​A space hulk by Joseph Mohr, level irrelevant
Written for Cepheus Engine
  Heck yeah we got us a sci-fi adventure, I can’t wait. Cepheus Engine is the OG Traveler-like, so classic science fiction instantly recognizable to any Analog reader in 1979. And then, we look at the front cover and our ardor cools somewhat. It’s a space hulk adventure, okay, I’ve written one of those myself, but this is probably the single most common type of scifi adventure. It’s a dungeon, but in space. Sadly, so many designers stop right there and act like the “it’s in space” part relieves them from having to put in the good ol’-fashioned design work to make it a good dungeon on its gameplay merits alone. Twenty-two pages for twenty-two keyed areas with generous margins, front and back sections, and arty covers? Okay, we can work with this, it’s not automatic tripe.
  Our plot, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, is that there’s a company transport (the titular Goliath) that picked up mysterious biological samples and then went dark. The first team to investigate also disappeared. Enter the PCs. Also a rival company’s merc team. And yes, of course the bio-sample was a frozen alien creature who woke up and slaughtered everything. Mountains of Madness, you have much to answer for.
  What I liked beyond “it’s a sci-fi adventure” is the that the writer understands the psychology of Traveler-style players. A cargo hold full of valuable weapons packed in oil, a set of valuable logs and information in the space hulk’s computers, the hulk’s salvage value itself…none if this is the ostensible quest here, but you absolutely do need an answer when your lovely little loot-goblins start trying to steal everything not nailed down. A thumbnail sketch of the possible negative consequences of them annoying a space corporation with this behavior is nice too.
  You note I’ve avoided talking about the map thus far. The first of what can be improved is “gimmie a better map”. Just because you’re putting your dungeon in space you don’t get any excuse to avoid all the basic rules of good map construction. This is linear, choke-point-heavy, and boring to explore, without much thought given to how the party moves through it. This is made even worse with the very random/swingy random encounter setup with Thawed Alien Guy and Rival Merc Party…basically, scrap the map, treat it like an exploration exercise, and you’ll do it a lot better.  
  So…best use case is sadly “have a very boring space hulk session”. If it’s the very first time a bunch of fantasy players ever get to play sci-fi there’s a chance they’ll enjoy the novelty, but that’s going to wear extremely thin after a while. The loot is generic and the rival party is so-so, so those aren’t anything to swipe from the product. The alien might be worth looking at if you need to save about thirty seconds of game design time on the premise “plant alien that eats life force”.
  Final Rating? */***** with a single disapproving cluck. Don’t assume just because you’re dangling the word “space” in front of us that you get to avoid doing the work on nuts-and-bolts RPG design.

​An adventure by RavensDagger, LL0 to LL3.
Written for Lancer
  As a man in my late thirties, of course I have strong positive feelings about MechWarrior. Unfortunately, as appealing as BattleTech is, the game seems to be like owning a boat or a horse, something people who make a lot of money do instead of being rich. The pitch for Lancer is all about being a copyright-free Mech Warrior in a TTRPG space so I’m all ears. Haven’t read the rules, but sure, lets see how the system does in itch.io freebie adventure space.
  First though, we find a few red flags in the document’s stats. Thirty-three pages, single-column, with a format editor credited, a bunch of artists credited, but…no playtesters. Editing was evidently for format, not spelling or continuity (my personal favorite was players typo’d to “platers”). Table of contents which tells us that “The Game” doesn’t begin until…page 14, almost halfway through. It’s nice-enough looking, and the art is uneven but charming, but once we do get to “The Game” it’s divided into a Prologue, three Chapters, and an Epilogue, which is a very “tradgame” setup, and there are zero maps in the main section. Finally, our setting is the Little Dipper, as a sector…which means that the author has no idea how stellar cartography works…a constellation isn’t a bunch of stars near each other, it’s an arrangement of stars based on how we see them from Earth. At ~130 light years away, Kochab, where the bulk of the action takes place, is far nearer to the Solar System than it is to Polaris (sector capital), at ~440 light years away. This is science fiction, please get the basics right.
  Our plot, and as “this is a Narrative Module” you can bet your sweet bippy that we’re on a railroad here so it’s only ever one plot, involves a lonely colony on a desert world (called the only planet in the Kochab system, which, by the way, in real life we already know contains at least one super-Jovian in the inner HZ), taken over by mercenaries off a rival corporation, doing, uh…something. No matter what the platers do, they crash land, get into a fight, investigate one of two sites, get into a second fight, and then investigate the final site, getting into a third fight. Maps for these mech battles are your job to figure out, GM, but no matter what happens the platers level up in the end.
  I hurt because I care. What I liked is the formatting and clean design of the module. I like the color and illustrations, gives some nice visual interest. I like the idea of a series of scenes in a sequence map, much as I would complain about the simplicity and the lack of choice mattering.
  Thus, what can be improved first is make interesting tactical maps. The combats are the only place in this entire thing where plater choices affect outcomes, which means those are where the game is actually being played…and that’s where we have handwavy situation descriptions without a battle map. Oopsie. Despite NPC profiles being lavishly described, with three pages for just five characters, the gameable content is low and could easily be improved by giving better motives and something for clever platers to work with in negotiations or interrogations.
  Also please get your astrogation correct.
  I have no idea about the average quality of Lancer adventures, so it may be that the best use case for this thing is indeed “play a Lancer campaign with it”. Personally, I plan to look at some aspects of the formatting and illustrations and hope to learn for my own publication adventures. Sci-fi adventures are, from experience, not a profitable venture but there’s always passion projects.
  Final Rating? */***** and a single regretful sigh. I was pulling for you, module. 

  I recently played in a Star Trek Braunstein run by Jacob (@stee_blackbend), an IRL friend who's also in my West Marches campaign. I'd only heard of the game type casually before, but I've played a lot of Forum Werewolf in the past, so why not? Jacob asked me if he could write a guest post about the game type, and it was certainly a good time as a player (even though I died). So, here's Jacob:
What is a Braunstein?
I use Braunstein to refer to the subgenre of gaming, while a specific Braunstein game would have a specific name, ala Trekstein, Travellerstein, or Starstein.
They are inspired by David Wesely's Braunstein 1-4, which featured an 1800s town and a Latin American Banana Republic as settings. Later referees ran Brownstones, a series of Braunsteins set in the Wild West.
The central element that defines a Braunstein is that every player is operating with their own goals and with independence.
A Braunstein is a wargame in that each player has defined assets and is opposed by other players, and an RPG in that every player has a character who they are in the game, along with the freedom of action in an RPG that's not part of a wargame.
For example, Captain Kirk and the Klingon Captain both have their separate goals, and are acting independently of each other to accomplish them.
The heroes AND villains are played by players. The GM is a true referee, as they maintain the rules as the players match wits against each other. A Braunstein is different from an RPG in the same way that a multiplayer video PVP game is different from a single player video game.
It's chaotic. It's said that David Wesely considered refereeing his original Braunstein as a complete failure, until his players eagerly asked for another.

