As a wargamer, when I first saw the movie ALIENS in 1986 I was taken in by the Colonial Marines fighting the Xenomorphs with cool weapons and quotes like, “Game over, man. Game over!” or “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”1 Over the years, however, the characters in ALIENS have come to mean more to me than the combat kit. In particular, I have come to appreciate Newt who is perhaps the real hero of ALIENS.
For many years I avoided starter kits as I long perceived them as little more than a slimmed down rulebook. That perception lasted until the mid- to late-2010s when I picked up the starter sets for all three Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars RPGs. Though each set certainly contained that (dreaded) slimmed-down rulebook, each also served as a jumping off point for me to use in introducing others to the game. Which brings me to today and Hope’s Last Day.
As part of the ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game – Evolved Edition and Rapture Protocol kickstarter campaign backers could pledge for an updated starter set—Hope’s Last Day. This adventure covers the final hours of Hadley’s Hope, the terraforming colony on LV-426 where Newt lives and the Colonial Marines were eventually deployed to as seen in the movie ALIENS.
Ripley: How long after we’re declared overdue can we expect a rescue?
IMDb.com, ALIENS (1986), Quotes
Corporal Hicks: [pause] Seventeen days.
Private Hudson: Seventeen *days*? Hey man, I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but we’re not gonna last seventeen hours! Those things are gonna come in here just like they did before. And they’re gonna come in here…
Ripley: Hudson!
Private Hudson: …and they’re gonna come in here AND THEY’RE GONNA GET US!
Ripley: Hudson! This little girl survived longer than that with no weapons and no training.
[to Newt]
Ripley: Right?
[Newt apes a salute]
Private Hudson: Why don’t you put *her* in charge?
Hope bursts forth
In March 2025 Free League Publishing launched the ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game – Evolved Edition and Rapture Protocol kickstarter campaign. The campaign fulfilled in November 2025 just a few months later than the September 2025 projection at campaign start. In this post I am going to dig into the new Starter Set – Hope’s Last Day. Later posts will cover other rewards in the campaign such as the Evolved Edition core rulebook and the Rapture Protocol- Cinematic Adventure campaign.
Cinematic adventure
In ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game a distinction is made between Cinematic and Campaign Play. Hope’s Last Day is a Cinematic Adventure meaning it,
…emulates the dramatic arc of an ALIEN film. Designed to be played in a single or a few sessions, this game mode emphasizes high stakes and fast and brutal play. Conflict between player characters is likely, and you are not all expected to survive. In fact, most of your PCs probably won’t live to see the end of the adventure. A short but completer three-act cinematic adventure, Hope’s Last Day, is included in this starter set.
Starter Set, Rules Booklet, p. 1
Hope’s Last Day is an adventure for a party of up to five players plus a “Game Mother” (GM) that is playable in a single long session or a few short engagements. Everything needed to play is in the Starter Set; a copy of the ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game Evolved Edition core rulebook is not required.
ALIENS in a box
Component-wise, Hope’s Last Day provides plenty of material to start your ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game adventures.
Hope’s Last Day comes with two booklets: a 26-page Rules Booklet and a 20-page Adventure Booklet. Both are of very high quality with saddle-stapled glossy pages. While the covers are dark, the inside is a bit better white-balanced; if you are printing this on your own expect to drop some credits on ink! To supplement the Starter Set Rules Booklet there are five (5) rules Reference Cards; as these are not specific to the adventure meaning they almost certainly will find a way into almost any other ALIEN RPG adventures. Much like the Initiative Cards. There are also cards for Wounded and Stress status.
The are five (5) double-sided character sheets for the players of Hope’s Last Day. These are a reminder to me that RPGs have come a long way since my early days of playing Traveller and bugging my parents for yet another stack of index cards. The Starter Set also includes cards for a character’s Personal Agenda as well as Gear; why simply note what you are carrying on your character sheet when you can use a handy card to reference when necessary?
