ALIEN: Chariot of the Gods - RPG Review 

If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a facehugger.

Seth: > Actually gets to be a player > Still fudges rolls 😂

Always a good day when I see Seth in my notifications.

Love this review of a truly chaotic mega-game. Seth's reveal as the imposter at the end and the countdown to the ship blowing up created an unforgettable end game panic. I forgive you for blowing me up, but I'll get you back next time.

"'Oh, it's dodgeball time'. And I run at 'em with my two wrenches." If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

I'm running this scenario tomorrow (and possibly for many days to come) as our first introduction to the Alien RPG. Yesterday, one of the players told me that they've not actually seen any Alien films: they're in for a surprise.

"I open the inner and outer airlocks, venting all atmosphere into space, and exposing all living tissue that's not protected in a suit or a stasis pod to the cleansing vacuum of space."

Last time I was this early the air was still breathable.

I'm a simple man. Seth posts something, I press like.

funny thing about the ship being cold and needing to warm up... heat venting is actually a big issue for space craft engineering, because in the vacuum of space the only way to get rid of heat is via radiation, so it will retain any heat it generates for a long time, and any external heat it's exposed to will stick to it. space is only "cold" if you're in the shade, otherwise it's insanely hot.

Loved the review, Is there any chance of getting the audio file of mother announcing the reactor overload as a .mp3 download? {It'd be neat to have for GM's that run the adventure.}

2:08 "If a gamemother"? I'll allow it, that term probably makes more sense anyway.

Love the review, Seth, and I agree with a lot of it. I actually figured out some of these complaints before my group played the adventure, so I got to change some things around. Here's a few modifications that I made when I ran this module that might help other people interested in running it: 1. After the Montero's crew wakes up, I gave my players time to breathe and get adjusted. The module says to let them eat dinner, work off their hydration, and let the players interact. I went the extra mile and gave each member of the crew things to do according to their roles (Cham and Rye working in the cargo deck, Davis and Miller on the bridge, and Wilson getting Special Order 966). This lets you introduce the Daisy to the crew, lets Cham and Rye load the cannisters onto Daisy before the arrival of the Cronus in case they want the money (Miller and Rye personal agendas), and allows the radar blip for Davis and Miller to foreshadow the Sotillo with the radar blips, then introduce the distress signal later on.. It's also the calm before the storm and lets the players partner up with their buddies. 2. The Alien RPG subreddit has great mappers on there, which include deck plans for the Montero and the Sotillo. Whether online or in person, I recommend checking them out and using the different floorplans. Not excusing the module for the lack of maps, but this is how I got around it. 3. With all the weapons given from the Montero and the shotgun and pulse rifle immediately available on the Cronus, my players didn't have TOO much trouble in actual combat encounters. I actually included a second Neomorph after the first, hibernating one, and the bloodburster were killed. I think the key thing is pacing and atmosphere, and incentivizing the players using the motion tracker they're given. Using the Roll20 jukebox for the motion tracker bloops was one of the greatest drivers of tension and was more memorable than the aliens themselves. 4. Give plenty of warnings about the inoculations before the players get them. I had Dr. Cooper's personal datapad explain WHY he didn't take his shot, just to cast doubt on the inoculations. One of my players still took it, and he wound up becoming an abomination later, but the ball was in their court and it was shocking when the player actually disappeared into the Cronus away from everyone else. 5. I just ignored the Analysis talent, since it was clearly unavailable. Best to just tell the players or make them do a wits-related roll. I actually wound up not using the Sotillo, since my players surprisingly never tried returning to the Montero, and got the Cronus back up and running, so it was on its way to Earth. The final act included Clayton's attempt to negotiate with the party (since Lucas had convinced everyone to kill her and Flynn, who I kept alive), them navigating the second Neomorph, and the final showdown between Ava and Lucas, after the rest of the players were incapacitated. Overall, we got 24 hours out of it, and it works really well when you tweak it to be a little more user-friendly.

I'm running this game for my players. Due to time constraints, we ended the first session before the recommended end of act 1, but it was right about where Seth recommended. Also during some table talk, one of the players mistakenly confused facehugger and chestburster, calling it a "faceburster". Looking forward to the scene where Dr. Cooper pops.

I suspect Seth is in fact, not sorry about blowing up Gail's character.

Been looking forward to this review! Much appreciated. For the shuttle "Daisy" I'd recommend using a picture and the description of the Lifter Ship from Alien Covenant.