If you've played the party game Mafia or Werewolf, this is essentially the RPG version of that, as you have the Sheriff trying to root out the werewolves, the doctor trying to keep people alive, and the werewolves trying to kill everyone. Only now the Sheriff can have a gunfight with a werewolf, the werewolves can wire the town hall with a kill switch, and the doctor might be running drugs on the side for fun.

What is Trekstein?
A Star Trek Braunstein set in The Original Series era.
The Enterprise commanded by Captain Kirk and a similar Klingon ship commanded by Captain Kor both arrive in orbit of Nimbus, a planet poised between the borders of the Federation and Klingon Empire, and attempt to sway the planet to join their interstellar governments.
Nimbus has recently had dilithium discovered on it, and access to it was a large part of the goal of getting Nimbus to join their planet.
The game began just as the Klingon and Starfleet ships dropped out of warp, and would end when Nimbus decisively decided how to be affiliated.

​(Thanks to a neat Traveller tool, I was able to create this hexmap of Nimbus that I could project on a 3D sphere)

The Setting:
Original Series Star Trek, in a sort of nebulous time, probably during the main series.
All the action was contained within Nimbus System, which contained one planet.
A Braunstein works in a cycle. Players plot and execute their plots, often for a while of relative quiet. Then things come to a head and there's explosive conflict. Then everyone goes back to executing their plans. It's a bit like a Mexican standoff crossed with a tea party; everyone's talking and doing stuff, but everyone knows anyone could draw and fire at any time. To keep this tension up, the play area needs to be small enough that the players you have bump elbows some, which is why Trekstein was set on a single planet, besides most Star Trek episodes being set on one planet.

The planet Nimbus was ruled by a collection of people who the title of Duke. For any planet-wide politics, they'd all gather together to vote. Besides that, every Duke had complete autonomy in their respective dukedoms.

Player wise, there were three factions at the beginning, four at the end:
Starfleet
Klingon
Dukes
And lastly the Gorn

I ran into my first major issue before the game began: no one joined as a duke. In fact, I only had three players. Having come from a 20+ player Star Wars game, I'd expected to have too many players, not too few.
The major focus of the game was originally going to be all the player dukes getting wined and dined by the Klingons and Starfleet while the dukes schemed.
I considered cancelling the game at this point, but instead decided to write up six dukes myself that I'd play. My concern was that my inner bias would sway me into letting one side win unfairly.
At this point I ditched my original idea of the dukes using Mongoose Traveller 2e to create a character, and the Klingons/Starfleet using pregens from Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant (a fanmade Traveller hack). We ended up exclusively using Star Trek Alpha Quadrant.

The starting dukes:
Khan - the villain of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
- Goal: become King of Nimbus.
Gorbin - a Cardassian running a Galactic Jurassic Park
- Goal: Gain more exotic predators for his park

Harry Mudd - the con-man from several TOS episodes
- Goal: Get rich
- Goal: Control the majority of the Dithlium trade on the planet.
- Goal: Get his wife Stella of his back (in the show, she sends private investigators out into space after him to get what's owed her)

Cyrano Jones - The trader who provides the Tribbles in The Trouble with Tribbles.
- Get richer and don't die

Hando Rolo - a knockoff of Lando Calrissian who ran the massive Casino Risa.
- Make a deal for Nimbus that benefits him the most.

Alcar Dovan - a retired Starfleet captain who became a great hunter. He was trying to drug and hunt players for sport.
- Hunt the most dangerous prey.

When I began, I was using a turn system that was supposed to be tied to days. This is a solid way to make sure everyone puts in their actions, and that time moves forward reasonably.
We made it to turn 2 before I realized it didn’t make sense and ditched it.
From then on, I handled player actions as they came in and it made sense. If Kirk wanted to leave where he was and go shoot somebody, but Kor was somewhere in a conversation, I’d resolve Kor’s conversation before I moved Kirk forward, so Kirk wouldn't end up forward in time from Kor. (this is important, because Kor could shoot someone at any moment, which would impact what Kirk wants to do)
Boot Hill talks of taking week or so long turns, and then pausing time for sessions. Since my game was purely play by post, there wasn't a difference function-wise between session and turn play. We had one long almost session where everyone involved in an encounter was online at the same time, but that's the closest we came to a session in the traditional sense, as the game was just moving forward as it happened.

The Starfleet and Klingon players quickly began visiting different dukes to sway them to their side.
As the game went, two large subplots emerged besides the Nimbus political allegiance main plot.

The Alien Bioweapon
The Klingons had a goal of discovering the rumored bioweapon on the planet and then obtaining it without the Federation hearing of it.
At some point, the Klingons were told that if they got rid of a monster in the Caverns of Despair mountain range, a duke would join them.
They went there and encountered a sealed lab filled with alien horrors. They managed to fight them off and reseal the lab. (purely for the fun of it, these were the Xenomorphs of Alien/Aliens)

Later, Harry Mudd (Player) convinced Alcar Dovan the Great Hunter (NPC) that his greatest hunt laid in that same mountain range; after a few terrible rolls, Alcar Dovan and his hunting expedition were slaughtered by the alien horrors, which they accidentally released.

This led to the slaughter of a mining camp by the aliens, with the Gorn, Klingons and Starfleet all beaming up and down to try to rescue some miners.

The aliens vanished into the earth, and only resurfaced later as they dug underground towards Hando Rolo's Casino Risa.
The Klingons found out about this early, and they managed to beam a heavy fighting force to the Casino and hold off the alien assault.
Captain Kirk was unaware of the aliens closing in on the casino, and was busy with a highstakes poker game with several dukes when the alarms of the casino began blaring, as heavily armed Klingons began appearing all around the casino. Since it was a Braunstein and Kirk only had information from his perspective, what was the Klingons saving the casino appeared as the Klingons launching a surprise attack on the casino.

The issue of the origin of the aliens was a hot topic, with Klingons and Starfleet both writing up propaganda articles blaming the "bioweapon" on the other side during the game:

After the Battle of Casino Risa, the aliens faded back into the ground and out of the game. Who knows what they're planning now...

The final subplot was The King Khan Crisis.
Multiple dukes warned and asked players for help dealing with Khan. Nobody ever pursued it, and Harry Mudd decided to sell large amounts of dithlium to Khan.
So as the game approached the end via the dukes preparing to vote, Khan publicly declared himself King of the entire planet, revealing he had dithlium warheads ready to fire.
After Duke Mudd tried to double-cross Khan, Khan launched an onslaught of nukes, one of which landed directly on Duke Mudd's town, vaporizing him and his possessions.
Duke Mudd’s final moments, from an in-game black box of camera footage:

Mudd’s player later clarified: “I would like it noted that Mudd was not wishing for Stella out of nostalgic love. He wished she'd be at Ground Zero because it's the only way to be sure.”

