“System Book 2: Xibalba is the second in a series of books by Spica Publishing that present a detailed planetary system with scientifically accurate physical data and an interesting setting to enable Referees to run exciting adventures there.”

This brief statement from the introduction sums up why I really like this product … it delivers on that promise. Too many adventures seem to start with an Earth-like world with giant purple dinosaur hampsters (or some other credibility stretching combination of “animal”, “plant/insect” and “color”) and a world that has been settled for thousands of years and “was, is, and forever more shall be” pretty much what you see right now. When you arrive at Xibalba, you get a sense that you are visiting a real place with a living history at a specific point in time. If you had visited this place 20 years ago, you would have found a very different place than it is today. You suspect that if you return in another 20 years, you will find it has continued to change and evolve and grow.

Since the book is divided into three sections, it seems reasonable to review each of the sections in order:

INTRODUCTION After the Color Cover and Title/Credits/Contents page, is a one page introduction. There are two things that a potential buyer should know from the introduction:

First, there are some other books that might be useful: Traveller Main Book would be helpful for running Xibalba with the Traveller rules system. The rules on asteroid mining in System Book 1: Katringa would be useful if the referee wants to stay in Xibalba for a while. Xibalba is compatible with the larger Outer Veil setting by Spica Publishing.

Second, “these books can be used for any science fiction role playing game as the specific rules involved have been kept to a minimum.” So you need none of the books listed above to use and enjoy Xibalba. Any rules set that will let you visit another star system will work … it is that system neutral.

THE XIBALBA SYSTEM Immediately after the introduction is a full page summary of the entire Xibalba system. If you are like me and things like “an A1 V star” mean nothing to you without siting down with wikipedia (far too much work), then you will like the short paragraphs at the top of the page. I found “Xibalba is a bleak, empty system consisting of three charred rockballs, a dispersed asteroid belt and a superjovian gas giant orbiting the cooling corpse of a star” to be one of the most useful sentences in the entire book. In one short statement it paints a picture of the system that I can offer to players that is far more vivid and provoking of an emotional state and mental image than many strings of hexadecimal planetary data (like most Traveller star systems are described with). Along with the text overview, I appreciated the color image of the solar system that clearly identifies the orbits of the major planets and gas giant, the staggering width of the asteroid belt, and the vast number of eccentric orbit comets in the inner system. Useful information at a glance … I love it.

For those with more scientific tastes, if you need to know the location of the habitable zone around the star (0.025 AU to 0.055 AU), it is in there. So are the many strings of hexadecimal planetary data, stellar luminosity and effective temperature and lots more stuff to gladden your technical heart. At the bottom of the page is a terrific little table listing the distance and travel time between all of the worlds and major asteroid settlements that will save you a lot of work during a game.

Each of the five ‘worlds’ in the system (three rock balls, an asteroid colony and a gas giant) are then presented with a picture, table of technical data and a short description. I liked the subtle details that make each place memorable and different from the other worlds, like a volcanically active world that erupts with freezing water, nitrogen and carbon dioxide ices raining down as bright spots on the dark surface.

After this comes about a page of History on the system. While Traveller histories usually begin hundreds or thousands of years ago and present a string of irrelevant dates, events and facts, Xibalba is completely different. First, the history only begins 43 years ago, and second almost every word in it was both interesting and relevant (if not essential) to understanding the atmosphere and nature of the Xibalba system and people.

Finishing up this section is about two pages of ‘what everyone knows’ about the mysterious phenomenon, the challenges of living in (or visiting) Xibalba and the image from the cover. I don’t want to say more, because I don’t want to spoil any of the surprise.

REFEREE’S INFORMATION This section opens up by painting a great picture of the tone and character of the place beyond the technical details and all about the people who live here. What a buyer needs to know is that this is not a ‘zombie hoard’ or ‘chainsaw wielding psycho’ Horror adventure. This is about mystery and wonder. I liked this quote “The unsettling occurrences in the system drive its inhabitants closer together, huddling in the darkness in their habitats much like villagers in an isolated, lonely settlement surrounded by foreboding, unknown wilderness.”