I finally saw ALIEN: Covenant. That blood burster was terrifying, especially the one that essentially replaced the guy's spine and then clawed its way out.

Thank you for including those random quotes. I keep a list of all the random things said in my games. It's nice to look back at them and laugh. For instance: "...I'm a god." "Of what?" "...Alcohol." or "D&D; also known as, My And The Boys Doing Crimes" or even "WET WILLY IS A MELEE ATTACK, SURE"

I love how Jack always has his lucky flask with him in every one of your videos Seth

"Generations of hasty alley sexy" caught me completely off guard XD

"...no one can hear you get sexy." LMFAO!!!

Solid review as always. Regarding end of act one I ended up blowing the Montero early as Davis refused to leave the ship - which was odd considering her agenda- so blew the ship after she failed a roll. This created tension between the crew as they think her drug problem is what has cost them their paycheck and their ship. It also forced Davis onto the Cronus. Ended act one with the blood burster escaping into the vents so they have something more to worry about . Have Ava humming “you are my lucky star” as she wanders about.

For the ultimate in deck plans I recommend "Alien The Blueprints" (Graham J. Langridge) This book includes the 'Daisy' actually, it's the same as the cargo lifter from Covenant. For the Sotillo, one or two of the Nostromo decks would work well. The book is a gorgeous accessory for this RPG or any fan of the movies.

uh..should I watch this?

Seth, I hope you like making these videos as much as we like watching them. These people aren't kidding when they say it makes them happy when you release a new one. Thank you.

I don't play this I'm here for the Traveller and Cyberpunk, but now I wanna play this TOO. I should really get some friends to play this with.

Great review, Seth. And you can wack me upside the head with a torch anyday...er, I mean my character. Seriously, this was such an incredible scenario to play in. I can't wait to run my friends and loved ones through the gauntlet as well!

Bought the Alien starter set + core book on your recommendation based on the last review, went thru the core book cover to cover and ran a couple solo one-shot sessions w/ my wife to test the mechanics, but haven't taken a crack @ the CotG campaign yet - this is great stuff man, glad I waited now. Can't wait to run this w my group!

Okay, now this was a review I've been waiting for, for a long time. Thank you so much for taking interest in this game and doing a review on it. Good stuff as always, thank you and stay safe.

Always enjoy the videos and in depth analysis of a game- and what game masters can do to anticipate issues and tweak a pre-printed product to add more enjoyment- like maps of spacecraft- things players will definitely ask about during the game

Can confirm on module length. It took my group about 18 hours to complete it and we were all pretty experienced with the game AND the survivors basically botched every roll possible and ended in a TPK. It was a lot of fun though!

Thanks for the review. I've been trying to figure out how to solo play this and now I have a good idea of what elements to focus my Mythic GME questions on. Been solo playing Forbidden Lands for the last three months, and it will be nice to switch settings without needing to learn a new game system. Keep up the great work, Seth.

Good review, Seth. And very interesting to hear behind the scenes of the scenario - we played this around nine months ago, after Hope's Last Day and before Destroyer of Worlds. I think our GM may have missed a bit about setting up Act 1 properly, because he blew up the original ship almost as soon as we landed on the Cronos. We didn't have mercenaries turn up, either. Our characters also deliberately left the flamer unit behind - they didn't think they'd need it to search a dead ship (as much as OOC we knew we would badly need it). However, seeing all the bacteria/spores in the air, we all insisted on staying in our space suits. As a result, nobody got infected. However, our blooming combat specialist was also the android (a bad call by the GM, I believe - he was effectively unstoppable and the only armed character!) and when he triggered in Act 3 he took out a couple of characters, then went and set off the reactor. To be fair, the damn neomorph took almost all of the rest of us out before he even managed to set it off. TPK. But still, good fun!

"...although I prefer the term Artificial Player Character, myself." Stellar reference, Seth! Pun intended. It's such a shame this adventure pivots entirely around all that Alien: Covenant hogwash, I wish there was a way to rejigger it to work with just the lore of the first two movies.

I am getting ready to run this scenario, your insights and suggestions are invaluable. I have never liked running published scenarios mainly because of organizational issues. This particular module seems to have information all over the place so to me, is best used as reference material and then write the adventure in your own words, this way you know where everything is located in the adventure. Another idea is to watch other RU-vid videos on how other Muthers ran the scenario. The players always ask questions that the modules never seem to have answers for. In this way, you can at least have some ideas on what the players are likely to ask from other games. Thanks Seth for the review and commentary.