Starfleet and the Klingons joined together to launch stealth and outright attacks on Khan's city, and eventually captured him. They did vaporize multiple blocks of his city though.

Before the aliens burst onto the scene, the Klingons and Starfleet joined in a debate broadcast to the people of Nimbus. This is when my players truly amazed me, as they sparred back and forth with LONG political arguments:
Part of a Klingon message:

Part of a Captain Kirk message:
​The PR part of the game played a big role in determining the finale.

After the defeat of Khan, Duke Hando pushed to reform the government from balkanized dukedoms to a republic of sorts, with him as President and the other dukes in various roles. Duke Gorbin was strongly in the corner of the Klingons. If the government hadn't been reformed, Starfleet would have won immediately at this point. But since Hando had to have every duke on his side, he offered the Klingons free trade, and control of Khan's old city, redubbed as Qapla' City, to be settled and run by a Director of Klingon Tourism (a job Commander Korax accepted)

Below are the exact goals for each faction/character, along with a review of how they did.

FEDERATION:
Starfleet has issued these orders to the crew of the USS Enterprise:
1. Get Nimbus to officially agree to join the Federation. - PASSED
2. Gain mining rights to the planet's dilithium crystals. - PASSED, via trade
3. Don't let the Klingons gain access to the planet's dilithium crystals. - FAILED, as they have trade rights
4. Don't escalate into an open armed conflict with the Klingons as that would violate the Organian Peace Treaty. - PASSED
5. There are rumors of dangerous tech on Nimbus. Gather data on any potential dangers to the Federation. - PASSED
So 4 goals accomplished.

EMPIRE:
You have been sent to Nimbus to accomplish the following goals for the glory of the Empire, as issued by the Klingon High Council:
1. Gain control of the planet's dilithium crystals. - HALF-POINT, as you didn’t gain complete control
2. Convince Nimbus to officially agree to join the Empire. FAILED
3. Don't let the Federation gain access to the planet's dilithium crystals. FAILED
4. Don't escalate into an open armed conflict with the Federation as that would violate the Organian Peace Treaty. PASSED
5. There's rumor of a powerful biological weapon on the planet. Locate and acquire it without the Federation learning of it. HALF-POINT
So the Empire accomplished 2 whole points

DUKE MUDD’S GOALS:

Your Missions:
1. Get Stella off your back, permanently. - PASSED
2. Become filthy rich. - FAILED
3. Gain control of the dilithium crystal trade on the planet, and don't lose it in any deal with the Klingons or Federation. - FAILED
2 and 3 are arguably accomplished, but potentially failed if Mudd had continued living. 1 is certainly accomplished.

GORN GOALS (this was the Gorn Captain from the episode “Arena”, banished from his homeland for his defeat at Kirk’s hand, and hoping to regain his honor =):

1. Kill Kirk or the Klingon captain to prove your strength in melee combat. - FAILED
2. Take control of Nimbus for the Gorn Hegemony – FAILED
(in the Gorn player’s defense, he was mid-game volunteer to play what was supposed to be a throw away character, and he played him with so much depth that he ended up not being homicidal enough to win)


Lessons Learned/Thoughts
- Lower crunch rules work well for Braunsteins. There are two major schools of style for a Braunstein:
A. Leaning into wargaming, with tracking location and time strictly. More rules heavy typically.
An example would be each player being the Chief of an orc tribe.
B. Leaning into the Werewolf/Mafia facets, where it's much closer to a standard RPG, but with everyone playing their own faction.
An example would be Trekstein.
If you're doing B, lighter rules or just focusing on using the core rules of your game is advised. For Trekstein, most things were standard skill rolls. I choose to accept every non-opposed roll as a success if it was an 8 or more, for sake of ease. This tended to make players succeed a fair deal, which is fun. It's fun to be overpowered because you've worked the situation to your advantage. One still died despite this.
There were many times I ruled on what Star Trek tech could do; I went with Star Trek novel logic; if it would probably work in a Star Trek novel, I ruled it would work here. Captain Kirk's crew was able to successfully remove chestbursters from impregnated civilians, proving that Star Trek tech is far better than Alien tech.

- Things will NEVER go as planned. And you'll scratch your head that you thought X and Y would be a good idea. So don't be afraid to change things up midgame if it's not working. Easy enough for me to say, since I ran this play by post over time, so I had plenty of time to change things, unlike David Wesely who put it all on the line running it live and in person.


- The most important part of a Braunstein rules-wise is combat/conflict rules. Many rules can be handwaved, but when the actual players directly come into conflict, that's when the rules matter. I suspect that playing in person it would be important to have a rules system that the players could use themselves to handle a fight. If everyone knows AD&D combat and there's no secret elements, players ought to be able to run their own combat between the Gnoll Chief and the Orc Chief. Braunstein combat is like a sport; it needs to be fair, because the game itself is closer to a sport than a traditional RPG.

- Design the scenario for the number of players you have. I would have replaced the dukes with something else if I'd known I'd only get one duke player. I like to run NPCs like video game NPCs (and leave most of the active agents of the game under player control), outside of characters like Khan or Alcar Dovan, which I run like they're a player (ie, they're allowed to actively try to kill players)

- I did find I had the most fun when I was refereeing an intense encounter between players, or when I tried to kill my players. Try to kill them, reasonably.
I suggest having a few chaos elements ready to drop into the game if need be, and if things start slowing down, have a NPC go after a PC at full throttle.
A great perk of using the Star Trek setting is everyone roughly knew how the world operated, so what would typically be lore we had to absorb was just basic knowledge everyone had. That's one perk to a historical Braunstein like David Wesely's, everyone basically knows what an 1800s soldier or CIA agent is capable of, so you can deduce what your opponent might be trying from that, along with being able to easily come up with ideas for what you want to do.
- Use pregens for session Braunsteins (a Braunstein that's meant to be played and have a clear ending). The characters need clear goals to shoot for, and a clear idea what who they are and what they have at their disposable.
- Give your NPCs one clear goal. I found when I had to use Khan I had a clear idea what he would do, so it felt like I was just channeling what Khan would do. Moving forward, I'll make NPCs that I have a clear idea of how they'll act and what they want.
- Generally, have two main factions for people who oppose each other, and then add subgoals for specific characters to spice things up. Starfleet and the Klingons were opponents, but Dukes had more individualized goals that throw more nuance into how the game plays out.
- Have an initial moment where the game begins. For Trekstein, it was just as the Klingon and Starfleet ships dropped out of warp.

