Continuum 2026

 The last weekend of July saw Megan and me at Continuum for a weekend of gaming. Mostly freeforms, with some ttrpgs and a few board games. Plus seeing lots of old friends and talking nonsense all weekend. What’s not to love?

Playing Mycelia in the atrium

TL;DR: We had a great time!

Here’s what we did:

Friday

We arrived mid-afternoon and didn’t do much other than check in, chat to a few friends, and have a bite to eat.

Four Gods and a Funeral

Four Gods and a Funeral is an 18-player fantasy game written and run by Megan Jones. It is set in the world of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Five Gods books, which I’ve not read. Luckily, I didn’t need to know anything about the world as it was all contained in the game materials.

I played Sarlos, the 18-year-old heir to the Vardo empire – and my mother’s puppet. And not just my mother’s puppet – I had been kidnapped twice and used in other players’ machinations. So I was a fairly useless kid and pawn to the real powers.

I was also in love with a queen, and was trying to work out how to marry another character. (Unfortunately, that other character was played by Megan, which made that side of my game somewhat awkward and we just didn’t go there. That was a casting goof by Megan J, but wasn’t a huge problem.)

Anyway, the game was good – political and angsty. There was a whole side of the game (magic) that I didn’t know about and, amazingly, I think I was still the heir to Vardo at the end of the game. That’s probably because I was no real threat to anyone…

Game material reading order

One thing that I noticed when reading my character information was that my character made much more sense after I had read the game background material. It did make me wonder if we ought to spend a little more time thinking about the order in which players read their characters.

For me, most of my games have a “setting and cast list” document which I send to players with the casting questionnaire. That way the overall setting is the first thing they read, and that puts everything else in context.

(Hopefully they haven’t forgotten that when they receive their character – but I do always give them another copy of that initial document.)

Similarly for Freeform Games, the front cover of the character booklet has the same short boilerplate text roughly setting the scene and explaining the setting. Hopefully players read that first.

When a freeform character pack contains several documents, it's not always clear in which order to read them, and I find that can cause some confusion. Anyway, something for me to ruminate on. 

Saturday

After a hearty breakfast, we had nothing scheduled, so Megan went back to bed, and I played a few light board games. After a meal deal from the Co-Op, it was time for our first proper game.

Hades Plan

In Hades Plan (for 12 players and written/run by Ray Hodson and Simon Clark), we were Greek gods who were putting together the third series of a reality TV show that involved lots of puzzles. So while being bickering gods, we had to come up with ideas for a show. (Ray and Simon provided lots of props.)

I was Demeter, the ancient Greek goddess of agriculture, the harvest, and grain. (I’ve just looked that up; I know next to nothing about Greek gods.) We chose the gods pretty much at random, and ironically I ended up being one of Megan’s parents. (Megan was playing Persephone.)

The game was silly and energetic, but not really my cup of tea. It’s the kind of larp where the players bring the game (characters were two paragraphs long). That’s okay, but I have two issues with games like this:

First, they rely on the players having a common understanding of the game world. As already noted, I know next to nothing about Greek gods (or Norse gods or Roman gods for that matter). That’s less of an issue when nobody knows anything about Greek gods, but in this case we had a lot of players who knew a lot about them. So less fun for me.

Second, the games often work on the basis that whoever is loudest gets their way. And I’m not a shouty type.

So it wasn’t really my kind of game, but those for whom it was their kind of fun seemed to have a good time.

With that done, it was time for tea.

The Highgate Club

After tea, I ran The Highgate Club, a game I co-wrote at Peaky back in 2010. I ran it with Alan Paull, one of the authors, who brings the Continuum board games library.

The Highgate Club is a private member’s club filled with weird people – aliens, elves, immortals, zombies, Atlanteans, cyborgs – even an angel. It has lots of crazy plots, and while I expected it to take about two and a half hours, the players were still going strong at three hours in. 

It definitely needs two GMs, though. So I’ll update the guidance. (Along with a load of other tweaks – as always, I found lots of little things needed improving.)

Megan told me she enjoyed it, which was a relief as she influences which games I run at Continuum.

The Highgate Club before the players got their hands on it...

Sunday

We had another free morning on Sunday, so Megan and I played Mycelia and Sanctuary, a couple of weightier board games. We preferred the sprouting, fruiting and decaying mushroom fun of Mycelia over the zoo-building fun of Sanctuary.

Good Society

After lunch, I ran a tabletop session of Good Society while Megan played in a horde larp.

For Good Society, I had four players and used the pregenerated playset I talked about here, updated to use the second edition reputation consequences.

My four players were all blokes but had no problem playing female characters. One had run a swashbuckling game of Good Society the day before, and agreed that trying to create a coherent backstory at a convention takes a long time.

As is often the case with Good Society (and Hillfolk), the game took a few scenes to get running, but it didn’t take long before the players were busy creating drama and interfering with each other. Most of the time I just listened, occasionally suggesting scenes between characters or jumping in when I felt that a scene was over. (That last skill is important – players are often so caught up in their characters that they don’t spot the obvious end to a scene.)

