Thread 96417281

Trying to hammer out a solid setting/headcanon for a unified Alien/Predator universe. Here's my take on what to keep , what to shitcan and what to add:

>Things to KEEP:
The Queen and the hive from Aliens. Gives the bugs a purpose beyond just being murder-insects.
Diverse Alein lifeforms (e.g., the T. Ocellus from the Alein Earth).
Gritty corporate dystopia. Weyland-Yutani is the real villain. "Truckers in space" aesthetic is mandatory.
The Engineer/Forerunner concept, but ONLY as a way to explain panspermia. It elegantly explains why so many species are biologically compatible (e.g., Facehuggers working on humans and Yautja). It also supports my favorite fan theory: the Yautja didn't invent their advanced technology; they inherited or reverse-engineered it. This explains how a tribal, honor-based society can also have plasma casters and FTL ships.

>Things to discard:
The AvP movie lore. Predators did not build pyramids on Earth.
The Human/Xenomorph Hybrid (looking at you, Newborn): This completely demystifies the Xenomorph for me. The horror of the Alien is its otherness. It's already the ultimate killer because it takes traits from its host—it's already optimized to hunt us. Making it more human just makes it less scary.
The "Magic" Black Goo: As it stands in the prequel films, the goo is a narrative crutch. It can create, it can destroy, it can mutate... it can do whatever the plot needs. I'd either discard it entirely or give it hard, consistent rules.

>Things to ADD:
More alien life in general. The galaxy feels way too empty with just humans, Xenos, and Preds.
Riddick from Pitch Black. Discard all the following Riddick lore. It is shit.

Please write which parts of the franchises you would keep and which discard. And we will see if we can come to an agreement and build consistent setting.

Or point me to people that already did this.

The new alien life forms is the best things that happaned to the franchsie since AVP movie came out.

And discussing settings to be used for TTRPG is /tg/

I would have posted stolen ideas from MotherShip but the few books i have read had nothing as evocative as the xenomorph.

Square pigs from Space Truckers.

I laughed super hard at their presence in that movie.

They improve any space dystopia setting they are added to.

>>96417281 (OP)
Just use the Alien and Predator Dark Horse Comics for expanded lore.

>>96417337
Yep. That's really all there is to it. Stick with the lore from the Dark Horse comic lines and you can't go wrong.

>>96417337
which volume/comic do I start with? Genuine question.

Wiki has tons of them.

Is the Aliens vs. Predator Omnibus: Volume 1 2007 a good place to start?

AvP has so much potential for sexy girls in super sexy outfits.

And we never saw it on the big screen. Biggest tragedy.

>>96417281 (OP)
You just described Hostile. https://www.zozergames.com/hostile.html
This is the game I am running now actually. I put in my own details and tweaked a few other to make it my own setting. Here's what I did and what you can do.
Keep the first four Alien movies (for the lore, not for the quality of the movies), the first two Predator movies, and the 90s comics for both franchises and the AvP. Also know that canonically that the two Bladerunner movies happen in the same setting as well and both are good for lore IMO.
This does 99% of your world building for you. I added these movies as well; Moon 44, Outland, and Soldier (1998). I have no issue with Pitch Black though I hadn't considered it .

>>96417396
There's so much of them... one of my personal favourites was Music of the Spears where composer guy wants to compose music from alien sounds, gets hooked on alien slime drug and eventually alien gets loose. Shit art but i like the story itself.

Actually majority of those have shit art but some of the stories are good. Great, even. Many predator comics have "old" predators who try to find their last battle and die in a blaze of glory. Ie. Predator vs. Judge Dredd. Or "bad" predators doing things against their "law". Like Homeworld and Bad Blood. Best if you can torrent (i don't know if you torrent anything in 2025, maybe there is better alternatives nowadays) whole heap.

>>96417396
The omnibus editions are all hella cheap on Amazon. I have them. They're a short read. Just read them in the order they're collected. You'll hit a few, especially in the Aliens line, that you won't care about so skip. But I think it's only like 7 or 8 books total. And they're comics so honestly you could plow through the whole thing in like 2 days easy.