What does the gameplay actually look like?
Here's what happened if you were a player.
You joined the Discord server.
You looked over a channel with public knowledge about the planet Nimbus.
You selected a pregen character from a list.
I created a private channel for you and me to talk, and send you your character sheet.
In your private channel, I provided info on your exact starting situation. Where you are, what your goals are.
At this point, you tell me what you want to do, and I tell you what happens.
If you're part of a faction, you also have a faction specific channel you can freely use at all times for talking to your faction members. (You always need these)
You can also see a channel everyone is in if you want to in character send a message to everyone.
If you come into contact with another player, I'd create a channel for you and the other players you are present with or directly hailing, etc. Then you'd talk and say what you're doing until there's a need for me to step in.
For example, Harry Mudd, Sulu, and Commander Korax were all meeting at Mudd's town. During the ensuing conversation, Korax drew his disrupter to shoot Sulu. I ran combat between them using the rules until it was resolved (Korax ruled horribly and ended up getting stunned before he could fire). Then players continued dictating their actions/speech.
And then game continues as such. During the above fight, Sulu and Korax were using their private channels to tell me any secret actions they were taking/asking for clarification on knowledge.

While you're sending me your actions and I'm resolving them, all the other players are also sending me their actions, and it's a bit like being in The Hunt for Red October, because you know the enemy captain is plotting your demise just as you are plotting yours. You also don't know what their secret goals are.
Play continues until our agreed-on ending, in this case Nimbus deciding which empire they're joining.

​A space dungeon by Christian Plogfors and Carl Niblaeus, what are levels? This is space.
Written for Death in Space
  Sometimes, I miss sci-fi and I have to go back. Every week I run a Stars Without Number game, I’m always in the market for cool adventures to salt into the sandbox. I am filled with hope every time. I am always disappointed.
  I don’t know Death in Space, but from looking at the brainchild of Plogfors & Niblaeus here it seems like we’re comfortably in the “grimy jobbers” territory here, which I can get behind. The adventure takes six pages to outline a prison break scenario aboard a worn-down old station, well-formatted and well-written. I’m working hard here to maintain my cynicism, and then I see the map by Mr. Plogfors and my heart is all ready to fall in love again: 

  Be strong, reviewer. Story is dirt simple; this broke-down little satellite station is being used by a private corporation as a prison, one of the two prisoners currently aboard has kinfolk who offer $500 and a treasure map (coordinates) to spring him. Most of the initial pages explain how its vulnerable (proximity sensors are offline, maintenance schedule, supply schedule, warden’s drinking habits, security access, etc) and then keys the areas for a heist, either via bluffing or via sneaking. Showing up with nukes at standoff range does not seem to be contemplated. Three tables of random events are used to generate dynamic content.
  What I liked is more than just the arty map, don’t get me wrong. Laser-focused on one of the two infiltration scenarios, the writers do a good job of giving players all the levers and buttons needed for a heist (prison breaks a subgenre of heist). While the personalities of the guards aren’t detailed explicitly, side comments paint a good picture, along with events like another sheriff arriving with a bottle of whisky, “it’s someone’s birthday”, that’s good stuff. Paints a picture. Rumors, all costing money and all true, are also wonderful resources for players to buy.
  Unfortunately what can be improved is “a lot” when it comes to details of the most important characters, the prisoner himself…and the station. The first is a big deal when your players are bluffing their way aboard, while the second is a lot bigger when they’re trying to sneak aboard the blinded station. Giving a little more information on the deranged AI that runs the station would help a lot given it’s a character both on the social and the sneaking sides. A little bit of consideration for how the station handles the suggested emergency events would help a lot too, given those chaotic events are similar to how “players improvising” typically winds up causing fires and disaster.  More prisoners would be nice too.
  I’m going to astonish myself and say the best use case here is…use as a prison break scenario for your Traveler or SWN sandbox, or else a workable sci-fi one-shot for any number of systems or settings where grit outnumbers chrome. A little basic, but not everything has to be wonderous.
  Final Rating? ***/***** with a few qualms but it’s easily the best sci-fi thing I’ve encountered on itch.io thus far. If nothing else, grab it for the map and the rumor setup.
  This is going to do terrible things for my expectations. Hey, maybe you can turn in an adventure site that's equally adequate? Three more weeks to go.

