Classic Era Science Fiction Gaming

Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is a Science Fiction roleplaying game with a long history. If Dungeons & Dragons has its own Systems Reference Document containing guidelines for publishing content under the Open-Gaming Licence, then so does Traveller, the classic Science Fiction roleplaying game inspired by Imperial Science Fiction, published by Game Designer’s Workshop in 1977. This is the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, which contains the ‘Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System’, which provides a common framework for Referees to create and run, and players roleplay, whether for their own table or for actual publication. This is a roleplaying game which enables the Player Characters to travel the stars, explore new worlds, engage in speculative trade, conduct small scale military missions, fight off pirates preying on interstellar trade, investigate strange alien ruins, and more.

Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is published by Stellagama Publishing, best known for the campaign setting, These Stars Are Ours!. It is an update and expansion of earlier versions of the rules. The changes include the inclusion of the hexadecimal notation system beloved of Traveller being optional; combining skill and characteristic modifiers—which means that the target thresholds for actions are higher; Player Character is less random and a Player Character cannot die during the process, although he can be injured; damage suffered by Player Characters and NPCs is not deducted from characteristics, but from Stamina and Lifeblood, instead; Player Characters have Traits, heroic abilities which makes them stand out; spaceships can be larger—ten thousand, rather five thousand tons—and can be equipped with main guns, like Particle Guns and Gravitic Disruptors; technology is shifted up and down slightly, so that Cybertechnology can be available at Tech Level 9 and Force Shields at Tech Level 16; Player Characters can suffer mortal wounds instead of dying and can even undergo Cyborg Conversion or Bio-Reconstruction; and a section for the Referee has been added. There are innumerable changes and additions throughout Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition, but they are compatible with previous editions of the Cepheus roleplaying game. Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is upfront about these changes, but in addition, throughout the rulebook, the Referee is given options that she can include in her campaign.

A Player Character in the Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition has six characteristics—Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing. These typically range between two and twelve, but can go much higher. Then a Player Character has skills. These range from Admin, Airman, and Athletics to Tactics, Watercraft, and Zero-G. Notable omissions are the Mechanics and Electronics skill, replaced by repair, Admin includes the Advocate skill, and Gambling is part of Carousing. Skills range in value from zero to five, and are gained from a Player Character’s Homeworld and his Career. He also gains one or more Traits, depending on the length of that Career. These are tied to particular skills, so for example, ‘Jump Tuition’ requires Piloting 1 as a skill and allows the Player Character to roll with Advantage when making a Jump throw and travel faster-than-light, whilst ‘Explorer’s Society’ grants a high passage ticket once every two months and free stay at the society’s hotels.

To create a Player Character, a player assigns an array of values to the Player Character’ characteristics. He chooses one skill for his character’s Homeworld and then puts him through a Career. There are twelve of these, and include Agent, Belter, Colonist, Elite, Navy, Pirate, Rogue, Scholar, and more. A career lasts a number of terms, each four years in length—though an option allows for their length to be random—and a player picks skills as he takes his character from one term to the next, learning fewer skills as he ages. Once per turn, the player can also choose to give up a skill option and instead increase a characteristic. There is also the chance of suffering from the effects of age, but the main thing that the player will be rolling for is an event each term. This creates an incident which the Player Character can gain from or suffer because of it, and it can be career-related or it can be life-related. At the end of the Career , a Player Character will gain mustering out benefits in terms of money, items, ship’s shares, and characteristic bonuses. In extreme situations, a Player Character will find himself being trained in psionics or being sent to prison!

Using the Event Tables allows a player to create a bit of background about his character. For example, this belter grew up on an inhospitable colony before signing on with a mining concern to strike it rich. He never did, but he was sponsored for university and trained in the sciences and technical subjects. After nearly getting injured during an attack on the company facilities, he decided to retire, believing he had sufficient skills to go it alone and look for his own strike.

Karol Stounten
Strength 4 Dexterity 6 Endurance 7 Intelligence 11 Education 11 Social Standing 8
Career: Belter, 4 Terms Rank: Crew Boss
Stamina: 7 Lifeblood: 7
Age: 34 Homeworld: Inhospitable Outpost
Events: Pirate Protection Racket (Resisted), Study, Specialist Training, Cyberterrorism!
Skills: Athletics-0, Computer-2, Demolitions-1, Engineering-1, Melee Combat-1, Piloting-2, Repair-1, Science-3, Streetwise-1, Zero-G-1
Traits: Sensor Ace, Scientist (Physical Sciences)
Equipment: Spacesuit, CR 10,000 Prospector

Mechanically, Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is simple. For a Player Character to undertake an action, his player rolls two six-sided dice and aims to beat a target number, typically eight or more, for an average difficulty task. The player will add modifiers for the characteristic and the skill being used, a skill rating of two indicating that the Player Character is a trained professional and an experienced professional if three or more. A roll of twelve always succeeds, and sometimes, a situation will give the Player Character Advantage, enabling his player to roll three six-sided dice and use the best two. This is usually due to a Player Character trait. The amount by which the roll exceeds or misses the Target Number is called the Effect. Effect itself is not clearly explained, although there are numerous uses for it throughout the book, such as increasing the damage by a successful attack or the captain aboard a starship in combat using Leadership to ‘Lead Crew’ and create bonuses that his player can assign to the other crew members.

As a Science Fiction roleplaying game, Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition provides a wide range of equipment. This includes armour, exploration and survival gear, arms, armour, and cybernetics. The latter is classified into four grades, which start with A-Grade, superficial or common implants, such as cosmetics or an Internal OmniComp, all the way up to R-Grade cybernetics, invasive, experimental, and irreversible implants like a Berserker Module or a Hercules Frame Replacement. Every cybernetic implant has a point cost. If a Player Character has more than six points worth of Cybernetic Points, he suffers from cyber-disassociation, which will affect his ability to socialise. The weapons include vibroblades, gyrojet guns, tanglers, blasters and laser guns, and even a grav launcher that fires a floating plasma bomb that the user can guide to the intended target. A solid selection of vehicles is included too, as well as a quick and dirty robot design sequence, which allows them to be created in a few minutes, alongside a few examples, ready to be used in play.

The rules for combat allow for cover, aiming, automatic weapons, suppressive fire, grappling, morale, and more. If a combatant suffers more damage than his Dexterity characteristic, he is knocked prone. Damage is deducted from Stamina first, and then Lifeblood, the latter indicating that he has been wounded. If it is less than half his Lifeblood, he is seriously wounded. He is mortally wounded if it is reduced to zero. There are rules for trauma surgery and recovery. The rules for chases cover both foot chases and vehicle chases. Psionics are handled in a straightforward fashion, possible talents consisting of Awareness, Clairvoyance, Telekinesis, Telepathy, and Teleportation. What talents a Player Character might have are determined randomly, but at the very least, he will have Telepathy. His Psionic Strength, essentially an extra characteristic, determines the number of PSI points he has and the abilities he has within a talent. In order to use a psionic ability, he simply spends the PSI points.