Next comes some data on incorporating this adventure into the overall Outer Veil setting. If you have no intention of using Outer Veil, don’t sweat it … this is less than a quarter of a page. A half page of ‘referee’ data and good advice on the ‘things that go bump in the night’ aspect of Xibalba comes next. This is followed by 4 adventure seeds linked to the unique nature of Xibalba itself.

Rather than presenting a single definitive explanation for the mystery, Xibalba concludes with five explanations that run from deep into the ‘soap opera’ realm to the extreme ‘hard science’ end of the spectrum. Each referee gets to pick his own one true explanation, several possible explanations, or just leave it a mystery. Each possible explanation was thoughtful and held potential for more fun and adventure.

CONCLUSION “All too often in science fiction RPGs life and travel in space is taken for granted or considered 'routine': everything is already explored, nothing is a frontier anymore and any sense of mystery is gone. The central goal of this book is to serve as a reminder that, while Humanity may have the ability to colonize and 'conquer' space, there are some things that cannot be anticipated and that will not be readily understandable. There are plenty of places where the infinite dark that surrounds a frail human colony will feel overwhelming.”

Setting aside everything else in this review, if the above quote from Xibalba stirs something inside of you, then you owe it to yourself to buy Xibalba and check it out. If that quote captures nothing of what you want in an adventure, then Xibalba is probably not for you.

Epic adventures spanning vast swathes of space and time are fairly rare. Adventures that do it well are even more rare. Adventures that do it both well and for free, are almost unheard of. I'll be darned if Spica doesn't seem to have pulled off a clean sweep ... Epic, Well Done and Free.

THE SHIP The first thing that caught my attention was the ship. I like ships and this really is a beautiful ship. A good size for adventuring. An interesting layout. Containing some rather innovative features. Alongside the ship is a crew. An interesting crew. A colorful crew. A crew whose brief descriptions have wetted my appetite to get to know them better as future adventures unfold.

THE SETTING The first part is more introduction than adventure, but it is an introduction to the Outer Veil universe of Spica Publishing. It seems a rich and interesting setting, with more wide open spaces and opportunity than I found in the long over-settled Third Imperium of the 'Official' Traveller Universe. This is only an opinion, but it is my opinion and I am sticking to it. [wink]

THE ADVENTURE The adventures center around hiring a crew, and trouble at a starport. Fairly typical 'meet and greet' stuff and a variation on the classic 'trouble with starport administration' theme. Overall, not one of my favorite themes, but I have to give credit where it is due ... I found it handled better than almost any similar adventure. With three adventures released as of the writing of this review, I can say that the 'action' gets better as the series progresses. So I found this a fair start to a great series of adventures.

THE WRITING Here is where this product really shines. The narrative painting the background is well written. The characters seem real and believable without the typical stereotype personalities and with subtle shades of strength and weakness that I found refreshing. While this adventure travels territory well worn by other products, it never feels stale, predictable or like you are being railroaded. Thank you Martin for painting a fun and believable epic adventure with refreshing prose.

THE BOTTOM LINE When fate hands you a product better than most commercial offerings, for free, grab it! Read it! Enjoy it! The only reason that I gave it 5 stars is because they don't allow 6 stars.

12 pages...no that counts the cover and open license so really it's 10 pages pages and $3.99 to basically say it's a spooky place were things go bump in the night, and no there is no actual explanation or reason for it. Oh sure there's some nice pictures, well 1 nice picture on the cover which they recycle again inside. Seriously unexplained sounds and lights, phantom voices you've seen it all before for less than $4. Spica dropped the ball here a lackluster phoned in performance.

Spica has come up with a highly believable and credible Solar System perfect for any frontier exploration based space opera game, like Traveller but not exclusively Traveller. It does use the Traveller principles for world generation, but, gives it a highly realistic edge to it. Accompanying the system, there is an open ended enigma/adventure whose resolution could be grounded in Hard SF assumptions or one can go the route of traditional Space Opera. The artwork although, CGI is fantastic and text really manages to evoke a sense of wonder and masterfully captures the essence of a desolate alien environment. This is Traveller done right. Keep up the excellent work Spica and I look forward to when these worlds get compiled together for some sort of print product.

