This article originally appeared in the September/October 2017 issue of Freelance Traveller.

Note: The reviewer was provided with a complimentary copy of this product for review.

This short folio provides all the basic groundwork needed to run a recovery/salvage adventure (there is a legal distinction outlined in the appendix, but operationally they’re the same) in a gas giant’s ring system in an out-of-the-way system. The default setting is Stellagama’s These Stars Are Ours! [TSAO] universe, but there’s really nothing that can’t be trivially changed to support any other setting—and it will be equally easy to adjust it for any of what Freelance Traveller calls ‘Classic-compatible rule sets’.

You’ll need a set of core rules—the author recommends Cepheus Engine or the Mongoose Traveller (1st Edition) SRD—and the usual appurtenances for playing a RPG. There are references to Cepheus Engine and the Cepheus Engine Vehicle Design System [VDS], and to TSAO, but the VDS and TSAO are not actually required for play. There are two pages of background information about the TSAO universe, but even this can be omitted if you set this adventure in a different setting.

You get just under one page of description of the local setting, enough to be able to transplant it into any system that meets the most basic criteria: out of the way, formerly a way station on a trade route, with a ringed gas giant.

It’s up to the referee to define the reason for the PCs—a party of three-to-five is recommended—are in the system, and why they’re approached by the patron (a belter) for the mission. Four NPCs are provided (not substitutes for a lack of PCs, and including the belter patron), each with their own reasons for wanting to be on this mission—and possibly operating at cross-purposes with each other and with the PCs.

This is not a “safe” mission, where the PCs can work easily in a shirtsleeve environment; they will, of necessity, be in vacc suits and zero-G the entire time that they are active. This means tracking how long various actions take, and ensuring that the characters get adequate rest and that they do not exceed the “carrying capacity” of their suits. There is opportunity for conflict between the characters, but it’s unlikely that they will come to blows; the main source of danger is the environment, and that’s quite enough, thank you.

There is an unexpected twist to the mission, that the characters won’t learn about until well into it. If they learn about it early enough, it could answer some questions they may or may not have thought to ask, and they can potentially profit from it; if not, those questions may remain unanswered (and the profit significantly reduced).

A ship design is provided, with classic (non-isometric, grey-scale) deck plans, well-labeled and with supplemental markings showing adventure-specific information. Even this ship, however, can be replaced relatively easily by one of similar size and usage, if the referee chooses. There was a minor bit of confusion; while the the ship’s basic description calls it a “military transport”, the plan calls it a “passenger liner”.

The adventure is quite well-written; even if a player reads it, and knows the ‘spoilers’ that I’ve avoided discussing here, it will still be very easy to get ‘into’ the adventure and enjoy it. It is not larded with extraneous information; there is plenty of room left to give the referee the freedom to customize the adventure to fit an existing campaign setting.

There’s plenty of opportunity to build on this adventure, regardless of your campaign type or setting. It can provide a couple of evenings’ worth of adventure for a gaming group, or a good scenario for a convention setting. Recommendation: At only $4, skip the latte and grab a copy.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2017 issue of Freelance Traveller.

Reviewer’s note: The publisher provided a complimentary copy of the product for review.

Canonically, the Imperial Navy is responsible for anti-piracy operations in the Third Imperium, and this, presumably, is de facto the main source of operational experience for ships and crews.

Mr Hazlewood and Stellagama Publishing propose another alternative: As piracy and certain other activities represent criminal problems rather than military ones, they should be handled by an organization that is more of a “police department” than a military force. Enter the Space Patrol.

The introductory material in this volume sets out the nature of the Space Patrol, and outlines its organization, mission, and jurisdiction. The limitations of the Space Patrol’s mission (and the definitions of the various classes of crimes that the Space Patrol has jurisdiction over) are carefully set out to avoid turning them into a general-purpose police force and bogging them down in local crimes. As a result, the Space Patrol is cast as an agency quite different from the Navy or Starport Authority.