Understandably, the longest section in the longest section in Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is devoted to starships. Spacecraft below one hundred tons are smallcraft and do not have a Jump Drive. Interstellar travel is achieved by the aforementioned Jump Drive, rated between one and six, indicating how many parsecs a starship can travel in a single jump. Speed within a system is measured in gees, again from one to six. The rules begin by explaining how starships are operated and the costs of doing so, including speculative trade in terms of cargo and passengers. The procedure for the latter is explained and there are suggestions too, on how to make the ferrying of cargoes more interesting. There is a similar procedure for designing spaceships and starships, all the way up to hulls displacing ten thousand tons. The latter enables the creation of large vessels and arming at that scale with large weapons that fit in triple turrets and bay weapons that displace fifty tons, and even main gun weapons that displace one thousand tons. In general, these are outside of the scope of most campaigns that a Referee might run, but their inclusion allows the possibility of a big, naval-based campaign. The procedure is the most complex in Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition, involving as it does quite a lot of decisions and arithmetic. The process does take a bit of practice to get right and get the numbers to balance. Numerous common spacecraft designs are included too, from a ten-ton fighter and ten-ton gig, all the way up a thousand-ton cruiser. Most of the vessels that will be within the purview of the Player Characters include the two-hundred-ton trader, one-hundred-ton scout vessel, and so on.

Spaceship combat is similarly complex. It is conducted in six-minute rounds which allow for weapon recharge cycles, the distances that missiles have to travel to reach their targets, the time needed for repairs, and so on. In that period, each crew member has time to take a single action. For the captain, that will be to ‘Lead Crew’ to orders, and more importantly, possible bonuses, or to ‘Outmanoeuvre’ the enemy and gain a better Position in relation to them; the Pilot has a choice of Attack Vector, Disengage, Evasive Manoeuvres, Plot Jump, and more; the Sensor Operator can Spoof Missiles, Jam Sensors, Target Systems, gain a Sensor Lock, or Break a Sensor Lock; the Gunner can Fire Energy Weapons, Launch Missiles, Launch Sand (which screens against attacks), or fire Point Defence weaponry; and the Engineer can Overcharge weapon or Redline Engines, or conduct jury-rigged repairs. It starts with attempting to gain Position over the enemy, this replacing what would be Initiative or Range in ground or air combat, as there is neither in space in Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition. Combatants can target specific locations on a spaceship, and if an attack does get through and hit an enemy vessel, it can inflict surface, internal, or critical damage. Internal and critical hits can damage or destroy specific components or locations aboard a vessel. The rules also allow for radiation damage too. Overall, the rules are busy and detailed—but not overly so, and they do work to keep every Player Character aboard a ship busy and useful in a fight.

The rules for world creation remain unchanged. The procedure enables the Referee to roll for the various factors which make up a world—size, atmosphere, water percentage, world government, law level, starport, and tech levels. All these will together indicate trade codes and the presence of bases, whilst the Referee determines what travel zone the world lies and what allegiances it has, if any, plus communication and trade routes. The procedure is straightforward and much less complex than the rules for either starship combat or design. In addition, there are rules and tables for social encounters, detailing NPCs, plus some sample generic stats, plus a guide to creating and running animals or xenofauna. This is perhaps the shortest section in the rulebook.

One new section specifically for the Referee provides her with a range of advice. This is broad in its coverage, its primary suggestion being for the Referee to start small with a handful of worlds and build as her players and their characters begin to explore the setting. There is advice on using contacts, enemies, and so on, as to what to allow or terms of technology since Cepheus Deluxe has a high number of baked-in features. These start with no Faster-Than-Light communication, slow interplanetary and interstellar travel, physical rather than virtual activity, and so on. The Referee is further supported with six detailed adventure seeds and then several appendices. These include a bibliography, options for using the ‘UWP’ or ‘Universal World Profile’, cyborg conversion or bio reconstruction to avoid death, and options for aliens. In general, Cepheus Deluxe is a humanocentric setting, but it is also a Science Fiction rules set, so rules for creating NPCs or Player Characters from alien species are almost obligatory. There are three given here, the Greys, the Reptiloids, and the Insectoids.

Lastly, Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition does include what every player and Referee wants for their Science Fiction roleplaying game—starship floor plans. Presented in ‘Appendix F: Schematics’—and not Appendix ‘F’ for ‘Floor Plans’, these accompany the full stats given for various spaceships earlier in the book, including an Assault Ship, Explorer, Prospector, Research vessel, Scout, and System Defence Boat. Many have a rocket-like quality to them, landing on their ends and having multiple small decks rather than fewer, but larger decks. However, they separated from their stats, and worse, they produced far too small to use with any ease.

Throughout Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition the Referee is constantly given two things. The first is options. For example, the ability to increase characteristic value once play starts; Hero Points to allow rerolls by both the players and the Referee; letting Player Characters switch Careers; allowing dodging and parrying in combat; armour as a penalty to hit rather than absorbing damage; heroes and grunts in combat for more cinematic play; and more. They lessen in number towards the end of the book, but they provide the Referee with numerous choices if she wants to tweak her Cepheus Deluxe game.

The second thing that Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition provides the Referee with, is examples. Examples of Player Character creation, combat, chases, starship combat, and so on. In some cases, more than one example, there being three examples of Player Character creation and two of combat, plus the examples of starship combat is lengthy and detailed, enabling the Referee to understand how the procedure works. In each and every case, they help to bring the rules to life.

What the Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition does is shift the ‘Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System’ away from its Traveller origins, and through that, any association with Imperial Science Fiction and specifically the Third Imperium, the setting for Traveller. However, the problem with that, is where it leaves Cepheus Deluxe, because it is not quite truly a generic Science Fiction roleplaying because its underlying architecture is still that of Traveller. This is not to say that Cepheus Deluxe could not do other types of Science Fiction. It could—and that includes many of the sources of inspiration listed in the roleplaying game’s Appendix A, such as The Expanse, Babylon 5, Dark Skies, and Outland. However, advice on adapting or adjusting Cepheus Deluxe to the possible subgenres of Science Fiction it could encompass, for example, Biopunk, Cyberpunk, Dieselpunk, Military Science Fiction, Space Opera, Space Western, would have been both very welcome and expanded its utility.