>>96418808
>Best if you can torrent (i don't know if you torrent anything in 2025, maybe there is better alternatives nowadays) whole heap.
Just read them online here: https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Aliens-Omnibus
https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Predator-Omnibus

>>96419425
Oh and when you get to it: yes that looks a lot like Ripley, Hicks and Newt. It was. It got retconned after Alien 3.

>>96418808
It was a time when a ton of creativity was allowed on IP comics. Hellraiser had an anthology magazine with some solid stories and a slow burn overarching plot that wasn't great but it was super interesting for what the franchise became. They had to help cure aids because it was an element of chaos or something absurd like that.

>>96417281 (OP)
I consider the Serena Dawn RPG website the definitive Alien/Predator canon.

We talk about Xenomorph and no one Mentions Quasimorph.

Best derivative IP out of this. Actually good gammeplay ideas comapred to any of the Alien Games.

>>96418808
>Many predator comics have "old" predators who try to find their last battle and die in a blaze of glory.
Chained to Life and Death is my favorite take on that.

>>96417396
The alien omnibuses then the predator omnibuses and then the AVP omnibus.

They are cheap, readily available and go from serious to fucking whacky. Alien expanded lore has literal ninjas using Xenodrugs and shit, massive alien frycooks making fried facehuggers for greasy spoons, and the president of USA suicide bombing a space jockey with a chest burster.

It's a wild ride. There is good stuff mixed in that isn't as batshit too. The predator comics establishing them as matriarchal in nature is good too.

>>96419951
>Quasimorph
Yeah, but the main antagonist of that setting is basically beings from another dimension brought to ours by mass suffering of clones. Unless you want to engage in Slavic pseudo-scientific occultism you can't really use that. I think you can use lore of the companies, terrorists, and cults, but they're not as neat/unique compared to the supernatural apocalypse happening.

>>96417281 (OP)
One difficulty integrating Alien and Predator is that Aliens are now officially in an alternate timeline where 80s tech advanced in their old form. Predator on the otherhand kinda moved away from that.

Not all Pred Clans build pyramids. Not all Clans use Xenos for hunting tests stock.
Yes, if one survives what they believe is the worst thing in the universe, then everything else is a push-over, what's the point?
There's a reason why there are different skulls in those trophy cases. Different opponents make better challenges.
There's an old deer-hunter's saying: The smartest thing in the woods during deer season IS THE DEER.
I point out as examples: Predator, Predator 2, Prey.

>>96417793
+1 to everything this anon said.
I would throw The Thing on top of the list of movies to add to the canon, personally.
And Avatar, maybe.

Alien Earth SUCKS

The doctor is in the house.
https://youtu.be/-latIFZ6xyA?t=1355


We should set up a document detailing map layouts, quests, events and xenomorph qualities and abilities like a Pokedex.

The AVP1 Alien in the ending cinematic has a very interesting accidental texture that makes it look much more symbolic than it actually is.

>>96417281 (OP)
>black goo
Hard rules are better than getting rid of it, it IS a useful narrative and lore device but really shouldn't be used a Star Trek technobabble magic cure all.
>Engineers
There should be a further explanation of their actions and why they want to destroy their creations.
>Engineers lore
They roll around and create life, all is good. Unfortunately they hyper evolve themselves into a dead end, and now can't reproduce anymore. They slowly start going extinct. They find out that they can reverse this by using the black goo to "unmake" the life that they made, as each form of life was made during different stages of their evolution. Two factions form, The Preservers, who believe that their time is done and they should ensure that their creations will find their legacy and learn from it. And then there are The Destroyers. The Destroyers created the Xenomorphs as weapons, but lost the war.
>Humans
EVERYONE IS A BASTARD. WY, the UPP, there should be no group who is a magical good guy, EVERYONE SUCKS.
>United American States
Freedom.... for a Price. You can have a standard of life that is pure luxury, but the rest struggle paycheck to paycheck. Corruption, Crime, and the only ways out are the USCMC or Indenturement to a MegaCorp.
>Union of Progressive Planets
Oh boy. Crank Marxism and ALL the warcrimes up to 11, if it weren't for Wayland-Yutani being so retarded these guys would get wiped out as nobody would want to follow them.
>what NOT TO DO
The UPP isn't the TikTok/Reddit gay space luxury communism fantasy, it's the Cultural Revolution/Five Year Plan/Red Terror with legions of subversive retards in the UAS and 3WE who would get purged the nanosecond the UPP took power.
>3WE
British/Japanese society on crack. Workers working themselves to death while paying outrageous taxes and crumbling social services while a strict social hierarchy means mobility is nearly impossible. The 3WE military is extremely competent, but poorly led.

