"Mining is a time-honored practice, its roots going back to the Stone Age. When humanity reached space, it began mining the asteroid bodies and extraterrestrial planets in pursuit of metal and ice. The most desired and profitable of these minerals are rare earths and radioactives. With asteroid mining, the Belter was born – a profession, and then a culture, of space miners. "

The company miner, working for corporation or government, works long shifts on interplanetary rocks for a steady salary and employment benefits. The independent belter, on the other hand, strikes out into the belt, prospecting, and mining with his own ship. Usually, he scrapes by on base metals and the more abundant rare earths. However, what sustains the belter through hard work and the loneliness of space is the lust for hitting a "motherlode" – good radioactive ore worth a fortune. As the 20th century song goes, this Uranium Fever infects the miner's heart and propels them into the unknown."

Its been a New York minute since we dived back into the deep end of 'These Stars Are Ours' setting . Do like asteroid mining & belt miner PC exploiting & having the guts to exploit the latest 'gold rush' then Uranium Fever is the setting book for you!

'Uranium Fever 'dives right into the 'New Gold Rush' of the Cepheus Engine rpg setting with asteroid mining done right. The problem here is that not only I'm I really far behind on this Traveller first edition retroclone but I'm super late to the party with a decent overview of this great setting book by authors/designers Omer Golan-Joel and Richard Hazlewood. 'Uranium Fever ' clocks in at about forty nine pages of dense settting material for the Cepheus Engine rpg. 'Uranium Fever ' gives the dungeon master everything they need for the PC's with incredibly detailed PC alternative classes,careers, new setting background material, mishaps, new ships, and lots more. This new gold rush is set within the 'These Stars Are Ours' universe where the human subjects & Grey ruled former intergalactic empire has given way to a brand new 'gold rush' of asteroid mining & lots of it. There's profit in the space rocks & the PC's better get in on the action or get left behind. When the interstellar empire collapses what gets left in its wake with the humans & aliens is pure opportunity & profit. 'Uranium Fever ' clocks the hazards, lawlessness, & sheer insane danger that is inherit with in belt mining & takes it to its logical extremes here. The PC's could literally lose life & limb with little recourse. There's worse then pirates lurking here with the PC's going into the deep end of asteroid mining laying out interstellar laws, claims, ownerships, & much more. The ideas for adventure ooze off the page here from claim jumpers to blood fueds over claim or mine ownership. The whole of 'Uranium Fever 'feels like it sounds an 'asteroid Wild West' and everything that goes with it.

'Uranium Fever ' flips the play book on asteroid mining & adventuring by letting the PC's actually turn a profit in this one on one mini game of adventure & bare knuckles mining. This book takes the PC's deep into the world of mining from running an operation to a fully realized mining company. There are new ships, new equipment, new ideas, new ship hazards, & new mysteries all wrapped up with a nice & neat Cepheus Engine rpg bow.

But is Uranium Fever any good?! Well having printed the fifty page book out & having read through it. There's lots of opportunity for adventurers & PC's to actually shine! This is a book rife with money for the taking but its damn dangerous work for only most ballsy and brave taking the asteroids for themselves. Corporations are dangerous as well wanting a piece of the action. But reading through Uranium Fever there are reminders of the classic Traveller tropes of what do adventurers do between missions. Running a belter operation is a great idea providing profit for adventurers whilst giving them material for creating their own star ships. There's plenty of opportunity here but there's also plenty for the dungeon master to exploit like the bastards that they are.

The writing is tight, the layout well done, the subject material very well covered, & by God there's more then enough here to convert it over to other OSR games. But 'Uranium Fever ' takes itself within itself & does it with a gusto that draws the reader in & makes you really want to adapt the book to its own campaign. And not only have I reviewed this book but it demanded that I print it out to exploit erm play 'Uranium Fever ' to draw in the player's PC's into the 'These Stars Are Ours' setting universe. Its a tight, dangerous, & wel thought out setting book with all of the right ingrediants to make mining fun,profitable, & oh so limb losing prospects. One last thing this is one of my favorite books for the ships, equipment, & brand new toys for the Cepheus Engine rpg system. Thanks for reading my review!