In some ways, this is not helped by the underwhelming treatment of alien races, either as NPCs or Player Characters. The inclusion of the three in the Appendix D feels like an afterthought. Here perhaps rules for the Referee to create her own would not have gone amiss, again, expanding the utility of Cepheus Deluxe. The inclusion of this and a more detailed examination of other genres would have made the Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition a better toolkit. Perhaps there is scope here for a Cepheus Deluxe Companion with tools, options, and essays to expand on this?

Physically, Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is disappointing. For the most part, the layout is clean and tidy, but it does need an edit in places. Worse, the artwork is often garish and simplistic, really failing to depict the tone of the roleplaying game’s Science Fiction. Conversely, the spaceship illustrations are excellent, though small.

Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is ultimately a passport to the Classic Era Science Fiction ‘Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System’. It presents and supports the Cepheus engine in a thoroughly accessible and—for the most part—supported fashion, especially with the engaging examples of play, providing the Referee with the tools to create her own content and use content available from other publishers.

A Hostile Setting

The year is 2225. For the last seventy-five years, hyperdrive starships have enabled mankind to colonise, settle, explore, and most importantly, exploit the more than three hundred planets in the interstellar space surrounding the Earth. Three arms of exploration and settlement have been developed—American, German, and Japanese. The majority of settled worlds lie within a four to six Parsec radius of Earth, but there are worked, settled, and visited worlds out to a radius of forty Parsecs. It turned out that none of them are true garden worlds. Many of them are tidally locked worlds and all have environmental conditions which make survival difficult if not outright challenging or dangerous. None have been found to be home to intelligent alien species, although many are home to indigenous species deadly, or at least a danger, to man. Even the Earth is no longer safe having suffered partial environmental collapse. Billions reside on the planet, but many make the long journey in hypersleep to make a new life on another world or to work contracts on resource worlds, for in the main, deep space is a place to work. Metals and rare earths, but above all petrochemicals for the plastics industry, remain in great demand.

The need for these resources has led to the rise of several South Korean chaebol and Japanese keiretsu-like corporations whose reach extends to the far edge of explored space, greater than that of any nation. Mining and aerospace company Reiner-Gama dominates and has its operations confined to the Solar System, but others include the engineering-based Leyland-Okuda; the British-based Erebus, built up from oil extraction in the Antarctic; Russian conglomerate Voroncovo, which provides data brokerage and security services alongside heavy engineering; Hong Kong-based manufacturer, Wu-Ketai; the Tokyo-based Matsuyama which specialises in colony construction and support; and the Tharsis Corporation, a mining company which originated on Mars and is led by Compton de Vaille, who at 223, is the longest lived human in history. The activities of these and lesser corporations are regulated by the United Corporate Combine, but peace, law enforcement, and labour relations across human space are still regulated by the political blocs and organisations of Earth. In the American Arm, the Federal Colonial Marshal Service stations officers on every colony, the Union of American Space Labor supports the safety and well-being of the workers everywhere, and the United States Marines provides military protection and peacekeeping. This includes the Tau Ceti 4 colony, originally divided between China and the United States of America, where the collapse of the newly democratic China in 2166 led to the foundation five new states all of whom claimed control of the former Chinese colony, civil unrest on the colony, and then insurgency and counter-insurgency as the United States Marines stepped in as a peacekeeping force, welcomed and rejected at the same time.

This is the setting for Hostile, a gritty, near future roleplaying setting inspired by the Blue-Collar Science Fiction of the seventies and eights, including the films, Alien, Outland, and Aliens. It is a future in which space exploration and colonisation is difficult, harsh, and dangerous, but in which there are asteroid systems and worlds to be exploited and great profits to be made. Conflict is not unknown—between colonies, between colonies and corporations, between corporations, and when that gets too much the Interstellar Commerce Organisation steps in or peacekeepers such as the United States Marine Corps are sent in, but in the main, space is a working environment. One with numerous hazards—the vacuum of space, radiation, adversely high and low temperatures, poisonous planetary atmospheres, potential insanity from being exposed to hyperspace, and strange alien creatures which see you as intruder, food, or incubation for its brood—which humanity must cope with in addition to the stresses of space travel and working away from Earth.

Hostile Setting is published by Zozer Games. It is the companion volume and setting guide for the publisher’s Hostile Rules, derived from Samardan Press’ Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, the Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System based on Traveller. The Hostile Setting can be run using the Hostile Rules or the Cepheus rules, but is primarily designed as the setting guide for the former. Instead of offering the chance to begin again in a golden age of opportunity and adventure, the Hostile Setting instead explores a new age of work, industrialisation, danger, retrofuturism, and cynicism. The supplement provides a complete that includes a future history that runs into the twenty-third century, details of major government, corporate, and criminal players along the American Arm, data for some one-hundred-and-fifty world worlds and detailed descriptions of over twenty, rules for character creation, equipment, arms, and armour, a space bestiary, rules for handling and working the hazardous environments of the future—including zero-g, radiation, and mining, starship construction and current designs, a write-up of the USCS Hercules—a newly released commercial towing vessel, including deckplans, over thirty detailed scenario hooks, and nods aplenty to the subgenres it is inspired by.

There is some crossover between Hostile Setting and Hostile Rules. This is primarily mechanically in terms of the Career options—including Corporate Agent, Corporate Executive, Colonist, Commercial Spacer, Marine, Marshal, Military Spacer, Physician, Ranger, Roughneck, Scientist, Survey Scout, and Technician. The Android Career is included also, but primarily for NPCs. The possibility of an Android as a Player Character is discussed and it is strongly—in fact, very strongly—advised that should a Player Character Android be included in a campaign, it should not be able to break its programming. Only six general options are suggested for androids—spacer, survey, scout, physician, scientist and technician. Elsewhere, Hostile Setting and Hostile Rules complement each other. Hostile Setting provides not just the setting that Hostile Rules lacks, but also details of specific arms and armour, equipment, and starships, as well as the rules for creating the latter. The rules for spaceship construction does feel slightly superfluous given the number of vessels detailed as part of the setting, but doubtless, there will be some Game Masters and readers who enjoy tinkering with them and designing their own starships.

