Solo means no GM: just one player GMing himself. But of course we will play it with a GM, because that's the only way to verify the result and enter it in the overworld. Plus it's more fun this way for the player too because otherwise he kinda has to read ahead and improvise instead of be presented with situations and react. We've already done this with SriK in Skeleton King's Crypt, by the way: that too is a solo adventure that I ran for SriK and even considerably modified to be even more fun than RAW (you can read about the changes in the thread [ > ], they were a hit with both SriK and viewers).
Unlike Skeleton King's Crypt, Last Survivor is not a single adventure: it's an adventure generator, and in theory could be used for infinite adventures. In practice you pick one out of a list of Mission Starters to generate the theme, and there are 24 of them. So that's how many adventures I want to run: one for each starter available. And the way I want to use them is as rewards for a player's character surviving one of the normal multi-character adventures. Those are already tough and most characters aren't expected to survive. Often, the entire group gets wiped, and that's intended. Ideally, only a sole character will survive, as in the typical Alien movie. But since this isn't a movie but a game, there's no way to prescribe that. So sometimes the whole group will be wiped, other times two or three characters might survive. But in the most nail-biting and satisfying conclusions, there will only be a sole survivor.
Surviving therefore an Alien adventure is a reward of its own, but why not pile on even more rewards if you can? You'll only be raising the stakes, and thus the enjoyment. So my idea is to reward survivors with a round of Last Survivor, in which they get a chance to help ANOTHER character survive. Like a bonus round, so instead of ending the adventure with one living character, they can end with two. And why would they want the extra character? Well there is a whole mechanics supplement about building colonies, and my idea is that survivors can be used there to speed up the colony's growth. Note also that we have most if not all types of aliens as models for Cult Engine 3, plus many colonial marines, the power loader, that tank from Aliens, and other support characters and machines, plus a full colony city-building kit, so we could conceivably build everything in 3D. Cult Intelligence (CI) is also at the point where it can take 2D character portraits and give us 3D models. Hell I even think we have some spaceships.
Moreover, since Last Survivor is the absolute simplest way to get into the Alien RPG, why not start the entire setting with one of these, even before Hope's Last Day? And since ysignal started that thread, and I want to reward initiative because without it nothing in my game functions, let's give him the very first Last Survivor adventure if he wants it. If he doesn't want it, the second poster in that thread can have it (recoil), and so on.
Please note that this will be an extremely basic adventure, likely with no art at all, and we may just even play it via text on Discord if a VTT isn't required. So please don't judge Alien RPG and its adventures based on this. The Alien adventures are extremely detailed and complex to the point where many GMs are complaining that they can't run them: read the review quotes I posted on the Alien overworld to see these complaints. Last Survivor is just a 16-page supplement in a 314-page rulebook in a game with maybe 1,000 pages of rules and 1,000 pages of adventures. It's just a minigame, if not a microgame, and that's how we will use it.
So, ysignal, let me know if you're in or not.
I am very excited to finally kick off the Alien setting, even in this small and humble way.