Because of these differences, and the effect that they can have on play, a discussion of planetary legal systems is included. A definition of the characteristics of a world’s legal system and a method of rolling it up are both provided; this profile focuses less on “what’s allowed and what’s not, and how likely are you to get hassled” and more on “how (and how well) the legal system works for a law enforcer doing law enforcement”. The characteristics thus selected are “Bureaucracy”, “Corruption”, “Repression”, and “Cruelty”. Each is broadly classified as “minimal”, “low”, “average”, “high”, and “extreme”, with a general description of how the level can be interpreted. There is an explicit invitation to adjust the definitions to fit the referee’s image of the world, and with some of the characteristics, it’s not impossible to conceive of expanding the rating into a “profile” of its own.

Much of the discussion of legal systems appears to start from a basis of what is often called “Western liberal democracy”, which decision is not difficult to understand, as it will be the likely background for most players, regardless of the world that the characters may find themselves on. Concepts such as separation of powers, rule of law, burden of proof, the necessity for warrants in appropriate contexts, and so on are treated as defaults. However, variation from the “Western liberal democracy” defaults are mentioned as possibilities, and enough information is provided that one can design a legal system that matches any present or historical system, or one that is completely novel. It should be noted that some variations are missed; for example, there is no discussion of the distinction between an adversarial system (such as is used in the United States) and an inquisitorial system (such as is used for some types of prosecution in France).

Basic rules for handling the entire investigation, charging, trial, appeal, and sentencing process are provided; most modifiers are based on relevant ratings from the legal system profile rather than the raw Law Level from the UWP.

The book to this point is quite well-written, and can serve as an introduction to (or clarification of concepts related to) legal systems for the layman.

As an interstellar organization in a presumed setting where the speed of travel is the speed of communication, the Space Patrol faces the same issues that other agencies of the canonical Third Imperium – or, in fact, any multiworld polity of any significant size – face. As written, the organization of the Space Patrol more-or-less parallels that of the interstellar polity as a whole, with the rank of the head of the Space Patrol organization normally being two ranks below the political head of the polity’s corresponding subdivision. The size of a Space Patrol organization on the world is generally determined by the importance of the world and the amount of interstellar traffic it receives; there are four types of Space Patrol “Bureaus” defined, from a small office with only a handful of Patrollers up to the largest with hundreds or thousands of Patrollers, training facilities, nearby courts and ship, vehicle, and equipment construction and repair facilities, and so on. Where internal borders are an issue, the Space Patrol establishes liaison offices to deal with cross-border matters; the criminals do not, after all, honor those internal borders. As with the overall interstellar polity, the Space Patrol’s ability to act is limited within a system’s own jurisdiction, though when actively pursuing an investigation or attempt at apprehension, there are exceptions to those limitations. Normally, agents of the Space Patrol will work with local law enforcement, and (as much as possible) within the local rules, to accomplish their missions.

Within the Space Patrol, there are four operational divisions, covering administration and politics (Secretariat), Investigation (including undercover work), logistical support (Operations), and active enforcement (Marshals). Agents working for the Investigation Division are what most people think of as “the Space Patrol”. To draw parallels between the Space Patrol and real-world police organizations, the Secretariat is clerical and administration personnel (and political liaison); Investigation is “beat cops” and detectives, Marshals are special enforcement units (e.g., SWAT teams, Counterterrorism, Vice Squads, political bodyguard details, and so on), and Operations is everything else.

All of this is useful background to give the player or referee a “feel” for what the Space Patrol is, and how it works. But by now, the reader is going to want more – and more there is.

This volume frankly admits that the standard Cepheus Engine careers of Agent and Navy could serve adequately for Space Patrol characters, but why settle for ‘adequate’? Mr Hazlewood has worked up four careers for the Space Patrol, one for each division. These careers actually extend the basic career rules from Cepheus Engine with concepts borrowed from various other compatible game systems (separate advancement tracks for enlisted and commissioned officers, decorations, mishaps and events, and allies and enemies), but otherwise conform to the basic career structure. Any one of the four careers can generate a character that will be useful in many ways, but each of the four career options has its own distinct flavor.

The Space Patrol, like any police department, needs vehicles – and in this case, spacecraft and starships – that are designed to meet their special needs. Several vessels are described, and three include deck plans (in the traditional monochrome plan view, not the more recent color isometric view). Most of the designs described are modifications of such familiar ships as the Modular Cutter, the Free Trader, or the Subsidized Merchant, and the latter two are deliberate mimics (“Q-ships”), with the intended mission of luring pirates into attacking an apparently unarmed or lightly-armed merchant, only to find the ‘victim’ to be more heavily armed than believed, and to have the tables turned.