In terms of what type of campaigns can be run in the Hostile Setting background, several options are discussed. These include working as troubleshooters, working as a crew of an interstellar transport, members of the United States Marine Corps or Federal Colonial Marshal Service, or explorers out on the frontier. The peacekeeping mission of Tau Ceti 4 lends itself to a low intensity military campaign and Hostile Setting focuses on this colony more than any other in the book with some colourful fiction for the situation there. A Hostile Setting campaign need not even leave a colony or mining station though, the Game Master could easily develop a colony which could support any number of situations involving exploration, survival, criminal activities, technical difficulties, labour relations, and more. For the Game Master wanting a nod to the primary inspiration for Hostile Setting, the film, Alien, there is guidance for creating and handling horror in the setting and a discussion of the types of exomorph—or alien horror—that the Player Characters might encounter in the far, dark reaches of space. Whilst several examples are included, the Game Master is advised to introduce these with care. A number of hyperspace anomalies are also discussed as potential sources of fear. Whatever the type of campaign chosen, there is some solid advice on how to describe the setting, including excellent lists of elements which can help enforce the look and feel of the environment.

Physically, Hostile Setting is serviceably done. The artwork is decent, capturing very much the grim and gritty feel of space being a working environment. One noticeable design feature is the text size, which although sans serif, is large.

The contents of Hostile Setting will feel familiar to anyone who played or read either Traveller or Cepheus, but very much filtered through not one, but three different Science Fiction subgenres—Blue Collar Science Fiction, Horror Science Fiction, and Military Science Fiction—and combined into one heavily implied setting with obvious inspirations. Hostile Setting can use either of those rules, but best works with Hostile Rules, since they complement each other. Further, the Hostile Setting showcases a setting not just where a Xenomorph—or in this case, an Exomorph—could be encountered somewhere far out from the safety of the Earth, but a Science Fiction setting rife with other dangers and other story possibilities. In fact, to come to the Hostile Setting expecting to focus mainly on encounters with dangerous alien lifeforms would lead to disappointment and to solely focus on that in play, would be to ignore those other, in many ways, more interesting story possibilities.

For the Game Master who wants a near future, grim and gritty Science Fiction setting which focuses upon Blue Collar protagonists rather than heroes, the Hostile Setting is a very good choice. The Hostile Setting takes its Blue-Collar Science Fiction inspirations and provides a well-realised background with support and scenario suggestions aplenty.

Hostile Mechanics

Hostile is a gritty, near future roleplaying game inspired by the Blue-Collar Science Fiction of films such as Alien, Bladerunner, and Outland. It is a future in which space exploration and colonisation is difficult, harsh, and dangerous, but in which there are asteroid systems and worlds to be exploited and great profits to be made. Conflict is not unknown—between colonies, between colonies and corporations, between corporations, and when that gets too much the Interstellar Commerce Organisation steps in or peacekeepers such as the United States Marine Corps are sent in, but in the main, space is a working environment. One with numerous hazards—the vacuum of space, radiation, adversely high and low temperatures, poisonous planetary atmospheres, potential insanity from being exposed to hyperspace, and strange alien creatures which see you as intruder, food, or incubation for its brood—which humanity must cope with in addition to the stresses of space travel and working away from Earth.

Published by Zozer Games, Hostile is derived from Samardan Press’ Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, the Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System based on Traveller. It is a standalone game system and setting which is divided into two volumes, Hostile Rules and Hostile Setting. To encompass the military Science Fiction aspect the setting—obviously inspired by Aliens—Hostile encompasses the squad level combat rules from Modern War, but that is only one option of play explored in Hostile Rules. In total, Hostile Rules covers the task resolution mechanics, character creation, survival rules, stress and panic rules, starship and ground combat, starship operations, creating worlds, trade and salvage, encounter tables, and more. What Hostile Rules does not do is provide an actual setting, although that is either referred to or inferred to throughout its pages, for typical wages and costs of items and services in 2250, as well as the licences and qualifications associated with the roleplaying game’s skills, both in the military and out.

Hostile Rules is itself not entirely complete and is not a standalone rulebook. Most obviously, there are no weapon stats given in the combat sections of Hostile Rules—that is saved for Hostile Setting.

The fundamentals of Hostile will be familiar to Referees and players of Traveller. The core mechanic consists of two-sided dice rolled against a target of eight or more, to which are added stat-derived modifiers; characters tend to be older, having gone through several four-year terms of service in a career and may suffer the effects of aging; in combat, damage is taken directly by a character’s three physical attributes—Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance; and starship travel is measured in the number of parsecs travelled. In flavour and feel though, Hostile Rules is very different to Traveller, being grim and gritty near future Science Fiction as opposed to the far future Imperial Science Fiction of Traveller.

Hostile Rules begins by explaining its core mechanic. For the standard skill role, it explains the perception roll and the characteristic roll, all done in a couple of pages, or so. It also discusses the types of campaigns which it can be used to run. These are typically built around particular crew types, including colony work crews, corporate investigation teams, roughneck crews, commercial starship crews, marine corps squads, private military contractors, and more. Then it explains character creation, with options for designed rather than random creation. Although the setting of Hostile is humanocentric, it includes options for the genetically engineered Android and Prole, but neither are intended as options for Player Characters. Proles are needy and introverted with a four-year lifespan, whilst Androids are passive and non-aggressive, and the designers advise the Referee to be careful before allowing an Android with ‘broken programming’ in play.

A character in Hostile is defined by six characteristics—Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intellect, Education, and Social Standing—each rolled on two six-sided dice and expressed as line of numbers and letters called UPP or Universal Personality Profile. A Player Character’s homeworld provides some base skills at level zero, with career options including Corporate Agent, Corporate Executive, Colonist, Commercial Spacer, Marine, Marshal, Military Spacer, Physician, Ranger, Roughneck, Scientist, Survey Scout, and Technician. The Android Career is included for NPCs. Then a player rolls for the character’s Career, term by term, with mustering benefits at the end. In addition, Hostile Rules adds tables for his appearance, height, weight, psych evaluation, reason for leaving Earth, suit badges, and more. This nicely adds flavour and detail. All of the details for each Career is neatly contained on the single page.

Chandra Pham is from Singapore on Earth and signed on with Kuorox Interplanetary as a crewhand and for the last two decades has risen through the ranks, qualifying as a senior broker before being appointed captain of the Blue Hildegard. Two years ago, the Blue Hildegard was hijacked following a gun battle in which numerous members of the crew and hijackers were killed. Captain Pham managed to lead an escape attempt and overpower the hijacker, but was badly injured during the incident, losing her right eye. Although an ICO Court of Inquiry exonerated her, it pointed to lax Kuorox Interplanetary operating procedures which enabled the hijacking. Chandra Pham was let go by Kuorox Interplanetary, but received Star Envoy Club Membership as a reward and is currently looking for an independent berth or opportunities to trade.

