Aliens Unlimited is a sourcebook for Heroes Unlimited, another game series from Palladium Books. It also has some conversion rules for using characters in Rifts however so I wanted to include this review with my other Rifts book reviews. Aliens Unlimited is an excellent addition to any space campaign setting.
Aliens Unlimited offers over 100 alien races and monsters with random creation tables to make more. It includes new superpowers, bionics, skills, equipment, and more. There is a spaceship creat table and rule set perfect for any budding space setting. Rules for adapting its contents to Rifts, The Mechanoids, Phase World, and other Palladium Books game settings.
Aliens Unlimited™ brings alien beings to your Earth-based Heroes Unlimited™ setting and enables you to take your Earth heroes to alien worlds. This sourcebook has everything you need to launch an alien based campaign or galactic adventures, or introduce alien invaders, villains, heroes and campaign ideas.
Aliens Unlimited™ makes the perfect resource and companion to the Thundercloud Galaxy™ or any of the Rifts® Dimension Books and Minion War™ series. Looking for some new space aliens, villains and monsters to add to your Thundercloud Galaxy™ or Minion War™ campaign? Need some unique Splugorth slaves? Demon henchmen? Take a look at Aliens Unlimited™ (and the Aliens Unlimited™ Galaxy Guide™ companion sourcebook); easy to adapt.
Gm Material from Aliens Unlimited
For those unfamiliar with Heroes Unlimited, people gain superpowers based on their category, like bionics, magic, experiment, mutants, etc. This book adds extra options to those categories when creating a character. This gives your players and the GM more options for coming up with ways to introduce players to gaining their powers (if done during gameplay).
For those that are getting back into playing Rifts or roleplaying in general it may be a good way to add some extra flair to base characters. You could have your characters going around doing hero things only to inevitably get caught up in some accident that then gives them a superpower or several.
Depending on the game you are running giving your characters a simple power like enhanced stats won’t make a huge impact on the game. What it will do for your players is give them that slight edge or boost making them feel a bit more heroic (perfect when doing an adventurer-style game). If you instead allow them to add multiple powers, and even mega hero then obviously that just adds even more heroism options to the player character.
So for the most part this book gives a GM new options to draw upon in the form of Aliens, either already created or ones they can create with the roll tables. This can be put to use in the obvious fashion of making villainous outworlders, or simple off-world NPCs.
Aliens Unlimited Player Material
This book offers players the ability to create really unique characters. Being able to create a race and then adding an OCC to it is super fun. It gives you much more control of tailoring your character to excel at its strengths than normally allowed.
The equipment, weapons, and spaceships from this book are not really anything to get super excited over. The exception to this is the Kisentite weapons that have an additional 1d6 to base damage by weapon type. That said these are supposed to be SDC weapons so it’s up to the GM as to whether they retain that if brought to an MDC setting, much less if they become MDC in doing so. They do allow you to block bullets and laser blasts though.
Something cool I like about the weapons listed is that they have many damage types. In Rifts games you basically get ion, laser, particle beam, and projectile. This book has a sonic, microwave, cold, advanced bow and arrow, and others.
You’ll find tons of races in Aliens Unlimited, but if you want Dinosaurs check our Rifts World Book 26 Dinosaur Swamp review.
Story material in Aliens Unlimited
Most of the story material in this book is related to the setting of Heroes Unlimited which is an alternate reality of present-day Earth. Therefore most of it makes for great story material if you are playing a pre-Rfits Earth campaign. For example, if you have players start as heroes pre-Rifts and then live through the upheaval of the dark ages and move into the later Rifts periods as budding demigods, heroes unlimited immortals, Mystic China martial arts immortals, genetic alterations, or some other reason for long life.
Project Tyche in this book discusses an organization that keeps its eyes open for UFOs and investigates them. This could be a great way for players to get caught up in otherworldly exploration even during the pre-rifts time. This is just one agency operating at the time regarding extra terrestrials. Where this one leaves off, others pick up. Get the book to find out more.
The originality of Aliens Unlimited
Making up this many different races would be a large undertaking so I have to put the races as being incredibly original. The factions are so-so as they are not that in-depth, though really it’s probably more that I’m not one for modern Earth settings. The roll tables are somewhat taken from already existing tables with extra added so not that unique.
Is Aliens Unlimited game breaking
Some of the races and maybe the creation tables could be game-breaking if you let them be, so don’t. I like to say, don’t make problems out of things that don’t need to be. So what if one player is more powerful than another, or if they are all more powerful than expected? It just means now they have to look out for even greater powers. Splugorth could try enslaving them, Evil gods could come out to kill them for interfering with their plans, or a black hole could appear and suck them in forever so they can’t mess up your game anymore. If players are intentionally trying to break your game, get better players.
Our recommendations of the best Rifts books for a Minion War game.
How good are the occs from Aliens Unlimited
A huge number of new races are added so the options are mind-boggling. The races are very diverse, with some being totally useless with others being really really awesome sounding. I personally like making characters out of races with odd combinations.
For example, the Latran race is a shapechanging dog that is SDC in human form and MDC in dog form (while in any MDC setting like Rifts Earth or Phase World). It also says they can be virtually any OCC, but rarely pursue the mystic arts. So naturally, I would love to make a mage dog. Hah. Mage dog.
How well does Aliens Unlimited mix with the core book
It fits in great with the original core book as aliens are common throughout Rifts Earth. The rifts have made a world full of aliens, even one-of-a-kind races that long to leave. Perhaps your group of players got together because they are so bizarre they only fit in with each other trying to find a way off Rifts Earth.
The only caveat to the above is that few superpowers are listed in Rifts Earth books so new GMs may not know how to deal with them. Most powers don’t require the expenditure of PPE, ISP, or draining an E-clip so many players may think it’s not fair. I caution you to let that thought go because usually, Heroes Unlimited players don’t have the same skills that Rifts Characters have. Since they come from somewhere else they will be hampered by not speaking the language maybe or other skill issues that make them stand out even more. The GM can use these to their advantage to make up scenarios or cause mischief.