  It's been a while, but every single week we're still playing, let's look at some more.
​
Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  The crew are down to the tomb world of Frost at the behest of their new patron Mr. Budike. Within the ruined Preceptor Archive university, a hidden facility was opened by thieves…one of whom died in the depths. The path to the hidden pretech was horrific enough, with a vast pile of centuries-old bodies in center of the doomed campus, now absent three thumbs, with Medic Jenny wisely grabbing dead university personnel’s ID chips for access. The nearly pristine facility below is almost out of power and marked with blood, with the crew diverted from a life support signal by a trail of blood…leading to a cybernetic revenant looming out of the dark!
Previously on the “The Flight of the Fox”:
  Terror in Tomb World! A tense battle with the horrific remnants of a university security guard ends in victory but when the crew goes to the jury-rigged stasis chambers they find not one but three empty, with only one still active, holding a mysterious occupant labeled “Charlie Edwards”. Stumbling upon vast capacitor banks usable in their own ship, it is only due to the keen alertness of Security Chief Bulkhead that an improvised claymore mine didn’t turn the front salvagers into a fine slurry! A stairway going deeper similarly mined has the crew moving instead to a ruined elevator shaft…which has another cybernetic revenant coming up! Only the precognitive powers of Percy Crichton alerted the crew to this threat, and after dispatching the dead guardian they now delve even deeper…stumbling upon an autonomous forklift which even now menaces them in the dark!
Previously on the “The Flight of the Fox”:
  Danger deeper in the dead world! After being menaced by a rogue forklift, the crew find themselves in danger from a revenant security guard and more terrible mines…but it is in the grim heart of the ancient complex that they meet their most dangerous foe, the security chief who would not even let death stop him from protecting the sleeping charges under his protection. Now with training modules perfect for Mr. Budike’s purposes and pretech capacitors for Engineer Reynolds’, the crew carefully begin the process of waking the mysterious final living survivor from the Time Before…
Previously on the “The Flight of the Fox”:
  Poised on the precipice of unknown wonders! After meeting Captain Shin-Ji of the Budike Xenosurvey ship Yang, the crew secretively make their way to med bay where Jenny carefully begins to bring the frozen time-lost refugee back. An agonizing resuscitation leaves the elderly victim alive and sane…an ancient custodian named Charlie Edwards, dashing Percy’s hopes despite the man proudly declaring himself forklift certified. Now the crew look not into the past but into the future, embarking on a strange voyage of discovery for a mysterious benefactor…
Previously on the “The Flight of the Fox”:
  A leap into the Great Unknown! Le Renard and the science ship Yang hurtle into the outer darkness, desperately hoping they find something in the ancient trail of a vanished species’ strange map. But the harsh metaspace tear has already nearly produced a casualty, as tech Sarah Chen manifests telekinetic powers. Only the quick thinking of Security Officer Bob Johnson and the calming effects of Jenny and Percy manage to sedate the tech before she torches herself into madness. What more strange and bizarre dangers will they face as the emerge near a rogue planet in the night…
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  A dark world…but not dead! The lonely sub-Jovan rogue planet in the night sky has a companion, a cloudy moon kept just above freezing by radiation and gravity that has activity, and a menacing station in low orbit. After mysterious communications from the moon seemed to promise safe passage down, the crew in their shuttle find a bizarre biosphere in the murky slush made of foxfire and sonar, landing at another strange structure powered by three bioforms made of energy. Percy makes telepathic contact with the alien beings and after barely surviving mind intact hears a plea for freedom…while seismic shakes warn of 100ft-tall entities travelling to the lander.
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  Freedom for the Zoltan, and death to the lankies! A frantic effort to free the three trapped energy beings led to a nick-of-time escape from the towering blind monster, later identified as one of the uplifted “lankies” by the grateful natives, known as the “Zoltan”. The three individuals, Pitkä, Lyhyt, and Keski, are now aboard ship as Le Renard and the Yang try to figure out the strange system’s puzzle, ruled by a mindless AI guardian and powered by the very species it was designed to serve and protect.
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  Demons deep aboard the Zoltans’ hell! A daring raid on the mysterious station by the captain and crew has them freeing the enslaved energy beings more than a mile from home! Steady work by Jenny, Joel, and Alan has freed eleven of the forty-three Zoltan being used as batteries by an unbraked monster of their own creation, but now the sleek shape of an energetic guardian hunter blocks the crew from their next path, with a roar that takes them back to the frantic fubar on Glomar!
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  Trapped within the bowels of hell, the walls closing in! In a pulse-pounding race against the nightmarish machine intelligence False Mind, the crew of Le Renard have freed the majority of the captive Zoltan but are now faced with the largest collection of the captive energy beings…surrounded by FOUR of the terrifying guardians. Now as time ticks down the captain and crew frantically try to come up with a way out, for their helpless new friends…and for themselves! 
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  Free but not yet clear! In a pulse-pounding explosive exit, the crew of Le Renard go kinetic in their jailbreak of the captive Zoltan, trading blows with guardians while dodging the looming Lanky wardens in main corridors. A quick-thinking bit of sabotage leaves the station’s thrusters locked in a bad position and the hellish nightmare prison is now on battery power as the Slate Bulkhead, barely alive from a single Lanky punch, staggers into the main hangar bay and the airlocks slam shut. Now, in the lambent glow 42 freed Zoltan, the captain and crew make plans to make good their escape!
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  Free and clear from P’frx’leen! Loose from the nightmare hell-station, Le Renard fires up the engines and send the dark nexus of the False Mind’s communication hurtling deep within the rogue planet’s gravity well. Days of healing and rest are accompanied by Engineer Reynold’s workshop working all shifts churning out improvised railguns for their newfound Zoltan friends; their masters have been set back, but the war for their moon has only just begun. Zoltan former prisoner Pitkä, alienated from his own world and curious about the wider universe, now joins the crew to explore with them, as they ready themselves for another jump into the unknown
  (This whole system was a player favorite, and their new crewmate is going to be very powerful going forward)

​​Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  Down to the sweltering surface of Arcturus IV! Arriving in the tightly-packed binary system of Arcturus, Le Renard proceeds to refuel within the heavily-industrialized system gas giant while the command crew sets course for their contact’s planet in the shuttle. Facilitator Priven Lal greets the command crew convivially and gives a fair price for their alien relics, but to transship the valuable pharmaceutical Crimson subtle work is required, either braving rival smuggling gangs at night or the brutal melting heat of the day. But that’s not all, deep within the city Percy also searches for psychic aid for the newborn telekinetic Sarah Chen, lost and scared back aboard ship.
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  Back in the smuggling saddle! Le Renard hovers above the burning nightside of Arcturus IV, awaiting the final and most crucial portion of their cargo, the rare drug Crimson, to be snuck past the rival gangs and semi-legal corporations along with a metapsion Percy has sought for the suffering newborn telekinetic Sarah Chen.
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  A sweaty drug deal does sideways! The command crew, along with elderly but forklift-certified custodian Charlie, manage the Crimson pick-up without a hitch but emerging from the warehouse leads to an ambush…but not a surprise one, thanks to the precognitive powers of Percy! All to the good, but the second attack by jury-rigged drones devolves to a scary situation, defused this time by Joel and his sniper rifle along with Slate and the Captain’s pistols. Now the crew is loaded and ready to go, but one final passenger remains to be freed, the nervous captive metapsion Teve Pezal...
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  A breakout that leaves crumbs! Percy Crighton, passionate about safeguarding the newborn psychic Sarah Chen while also helping nervous captive metapsion Teve Pezal, led the crew down to the gangland of Arcturus IV with a case of Glomar Whiskey and the ghost of a plan. Claiming to be working for the new Controller-affiliated boss in the system named “Carl Theseus”, they successfully bluff their way out of the gang’s jam and fled while angry Controller-affiliates demand all ships lock in place. Now in the glowing system of Al-Dua with a hot cargo of Crimson and a low bunker of fuel, Le Renard approaches with caution as inspectors ask her to heave-to!
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  The drug smugglers become arms dealers! After a shockingly smooth transfers of the contraband Crimson in the radioactive husk of Al-Dua, the captain and crew decide to go to Haiomed 24, where primitive cyborgs pay top dollar for used parts! A simple salvage mission to the ancient space wreck of Schipareli 8 forms a new wrinkle, as the crew are welcomed aboard the nuked station with open robotic hands!
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  Friends and nofriends in the ruins of Schiaprelli 8! On the hunt for cyborg parts the crew of Le Renard finds more than they expected with friendly if dimwitted robots who welcome them but are also in need to help, with their automated repair factory disabled. Descending with the help of Zoltan energy, the crew meet malfunctioning and mad loader bots on the hunt for power and parts themselves! Now the crew approach a massive factory area filled to the brim with parts, ominous in the silent darkness!
Previously on the “Flight of the Fox”:
  The crew have a staunch refusal to be fixed! Deep with-in the radioactive bowels of Scapareli 8, Jenny and her companions explore the powered-down lair of the FIXU-system, desperately needed by their new robot friends! FIXU insists that to properly fix the robots a full brain replacement is required, and after the crew objects strongly, half a dozen headless friend-bots violently object! After a thrilling fight, now the station itself is reprogrammed and Le Renard leaves with happy friends and a hold full of cy-bernetic parts…now they’re off to Haiomed 24 and new adventures ahead!