Senior Captain Chandra Pham, Age 38
Homeworld: Earth
Height: 159 cm Weight: 64 kg
Psych Evaluation: Selfish (Concerned with reward and compensation)
Reason for Leaving Earth: Caught up in political turmoil
Distinctive Feature: Shades
Qualifications: Commercial Brokerage Licence, ICO Sensor & Signals Licence, ICO Cargo Loader Licence, ICO Space Transportation Licence, UASL Pressure Suit Handling Licence

578C86
Commercial Spacer (5 Terms)
Brawling-0, Broker-4, Carousing-0, Comms-1, Computer-1, Ground Vehicle-0, Gun Combat-1, Loader-1, Navigation-1, Pilot-2, Streetwise-0, Vacc Suit-1
Cr. 20,000
Star Envoy Club Membership

As well as providing rules for a multitude of environmental hazards, from acid, hiking, and diseases to arctic and desert, pressure loss, and hunger, Hostile Rules includes rules for stress and panic. This can occur when a starship or vacc suit takes damage for the first time, suffering damage to reduce an attribute to half or more, losing control during a spacewalk, and more. This is a standard Intelligence roll and if failed, the Player Character temporarily loses a point of Intelligence, potentially making further Stress checks harder to pass. If a Player Character’s Intelligence is reduced to half or zero in this way, a Panic Check is made and if failed, he will act accordingly to a roll on the Panic Effects table. In general, this favours Player Characters who have a high Intelligence, but there is a spiral loss, at least temporarily, to Stress checks from any lost Intelligence and of course, scope to roleplay a character’s response.

The combat rules cover everything from personal combat all the up to vehicular combat. This includes blind, area, and frenzy fire, calling for fire support, handling NPCs, the scale between man portable and vehicular weapons, and more. Space combat is also covered, but in some ways, the chapter on starship is actually more interesting, getting right down into the nitty gritty of details such refueling, loading and unloading, fight and hyperspace, landing, and more. What this impresses upon the reader is that Hostile is not setting in which a starship necessarily takes off, travels, and lands somewhere. This all takes effort and work upon the part of the crew, and whilst it need not be played out each and every time, it should be done at least once, if not twice, to reinforce the nature of space travel. One aspect which is like Traveller in the Hostile Rules is that travel in hyperspace is done outside of star systems and two aspects in which it is not, is that hyperspace travel is done in hypersleep and that starships can travel for more than week. Which means that a starship capable of travelling three parsecs per week would cover that distance in a week, a shop capable of only traveling one per week, would take three. One pleasing genre enforcing element is that commercial starship crews make most of their money through bonuses, not base pay, so Player Characters get to gripe about their bonus!

Hostile Rules also goes in quite details about worlds and world data, especially its physical characteristics. There are rules here for creating worlds, adding trade classifications and bases, and more, although there is no checklist, so it does look as if they are not actually there! As with the small arms, actual world data for individual colonies and settlements within the setting are saved for Hostile Setting. There are rules for trade though, and salvage.

Hostile Rules is rounded off with a lengthy set of encounter tables and advice for the Referee. The encounter tables handle everything from Space Encounters and Starport Encounters to Colony Encounters and Patron Encounters, as rules for handling interaction between the Player Characters and the NPCs. It also includes tables and guidance for Animal Encounters, including creating them, though this does not extend as far as Exomorphs—or Alien Horrors! There is a nice little essay here on making them interesting and different to that of the Xenomorphs, the obvious inspiration for Hostile. It only runs to a couple of pages, so it is a pity that it could not be longer, but unlike the other animals, there are no tables to help the Referee create her own, though there are plenty of ideas included to make encounters with them different and challenging.

The advice for the Referee is excellent, covering campaign types—the fact that the different crew types allow for a range of Player Character types, adjudicating the rules, how to create scenarios, including a example inspired by a horror film, how to prepare so that you can improvise better, and finally, run campaigns. The latter feels shorter and less useful than the rest, but overall, this is all helpful advice.

Physically, Hostile Rules is serviceably done. The artwork is excellent, capturing very much the grim and gritty feel of space being a working environment. One noticeable design feature is the text size, which although sans serif, is large. Hostile Rules could have easily been a shorter book with a smaller sized typeface, but the larger size is very easy to read.

The absence of weapons is the biggest issue with Hostile Rules. It is obvious why it lacks them—Hostile Rules and Hostile Setting are designed to complement each other. However, with the addition of weapons stats, Hostile Rules would all be a standalone set of roleplaying rules.

The contents of Hostile Rules will feel familiar to anyone who played or read either Traveller or Cepheus, but very much filtered through not one, but three different Science Fiction subgenres—Blue Collar Science Fiction, Horror Science Fiction, and Military Science Fiction—and combined into one heavily implied setting with obvious inspirations. Bar the absence of weapons, Hostile Rules does very much feel like a Cepheus Engine version of Alien and Aliens, minus the Xenomorphs. This is not to say that this is a bad thing, but like the Aliens Universe, and even more so with Hostile there are numerous tales to be told which do involve conflict and exploration and strangeness without encountering a Xenomorph, or in this case, an Exomorph. Although Hostile Rules includes rules for Exomorphs and a Referee can run games involving them, they are not its focus as they are in Free League Publishing’s Alien: The Roleplaying Game. Plus, of course, Hostile already has enough elements within it that are trying to kill the Player Characters.

Although not complete, Hostile Rules is an engagingly accessible set of rules and mechanics which serve to make space and the frontier a dangerous place to be, let alone work. In combination with Hostile Setting it will provided a solid, detailed design, both in terms of the rules and the grim and gritty future.

On the Star Frontier

The year is 2260 AD. Two years ago, the United Terran Republic and its allies won the Terran Liberation War, forcing the mighty and ancient Reticulan Empire to sue for peace after twenty-five years of uprisings and war. For some one-hundred-and-seventy-five years, Earth and Humanity had been repressively suborned as the Reticulan client state of House Thiragin, the Earth Federal Administration. Humanity was allowed to expand and establish colonies, but in return had to commit auxiliary troops to serve in the wars against House Thiragin’s rival houses in the Reticulan Empire and other alien species, and was subject to both a tight rein on its economy and Reticulan abductions and bio-technological experimentation. The latter not only resulted in the confirmation and development of psionics among humans, but also the creation of Human-Reticulan Hybrids. Besides having a higher likelihood of possessing psionics, Hybrids were favoured by House Thiragin and dominated the Earth Federal Administration government, the loathed Federal Security Apparatus, and the Exalted Order of Fomalhaut, the latter the Earth Federal Administration’s state sanctioned faith. Ultimately, it would be an unexplained mass abduction of children by the Reticulans that would trigger the Terran Revolution and it would be troops who had served with House Thiragin, known as the Returnees’ Circles, who would form the backbone of the Terran forces in the revolution.