The Space Patrol has standard equipment customized for its particular needs, and there are descriptions of a selection of Patrol equipment. Obviously, if the referee feels that additional equipment should be available, it can be added.

While the creative referee can certainly take what’s been presented to this point, and develop Space Patrol adventures without further reference to this volume, the author discusses several campaign settings and campaign types that mesh well with the described Space Patrol, and which are easily adapted to the referee’s preferences. A broad selection of generalized NPCs is also provided, capable of filling virtually any needed role in a Space Patrol campaign. Most can also be converted into player-characters if desired. There are even complete crew workups for a corvette and a Customs cutter, and a selection of Most Wanted criminals.

In addition to the generalized discussion of campaign types, a set of adventure seeds, in the traditional format, are provided. Two of the provided seeds can be linked together into a mini-campaign. These seeds do suffer from the “minor variations on a theme” problem with traditional denouements, but are still well-designed for the Space Patrol.

Overall, this volume is worth the price, even if you decide that the Space Patrol functions are folded into the Navy in your universe. The perspective that it provides on interstellar crime and law enforcement can enrich any setting.

I love this game.

Light, packs a punch, well-written.

It allows you a Cepheus / Traveller approach to S&S. It has some really excellent enhancements to the standard 2D6 combat and the magic system slots in so well.

I can imagine running this pure sand-box and allowing the heroes / protagonists plying their blades and cunning in campaigns akin to the best swords and sorcery stories.

Bravo. I want more.

Awesome setting! It is two years since Terra fought an alien race to a stand still, causing them to withdraw from the planets near Earth. I have stolen news articles from 1918 (spanish flu anyone??) and 1945-1950 to give more background events.

We started off with a group of salvage experts (rogues) who mostly dealt with humans, and then needed more information, so slowly started to interact with aliens - who are more than just clever dogs and cats. The aliens are good - well described and fun to run as GM. Not sure i want aliens as PCs as too hard to get right.

I am introducing many more sentient races (read clever monsters) and hazards (read monters and nasty plants) on the nearby stars for the hapless players to enjoy. I have limited Terra's tech to 10, Jump-1, so that players cannot go just anywhere, and it kind of feels like they have to 'hug the coast' :-) Anything above that (including Jump 2) is stolen tech. Players can only do J2 on a transporter ship, which has reduced their desires to be wanton criminals as they are easy to spot when waiting for a highliner to turn up. And it means that there is lots of alien tech just sitting around waiting to be acquired for Terra (hurar!!) - and boffens will pay nicely for it.

As per other reviews of mine, i am also including disco from Retro Stars, and simple characters from Space Aces.

it was an unexpected pleasant surprise that Barbaric! was translated to Spanish!!! Thanks!!

Nice little indie fantasy implementation of the Traveller/Cepheus SRD. The character generation system really stands out, with the professions mini-game telling it's own backstory for your PC. It's great just for this. However the system falls short on other regards. Combat feels clunky, equipment is unbalanced, some rules defy common sense, and a bit more proofreading would help. Nonetheless, it does work, and considering it's based off such an old sci-fi game engine, that's a feat on it's own.

I didn't like this on a first read, but it's a very simple, very effective 2d6 Sword and Sorcery game. Don't expect D&D/OSR, your characters are capable and good at something from level 1. This is a game where you play Conan types, thieves, and sorcerers as dangerous to themselves as everyone else. Healing rules could be a tad harsher but critical hit tables already make combat absolutely brutal and something with considerable cost.

What surprised me was this DID pass what I consider the "Sandy Peterson test of Sword and Sorcery games" which was that he mentioned a scene in a Conan story where a guy gets the drop on Conan with a Crossbow and Conan surrenders, something which would NEVER happen in D&D or a similar game. Due to the damage crossbows and Bows do, The magic rules are suitably dangerous and uncertain with a lot of potential for really interesting failure.

Soundtrack it to Dust's Learning to Die.

"The fierce, proud, and relentless commander of warriors, standing tall above her enemies and simmering with rage, Jirel bids farewell to the world of treacherous men and walks through a forbidden door into Hell itself in pursuit of freedom, justice, and revenge."