​An adventure by Francesco Spedicato, level nill.
Written for the dread System Agnostic
  Trifold time again, this time with a black background so I guess its primary market is people who want to passively-aggressively drive up their workplace’s printer costs? Anyway, it does the bare minimum by having a node-and-line map of its nine locations and a thin but viable set of story beats and plot. Slightly abstracted location, but hey, there’s a d6 table that has adventure prompts and a d6 table with 10 entries for unexpected surprises. A threat track abstracts the increasing danger every time the players fail badly or waste time and if it hits 5 everybody dies. Our expectations were low and you barely met them.
  Plot is pretty easy to grok. There’s a mining rig located on a water planet, where prisoners are used to mine [something]. You (oh yeah, it’s second person baby) had to deliver mail to the warden, and while you’re there a pulsar pulse knocks out the rig’s [something] and now prisoners are escaped and everyone panics while the rig collapses. Wander the prison sectors, pausing occasionally at the odd parsing of Google Translate, and make it to your ship while enjoying vignettes of violence and terror. Charming.
  Given I’m in my late thirties of course what I like has to include the occasion charming ascii art piece, sure. There’s a few nice situations to wander in to, like prisoners trying to use a dump truck to force the jailors at the spaceport to stop blocking the landing pad. The initial Chambers-approved start is “prisoners break in to the room with zip guns”, that’s hard to go wrong with. Even though I would do more with it, a threat track/timer helps make the whole scenario nice and frantic.
  That’s it, there’s no more good. The first of what can be improved is the smallest, just do an editing pass over things. Secondly, more generally the rooms and situations are all stick, no carrot…some concrete gear would make all the choices a little more interesting, as well as some idea of rewards or push your luck enticements encouraging players to risk delays in this timed scenario. Of course REAL TIME RECORDS ARE ESSENTIAL…better to have a scale on the rig “map” and a number of minutes until the rig collapses, but that’s antithetical to the itch.io soul. A bit more thought on other hazards than “prisoners and panicky jailors” would also be an improvement, the scenario as-is wouldn’t be to hard to set on a twenty-first-century Gulf of Mexico or North Sea oil rig, and that’s not taking advantage of all that the genre has to offer.
  The best use case for this is then unfortunately just a rather dull one-shot game. This might be a passable session of Dread, although the horror is rather muted. Not much to steal for use elsewhere.
  Final Rating? */***** with a resounding “meh”. I need to stop looking cheerful when products with ascii art come across my queue, it’s always a disappointment. 

​A horror one-shot by Sam Bell, level nill.
Written for use with “any sci-fi or horror system”
  Happy September, everyone, and Happy Labor Day to those of you who get it off (so non-laborers). I’m doing a little mini-theme this month, “Sci-fi September”, where for the five Mondays of this month I’m reviewing science fiction adventures from my itch sewer-diving. Given I’ve added Traveler and Stars Without Number to my permitted systems in the next Adventure Site Contest, why not give a baseline?
  This was a stupid idea. Zenith-47 starts us out with a twenty-page “modular” horror adventure where details are “modular” (meaning changed based on table rolls) or tagged in brackets like [Generic Name] for the players’ ship. Oh and of course it’s horror, because that’s apparently the default sci-fi mode. Oh and of course no map is provided because mapping is hard. The list of recommended systems is wild, “Mothership, Ten Candles, Dread, 2400: Orbital Decay, Ironsworn: Starforged, Stars Without Number,
Scum and Villainy”. Format is a nightmare of bullet points with sub-options to somehow make SWN and 10 Candles both work.
  The plot, such as it is, is that space station Zenith-47 got hit by a solar flare which woke up the Big Bad [HAL, Xenomorph, zombies, mutants, Darkness, Living Magic Flare] who lures the players in to Inflict Horror Things On Them…hilariously, if the players turn down the call to adventure their ship automatically takes them to the station because Galaxy Mandate Rules force them to help the mayday. The modules aren’t mapped so by default you’re supposed to walk from one to another, experiencing bits of scariness, until the lab module where the [Big Bad] is confronted and [defeated by things] and then an escape pod just…happens? What a jumble.
  I don’t know what I liked, the experience of reading this product was its own little horror one-shot. There are occasional flashes of okay writing, where I think this would actually be a functional, if underbaked, little adventure if just one of the antagonists was chosen. But…
  What could be improved even in those cases would be more restraint. I don’t demand every horror scenario follow the TOMBS cycle but for the love of Pete a little bit of subtly wouldn’t go amiss once in a while. HAVING A MAP makes everything better of course, I don’t care about making it artistic, just a ball-and-stick space station diagram would do wonders. I could say an improvement would be to have a single horror element or antagonist be even slightly original but that’s just pie-in-the-sky wishcasting.
  Sometimes, the best use case for a product is as a cautionary tale to others. I can’t imagine anything gained from trying to use any portion of this module versus making a scary space station scenario myself using story cubes and stickle bricks. Which, trademark, is a great name for a new TTRPG system.
  Final Rating? */***** because it didn’t actively nauseate me. Misallocated hard work is always sad to see, best not to linger.

  The great campaign is still ongoing, here's the updates since then:
Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  Searching the rainy city of Gamma for a smuggler, the crew of Le Renard find Kalicilos, an offworlder more than happy to take natural diamonds as a finders’ fee, who has a line on some valuable alien artifacts perfect for an unaffiliated smuggling ship. After a few sidebars with a local psychic and arrangement for a future meeting with the potential rebel defector, the captain and crew found Agent Johnson 9801 (known as Sally), a tough-talking chain-smoking hard-drinking Agency broad with a love of the finer things in life and a willingness to overlook the occasional lost relic., the crew met with Dr. Jing to try and best pull off their heist…all the while aware that the vast chasing rebel fleet is less than a day away from arrival.
 
Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  After a tense meeting with the nervous defector Carl Theseus where they directed the scout to dock with their ship, now we join our crew along with the curious scholar Hu Jing as his “help” in researching the newly uncovered alien ruins…all the while looking carefully at the schematics of the Perimeter Agency’s formidable site defenses. Sneaking away from the approved site and the already-categorized artifacts, the crew follows the irascible Dr. Jing to a forbidden section of the ruins. Forsaking the obvious main chamber and its pair of Agency Warbots, the crew instead go to a chamber only barely breached, spending a pair of precious hours on stealthy excavation to enter a mysterious chamber with a starmap leading to no star upon its black ceiling…and an alien robot made of ceramic that moves with liquid menace in reaction to the trespass.