As of 2260 AD, the United Terran Republic is a presidential republic attempting to switch from a wartime to peacetime footing; to expand coreward to explore and establish new colonies and make contact with lost ‘black’ colonies established in secret from the Earth Federal Administration; and maintain vigorous defences against Earth’s former master, the Reticulan Empire to rimward. Although there is trade and contact between the United Terran Republic and the Reticulan Empire, the two states are wary of each other and a state of cold war exists between them. The territories of the United Terran Republic and the Reticulan Empire come together in an area known as the Terran Badlands, along with a third interstellar power, the Ciek Confederation. Located within the Terran Badlands are two client states supported and maintained by the United Terran Republic, the Reticulan Technate and the Ssesslessian Harmony. The first of these is governed by the rebel Technocratic Movement, consisting of Reticulans who supported the Terran revolution, whilst the latter was given to the serpentine Ssesslessians as a new homeworld after theirs had been glassed by the Reticulans.

This is the set up for These Stars Are Ours!, a near future setting published by Stellagama Publishing for use with the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document from Samardan Press which details the core rules for a Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System. If the Third Imperium of Classic Traveller draws upon the Imperial Science Fiction of the 1950s, then These Stars Are Ours! draws upon another sub genre of the same period—UFOlogy and ‘little green men’. Or rather, ‘little grey men’, for the Reticulans are akin to the Greys of UFO lore and their spaceships and starships are saucers. What these point to are the space opera or  pulp sensibilities of the These Stars Are Ours! setting, and these sensibilities continue with the other alien species to be found across known space. These include the Cicek, aggressive and personal glory-obsessed warm-blooded, humanoid reptiles complete with tails; the snakelike Ssesslessians, a theocratic species with a complex pantheon who served the Reticulans as assassins; and the Zhuzzh, pragmatic, opportunistic, and nomadic insectoids who all but worship technology and who are inveterate tinkerers rather than designers and innovators. There are other races to be found across known space, but these are the main ones to be found in the Terran Badlands. Behind them though are the ‘Precursors’, one or more ancient species who disappeared millennia ago following a devastating war leaving behind mysterious ruins, who may have seeded and manipulated species across known space and who may be the forebears of numerous species.

Now despite the strong nods to both pulp and space opera sensibilities with these alien species, These Stars Are Ours! is not really a pulp or even a space opera setting. This is because it still uses the dry, technical mechanics and terminology of the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document—and thus ultimately of Traveller. So it employs Tech Levels, Maneuvre Drives, Jump Drives, Parsecs, Sectors, Subsectors, the Universal World Profile, and so on.  Looking to the sources of inspiration in the book’s appendices and it is clear that the tone and feel is other than Pulp Sci-Fi—so Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Barry B. Longyear’s Enemy Mine, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy; films such as Alien, Outland, and Serenity; television series like Babylon 5, Dark Skies, and Space: Above and Beyond; and computer games including Mass Effect, UFO: Enemy Unknown, and Dead Space. The Science Fiction of These Stars Are Ours! is much drier than straight space opera, but the inclusion of both the film Serenity and the television series Firefly point towards another influence and that is the Western genre. Much like both of those sources, These Stars Are Ours! is set after a devastating war, during a period of reconstruction, much like the years after the American Civil War. 

Now as much as there are similarities between the aftermath of the American Civil War and the aftermath of the Terran Liberation War—or the Terran Rebellion as the Reticulans call it—there are numerous differences too. The most notable difference is that These Stars Are Ours! presents an obvious and very alien enemy in the form of the Reticulans whilst moving the Human-Reticulan relationship into one of a cold war. Yet it retains the sense of distrust and resentment that arises from a period of occupation and civil war, which in the United Terran Republic—and beyond of These Stars Are Ours! is aimed at Reticulan Hybrids—humans genetically modified as embryos with Reticulan dna—who were seen as collaborators.

In terms of background, These Stars Are Ours! is richly packed. Not just with a history of the Terran Liberation War, but also the state of the United Terran Republic and its politics, military and intelligence agencies—notably CRC-32 which provides the military and government with covert Psionic Intelligence (or PSINT) support and its civilian research counterpart, the Psionic Research Institute (or PRI). It also covers the major corporations in the United Terran Republic, along with religion and spirituality, legal system, and various criminal and terrorist groups. It covers the various alien races in similar detail, from the Reticulans of the Reticulan Empire and the separatist Reticulan Technate to the eight-limbed, two metres tall, crustacean-like Klax who serve as security forces for the Reticulans, whilst of course adding details about their various biologies, psychologies, and societies. Where a particular alien species is available to choose as a player character, notes are given on how to play them. 

As well as Humans, These Stars Are Ours! offers the Cicek, Reticulans, Reticulan Hybrids, Ssesslessians, and Zhuzzh as playable races. The main major difference in the setting to the more familiar Traveller is that Psionics are more freely available and that Psionic Strength is added as a seventh attribute. In terms of Careers, These Stars Are Ours! uses those from Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, but adds another twenty on top. Those available to Humans are the most diverse, including Teran Navy and Terran Police as well as Terran Naval Infantry and Teran Marines. For the most part,  the new Careers reflect the past quarter of a century that Humans have spent at war. If a character is a Psion, then he will serve in CRC-32 or the PRI, depending upon his Psionic Strength. Those of the Alien species are not as diverse, apart from the Reticulans, typically presenting one Career per species—essentially much like Basic Dungeons & Dragons did Race as Class. There are Event tables for all of the new Careers and the character rules also allow for cybernetics and cyborgs.

Creating a character in These Stars Are Ours! is the same as Cepheus Engine System Reference Document or Traveller. A player rolls two six-sided dice for his character’s seven attributes and then chooses a Career for him. Over the course of the Career, the player will add skills and other benefits to the character. A character may have an illustrious career, be discharged following an injury, and so on. The process will require a little flipping back and forth between These Stars Are Ours! and Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, especially if a player decides on a career not in These Stars Are Ours! Either way, the process is a lengthy one.

Our sample character was one of the elite of the Earth Federal Administration who was in training to become a politician and administrator before he discovered the extent of Reticulan activities in Terran space and defected. He was tested for psionic capability and recruited by CRC-32 and constantly trained throughout his career. He was on active military campaign in the last years of the Terran Liberation War, but was captured and held captive until the armistice between the United Terran Republic and Reticulan Empire was signed.