Black Goo is expanded upon greatly in the Alien RPG, and isn't a terrible addition to Alien. It makes monsters, turns people into monsters, or makes people incubate monsters. It's a goldmine for writers to play around with.

On that note, what does Predator add to the Alien setting? I personally like the crossover, but how do you address the common complain of "Alien adds a lot to Predator, but Predator adds nothing to Alien"?

How far do we lean into Alien/Predator lore. Are we going to see the Amengi, or Fulfremmen in your setting?

>>96417555
Imagine.

>>96435880
The Amengi are bretty gud, and they use a unused asset (the OG/Jean Claude Predator) into a possible plot/BBEG and perfectly explain why the Predators are so fucked up.
>the Marysuemenn
NO. FULL STOP.

>>96436745
You've peaked my interest.

I'm writing a Predator campaign for the Alien RPG and I'm not sure how to go about referencing the Amengi. I'm trying to keep the tone of Alien. How did you do it?

>>96436834
Simple, keep them as Easter Eggs, like Predator 2 or a encounter that the party only gets glimpses of.
>weapons
The Alien RPG ABSOLUTELY SUCKS and the video games aren't much better. Aliens:Fireteam Elite is a absolute dumpster fire in art direction, it somehow transcends 343Halo in bad ideas. Everything looks like generic sci-fi slop, and unfortunately the writers tried their best to make them fit but couldn't.
>reddït
Good ideas are good ideas.

>>96430579
Labyrinth is so good, if I just want dumb fun though have to go with Stronghold.

>>96435880
Black Goo comes from the William Gibson Alien 3 script and was used quite well there, Prometheus/Covenant took his ideas and implemented them in less competent ways.

>>96417281 (OP)
Won't the new Alien edition from free league do that?

Btw of those alien comics, i really recommend "stalker". Can be found from aliens omnibus 6: >>96419425

>>96430579
A XenoDex? Include the data from the various wikis.

So what you're saying is that when it comes to Romulus and the AVP continuity, you gotta keep 'em sep-err-8-ed?

>>96417281 (OP)
Earth Angel is one of my favorite Aliens comics.

For a janky console RTS game AvP Extinction has a fun story, the company makes both a tame alien subspecies you fight in the Alien campaign and a predalien queen to fight in the Predator one. Inventing new aliens to fill a unit roster makes the lifecycle even more complicated unfortunately.

The genetically altered xenomorphs were wiped out, guess natural is best.

How should Praetorians fit into the lifecycle? Potential queens from Royal facehuggers? Normal aliens fed Royal Jelly? Every game has its own version.

>>96417281 (OP)

Are you going to link Blade Runner to the Alien canon?

>>96445233
Honestly no. cause blade runner has only one good idea: robots that believe they are human and want to be human.

So I am stealing that idea.

I see no other things that can be taken from those movies. THe rest is generic cyberpunk

>>96417281 (OP)
I like 6 from the AVP game that came out around 2012?

Problem is she kind of brushes up against the development cycle that was established in AVP extinction, which I really like. Basically she's a drone that comes from a human, which would make her a Warrior. However. By the end she becomes a pretorian, and in the last scene, with her queen dead she becomes a queen.

I think this is fine though. Basically a hive would have its preatorian guard, which can easily become queens in the event of the queen's death, but lesser forms can also become pretorians and then queens but it's a greater expenditure of energy. So basically the hive has the option of investing additional resources to have back ups ready to deploy quickly. But even if they're wiped out, if a Warrior or drone can find enough food and then a safe place to go through both metamorphosis they can become a queen.