So last night it was a night with an old friend, that friend happened to be C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry in paperback. She was created in '34 by C.L.Moore as a reaction to the Sword & Sorcery tales of the Pulp magazine era. Reading through the stacks of Amazon book reviews is like reading through a laundry list of a comic book or Pulp letters column. The Amazon break down from one of their reviewers hits the high marks; "C. L. Moore created Jirel, ruler of Joiry, in reaction to the beefy total-testosterone blood-and-thunder tales of '30s pulp magazines, but Jirel is no anti-Conan. She's a good Catholic girl, stubbornly purposeful, relentless in pursuit of enemies or vengeance, hard-boiled and a little stupid, and cannot be distracted by mere physical attractiveness. Indeed, in Jirel's world, beauty = decadence = corruption. Were these stories written today, inevitably Jirel would have a lot of hot sex, but as they were first published in Weird Tales between 1934-1939, sexual attraction is mostly only vividly implied. No loss. Jirel's journeys through unnatural landscapes and her battles with supernatural opponents are still wonderful to read, and though newcomers Red Sonja and Xena are more famous now, Jirel rules as the archetypal, indomitable redheaded swordswoman in chain mail and greaves, swinging her "great two-edged sword."" The idea that a Sword & Sorcery character not only rules her own domain but that the supernatural won't leave her alone is something seldom seen. She's a warrior & a more then a bit fallible. This makes her far more relatable to the reader then some of today's characters. She's very much in a similar spirit to some of Clark Ashton Smith's characters in a sense. The ironic play of the setting, the masterful use of the English language, and the sly character development all built around C.L. Moore's weaving of the stories.

And what does any of this have to do with Omer Golan-Joel new Cepheus Engine rpg powered supplement Barbaric! ? Everything really. Barbaric! is the Sword & Sorcery add on book that has the very essence to run a Sword & Sorcery based rpg 2d6 Sword & Sorcery based campaign from the ground up. This means that C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry world & setting could easily be adapted into a Barbaric! campaign. Or Robert E.Howard's works, mixed in Clark Ashton Smith, etc. all of the Appendix N writers are grist for the Barbaric! mill. This book clocks in at fifty seven pages of good solid layout, a readable product, & the quality we've come to expect from Stellagama Publishing.

If you want your own Conan wanna be slithering through the darkness, the barbarian hordes tearing down the sorcerer's tower, etc. within Cepheus Engine then Barbaric! is the supplement for you! Omer Golan-Joel does an excellent job of boiling down every Sword & Sorcery & Pulpy goodness of his take on Cepheus Engine rpg system weirdness in Barbaric!. We've seen this before in Sword of Cepheus.

The difference between Sword of Cepheus & Barbaric! is day & night because of how & where Omar places the life paths, the humancentric elements, the Sword & Sorcery elements vs all of the High Fantasy flavor. This is 2d6 Conan like Sword & Sorcery play vs 2d6 High Fantasy, sure they have elements in common but you know the difference when you see it, read it, & play it. Barbaric! hits the high notes of 2d6 Sword & Sorcery play for the its publishing. Cepheus Atom could be used to plug into a whole new world of post apocalyptical goodness.

For bringing to life C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry into Barbaric! there are several reasons why it would work. Jirel of Joiry has all of the 'journey of a hero' elements in place, but what happens to her world when she's gone?! Surely there were adventurers looking for her?! Even on a quest for vengence nothing happens in a vacuum. This is where Barbaric! could come into play. The PC's are generated to go on a quest to find her & encounters with the supernatural result from there. Simple & easy to do a 2d6 campaign from there. Moore's Jirel stories include the following: "Black God's Kiss" (October 1934) "Black God's Shadow" (December 1934) "Jirel Meets Magic" (July 1935) "The Dark Land" (January 1936) "Quest of the Starstone" (November 1937), with Henry Kuttner "Hellsgarde" (April 1939) For grabbing the Jirel of Joiry stories cheaply the Paizo's Black God's Kiss (Trade Paperback) is the best source in print at the moment.