Brigadier Jeffry Ennes
Reticulan Hybrid Age 50
Elite-2 (Rank 3: Manager)/CRC-32-6 (Rank 5: Brigadier)
7B5C8B-D
Admin-2, Advocate-3, Carousing-o, Clairvoyance-1, Comms-1, Computer-1, Gun Combat-1, Jack-of-All-Trades-2, Leadership-1, Liaison-0, Linguistics-0, Medicine-1, Melee Combat-0, Reticulan-1, Telepathy-3, Teleportation-3, Vehicle-0, Zero-G-0
History: Political Infighting, Psionic Training, Strange Science, Advancement, Psionic Training, Battle, Captured.
Benefits: Explorer’s Society, CR 30,000, Pension: CR 12,000
Traits: Bad First Impression (humans only), Engineered (TL13), Notable Dexterity, Weak Strength, Psionic.

In terms of technology, These Stars Are Ours! is roughly Technology Level 11, with military equipment and technology being typically Technology Level 11 and Technology Level 12. This means that starships are commonly capable of Jump-2 (travelling two parsecs in a single jump), fine gravitics is being developed, fusion power is freely available, and so on. Reticulan technology is generally higher, most notably shown in its mastery of gravitics and longer Jump ranges. As befitting the setting, their ships are saucers rather than the sleeker, if not streamlined ships deployed by other races. Some six ships—starships and small craft—are detailed and given deck plans, and where necessary civilian and military versions are both given. They include the Reticulan Abductor and Saucers, the Ssesslessian Infiltrator, Zhuzzh Scavenger, Cicek Raider, and Terran Shaka-class Light Military Transport. The latter is the only Terran ship, which is perhaps a little disappointing, but given the post-war state of the United Terran Republic, these ships are commonly available to purchase and are used as by free traders. Plus the fact that it happens to look not unlike the Firefly class is likely to make it a popular choice with the players (if not their characters). 

Some seventy or so worlds of the region Trailing-Rimward to Terra are described as part of the Terran Borderlands. The latter lies at the point where three interstellar powers meet—the Reticulan Empire, the Cicek Confederation, and the United Terran Republic—and contains the two Terran client-states, the Reticulan Technate and the Ssesslessian Harmony. Each of the worlds comes with its own Universal World Profile and a fairly detailed description, though this can vary in length from one to as many as five paragraphs. Along with the accompanying star map, this gives a good-sized area for the player characters to explore and to support that, These Stars Are Ours! comes with a dozen patrons. These range from supporting a colonisation on a ‘jackpot’ planet and transporting a Reticulan diplomat—hopefully her money will be enough to overcome any lingering antipathy towards the Reticulans, to the exploration of a Precursor site and a hunt for a celebrity’s missing yacht. They represent a good mix of adventure types and make good use of the background to the setting. These Stars Are Ours! is rounded out with a pair of appendices, one a bibliography of inspirations, the other various news entries or Terran News Agency Dispatches, which the Game Master could develop into scenarios of her own.

Physically, These Stars Are Ours! is simply and clearly presented and there is a good index. The few illustrations are decent, the star maps clear, and the deckplans good. As much as the content is interesting and engaging, what lets the setting supplement down is the editing. At worst someone has edited the book, at best no one has, and in places, the unpolished writing in These Stars Are Ours! does sometimes make a cringeworthy read.

If there is anything missing from the These Stars Are Ours! setting it is perhaps a few more starships to individualise the setting some more and certainly some personalities. Apart from the president of the United Terran Republic, no individuals are really mentioned, so the history and setting do feel slightly impersonal. There is no advice for the Game Master, but anyway, she should be able to come up with scenarios and campaign ideas from the background material given in These Stars Are Ours!.

Although using mechanics derived from Traveller, the setting of These Stars Are Ours! is very different to that of Traveller. It is not ‘high’ or Imperial Space Opera, but has a harder, rougher edge to it, drawing from a source that is more pulp Sci-Fi in its sensibilities even as the Cepheus mechanics serve to reduce said pulp tendencies. Nevertheless, These Stars Are Ours! draws deeply upon its source material of UFOlogy and ‘Little Green Men’ and infuses them with a frontier, almost Wild West feel to present a very accessible setting in terms of background and size.

Disappointingly Close To The Near Heavens

The advent of the Open Gaming Licence opens up a world of publishing possibilities for both creatives and other publishers. So it is with the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document from Samardan Press which details the core rules for a Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System. In other words, it allows the creation of Science Fiction gaming content which is compatible with Traveller, the first big Science Fiction roleplaying game, though not set in the same background as Traveller’s primary setting of the Third Imperium. So for example, Stellagama Publishing has its own setting in These Stars Are Ours! as does Battlefield Press with Warren C. Norwood’s Double Spiral War. Stygian Fox Publishing, best known for publishing the highly regarded Things We Leave Behind for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, also has its own setting in the form of ‘The Near Heavens’ of which A Life Worth Living is the first release for.

‘The Near Heavens’ offers “Hard Edged Science Fiction Roleplaying in the Near Heavens Setting of AD2151’. In the twenty-second century humanity has explored and colonised worlds out as far as Groombridge and Sirius, the limits of the authority of the Terran Associative. This is the governmental organisation which has come to regulate life on and off world as nation states shattered in the wake of a limited nuclear war in the twenty-first century. Although there are still nation state holdouts, what has replaced them across most of settled space are polities based around cultures, often fracturing out of their former states in a series of ‘Culture Wars’. These continue to this day, with some ‘Culture Wars’ actually serving as proxy wars for other polities or corporations. Such conflicts, typically low scale, offer employment opportunities for mercenaries. Interstellar travel is achieved via Jump Space, but a Jump takes weeks and requires passengers to travel in cryosleep as only Synths, or Synthetic androids, can withstand the rigours of Jump space. Passengers do not age in cryosleep, so frequent travellers are typically biologically younger than their chronological age. Space travel is not entirely safe and Jump inversion incidents, which occasionally result in the loss of passengers rather than a starship, are a known hazard.

A Life Worth Living is an introduction and scenario for ‘The Near Heavens’. It is a fairly linear affair designed to highlight various aspects of the setting and comes with a set of pre-generated player characters designed to play the scenario. They are Private Security Contractors—or mercenaries—who operate as a special operations cadre known as Black Maul. Currently on Groombridge after completing a contract, they receive messages from Terese de Sainte, an ex-member of the squad. Her messages make reference to the ‘Cabin in the Woods’, an incident on the world of Eden in the Groombridge system in which the squad was attacked by Edenite separatists and had to hold out until it was evacuated. It was a defining moment for the squad and the constant references to this incident suggest that she might be serious trouble.