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

You want to relax in a belt an watch valuable rocks flying by? Then Uranium Fever (UF) is the wrong expansion for you. Why? Sit down and listen... eh read ;)

Sorry if my english is bad. I hope it is good enough to understand ;) I'm new to Pen&Paper RPGs. I started with Cepheus Engine (CE) because the SRD is for free but I like it so much, that I bought a few expansions. Also I'm playing solo. In other games I always liked it to mining ressources. So why not doing that in CE? That's why I'm playing UF. Generally UF is a very nice addition to CE and easy to understand. I found a typo and one table in the rulebook was not clear to me. I wrote a comment at the UF page and Omer from Stellagama Publishing responded very fast to my questions. They will resolve the typo in the next version and the table is now clear to me. All thumbs up for good customer service of Stellagama Publishing. But how is UF playing? I will write down my experiences for you:

First I setup a character for Belting in my own universe. The goal of this character is to become a rich man with a large fleet of ships mining the only belt in this system. So I created a small ship for belting, hired a crew and TADA I'm in the belt and start trying to get rich. Oh i waited 1 year until my ship was finished... In the belt I tried to find some valuable rocks. Damn that takes so much time. But first shot and I found an alien artifact. So much luck, I was motivated and sell it for a good price. First expenses were assured and my life was easier. I used the money to improve my ship and started a second run into the belt. I searched very long for something valuable. Finally I found something very small of not that much worth. I continued my search and it takes a lot of time again. Then I had luck again. I found a small rock of about 200 diameters. I scanned it properly and it was a very strange rock. I will sell this information to the same person I sold the artifact before. But it's risky. The leader of my homeworld is a dictator and Government is strict. So nobody knows if I will be able to sell it without getting arrested ore worse... What my character doesn't know at this point ist that the rock he found is an egg of a Solardragon. One of this kind has triggered a large breakdown ages ago. Nobody remember that today but a small secret society...

Belting isn't boring because it is hard work. The chance to find something very unusual seems quite high. I haven't searched for adventure but I found it. Now I'm into it with characters who are not able to fight. If I ever get into a fight it will get worse. But who knows what will happen? I like that and UF guided me into it. That's the best point of UF.

I recommend you to use UF for getting into adventure. There are plenty of chances to get involved. Random encounters, special finding while Belting, trying to sell special finds at a planet with strict government, etc. Like always playing such games as CE: It is up to you making something exciting out of it. UF is supporting you with a very nice framework of getting into it ;)

Good work Stellagama Publishing!

I’ve always been a sucker for mining, perhaps because of all those hours I spent playing Eve Online digging out Veldspar and Scordite and trying to find a nice load of Golden Omber so that I could upgrade my mining ship … and mining should make a great solo past-time. Uranium Fever provides you with all the essentials for a game of space mining; initially the book describes asteroid mining in the context of Stellagama’s These Stars Are Ours! setting, and there are ideas there for use in any SF setting. I particularly like the miner’s slang table. Neat! To add variety Stellagama has provided three variant careers for miners, the interdependent miner, the corporate miner and the planetary miner. The event and mishap tables are full of flavor and gaming hooks.

The meat of the book is composed of the prospecting and mining rules, and these are made up of dice roll ‘chains’ that eventually lead the player to an asteroid of ‘X’ value that he can mine. Earlier, when I said the Uranium Fever provides ‘the essentials for a game of space mining’ I sort of meant it, this is a ‘game’ in itself that could easily be played solo, the characters trying to locate and exploit bigger and higher yield rocks. Just as free traders chase the next speculative cargo, these miners are searching for that rock full of radioactives. But of course that is the problem, too … few gaming groups want to mine asteroids in every session – there has to be adventure too! Just as Marc Miller envisaged that speculative trade and the life of a free trader should serve merely as a vehicle for adventure, Uranium Fever should be used in much the same vein. ‘What can happen while we are mining?’ ‘What will we really find?’. Alien artifacts, pirate bases, lost shuttles, abandoned cargoes, fugitives from justice, wrecked battlecruisers … the genre is filled with exciting plot elements that sit ‘out there’ in the asteroids waiting to be found. Traveller itself based two of its adventures around such a situation, Adventure 1: The Kinunir and Adventure 6: Expedition to Zhodane. And let’s not forget that the TV show The Expanse opened with the ice mining ship Canterbury responding to a distress call in the asteroid belt…

Buried in the asteroid mining mechanics is a great section on the legalities and processes, including claim beacons, reporting claims, claim jumping and selling claims on to bigger corporate outfits. Rounding off the book are three small mining ships suitable for a little group of mining characters, the 10-ton gig (a shuttle), the 100-ton Prospector and the 600-ton Miner. These designs come with great deckplans, and are purposefully designed to resemble the ‘low-tech’ spacecraft that you see in The Expanse; perfect designs for my own settings in fact.