And in the case ofnparticularly successful warriors or drones, they can be 'promoted' to preatorian, so the best, most intelligent of them are first in line to take over the hive if the queen dies.

>>96417281 (OP)
Black good should be thought of like Nanomachines if you want to keep it. Basically it can do anything, go in to cells and fuck around with your DNA in chaotic or specific ways. You can't change its programming without specialised knowledge, and because it's so virulent WY research into it always fucks up, with outbexception.

>>96417316
minecraft?

>>96417281 (OP)
>The AvP movie lore. Predators did not build pyramids on Earth.
Lame

>>96454059
That bit was fun.

>>96438502
Pretty sure they don't have the license for AvP material (not the films and video-games anyway, maybe the comics; the Blood and Stone series seem to be in the same continuity as Covenant, which they seem to have the license for).

My main recommendations:
Don't make all human groups over-the-top evil, and especially not totally retarded. WY in expanded universe go from ruthless company to evil empire and it isn't an improvement. You need the PCs to come from a flawed but basically decent society in order to have the 'everyman hero' vibe. Nostromo crew are shocked that they were expendable, Ripley wants Burke to stand trial with some confidence he will be punished, etc. They don't live in a grimdark dystopia.
Implications for bio-tech from the alien are huge. Just being able to integrate host DNA into new form is a big deal. Concept of transhuman upgrades from Romulus was good, implementation not so much.
Alien is cosmic horror, don't be afraid to have the aliens be more than animalistic monsters. Queen is obviously smart. Hive could be the start of something more complex, like a bio-mechanical technology base (see similarity to space jockey stuff). Should be actually alien and mostly incomprehensible though. Gives another motive to mess with them beyond just medical stuff.
Independent evil AI/synthetics and creepy transhumans are good supplements to the bad-guy line up. Commies (UPP) and criminals too. Don't have corps and bugs be the only threats.

Both O'Bannon and Geiger were big Lovecraft fans and said that Yog-Sothery was a major inspiration for Alien (incomprehensible alien monsters, uncaring universe, even details like the eggs being kind of Elder-Thing shaped).
How would you play that element up? What parts of the mythos would be a good fit?
Black goo has something of a Shoggoth (or FSoT) vibe to it (i.e. living black liquid, associated with ancient aliens, who suffered a disaster, possibly due to their creation running out of control). AI / synthetics hint at possibly 'going shoggoth' on humans a few times (most notably, David in Covenant).
Space jockey has a superficial resemblance to Rhan-Tegoth, Chaugnar Faugn, and Yag-Kosha due to the trunk (and being a huge, weird space alien).
Novelisation of Alien mentions some kind of futuristic trained dreaming. Think this is expanded a bit elsewhere with dream recordings or something. Could tie in to dreamlands, I guess?
A:E has transmission of consciousness (or at least a facsimile of personality) into new bodies. Big theme in Lovecraftian horror (Thing on the Doorstep, Shadow Out of Time).

>>96417281 (OP)
I like the bit in the Alien RPG source book where it states/postulates that the Facehugger doesn't just lay an egg, so much as it implants an embryo that releases an enzyme that breaks down the hosts internal organs to get biomass for the Xeno. You aren't a surrogate or an incubator, you're a flesh cocoon. The baby is breaking down your tissue and lungs into bio-goo and re-shaping it into a chestburster.

Really creepy stuff.

>>96425762
I'm more or less enjoying it so far but I feel like the final 2 episodes are really gonna make or break it
>Good
>strong focus on science weirdos messing with xenos instead of space trucker rehash or colonial marines rehash
>robot kid stuff is kinda neat, the bit where she mimics the facehugger sound/where the redhead insisted she was pregnant were real creepy
>little eyeball fella is neat
>Olyphant synthetic is cool
>antagonist is literally Captain Hook

>Bad
>they couldn't help but spell out the Peter Pan allegory last episode
>barely any xenos
>barely any Earth
>barely any alternate species beyond the little eyeball fella
>Hermit's actor is real bad
>too many cross-dissolves

At least it's something new and different that isn't completely retarded, which is more than I can say about something like Covenant.