Eric Fabiaschi Swords & Stitchery blog Want more OSR goodness Subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/

Barbaric! is a lightweight role-playing game (57 pages) where players assume the roles of characters exploring a fantasy world. Characters have no attributes and there are seven skills. I like how you can quickly create a character. This RPG ruleset includes 7 character races, 30 traits, 36 spells, 50 monsters, a random magical item chart (36 items), a spellcasting mishap chart (36 possibilities), and three 2d6 critical hit charts. - - So, I tried this out using the Mythic Game Master Emulator. I used a Tavern Tales Adventure called Mad for Love. The six characters were able to fight their way through a building only to discover that the “boss” was not there. They raced to the new location, fought the “big bad”, and convinced the confused “boss” that everything was okay. They took the love potion away from him and kept it for themselves. They sold it the next day to a female wizard. She seemed nice. Give this fun system a try!

" Pirates are the scourge of the space-lanes. Cutthroats, bandits, and scum, they are enemies to all humanity. Captured pirates can expect no mercy: only grim justice for their heinous crimes. Despite the risks, this book encourages science fiction roleplayers—Gamemasters and players alike—to embrace their inner space pirate, and set forth to the stars to carve a bloody swath across the galaxy!"

There are days when sometimes when looking over at the absolute wall of Traveller rpg books that stare at me that it begins to hit me just how not intimated by this game hits me. Most of Traveller & Cepheus Engine rpg game campaigns that either have crossed the table top or the screen revolve around piracy or one kind or another. Traveller was the game that engineers & science geeks play. But once we got into it, this was the science fictional game to play hands down. So when Stellagama Publishing sent me a copy of Piracy and Privateering it took me a day or more to put it at the top of the pile of books to be reviewed. See what Piracy and Privateering does is to create an almost rpg system neutral book that leans heavily into the wind of the Original 2d6 OGL Science Fiction rules, Cepheus Engine, Stars Without Number, and White Star. Now way back in the early half of 2019 we grabbed a copy of Piracy and Privateering This was with the intent of running a piracy themed game of White Star or Stars Without Number. But then OSR game campaigns took over. And Piracy and Privateering will work with Cepheus Lite Rpg rather easily. Technically with these two books you could run an entire campaign for many years.

This is an updated & expanded sourcebook tha hammers on the detailed systems of piracy. And with Piracy and Privateering you can actually run an entire OSR or Cepheus Engine rpg campaign from the pirates perspective! Piracy and Privateering gives the players & the DM everything they need to get a steady hand on the setting of such a game from boarding actions to what to do with the booty afterwards. Josh Peters does an excellent job of fleshing out everything needed from: Pirate setting generation setting the scene for your piracy game Target aquistition & boarding of ships Randomly encountering the monsters of your pirate PC's & the hunters of such PC's. Traffic, back water worlds, & all of the little things that goes into such a campaign. Indepth world & setting info NPC handling, generation, & plug or play aspects of the pirate NPC. What Piracy and Privateering is a space opera & pirarcy tool box for not only generating entire adventures, NPC's, & more but giving the space campaign teeth & legs to continue for years to come. It does this with its random generation & steady ideas of growth through play & actual rolls. This is a marked improvement in some of the early products that I've seen. Right now we're in the middle of generating a whole cloth campaign dark space opera using Cepheus Engine rpg & classic Traveller resources. This means that Piracy and Privateering couldn't come at a better time for our group or me as dungeon master. This is a great buy so go & grab it here! Piracy and Privateering is a fine addition to the Cepheus Engine & OSR space opera gaming scene.

Eric Fabiaschi Swords & Stitchery blog Want more OSR action? Subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/

This adventure has kept my sci-fi gaming group occupied for two sessions, and tomorrow is the finale. I've enjoyed this adventure. I really appreciate all the little adventure hooks the author put in to give you ideas for follow-up adventures. I'm sure my players will ignore most of them, because that's just what they do! But maybe they'll follow up on one or two of the plot threads, at least.

The most fun part of the adventure so far was hearing the players speculating wildly on just how the wreck came to be in the ring. Why did it crash? Was it sabotage? Alien mind control? Suicide? Accident? Nobody knows! We'll see tomorrow night if they can figure it out. Or maybe they'll have to gather more clues on other planets.

I also enjoyed the flavor of the setting that the adventure author added - little things like the order of monks who specialize in recovering and burying people killed in space, and the tension with the untrustworthy hired hand. I will buy more adventures from this writer, if I can find them.