Previously on “The Flight of the Fox:
  In a tense standoff with the terrifying alien guardian found in the ruins on Glomar 2, the crew of Le Renard fired first in the form of engineer Joel Reynolds, leading to a frantic melee where only sword-waving Slate Bulkhead and revolver-wielding Captain LeBeau managed to hit the well-armored robot, drawing terrible wounds in return. Psychic Percy Crighton fled the chamber in a panic, drawing the guardian out with him. After murdering the hapless Dr. Jing, Percy fled down the trench only to draw the advanced Perimeter Agency warbots into the fray; but the powerful plasma weaponry of the pretech bots seemed only to empower the menacing ceramic death machine, leading to a site-wide alert. While Agency personnel battled for their lives against the alien monster, the crew grabbed handy relics and fled the scene of the crime, setting off a demolition charge to cover their tracks…only for an orbital kinetic strike to be called minutes later, obliterating the alien ruins entirely. Now battered, bruised, and in the case of Joel, blinded, the crew try to make good their escape of the system as the pursuing rebel fleet arrives, transmitting a demand that the fugitives be handed over… 

Previously on “The Flight of the Fox:
  The chase is on in the Glomar System! While ship’s medic Jenny desperately works to restore sight to Engineer Reynolds, the good ship Le Renard tries as best she can to join a dozen other vessels in fleeing Glomar 2 before the vast rebel fleet, as the belligerent Admiral Hiermonious Aiken demands the locals hand over the fugitive corvette…while the Perimeter Agency demands all fleeing ships halt for inspection, fearing a breach in quarantine from disaster at the dig site. After stalling for time desperately with the Agency patrol boats, Le Renard finally provokes a response…but not before, at Jenny’s suggestion, linking up with a heavy freighter who also chose flight to inspection. A flight of fighters launched from the rebel fleet at the same time moves to incept the fleeing ships, but the two ships’ delay proves fortunate as the extra time sees the rebels and the Agency intercept at the same time. While nuclear explosions and singularity surges show that the battle back on Glomar 2 rages fiercely, the captain desperately tries to turn the two sides against one another even as plasma begins to fly. The last rebel interceptor gets swatted down even by the Agency and the boats once more demand to board, just as power flickers and goes out. Thanks to quick thinking on the part of Security Officer Bulkhead, Percy’s cargo manifest wizardry, and clever use of the ship’s smuggling compartment, the inspectors find and confiscate what appears to be excess whiskey, barely missing the stolen alien relics. The captain and crew breathe a sigh of relief and slip at last into metaspace, but not before all seeing the grim report of Engineer Reynolds…the power plant failure was SABOTAGE!
  (Note crew morale here...I've begun monitoring crew morale as they've increasingly been desperate and shore leave is long away. Interestingly, though, I rolled the best result at this point...which makes sense. These aren't heroes, this is a smuggling ship, they're smuggling. I told the players how much more relaxed their crew seems after this narrow escape)

Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  A day in the life of Le Renard…while the captain recuperates under the care of medbot Jenny, the rest of the command crew carefully works to detect the saboteur, with security and engineering rigging up hidden cameras while Percy carefully puts his nascent empathic skills to the test interviewing every crewmember, with an especial focus on the new defector Carl Theseus. The defector passes his first test, but when the prisoner Jorge is set up to take the fall by being freed, drugged, and sent with a screwdriver to cause havoc, the carefully hidden cameras manage to catch Carl in the act of framing the poor patsy, who is once again under guard but down a kneecap. Now the crew descends on the false friend, determined to ensure the ship’s safety and security against the snake in the grass.
  (I would never insert a false defector like Carl here, but I'm not running the rebels...that's my nine-year-old son. He's making clever and really devious choices, and the false defector was a nasty play that's all him).

Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  Death to saboteurs! Double-agent Carl Theseus was interrogated via drugs and confessed to being a plant, placed to sabotage or at least reveal Le Renard…with a ship loaded down with hacks to support the mission. Now with the traitor spaced and the scout ship cleaned, Le Renard is only stronger going forward to meet with the eccentric “Art Dealer” Gan Budike on the vast station Grojec 1 orbiting the tomb world Frost in the Backdoor system. The relics are his, but the command crew also debate selling the location found amidst the alien ruins…a rogue planet in the outer dark, mysterious and alluring.

Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  New patron…and new perils! The crew of Le Renard head out for a hard day’s night on the town while the command crew meet with the mysterious Mr. Budike. While the wealthy magnate is more than happy to pay a fair wage for the alien artifacts and hints at more smuggling jobs to come, it is the intriguing star map that has him most involved. After a high-stakes negotiation, Le Renard is now under contract as an escort for a scientific expedition to the dark planet…and getting its spike drive upgraded to make it there and back again with safety. Pushing for a little more, psychic Percy also requests a precog chamber to aid in the navigation, which Mr. Budike is willing to part with…if the crew will in turn retrieve valuable pretech from the airless tomb world below!
  Without a doubt, this is one of the most enjoyable campaigns I've ever run. NOW it's going to begin to really open up with a new job and a ton of possible new cargoes and destinations. They've had choices before, but with a Spike Drill-3 drive and a full tank of gas, now the sector's their oyster...although the rebel fleet still lurks out there if they linger anywhere too long.

  My very wonderful Thursday night gaming group has a rotating set of GMs, and recently I’ve been the man in the chair. After a list of votes for system, the group settled on Stars Without Number, the Kevin Crawford love letter to classic Traveler. I was delighted, because I’ve always wanted to run the system, but the scope of the campaign wasn’t aimed at the interminable sandbox wandering that often has travelers travelling…forever. So why not add the other campaign frame I’ve long wanted…FTL.
  FTL: Faster Than Light is a brilliant RTS roguelike from subset games. The premise, from Wikipedia:
  “[In FTL: Faster Than Light], the player controls the crew of a single spacecraft, holding critical information to be delivered to an allied fleet, while being pursued by a large rebel fleet. The player must guide the spacecraft through eight sectors, each with planetary systems and events procedurally generated in a roguelike fashion, while facing rebel and other hostile forces, recruiting new crew, and outfitting and upgrading their ship. Combat takes place in pausable real time, and if the ship is destroyed or all of its crew lost, the game ends, forcing the player to restart with a new ship. The player's crew intercepts a data packet from the rebel fleet containing information that could throw the rebels into disarray and ensure a Federation victory. The goal is to reach Federation headquarters, waiting several space sectors away, while avoiding destruction from hostile ships or by the pursuing rebel fleet.[3][4] The final sector ends with a battle against the Rebel Flagship, a multi-stage fight which results in either victory or defeat for the Federation.”
  Doesn’t this sound like a great premise for a TTRPG campaign? In the first session the players all came with their PCs rolled, and we focused on creating the main character…the ship. Le Renard, captained by a Québec-expy named Bennoit LeBeau, is a Federation-affiliated (but not direct navy) frigate with not only the five main PCs but with a dozen other NPCs, run as secondaries by the players at times, and a bone to pick with the rebels after the Federation fleet they were with was destroyed. Armed with just the location of the rebel’s mysterious Controller and half a tank of jump fuel, the players start by hopping into a strange sector with knowledge that the rebel fleet will be breathing down their necks in a matter days.
  The initial session was enjoyable, with the players finding a refueling station controlled by fanatical worshippers of the Controller, then their bluffing accidentally led to a pair of infiltrators checking out their ruined bridge for messages from the Controller…and actually finding a Federation comm pad, revealing their enemy status. A tense scene to run, with half the players actually at a dinner with the station’s leader, while the two remaining at the ship fought the spies. After this first session, I began to write recaps for the following sessions to read every time. These are what we’ve had so far:
 
Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  A tense standoff with the Lim 9 station administrator over Le Renard’s Federation affiliation ended in bloodshed, fortunately most of it the administrator’s. While beating a hasty retreat, Captain Lebeau and his two companions managed to hijack the station’s alert system, sending the crew scurrying. Dr. Jenny meanwhile secured the prisoner Jorge Jurgen, a hapless hostage…or helpful recruit? Blasting randomly at the station as they fled, the crew went for the inner inhabitable planet Grid after hearing of a crashed Federation scout there. Landing HARD on the desert planet, Engineer Reynolds set his crew to repairing as the command crew hastened to the wreckage of the scout, finding not just a black box with a rutter [basically a map needed to jump to another star] to another system, but also the faint tracks of the pilot Charles Danyiel, who’s terrible final message promised he would be seeking water in the desolate world.
 
Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  While making repairs and salvaging scrap on the desert world of Grid, our heroes discovered more dangers than mere dry heat, as Le Renard discovered when a massive earthquake rolled in less than an hour after Engineer Reynolds finished repairing the landing struts. Following the lost pilot’s tracks to an oasis one hundred miles away, the Captain and his crew discovered a primitive civilization led by a “chief’canic”, who worship machines even as their ancient terraforming gear winds itself down. The Captain’s initial attempts to ransom the lost pilot ended in failure but Chief of Security Slate Bulkhead made contact with a rebellious “under’canic” who offered to free the lost pilot if the crew could heal the machines of the Ancients. The crew are now within a vast ziggurat, as their engineer frantically tries to fix the barely-understood pretech machinery…and as sonic booms announce the arrival of the advance scouts of the rebel fleet searching for them overhead.
 
Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  As brilliant Engineer Reynolds fumbled desperately with the advanced terraforming machinery wracking the desert world of grid, the rest of the command crew discovered, and then fought an ancient robot guarding rare pretech deep within the facility. With the help of a grateful local, the crew used a combination of stealth and distracting medical miracle-working to rescue lost pilot Lt. Chuck Danyiel. Rigging the pretech terraforming stations to send out bursts of confusing static, the crew manage a thrilling escape from the six circling scouts, forerunners of the imminent rebel fleet. Leaving at flank speed, it is only within the confines of metaspace that the communications officer discovered a hidden message from one of the rebels, speaking of a desire to defect…and warning that the fleet was less that two days from the Makis System. Now in the famously neutral Glomar System, the crew are low on fuel but a little higher on hope, making their way to the system’s solitary gas giant to refuel and take stock of their latest destination.
 
Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  After taking a little time refueling while hiding on the dark side of the gas giant Glomar 1, the crew votes to make contact with the aging mining station in orbit around the world, where a committee of workers, having thrown off their bosses’ control, are up a creek without a paddle with nowhere to sell their refined fuel. The captain has convinced the committee to authorize Le Renard to find a smuggler contact on the system’s main planet of Glomar 2, where alien ruins entice a lively population of smugglers…and the ancient Mandate-era Perimeter Agency ruthlessly works to suppress export of the most dangerous maltech found among the bones of the aliens’ lost civilization. But that’s not the only wrinkle in this sticky situation; as Le Renard makes landfall, the sensors officer notes a pair of rebel scouts docked on the system’s station, including the drive signature of the hopeful defector. Will the crew find a smuggler for their hapless miners? Will they manage to find a rutter to leave the system along safer routes? Will they manage to evade the rebel fleet, which must be on its way…
 
  I’ll continue posting these recaps as the campaign goes along. If anyone is interested in terms both specific to Stars Without Number, or general concepts from the game, please, ask away…science fiction gaming is a very different experience, even though many of us have played at least some before, and it’s been a learning experience for us all as we play around in the system.

​A sandbox by Michael Shorten, levels moot...
BECAUSE IT’S WRITTEN FOR CLASSIC TRAVELLER, DUDES
  And now for something completely different. TRAVELLER? Heck yeah. This thing is an adventure in the classic spacegame sense of being a hexmap with sandbox content scattered around in the hopes of making an adventure out of what results…and then adds a plot pressure by making it a Battlestar Galactica (!) setting. The author is assuming a battlestar-led refugee fleet heading into the eponymous veil, a nebula region that helps them hide from the Cylons. This is actually not a bad idea for a sci-fi space campaign, with not only Battlestar Galactica using that as a plot driver but also great games like Homeworld or Faster Than Light embracing the “explore with a swarm behind us” premise. So, you have a sandbox with a lot of freedom, but also pressure of hostile chase fleets and hungry refugees giving direction and motivation. I won’t hate on it.
  The module is long, using twenty-five pages to detail the sector with a dozen of the hexes containing systems of interest. Appendixes for fleet crisis rolls, a timeline of threats, and random encounters while setting foot on the planets all add a lot more “adventure” to the sandbox, while the setting-specific stuff is helpful for anyone else using Classic Traveler to play Battlestar Galactica fanfiction campaigns. I think the author’s game is probably a blast.
  One aside, the author notes that “some” of the content has been generated and then heavily adapted from ChatGPT. He doesn’t outline what, but I’m pretty familiar with how AI likes to generate alien exoplanet biospheres, so I suspect that’s what it was used on. LMMs love speculative and generally boring exobiology, weird huh?
  Well, what I liked has to be more than just “finally something for Traveler”, right? Well, beyond liking the setting, the premise, and the high-level design, I’m going to laud the ambition here. The module’s size is actually pretty reasonable given that it is a ~6-12 session mini-campaign by itself. There’s a good understanding of how a player-run campaign ebbs and flows, with a good mix of sticks and carrots prompting action. The dice-rolled (ChatGPT) alien worlds are sometimes kind of nifty.
  The alert reader will notice some of what can be improved from the review so far…give us more specifics, dear module. Proper names are omitted for most of the content, which also encourages some very high abstraction for the random encounters and events. A lot of homework is needed to turn d6=4 and d6=1, “EVENT TYPE: TERRAIN/NATURAL, Terrain is especially (difficult/easy) to navigate at this time” into something resembling actually gameplay. There’s a lot like that, where you can clearly see the potential, but time, ever fleeting, is required to make the game happen. The one mapped feature in the module, a simple Dyson being used as an alien spire, is just five room descriptions…I guess actual encounters are to be rolled? Finally, I have no objection to using language model prompts for seeds, but a there are definitely places where more interconnectivities should have been added between systems.
  It’s when I examine the best use case that the module stumbles a bit. It’s a great zone for a very specific Battlestar Galactica-inspired campaign, but I don’t know if the region will really pop for the more traditional trade-and-exploration motivated Traveler game. It all hangs together pretty well, but if bits are extracted you start to see how generic it is.
  Final Rating? **/***** because while it’s a good overview, and the game played can certainly be fun, it’s going to make the user invest so much time that he maybe would rather make something tailored to his game instead. Sad, because a lot of potential was here.