the region. There is even hope that if successful, the Great Mother Mission will serve as an example of co-operation and goodwill in the face of increased hostilities between the United Americas and the Union of Progressive Peoples. Of course, the expedition is rife with tensions and issues, both political and corporate, and these will drive the actions of the expedition members NPCs for much of the campaign and influence those of the Player Characters too.
The Player Characters are members of the expedition assigned to the UNCSS Solovetsky Island, one of Great Mother Mission’s four Magellan-class J Science Exploration Vessels (SEV). They can take just about any role about ship, but need to be free to conduct planet-based missions too. Otherwise, the players have a lot of freedom in terms of what characters they can create and roleplay. The campaign consists of seven chapters or expeditions, the first six of which can be played in any order as a sandbox, the completion of each one reward the players and their characters with another piece of the campaign’s metapuzzle, whilst the seventh serves as the campaign’s finale. Alternatively, they can be run as one-shots, but that would negate the tension and mystery that builds as the campaign progresses. The lose structure of the campaign also means that the Game Master has room to create her own scenarios set on other worlds in the Far Spinward Colonies. She may want to do that to have her Player Characters discover what happened to the other colonies that were not necessarily affected by the campaign’s emerging threat. The campaign includes a Session Zero for set-up and guidance on how to handle downtime scenes between the expeditions, as well as list of events that can occur as necessary or because of the Player Characters’ actions.
Over the course of the campaign, the Player Characters will colonies riven by a family feud, divided into extreme haves and have-nots, on the edge of insurrection, and seemingly empty bar strict automation. They will also conduct a search and rescue mission for a lost expedition vessel and even help set up and run a colony. The latter makes use of the colony creation and operation rules and advice in the supplement’s appendix which also include expanded rules for creating star systems and planets. Structurally, since ‘The Lost Worlds’ can be played in any order, it does lack a sense of space or urgency as written. Rather urgency is going to build from the narrative and the discoveries that the Player Characters make as opposed to inbuilt timing mechanism. Thus, by the end of the sixth part of the campaign, the Player Characters will have uncovered, even encountered, and hopefully understood the nature of a threat to not just the Far Spinward Colonies, but all of occupied space. Again and again, the Player Characters will find signs of ‘alien’ activity and even be confronted by it, but where in a Cinematic scenario, the objectives are simply survival and escape, here they are also to learn and wonder at some the secrets that the campaign will reveal.
Building Better Worlds does feel as if it should be two books, one focusing on its themes of colonisation and exploration, the other on its campaign. Perhaps as two books, the one devoted to colonisation and exploration would have had more room for colonies of the Alien universe to be expanded upon and detailed. Plus, ‘The Lost Worlds’ is more of a re-exploratory campaign than an exploratory campaign and were it not for the expedition where the Player Characters get to set up and run a colony, that part of the supplement would have been ignored. However, this does not mean that as just the one book, Building Better Worlds is a bad book by any stretch of the imagination.
Physically, Building Better Worlds is a great looking book. It is well written and the artwork is as excellent as you would expect for the line. As with other books for Alien: The Roleplaying Game, the layout is fairly open and thus easier to read. Being for the first edition of the roleplaying game, it still uses the black background that some readers have an issue with.
Building Better Worlds expands Alien: The Roleplaying Game—and consequently Alien: The Roleplaying Game – Evolved Edition—with a wealth of options, campaign ideas and playstyles, threats and other dangers, that all together open the possibilities of the roleplaying game’s Campaign mode and the Frontier Colonist campaign model. It then showcases them with a great campaign that delivers an escalating combination of horror and hubris.