"The bombs fell. Nations wielded varied and monstrous weapons against one another. Fires, clouds of poison, and worse have swept the world. Now only the savage Wastes remain: haunted by mutants, deranged robots, and genegineered monstrosities. But from the fire, heroes and villains rise: tribals, survivors, mutants, all the warped remnants of Humanity. Armed with primitive weapons, pre-Collapse artifacts, and afflicted by strange mutations, they set forth to conquer the wastes, or at least to survive them. By spear and laser, they shall prevail – or die a horrible death."

There are times when I look at my poor book shelves & wonder if their gonna take another post apocalyptic rule book. Look Omer Golan-Joel is a master of his design & so this rule book takes the old Traveller rpg & Cepheus engine rpg into the realm of post apocalyptic gaming.

And it does it with style & system gravitus of the 2d6 systems & their OGL which makes everything independant. This means that the entire book has everything you need to take your games into the wastelands. Cepheus Atom has everything from the ground up from bare bones equipment,mutations, and even a complete mini mutant manual all within forty nine pages. Everything to get a group of players up & running into the wastelands. And that's not all. There' a complete feeling of a Fifties Atomic monster movie fest with the feel of the mutations & the whole cloth of the system. Think 1953's 'Them' & your on the right direction in the wasteland.

The entire system works together as an organic post apocalytic wasteland whole. And it takes the Traveller game into another direction. The "Contamination" stat (the cumulative sum of radioactive and biological fall out that your PC get's is a simple yet highly effective way of keeping track of the horror of mutation that the PC has. Simple, easy, and highly hackable. And if there is any take away from Cepheus Atom its the fact that its a very hackable system.

And this is where Cepheus Atom shines, the fact that its an easily unlockable system & works like a dream when it comes to creating the type of wasteland that the dungeon master wants. And then we get a robotic & wilderness set of encounters that reminds me completely of Fallout. But remember Fallout sto erm borrowed quite a few things from the old school games such as Gamma World & Metamorphis Alpha first edition. Clocking in at a very dense fifty pages Cepheus Atom has everything that a DM needs to get their post apocalytic on without a lot of fuss or muss! Highly recommended! The players can dive right in & get to cracking mutant monster heads in the wastelands! Eric Fabiaschi Swords & Stitchery Want more OSR goodness Subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/

"If you want a handful of grit in your dice bag, if you’re more of about Conan than Rincewind, if you like the vibe of OSR, but not the engines, then Sword of Cepheus looks like the game for you."

I don’t like complexity in my tabletop-roleplaying games. It’s not just my age, I’m also more interested in the adventure than the stacking the of feats and traits. And, as a GM, frankly, the chaotic exploding synergies of games like Dungeons and Dragons make me feel panicky.

However, I don’t like it when glossing over resource management breaks genre conventions — if torches can’t run out, if food isn’t scarce, then players will turn each dungeon adventure into weaponized archaeology.

Unfortunately, I’m also — on reflection — unkeen on randomized emulations that take away the possibilities and drama created by choice: “Oh, you rolled a ‘1’. Whoops your arrows ran out.” (Some games square this circle a little.)

That’s why I was excited when Omer Golan-Joel announced he was working on a Sword and Sorcery game called (drum roll) Sword of Cepheus: 2D6 Sword and Sorcery Roleplaying.

Read the full review at Black Gate Magazine...

I highly recommend this product to any 2d6 SciFi GM looking for a new ship to add to their game. This book is incredibly good value for money, crammed with detailed colour plans, descriptions and ideas. The ship presented is an interesting design, different in shape and layout to the usual variations on a wedge or cylinder, and there is sound reasoning behind the design choices ( as explained in the text ). The descriptions and plans are clear and the variations sketched out extend the possible uses of the platform and its components beyond mere picket boat, and suggest several “adventure seeds”.

" In this adventure, the characters are crew members or passengers on a starship. As they emerge from jump in the remote system of Parvati and begin moving towards the mainworld, they pick up a distress signal, a Reticulan (grey alien!) “Signal 99”, from a nearby ship. The ship is in danger and in need of rescue.