This is an excellent product. It is scientifically accurate and is flexible enough to fit into any Traveller game or other similar SF RPG setting. The mystery is left undefined yet useful suggestions are provided to aid the GM's job. You are not left hanging. The artwork is clean and well executed and will make good handouts for your players. I am excited to present this adventure in my game and I think you will be too. If you are having any doubts, dispel them and buy this book. You'll be glad you did.

Spica does it again. Using the baseline of a generic Traveller universe (ever evolving Outer Veil Campaign setting), it has has decided to detail one of the major big ships of the universe tapping in the same vein as FASA did many moons ago with the King Richard deckplan and supplement by detailing a mega-liner. While there is the Outer Veil implied, this product can be used for any Traveller Universe or generic Space Opera campaign.

Spica did a careful rewrite of the rules for passengers and listing of hazards of a megaliner for this supplement. In addition, they have created an ideal passenger manifest with shades of different personalities that allow the Referee to reuse the same NPCs in different ways or in different circumstances a number of times. There is an alien race and countless adventure hooks. Rounding things out there is a deckplan of the said starliner.

All in all, an excellent product - the only drawback is the lack of art - save for the beforementioned deckplans and the cover - there is no art. I realize that art would have greatly increased the cost and production costs, as well as inflate the page count - but I would have loved to see these NPCs rendered by some artist. That said, this is a keeper and a worthy successor to FASA's King Richard.

Look forward to seeing more from Spica in the near future, even as it is set in the not too distant future guys - you produce great stuff that really needs to in dead tree.

I can’t decide if this is a great companion to Mongoose Book 1 Mercenary, or a better version of it. It just reads like a more complete look at day-to-day life for Mercs. Also includes an entire subsector (in Foreven), a new alien race and an adventure. Layout and typography are really slick, very well organized, and a must for anyone incorporating the military into Traveller (not just Mongoose, but looks tot be useful for Classic as well).

Really great collection of NPCs, many of them collected as crews (traders, survey team, mercs) and, in one case, an entire marine platoon. I really like the look of the Psionic Tactical (PsiTac) Team. Enhanced by the exceptional typography and layout work I see in almost all Spica products.

Nice map, would love to see it available in print!

Introduction

OUTER VEIL is a new setting book for the Traveller rpg published by Mongoose. Traveller has a pedigree going back to the very root of roleplaying (1977) and has a well developed setting that has emerged, somewhat organically, over the intervening decades. This setting, which is usually referred to as the Original Traveller Universe (OTU) is set very far in the future and has a very decentralised feel with a light feudal oligarchy ruling over it. It also has some anachronistic touches, and despite being millennia in the future it often feels oddly like 1972!

Spica Publishing, founded in July 2006, have published a wide range of support material for the current Mongoose edition of Traveller, and yet in the past they did have plans to publish an entire sector in the OTU. This seems to have been somewhat derailed by the new licence, although not by any active intervention by Mongoose or Mark Miller, and it seems that they have turned their hand to a new and independent setting.

Overview

OUTER VEIL is a near future setting, the game date is 2159, and yet mankind has explored a full sector, divided into the dense Core, the growing Frontier and the thinly settled Outer Veil. The pace of technological progress has been consistent and IMHO more acceptable for a SF genre project. From 2033 to 2159 Earth has moved from TL8 to just TL11, with Jump-1 ships developed in 2068, and Jump-2 in 2150. The history of the setting is well developed and addresses a lot of the usual issues about Traveller, e.g. Why doesn’t knowledge spread evenly and how can barbarism exist a week away from abundance and ultra technology? In OUTER VEIL the whole of space is nominally TL10-11, and if you have the money you can buy equipment at that level. ICT is cheap, pervasive and wireless, and as the text says “storage is effectively limitless with 22nd century technology”. That’s not to say that backward colonies don’t exist, indeed on the Veil some goods are imported in a lower tech form just so they’re easier to maintain. Gravitics is a new technology and although it has replaced aircraft, ground vehicles are still wheeled, tracked or waterborne.