Lots of really great advice! I’m going to be running this in a couple weeks for my group. We’re all brand new to the Alien RPG.

Great review! The random player quotes at the end were really funny too. Please keep those coming with future reviews :-D

Another option for the android is that he could end up becoming attached to the crew and developing a moral compass that conflicts with his orders, sort of like a reverse I, Robot. In that story, a robot that was previously thought safe violates Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, but in this scenario, a robot that was not designed with those laws in place puts them in himself after spending so much time with the crew.

Great video, as usual! I hope you give us your wisdom on cyberunk red and it's adventures, eventually. And, just a thought, a cyberunk red adventure written by mr. Skorkowsky would be awesome! (and very useful)

None of my players would take the inoculations. So I started to change the NPCs into abominations much quicker and they seemed to like it.

Excellent review! Thanks for taking the time to make it for us.

Love your review and the final comment at the end too lol. Nice uniform and background graphics and the voice of 'muthr' really good. She should do voice overs.

28:10 I ashamed by how hard that made me laugh

Got to play with my party and then a Seth video comes out both on the same day? Very nice!

I ran this recently for most of my usual group. I dropped the Sotillo since things were going down the tubes sufficiently. The game ended with the three players and an NPC in the emergency shuttle as the Cronus self-destructed. All three players were holding guns on each other, knowing that the NPC had to live since they were the payday, but there were only three cryopods. Just a great place to have the game fade to black as we ended.

Interesting stuff, I just discovered your channel which was great since I just received the Alien Corebook today; it looks absolutely gorgeous and I'm eager to listen to a few talks about the material for the game. I haven't looked into RPGs since I stopped playing them 30 years ago, but now I am very interested in them, mainly for writing inspiration since I'm an amateur fantasy novelist who also likes to include horror elements. Thanks for a great presentation. By the way, you've got a great voice, you should work as a radio host or something.

I cannot wait to play this game. Alien is my fav sci-fi movie franchise of all time and i love horror movies/stories. I found Alien RPG a year ago when it was first released and bought - couldn't wait to spring it on my tabletop gang. Just as I got it and started reading it, uncle Koe-Vid and the irrational fear thereof gripped California and suddenly no one could leave the house, and this game has gathered dust on my shelves. I've thought about playing online, but most of my players are not the web-cam types and I wouldn't want to play it with just voice and not face/body reactions. Unfortunately since that time, one of my long time players retired from military and moved back to TN, and my longest standing friend/player just got orders to go to Germany in a couple months, so now even when all this nonsense is behind us, I've lost my two longest standing players and friends from the table. Great review. I hope to one day run it. The same publishing company that made Alien RPG just inherited the rights to continue The One Ring - my fav RPG of all time, and other favorite franchise besides Alien.

I need the recording of that game, i will happily watch all 20 hours.

I haven't run one in this incarnation of Aliens, but I did run a campaign in the Aliens RPG in like '94. What I found worked was I always gave each Player an NPC to boss around in addition to their actual Character. To avoid gratuitous red shirtism make sure that each NPC had one needed Skill. So loosing one of these NPCs did set the party back.

I can't thank you enough for the mp3 of mother for my game, that was an awesome addition!

So Seth mentions at 28:30 about the voice of Mother in this video being a member of his group! So the person at 13.18 isn't an actor? Damn, It seemed so natural! Great work!

I actually managed to run this in a single 5 hourish session, but mostly because I didn't implement a lot of the optional story beats. Which I wanted to do so if we revisit this oneshot (we recently gained a 4th player to our group), I can throw new stuff in a 2nd attempt to surprise them. I also ended up with 2 out of 3 infected PC's, one in Act 2 and the other very late in Act 3. I had drawn out the symptoms for the 1st player, so they were able to play as they slowly went mad and ended up hunting down another PC in Act 3 (which he had a blast doing). The 2nd player had gotten infected late in Act 3, which is also when I introduced the mercenaries, so these 2 PCs had the means of escape. Thus allowing them to survive and fly away, as I described the 2nd infected PC starting to feel the inoculation symptoms, to close out the oneshot.

Getting ready to run this and I have to say that I totally believe we're gonna take forever to burn through this one because we're insanely heavy roleplayers. Can't wait to take them all down one-by-one in true Alien fashion!

Thanks Seth! Best RPG reviews on YT.

Loved playing this scenario just before lockdown in the UK. The personal goals are what makes these games. We did the Marines scenario recently, too

oh yes I've been waiting for this episode. I think you are 100% right about the length because our game took 5 hours but is still not over and has one more act to go. Also thanks for the advice on the infection.