As the characters race to save the dying ship, they discover the true nature of the Reticulan vessel. However, there are other parties interested in the fate of the stricken vessel, and not necessarily interested in helping…

The damaged ship is a dreaded Reticulan Abductor. The hated Reticulan Empire used these large vessels to capture subjects for their nefarious experiments. As the characters explore the ship, they will discover that there are many human subjects aboard the ship in low berths – what the Reticulans planned to do with them is the subject of horror stories. This should be especially disturbing to the characters, as the Reticulan Empire recently signed a treaty with the human United Terran Republic that specifically outlaws abduction and experimentation on humans. There are a number of Reticulan survivors as well. Also aboard the Abductor are a group of insect-like Zhuzzh, known throughout the galaxy as hard-nosed scavengers and pirates. The characters will discover the Zhuzzh as they are removing the frozen humans from the Abductor and transferring them aboard their ship. Their ultimate purpose is unknown, but the Zhuzzh do not want to share their “salvage” with others.

The characters will have to make some tough decisions. Will they try to save the surviving Reticulans, including children, or let them die and save just the humans? Will they go after the Zhuzzh vessel when the salvagers flee or stay and save more survivors from the ship? There are no ideal answers to these dilemmas. Driving this tension and action is the impending explosion of the Abductor’s damaged power plant. No matter what they do, the characters will not be able to save everyone – they will have to save as many as they can and then flee for their lives."

Claustrophobic, tight, dangerous, & very horrifying are not things that reviewers tpyically write about when their reviewing an adventure.But that's exactly the sort of adjectives that one can use for TSAO: Signal 99 by Richard Hazlewood. TSAO: Signal 99 seems like a pretty straight forward adventure believe me its not & its a pain in the arse. I mean this in the best possible sense of the word for a table top rpg adventure. TSAO: Signal 99 for the Celpheus Engine rpg is going to test the players to their absolute limits if played right. This is not an adventure for the unwary or the easily frustrated. The adventure itself isn't difficult but its adventure elements are! Take your average Sixties or Seventies action film with tight locations, add in elements of a savagely hated empire, mix in a whole lot of suspense and you've got TSAO: Signal 99

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So why is TSAO: Signal 99 so nasty & dangerous?! Because TSAO: Signal 99 is about choices & having PC's live with the consquences. The insect-like Zhuzzh who are notorious pirates, scavengers, & smugglers are right in the thick of things inside what turns out to be a a badly damaged Reticulan Abductor. And that's only a quarter of what's happening. There's a ton of lever pulling, & button smashing in this adventure & its easy to see when & where PC's are gonna die. There is a ton of water under the bridge between the humans & the Reticulan Empire. If you want a really nice primer for your games of the TSAO universe with a nice slice of its history then I suggest the TSAO: A Primer to These Stars Are Ours!. Its free & it contains everything needed to started down the deep rabbit hole that is the TSAO setting. But for anyone wanting to run or DM TSAO: Signal 99 don't skim go for the whole burrito with the These Stars Are Ours sourcebook. There's a lot going on in TSAO: Signal 99. The best way of handling TSAO: Signal 99 is to be prepared for many of the eventualities that could arise from things going sideways in this adventure.

TSAO: Signal 99 is a good adventure & infact excellent but its not one for the inexperienced DM at all. This is a solid adventure in fact for the original Traveller rpg. Why?! It actually not only touches on many of the themes of the original Traveller rpg but it does so with style. But TSAO: Signal 99 takes its adventure 'P''s & 'Q''s from both war films & action flicks with a lot of gerne promises form these sources. In other words TSAO: Signal 99 is a module for experienced Traveller or Cephues Engine rpg players only. Both in its run & what it does. What it does is take the full measure of the players & then shoves them through the adventure gaunlet. There's lots of problem solving, old war issues, & more that need the expert touch. Can I see running this with a merc outfit or a group of military veterans who are on vacation?! Absolutely! Would TSAO: Signal 99 make a good campaign rider adventure?! Abosolutely! TSAO: Signal 99 make a good beginning adventure? Possibly for the sort of Traveller rpg or Celpheus rpg players who have ton of experience under their belt! Would I run TSAO: Signal 99? And buy it?! Absolutely! Solidly written very well done, and a top brass spit & polish add on to the Celpheus Engine Rpg.. TSAO: Signal 99 is a great adventure that I've had the pleasure of reviewing! Eric Fabiaschi Swords & Stitchery Blog Want more OSR Content?! Subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/