The history and the setup of OUTER VEIL has been done extremely well, so as to be believable, consistent with the core Traveller rulebook, and yet also to deliver a style and feel that is far more Firefly or Aliens than some SF games you may have played. Essentially space was colonised by Megacorps that seized political control through the Inter Stellar Trade Organisation (ISTO) after various corporate wars. Eventually the nation states rebelled and after a civil war established the Federated Nations of Humanity in 2131. The government structure of Humanity is rather similar to the present European Union, a ruling Executive of three members, an elected Assembly, and Commissions of civil servants that manage the broad decisions of the other two institutions. The wider structure of Member Nations and Colonies mirrors the colonisation of North America by the U.S.A., with Colonies similar in form and type to the Territories, and the Member Nations like full states. The Megacorps still run 60% of the economy, the FNH actively runs 25% with the balance in the hands of Independents. There is a wider variety of ‘actual’ governments the further away from the Core that one goes, and there are good rules on setting up new Colonies: indepedent, corporate charter world and government colonial projects. The political system is dominated by three broad coalitions: Stability (conservative), Progress (expansionist) and Unity (lefties), all of which can provide excellent flavour and motivation. In addition there are Secessionists, militant and peaceful; pirates, privateers and raiders, unsanctioned colonies and a whole grey zone in which dissidents and outcasts can dwell.

Military concerns are not pressing for the FNH at the moment, they keep a Core Navy, a Marines Corp (FNHMC) and planetary armies. Few warships above 1000 tonnes are seen in the Frontier and the Outer Veil, most smaller than that. Mercenary units exist and are licensed, and in the Frontier and Outer Veil illegal corporate wars still erupt. Meson guns haven’t been invented, combat armour isn’t known, and this and the small size of ships means that a referee need not use High Guard or Mercenary, although they could.. This is not a setting for huge naval battles or a Honor Harrington “ship of the line” style campaign. It is well suited to brush wars, black ops by corporate teams and possible bug hunts. I say possible, but not yet.

The economy is well explained in the setting, the role of the Megacorps allows for Outlander or Blade Runner games, but as the scale diminishes in the Frontier and the Outer Veil, then the Free and Subsidised Traders start to play a key role, allowing a Firefly or classic small scale mercantile/troubleshooter game. As mentioned above, the possibility to start colonies is covered, and colonial games have great potential for economic gaming. The nature of travel and the distances to HQ mean that even the largest Megacorps can get very entrepreneurial on the borders.

The culture is Neo-Modernist, most religions we know now are extant, although they have to have adopted an explanation for multiple worlds, and the evidence of alien intelligence, not to mention psionics. From the dense activity of the Core to the abandoned ‘land grab colonies’ composed of a single ethnicity or culture, most SF cultural diversity can be extrapolated and encompassed.

Did I mention aliens and psionics? Well there are no aliens, but there were. Ruins exist of the Monument Builders and the Ascraeus Civilisation, but these are ancients and no current non human sophonts have been encountered. The Ascraeuns were a TL13 humanoid species and through their artefacts humans discovered psionics, although it requires a psionic amplifying device to be effective.

Contents

OUTER VEIL is well written, it uses concise but rich text to build a good overview of what is a huge setting, and it does so in 8 key chapters:

The Outer Veil, which is a summary of the overall setting,

Outer Veil Characters, which provides eight careers suited to the setting:

Citizen,

Colonist,

Elite,

FNH Marine Corps,

FNH Navy,

Justice Commission,,

Planetary Army,

Scout,

Starships of the Outer Veil:

14 ships that cover the full range of Traveller core ship types with deckplans,

Belting, as it says, mining rocks

Astrography:

The full sector, mapped and detailed at the level of about a page per sub sector, so similar to Mongoose sector write ups,

Referee’s Information:

Outer Veil Patrons: four of them,

Brotherhood and Justics:

An introductory adventure.