The trail leads back to Earth and beyond, the mystery revolving around a McGuffin or two, both of which will remain elusive and just out of reach for much of A Life Worth Living. The plot is fairly straightforward and involves a good mix of interaction and combat as well as investigation. Whilst it has some decent moments, it does end on a downbeat note with little in the way of a decent climax. Both it and the ‘Near Heavens’ setting is supported by details of various drones and vehicles, ’Bots and Synthetics, and arms used by both the members of Black Maul and other Private Security Contractors. The description of the Synthetics includes the means to create them as characters—both player characters and NPCs—and it should be noted that one of the members of Black Maul is a Synth.

Although A Life Worth Living is designed to be played using the pre-generated characters provided, it can be played using characters that the players created themselves. They need to be mercenaries, primarily with ground combat related skills, but there are plenty options within that framework. The Game Master will need to work some of the scenario’s background into that of player characters’ background, especially to establish the relationship with Terese de Sainte. One way to do that is to stage the ‘Cabin in the Woods’ scene is as a prologue. This would strengthen the ties between the Terese de Sainte and the rest of Black Maul and so strengthen the motivations of the Black Maul squad members—that is, the player characters—to go to the help of Terese de Sainte at the start of the scenario. One of the players would have to roleplay Terese de Sainte as one of the members of Black Maul does not turn up until the closing moments of ‘Cabin in the Woods’ to rescue them. This would also strengthen the player characters’ ties to Terese de Sainte. Plus, it would work with the pre-generated characters as well as those created by the players.

Physically, A Life Worth Living is beautifully presented. The layout looks clean and the book is liberally illustrated with stunning artwork, the best of which is very well done as contemporary adverts. Unfortunately, A Life Worth Living is far from perfect. As pretty as the layout is—and it is undoubtedly pretty—look closer and it is just a bit rough around the edges. The editing, or lack thereof, is excruciating and leaves the reader wishing that time had been spent on this. It does not help that there are no page numbers and no index. For some gamers, the scenario’s linear plot may be more of an issue, but A Life Worth Living does involve a lot of space travel, going from point A to point B, and it really is an introductory scenario, so arguably, this can be overlooked.

The primary problem with the design of A Life Worth Living is that there is no explanation of the plot. Instead, the plot is explained as it progresses in the book and this is the most awkward means of presenting the plot. A summary of the plot would really have helped the Game Master prepare the scenario.

A Life Worth Living is probably the prettiest and most professional looking book ever released for use with the Cepheus Engine System, let alone for Traveller. Yet that professionalism is not carried off as far as the content is concerned. Although the it is far from unplayable, A Life Worth Living needs another edit and it needs just a little further development. 

Wreck on the Borderlands

Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring is a Science Fiction adventure for three to five players published by Stellagama Publishing. Designed for use with the Cepheus Engine Core Rules and other 2D6 OGL SciFi mechanics, what this means is that it can be run using any version of the Science Fiction roleplaying game published by Game Designers’ Workshop in 1977, from Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller to Mongoose’s Traveller and Traveller 5. Although the plot of the scenario can be stripped out and run using Science Fiction roleplaying game where space travel is common, Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring is set in Stellagama Publishing’s These Stars Are Ours! campaign setting. This is a near-future setting which begins in 2260 AD in the aftermath of Terran Liberation War against the occupying Reticulan Empire. A cold war exists between the new United Terran Republic and the Reticulan Empire, played out in the badlands between their territories, home to client states, pirates, petty warlords, rogue colonies, greedy merchants, brave explorers, and more. It is in these badlands that Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring takes place.

Almost a quarter of a century ago, the interstellar transport Tallmadge’s Splendor was lost, fate unknown. Now, a belter has located her, on an asteroid moonlet of a remote gas giant in a barely-explored frontier system, and wants to hire a team of adventurers—preferably with a ship of their own—to help him salvage the ship. This is a challenging task and ideally, the player characters should possess a variety of shipboard skills, in particular, the Mechanical, Engineering, and Zero-G skills. Getting to the wreck of the Tallmadge’s Splendor—located in the Parvati system on the very edge of Terran space—is the easy part, getting the salvage out is the difficult part. This definitely requires the characters’ technical skills as they will be operating in micro-gravity and the ship is shattered and open to the vacuum of space. 

The technical aspects of the adventure are not its only challenge. There is at least one NPC who has ulterior motives and two NPCs who have motives other than salvage. In fact, one of the interesting NPCs is a member of the Brothers of St. Cuthbert, which is dedicated to recovering the bodies of those lost in space and returning them home for proper burial. This nicely adds a degree of faith and purpose not always present in adventures for the Cepheus Engine Core Rules and other 2D6 OGL SciFi mechanics. There is one other danger in Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring, one that suffuses both the ship and adventure with a sense of unease. Now, in scenarios like these, the cause of this unease, perhaps paranoia, might be some alien thing or crazed survivor, either ready and hungry to stalk and slaughter first the NPCs and then the player characters. And so it is here, but in Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring it does not feel like a cliché because it does not have to play out like a survival horror movie in space. Only if the player characters make every effort to interfere will the scenario turn into one of survival horror in space rather than one of salvage and recovery.

Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring comes as a full colour, twenty-page, 1.91 MB PDF document. Besides the adventure itself, basically the wreck of the Tallmadge’s Splendor and its environs, the scenario provides some background detail to the These Stars Are Ours! campaign setting, stats and write-ups for its NPCs, and a description and a full set of deckplans for the ship. It also includes a glossary. 

Physically, Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring is decently written and presented, although the editing could have been better as it does feel a bit tight in places. The artwork is decent, though not wholly necessary. The deckplans are good, though perhaps they could have been larger.

Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring is not quite perfect though. If the player characters lack a ship, it would have been nice if more detail had been provided about the ship belong to the belter who hires them. It would also have been to seen the NPCs given a little more development perhaps to make them easier to roleplay by the Game Master. That said, what Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring lacks are two vital player handouts—both showing the ship’s manifest. One for the passengers and one for the cargo. Both would have been great handouts and both would really act as good cues for both the players and their characters as well as providing possible plot lines for the Game Master to develop. The inclusion of some NPCs on the nearest planet or space station would not have gone amiss either and their use would have fleshed out the scenario just that little further. 

A nice, little adventure, Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring should provide two good sessions of play, whatever game system the Game Master runs it in. It has a pleasing workmanlike, blue collar sensibility which should make for an interesting and low key change of pace. Even when the ‘monster’ does appear, it is done in a low-key fashion such that it feels like one possible consequence of the players’ actions rather than the whole point of the scenario. Not every Science Fiction adventure needs to feel as if the crew are just going to work, but when the Game Master knows that it is what his campaign could deal with, Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring is a good choice.