Your reviews are great. Thank you!

In reference to the microwave burrito.... I'd imagine a ship like that would have a complex network of environmental control ducts and heaters. Power could be distributed pretty quickly and heat the whole ship evenly.

It’s kind of depressing but I don’t have anyone to play RPGs with anymore. So I watch seth’s videos to kind of live vicariously through him.

I spent 3 months building up a backstab of my group with my gamemaster in a Shadowrun game last year....The group was SO shocked they all ended up leaving the table and standing on the far side of the room. It didn't work. i died cataclysmically and built a new guy (which I knew i was prolly gonna have to do anyway). it's been nearly two years and i still get crap for it. It was amazing.

We just did this last Saturday, our DM (Mother) had run it already a couple of months ago. It was excellent, took us about 12 hours with an hour's break and a fair bit of waffling. We meet up from around the UK a few times a year for a weekend of rpg, so we lose a lot of gaming time to just catching up in the first few hours. I was Davis, the pilot. I escaped with Clayton and Miller, everyone else... well. Really enjoyed it, great mechanics and experience. We'd played the Blade Runner game a few months back, and that was also fantastic.

The earlier model artificial PCs always were a little bit twitchy. Modern behavioral inhibitors (read: diluting the booze) prevents them from harming, or by inaction allowing harm to come to, a review. Love ya, Jack! :P

I got the starter set for my birthday and can't wait to play it with friends

Informative AND entertaining, keep up the great work!

Great video! I've watched some podcasts of this interesting system, and I especially like the stress rules working for or against players. As in any game of horror, the GM needs to slowly ramp up the tension as you've mentioned in other videos, to keep everyone invested. I'm all for saving the big bad until the situation seems hopeless to watch the players panic and then aggressively scheme to survive.

Based on the rules in the module, the android is actually supposed to follow the same stress rules as everyone else- until the point they are revealed as an android. Also regarding infections- #1. if the characters keep their space suits on, they can't really become infected with the spores (though they are pretty much guaranteed that they will need to remove them since they will eventually run out of air). #2. By RAW there are rules for resisting the infection- you make a roll to see if you move from stage 1 to stage 2 of the infection (you need to read the rules regarding how this particularly infection works, as it acts like a virus. These rules are found at the back of the adventure in the section about abominations), so a PC can potentially stave off the infection.

This is why I'm leery of adventures (and entire games) that revolve around solving a mystery or figuring out a pre-established plot. I find that often times the author of an adventure makes logical connections that my players (or myself) would not otherwise make. Or, holes in the narrative that have to be plugged with a lot of GM effort.

Damn it....that's the title of a book I've started to write a few years ago.....😯 Nice video Seth.

Seth, I like how Jack was back on your side and not just the YT comment naysayers like in a few previous videos. I like when you and Jack get along.

its very funny to look at this review after having been a player in this scenario. I was so excited to hear about the Mad AI that would listen in to everything we said through the vents and trying to lure us into spaces alone with secrets he had listened into, or about the alien ontop of the spacehulk! these two things, especially the mad ai, was incredibly fun and exciting! then color me surprised when I listen in to this and realize that the parts me and my player group enjoyed the most, was things our GM home made for this scenario.... it really showed how much was missing from this scenario to truly be called an "ALIEN RPG SCENARIO", cause without those things, the scenario was pretty empty

I have run Chariot of the Gods 7 times. The ONLY time it was a single 5 hour session was a TPK not far into act 2 when a traumatized character set the reactor to blow AFTER the Montero blew up. It was a glorious moment. However, most runs are 10+ hours. Its a challenging scenario, and its nowhere near as one shot as it says.

One thing i really liked about the adventure is the fact there are no aliens in it. Making it really clear that there is more to the rpg than just the quintessential black horrors.

I ran this adventure in 3 two hour sessions twice (for two different groups), so for me it averaged about 6 hours. It was awesome both times. I did skip some of the optional events- primarily the pirates that show up at the end. The module even suggests that the pirates are really only there in case you feel like you need an additional complication, but I found that by the end of Act 2 there was enough going on that there was no need for this additional complication, and it just served to draw out the scenario unnecessarily. Also the GM has some control as to when certain events are triggered, which allows the GM to slow or speed up the pace of the module's progression depending on how fast they want to get through it. I tried to find a balance between giving the PCs some time to explore with also keeping the tension high and the game lively by having events popping up that they needed to react to.