Conclusions

OUTER VEIL is a very good product. It is well written, the setting is meshed into and out of the core Traveller rulebook, and by being written from the ground up it is consistent, believable and allows for many excellent gaming opportunities. It will suit players who want an SF game that might happen in fifty years, where society has changed but the culture is recognisable and the tech is still within human comprehension. It allows for dystopian, corporate, colonisation, first contact (hey add your own aliens), and frontier games. There is no meta plot, no 300,000 year history, it’s new and it’s all up for grabs.

On the other hand, it’s Traveller. It carefully doesn’t break anything. You can grab a ship from a Mongoose book and as long as it’s TL11 or lower and doesn’t have a meson gun, it’s fine. You can use High Guard or Mercenary or Agent or Robots or Cybernetics. Nothing you have in your Traveller collection is redundant, well maybe that TL16 Twilight Sector book, but that’s the opposite end of the spectrum.

The book is simply laid out, readable, and illustrated with neat CGI images that fit the feel of the setting whilst not setting any hearts a flutter.

Should you buy it? Yes: if it sets your teeth on edge explaining away OTU’s tech levels and historical absurdity, or you don’t want aliens, or you want a new brave frontier. No: if your lOVe the OTU and are happy and love the depth and scale of all the existing material. Maybe: if you fancy a read, might port some of the ships and careers to your game or back to OTU, and since it doesn’t really break Traveller, just like the idea of diversity.

Am I pleased I have it? Hell Yes!

Outer Veil is an amazing campaign setting. The detail is amazing and the near earth future setting has a much stronger feel of realism than the official Traveller Universe. I like the no aliens but ruins, The mega corporations, the extra world detail. This is the campaign I have thought about creating but never had the time and tripped on the details. The referee and players have so much room for adventure, from FNH Agents to Frontier merchants, New World Colonists, Scouts, Pirates Mercenaries ad infinitum. The Outer Veil fires my imagination and I am looking forward to firing up a campaign. Amazing job Spica Publishing you are a blessing to the mongoose Traveller Rule system.

Career Book 2 from Spica Publishing continues and expands upon the material presented in their first career book. The new careers present some exciting options, including University, Slave, Prisoner and Puppeteer, which makes a great option for Hiver players. The book is advertised mainly on the strength of the careers included, which is fine, but the rules for alternative skill selection and a new injury table offer just as much variety and novelty to the game as do the careers.

Career Book 1 from Spica Publishing is among the finest third-party publications for the Traveller RPG that I have ever seen. The book features several all-new and fresh careers for PCs, as well as a fine selection of NPCs. Layout and art are fantastic, making the book an attractive addition to one's shelf (or file folder). Its greatest strength lies in the expanded Event Tables for the careers from the Core Traveller Rule Book and the expansions to the somewhat boring Life Events table from Mongoose' book. The only issue that I had with the book is that I would have liked for the religious careers to have some sort of psionic option.

Looking for a home for your Ripleys and Deckards? You're in luck because the Outer Veil has plenty of space available. Set in the mid 22nd century at the beginning of the interstellar age the Outer Veil literally offers a sector wide gaming challenge. Corporate intrigue, exploration as well as life on a new world are only some of the adventures possible with this setting. Humanity may dominate the stars but we are not the first out there. Ancient ruins of two interstellar races abound leaving the question are there more? Setting specific rules, careers, spacecraft and equipment provide the finishing touches to the strong background. Bottom line if you are looking for a new Traveller setting with a what's out there feel the Outer Veil provides it.

The Outer Veil is an odd on by Spica Games to Mongoose' latest Traveller Rules. It covers this universe one hundred and fifty years from now, as humanity drives out into the explored or unexplored section of space called 'The Outer veil'. As well as history and a complete sector based around Sol, it has new ships and weapons as well as an adventure and setting specific careers. The TL is 11, which means that Jump-2 is only just becoming available. This whole product is extremely well thought out, and a joy to read. They seem to have sorted out a few missing items very quickly and are very responsive to constructive comment. I hope they concentrate from now on, on producing scenarios and addons for this system rather than the regular Traveller universe. as this is a trully excellent idea and product. Even the ship deck plans are a cut above the normal. I can't recommend this product enough to anybody who wants to play either Traveller or just a sci-fi RPG. Its great.