>>96458161
>Don't make all human groups over-the-top evil, and especially not totally retarded. WY in expanded universe go from ruthless company to evil empire and it isn't an improvement. You need the PCs to come from a flawed but basically decent society in order to have the 'everyman hero' vibe. Nostromo crew are shocked that they were expendable, Ripley wants Burke to stand trial with some confidence he will be punished, etc. They don't live in a grimdark dystopia.
This. A big part of why Alien is such a terrifying setting is the mundanity of the dystopia. You won't be put in a cattle car, you can still get a decent meal, there's still leisure activities. But the powers that be will absolutely fuck you over for a percentage. Crew expendable.

>>96458390
I really love Elden in Prometheus: Fire and Stone.
>synth assistant to the science officer, who has cancer
>crew lands on LV-223 looking for the Prometheus
>they get attacked by Xenos, split up
>science officer and Elden end up in a cave, find some black goo and evidence of someone researching it
>scientist injects Elden with black goo to see what it does
>it evolves him into a biomech creature that can talk to xenos
>he develops a personality, rips all his skin off, grows new limbs
>feels betrayed by the scientist, considers xenos his new family
>eventually we learn the cave they were in was the Deacon from the end of Prometheus, which overdosed on black goo and grew into an organic mountain range over the course of years
Lots of creepy shit in that story, I like the idea of a being getting goo'd and evolving into something new, only to simultaneously love/hate the transformation

>>96442506
which game was it where the Alien campaign has you play as Six.
>creepy doctor researching live alien subjects (and all that this implies)
>burn the number 6 into PC Alien's forehead
>break out of xenojail
>stealth through vents
>french kiss people through their brain stems
>kill the creepy doctor
>escape and become a queen morph

I don't know or care about the lore as established, comics or movies or otherwise, I like the idea that a single alien will become a queen morph in the absence of a viable broodmother to produce new eggs, generally the biggest and the strongest of the group, while the others either die contesting the claim or become simple drones.

>>96458390
Bro, that saxophone is fucked up.

>>96438502
Writer for the Alien RPG (Andrew Gaska) doesn't like the crossover.

>>96458850
I think that first appeared explicitly in the Cold Forge novel, but it's also a pretty obvious extrapolation from what we see in Resurrection, Prometheus, and Covenant (and re-visited in Romulus) and goes back at least as far as the mid-ninties material like Alien3 (dog / ox burster different to human version), the Technical Manual (WY scientists speculating that the alien is human shaped because it reads the hosts hox genes or something to adapt to its environment), various comics with variant aliens, and the Kenner toy range. Even the original film had a deleted scene where the alien transforms humans into eggs, suggesting some method of altering their biology. It's also implausible that you could fit an animal as big as a chestburster inside someone's thorax without seriously altering their anatomy or leaving them virtually incapacitated.

>>96458998
>But the powers that be will absolutely fuck you over for a percentage. Crew expendable.
I don't even think it's that bad. In Alien, WY is fucking ruthless, but nobody expects them to be that bad. Right up until they see the evidence, they assume that the company wouldn't throw their lives away. It is obviously meant to be a shocking revalation that the crew are expendable. That isn't the attitude of someone living in a cyberpunk-style world. At worst it's equivalent to modern-day where things are pretty bad for a lot of people, but most normies can still tell themselves that society is more-or-less OK. I think it's more likely the intent that for it to be basically 1970-80s America where society as a whole was pretty much OK, with a few fucked-up things going on but well-concealed from the public.
Aliens doesn't seem any worse. Some bureaucrats are dismissive of what sounds like a crazy story, one influential guy is a psychopath, and he can pull some strings to manipulate events. But the marines are basically good people, and everyone seems to expect society to function OK.
In 3 you have a bit of a step towards dystopia. Then the comics (and, to a lesser extent, the novels) go absolutely crazy with shit like the berserker program (40k dreadnaughts with psycho prisoners inside, who get slowly killed by the suit) and the royal jelly (drug which turns people into insane killing machines extracted from aliens, which the military actually wants). Romulus has WY working its employees to death like some kind of third-world operation, and I think that is too far outside of most normal people's experience to really empathise with. Obviously big corporations now can have some employees who are basically fine and some who are pretty much slaves or whose lives are considered worth little, so it isn't unrealistic to mix them up. But it feels more realist to me if 'crew expendable' is a big deal.

sorry for not posting more. still reading the Omnibus comics.

some ideas are cool. But most are mid.

