This review originally appeared in the September/October 2016 issue of Freelance Traveller.

This adventure was originally run, with great success, at a UK TravellerCon. The author was encouraged to release it publicly, and has, through German publisher 13Mann Verlag. Surprisingly, it’s free (not even PWYW), but I’d certainly agree that (given a convenient opportunity) throwing the author a few bucks, quid, or Euro in appreciation wouldn’t be out of line.

The design of the adventure is interesting, in that it can be played by a group of three PCs in either of two ways, or both aspects can be covered with a group of six – but in the latter case, the author recommends running it as two separate groups of three until they meet near the end of the first segment of the adventure.

Mr Collinson has clearly done his homework for this adventure; while only the Mongoose Traveller Core Rulebook is required, he lists several other publications that would be useful, mostly for skill definitions and related tasks, and several others that he used for background information in composing the adventure, including two Freelance Traveller articles.

I’m not going to discuss the plot or give details of the storyline here; all I’ll say is that it’s a well-written one that deserves to have the players come at it cold. I will say that it’s not fundamentally a combat adventure, and neither referees nor players should come in expecting firefights.

The adventure’s organization is in “Acts” and “Scenes”; each Act represents a major thematic shift, usually accompanied by a major setting shift; each Scene develops the dramatic line of the Act. Development is essentially linear, with the exception of Act I, which has two developmental lines running in parallel and merging at the end of the Act. There is the potential for this to be “railroad-y”, as not following the plan can in several places abruptly end the adventure, but if well-run, the players are not likely to notice this, and will see the adventure through to completion.

The six player-characters are well-defined, with capsule backgrounds and personal characteristics that allow for each to be seen as – and played as – a distinct personality, rather than a generic character-in-such-and-such-role.

Each scene is also well-defined in terms of what’s expected to happen, where, and with what actions on the part of the various dramatis personae. Locations are described in a way that allow the players to get a “feel” for what the location is like, and what sort of reactions to various types of actions can be expected. This extends to animals that appear in the adventure; while some of them could be replaced with generic pulp “space-cows” or “space-sheep”, others are truly alien, and point up that no, you’re really not in Kansas anymore.

As noted at the beginning of this review, the adventure was originally written for and run at TravellerCON in the UK, and so can clearly be played fully in a single four-to-five-hour session. On the other hand, if for whatever reason you don’t have a single block of time of sufficient length, the breaks at change-of-Act are also good points to break, stretch, and say “continued next time”. There’s also room for making this a side adventure in a longer campaign, or making this the central adventure in a longer campaign, with side adventures of its own.

I would say that this adventure is easily the equal of any adventure folio for Traveller that I’ve seen, and I could wish that the 13Mann “Adventure for a Book” campaign had worked out, with other adventures of quality to match this – a linked set of four to six adventures of this quality would absolutely have been worth the US$20-30 that a print edition would have commanded. Go forth and download; it’s only 1.5MB of your time/bandwidth.

I did a quick read through and liked it in general. The only weakness as a storyline in it was there were few built in places for a logical sidetrack. Most player groups have a natural bent for deviating from the storyline to a greater or lesser degree. So while the story arc was basically good and sound, there were limited opportunities for players to deviate from the script. Overall though, it would actually be a very decent introductory adventure for an experienced GM with more novice players who haven't evolved the "lets deviate NOW!" mentality.

Rendering into PDF format is excellent, and this could easily be printed if desired - a color printer might be needed since there are some color charts which might not render well in B&W.

The adventure itself is mainly suitable as a standalone using the pre-generated characters - the adventure flow is very structured and depends on specific characteristics and history of the characters, and therefore is unsuitable for use in an ongoing campaign. As a standalone using the included characters, it would make a good change-of-pace for a tournament of other convention play-session. This is not a style I, personally, would use, and there are not any interesting locations, gadgets, or plot elements that can be readily transferred to an ongoing campaign.

Overall, appears to be good quality, but not a type of adventure suitable for my play style and gaming groups.

Hard to argue with this in terms of value for money. A flexible scenario set just beyond the Imperial fringes of the Spinward Marches. While the set up is handy for one offs an tournament sit could work for anyone with a little work although there is a stowaway element that might be hard to make work with your more conscientious/paranoid trader crew.

This is an interesting and very open adventure which can be run in many different ways depending on what the Referee wishes to achieve. The basic concept involves stowaways on a starship, but notes are provided such that the characters may be crew, stowaways or... possibly most fascinatingly... both at once. Pre-generated characters are provided, with the stowaway ones in particular being given extensive backstories as to just why they have decided to travel in this manner. Given the background, I think it best that if the players are to be the stowaways the pre-generated characters should be used: although the crew pre-gens are nicely-rounded characters any characters with the appropriate skills will do.

The adventure is divided into several phases including the loading and departure of the ship, events on board and what happens on arrival at their destination and beyond. Plenty of detail is provided for administering these events from either standpoint: the party being the stowaways or them being the crew, or indeed both. In this last case it is recommended that for best effect the two groups be separated for play until the stowaways are discovered.

Given the nature of the stowaways' reason for fleeing their homeworld, there are interesting ethical issues over and above those of dealing with stowaways which are of particular note if you have player-character crew attempting to deal with the situation - and these could lead to longer-term involvement, or even drive your campaign for a while depending on how involved your players wish to get.

As mentioned, the adventure is well-resourced with background material as well as with loads of pre-generated characters; and there is also a map of the downport at the destination world which comes into play if the characters either are the stowaways or decide to aid them after arrival. Throughout, numerous options are offered, making it easy to cope with player actions. The adventure could also work well as a convention adventure with limited running time and using the pre-generated characters.