Just finished this, took us 2 sessions of 4h each. The Lucas fooled the rest of the crew into going into cryo while she set the course towards Bionical, her "employer".

Useful review. I may run this one day.

Sounds like a blast. I have the Starter Set coming.

I've been waiting for this one!

Playing in the same room? That was a thing at one time wasn't it?

"Generations of hasty alley sex" had me rolling on the floor.

Played this one over two fairly long sessions a couple months ago. Our first act went pretty much the same as described, nothing was automated so we just turned on random stuff as we explored the ship, eventually finding the NPC crew and fighting off the neomorph. We didn't even know about the shuttle and didn't know about the reactor overload till someone decided in-character to steal the main ship and bail, only to blow up a couple minutes later. From there the GM decided that every NPC was infected and they all turned on us in unison which took out a couple more of us; then while we were locked in the medbay one of the PCs turned and the already injured survivors had no chance, we never even got to act 3. Overall it was a good time and went pretty much exactly how you'd expect an Alien game to play out. My only real complaint with the system was that it felt designed for this kind of one-shot where everyone dies, mostly due to the stress mechanic that makes it basically impossible to succeed at anything once you have about 3 stress dice. it works great for that kind of game, but I can't see actually playing in a long campaign with this system.

For those who aren't sure what a flatbed cargo lifter is in the franchise, I refer you to the little ship from the end of Alien: Covenant with the crane used to fight back the Xenomorph while they were still in atmo.

Oh oh oh I just thought of a great Alien scenario! It's a animal cargo ship full to the brim with cows and chickens, maybe a horse for transportation on the huge frigate, a mad geneticist could even Noah's ark it if you really want to more clichés

A friend of mine ran this for us last Halloween. It was awesome!

Your group sounds like great fun XD

I was so excited for this video. Hope you play "Destroyer of Worlds" next. I had a lot of fun running it but it's long

If you Google Wy-37b flatbed cargo lifter, you can find images and clips of the shuttle. To Seth's point, you absolutely should not have to.

Nicely done as always. I agree about arbitrarily killing characters. When I run, the dice usually decide if someone lives or dies (occasionally down to Luck checks in Call of Cthulhu). More often, my players write themselves out of scenes or avoid certain scenes of violence, even before they know it's going to be violent. In some cases where the player leaves the scene and battle erupts, I'll let them make roles for the monsters or take over an npc, at least for the course of the fight. In one case a small group of new characters in a modern-day zombie-apocalypse game decided to "practice" killing zombies. Since other players were supposed to come in shortly after, and combat takes a while, I let them run some of the zombies. Players are vicious when it comes to killing other characters. It was a bloodbath. Two characters died and the last fled the fight without any of the zombies being taken out. I don't know if I'd have run it that brutally or not. But everyone seemed to have a pretty good time. Moral of that story: "Don't 'practice' killing zombies."

This adventure is pretty good. S P O I L E R S P A C E The game i DMd lasted for about 4 hours, and the gang was about to evacuate the ship ASAP. Didn't help that the pirates that came made them even more nervous and then the android character (which happend to be the captain) also detonated their own ship. as soon as they were alone on the second one - i let all hell break loose ^^ One of them wanted to clean the air scrubbers and i had that black goo in there and he turned into a neomorph and i said (you are now playing on team alien!) The Captain (Android) was on the bridge and locked the door, and the other 2 went into the life boat and tried to get out, while my neomorph player and another alien i had there, just went after them and tried to kill them. they hated me so much for it (but loved the game) and it was a hell lot of fun.

Thanks Seth, really enjoy your videos.

Good to see you defeated both construction and children with megaphones to get this one out!

Yeah, it's a hard no on me taking out PCs for story. I play with friends and i want them to still consider me a friend after the session. Let the dice take the rap.

In every single way this is exactly the video I wanted to see. Thanks Seth!!!

"Artificial Player Character" lol

I've run it twice, and both times it clocked in at about nine hours (and now I have ten players with some of the carryover bonuses for Destroyer of Worlds)

Would you be willing to do a rpg rules video for alien like you are for traveller and cthulu? Me and my friends love your videos of that style it makes learning new systems sk much easier :)

Enjoyed the video, Stopped before the APC told me what to do.

Jack the NPC is one of my favourite characters in any form of media (Excluding the Disc World, of course).

The Daisy is the same thing they had in Covenant. The cargo loader they escape the planet with.

Great video, as always. Quick question: Is it advisable to let players choose the character they prefer, or is it better for me to assign each one a character that I think they will play well?

GMing it this weekend. Very excited