The white Human-alien-predator hybrid is stupid.

>>96430579
This was the nastiest version of an Aliens story I've ever seen. Still makes me shiver. Awful, awful stuff.

>>96417555
>>96436743
>>96460272
femyautja are criminally underrated

>>96437218
>Labyrinth is so good
>>96461115
>This was the nastiest version of an Aliens story I've ever seen.
I've read it just now because you made me interested, and now that I have, I'm wondering if I maybe I have the wrong comic
are we talking about the 4 issue thing? aboard the ship?
I mean it's wasn't bad or anything, the writing is competent, but it was much more... tame than I had anticipated
it wasn't scary
I don't even like horrors of the body variety, but the plot honestly felt kind of standard, nothing really surprised me
it didn't have any particularly interesting ideas and made aliens less scary if anything
I wouldn't even call it disturbing

>>96460272
Yes most things are mid because that's how middles work.

>>96417298
>The new alien life forms is the best things that happaned to the franchsie since AVP movie came out.
It didn't remotely invent that, dumbo. Alien 3 sort of had it and all the expanded universe videogames were rife with it

>>96417281 (OP)
>The Queen and the hive from Aliens. Gives the bugs a purpose beyond just being murder-insects.
>The Human/Xenomorph Hybrid (looking at you, Newborn): This completely demystifies the Xenomorph for me.
Frankly making Xenomorph into eusocial insects already kind of demystifies them a lil bit. Other settings/species like Scramblers from Blindsight and even nids from 40k navigate it more gracefully IMO.
I think xeno lifecycle with queens could be restructured to be "weirder".

Is this character believable or realistic

>>96471475
>starts a megacorp at six, somehow
>misquotes Clarke
>doesn’t even know how to fix his synths/hybrids
>bothered responding to a call from some insane mechanic
He’s an idiot. He’s probably a nepobaby. His rich dad died and he got all his cash and he knew the right people and was in the right place at the right time.

>>96471475
does it matter? it's not meant to be grounded nor relatable, ultra rich ceo in such works are essentially stand ins for demons, represent vices and a separation from humanity, not actual people.

>>96471577
Sure, but humans have this insane appeal to age/authority and they hate seeing young people being smarter or morensuccessful than themselves, so I find it a bit hard to believe that society would just place a kid that high on the pedestal.

>>96471612
He definitely had help from a lot of people

>>96471475
>>96471542
>>96471577
>>96471612
>>96471624
His rich ass dad died when he was like 5 and he inherited all his fortunes and all of his teams. Probably.

>>96471612
Eh, it happened before already.

>>96471657
What? Zuckerberg? Hardly comparable to starting a megacorp at the age of six.

>>96417281 (OP)
I think you should mash together as many other franchises and hammer out the inconsistencies later
jurassic park, independence day, terminator, planet of the apes, war of the worlds, starship troopers, avatar, the thing
shit like that

>>96471696
Stitch belongs to that wall.

I agree with you, but we need to select specific elements.


Jurassica park. Tech evolved to have Dinos ressurected. fine. Maybe they have a Jurassic planet somewhwere as an experiemnt. We will have a T-Rex infected by a xenomorph.

>independence day.
Meh. We can take the alien design from there, but those aliens do not fight in melee. So not a great idea.

>Terminator.
Hell yes. T-800 Better than synths.

>planet of the apes.
Never watched it. Do not see how much they would contribute to the setting.

>war of the worlds.
This is cool. At least the book ones. Advanced tech, but weak to biological infections.

>starship troopers
Meh. It would turn colonial marines into space amrines. and add a bug hivemind galactic enemy.
It removes focus from the Xenomoprh and turns everything into warhamemr 40k.

>avatar
I like the planetary mega=computer aspect of it.

>the thing
too OP. At this point replace it with the black goo.