The first of the large, full-color maps in Hope’s Last Day is actually a two-sided folded map measuring 22″ x 34″. The map is on slightly heavier paper with a bit of a waterproof-like finish. On one side is a map of “Stars of the Middle Heavens in the Year 2183” which almost certainly find use in any future ALIEN RPG campaign or adventure, if not the least for simply orientating the adventure group as to where the action is happening. The back side is maps for two levels of the facility the adventure takes place in. In addition to the large 22″ x 34″ map, in this Starter Set there are two other “map” products included. The first is a 17″ x 22″ double sided map used in the adventure, along with a third smaller map sheet (11″ x17″) that (spoiler alert) is for use by the GM and NOT the player-characters! There is a small half-sheet of tokens in the Starter Set to go along with the maps. Material is also provided to construct a supply dial for tracking air or ammunition.
Based on my grognard expectations, the two booklets and map should be the minimal necessary kit for me to play Hope’s Last Day. The ALIEN RPG is, however, built on the “d6-fork” of the Free League Tabletop License (FTL) which uses six-sided dice but with non-standard faces. Instead of making me use standard dice and having to remember what the different faces mean, the Starter Set comes with 10 ALIEN RPG Base Dice and 10 Stress Dice. Thanks, Fria Ligua!
One item included in the Hope’s Last Day Starter Set—and absolutely not needed for play—is a Xenomorph miniature. Yeah, it looks cool but…
Lost Hope?
As much as I like ALIENS and the story of Newt’s survival, I question whether the use of LV-426/Hadley’s Hope in Hope’s Last Day is asking too much of the players. There is a reference to the fate of Hadley’s Hope in ALIENS and one has to (hope?) the players do not know…or are willing to try to “alter the outcome.”
Burke: [about the facehuggers] Look, those two specimens are worth millions to the bio-weapons division. Now, if you’re smart, we can both come out of it as heroes and we’ll be set up for life.
IMDb.com, ALIENS (1986), Quotes
Ripley: You’re crazy Burke, you know that? You really think that you can get a dangerous organism like that past ICC quarantine?
Burke: How can they impound it if they don’t know about it?
Ripley: Oh, they *will* know about it, Burke, from me. Just like they’ll know that you were responsible for the deaths of 158 colonists here.
Burke: Wait a second…
Ripley: You sent them to that ship.
Burke: You’re wrong.
Ripley: I just checked the colony log. Dated 0-6-1-2-7-9, signed Burke, Carter J. You sent them out there and you didn’t even warn them. Why didn’t you warn them, Burke?
Burke: Okay, look. What if that ship didn’t even exist, huh? Did you ever think about that? I didn’t know! So now, if I went in and made a major security issue out of it, everybody steps in. Administration steps in, and there are no exclusive rights for anybody; nobody wins. So I made a decision and it was… wrong. It was a bad call, Ripley. It was a bad call.
Ripley: Bad call?
[Ripley grabs Burke by his vest and shoves him against a wall]
Ripley: These people are *dead*, Burke! Don’t you have any idea what you have done here? Well, I’m gonna make sure they nail you right to the wall for this! You’re not gonna sleaze your way out of this one! Right to the wall!
[Ripley lets go of Burke]
Burke: Ripley…! You know, I… I expected more from you. I thought you’d be smarter than this.
Ripley: I’m happy to disappoint you.
[Ripley leaves]
[Interestingly, the Hope’s Last Day Adventure Booklet has nearly this same quote on page 14. I say “nearly” because the numbers are different. So…which one it the truth? I guess that is up to the players after all.]
All of which is a reminder about the (unstated?) intent of the Hope’s Last Day Starter Set. This starter set, more so than some others I own and enjoy, is not intended to kick off a campaign but instead is intended as a tool to introduce and teach players about ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game. As a cinematic adventure, Hope’s Last Day is quite literally a one-shot; the adventure book does not even include seeds for a possible next adventure—it just ends. That certainly may be the way most who encounter Xenomorphs end up but I feel there is a thematic mismatch between a starter set that is supposed to “start” your adventures and a (literally) dead-end. In the case of Hope’s Last Day I want to be Newt—a survivor—and not Xenomorph chowder. I expect Hope’s Last Day to give me that opportunity. Yet, I am concerned that the game—by design—may be stacked against me.
- Always a hoot when one uses this as a recommended Course of Action (COA) when planning using the military decision-making process (MDMP). ↩︎
Feature image courtesy RMN
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