I had been slightly hesitant to bring Good Society to Continuum, as it’s very different to many other ttrpgs (and Hillfolk was a bit of a struggle last year). But unlike last year, where I got the impression it was the last choice for at least one player, all my players were keen to play Good Society – and wanted to play it because it was so different from the other games on offer. And as a result, we had a great game.

(Good Society is like Fiasco and Hillfolk in that it is very dependent on the players. With the right group, these games are brilliant. But with more reserved players (or players who expect more direction from a GM), they can struggle.)

A few thoughts

So much going on: With four main characters and eight minor characters, I found it hard to keep on top of everything that was going on in the table. There were main arcs, yes, but there were also a lot of minor things happening that didn’t always get picked up later.

(I couldn’t now, for example, tell you much about what the story – and it’s only 48 hours later as I write this.)

I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but worth bearing in mind. I think I’d need to take a lot of notes were I playing a game over several sessions. (My recent online game of Good Society only had three players, which probably made it easier to hold in my head.)

Perhaps I need to figure out a way to take notes.

System doesn’t matter: Once again, I found that we didn’t use many resolve tokens. One or two, perhaps? The game flows brilliantly without needing the tokens, and for most of the game they sat on the table, ignored. (At least with Hillfolk, a drama token is at stake in each scene – even if they don’t really have much use either. Perhaps I should try mashing the two systems together?)

So that was Good Society. While I was doing that, Megan thoroughly enjoyed her larp. We had tea, another game of Mycelia (where Megan thrashed me), and then it was our final game.

Plan 8 from Outer Space

Plan 8 is an eight-player game written by Mike Young and run by Ezzy Pearson and Vikki Sterling. It’s an extremely silly game of aliens completing a post-mortem of their previous plans for dealing with Planet Earth, and preparing their 9th plan.

Broadly, the game consists of being in a ghastly business meeting (it even has a PowerPoint deck), trying NOT to take the blame for the previous plans, and then coming up with daft ideas for the next one.

It’s lots of chaotic fun, with a lot of laughter. It’s not a good game for wallflowers, though – be prepared to be loud and argue your corner.

I played the Head of Marketing, while Megan played the Head of Accounts. Her costume was so much better than mine, but that was true of most games. It was about two hours of frantic fun.

Head of Accounts

(The game takes its name from the legendarily bad movie, Plan 9 from Outer Space. I’ve not seen the movie, so I can’t say if it is in any way relatable.)

Locked in

We had one final bit of excitement on Sunday as the bathroom door handle broke and trapped Megan in the bathroom. Luckily, I was able to get help from reception, and it was sorted, but it could have been serious had I not been around. I don’t know how easy it would be to raise the alarm from inside the bathroom.

Monday

And after breakfast on Monday, we headed home.

Touched by Darkness: a megagame

In July, I travelled down to Patriot Games in Sheffield to play my second megagame, Touched by Darkness.

Touched by Darkness

Touched by Darkness is a megagame for up to 47 players designed by Ben Kanelos and run by Paddy Rose and three helpers. I think we had around 40 players, most of whom had never played a megagame before.

Here’s the pitch:

The Dark One's eclipse has blotted out the sun. Darkness has swallowed the Empire and is coming for your outpost next! You and your teammates must gather resources, perform arcane rituals, and attempt to survive. But beware! The shadows that attack your outpost are not the only threat. The Dark One may have corrupted the mind of a teammate, meaning you can no longer trust them. Can you hold this last bastion of humanity together and banish the Dark One?

Pennine Megagames run three games a year, usually one in Leeds, one in Sheffield and one in Manchester. I went to Fae’s Anatomy last year in Leeds (read about it here).

Logistics

I went with Megan, who hadn’t played a megagame before. We drove down to Meadowhall and took the train to Sheffield station, where we walked to Patriot Games (about a 10-minute walk). We got there just after Patriot Games opened, which gave us time to browse the store and have a cup of tea and cake in the café, before joining the other megagame players.

(Patriot Games is really lovely. Possibly the nicest games store I’ve been to – large, airy, with a café and plenty of tables for playing games.)

Luminarians - Temple of Light

Megan and I were playing Luminarians. Our faith was the primary religion of the Empire, and our clerics purged the Dark One during the last Eclipse.

The Luminarians had two subfactions – Mistfalls and the Temple of Light. Megan was a steward in Mistfalls, while I was the Chaplain (a healer) in the Temple of Light. As my boss failed to turn up, I promoted myself to Chief Physician.

We were the main healers in the game. Some other factions had some limited healing, but we could heal more people at once. (Or at least, we could once I had trained enough clerics. My first few turns involved training clerics.

Action time at our faction board - some players wore costumes.

Other factions

Other factions included the Stonegrip Clan (the source of ore), the Rosethorns (irritating druids), the Alchemists Guild (the only source of crystals, needed for the magic rituals to banish the Dark One).

Oh, and there were an unknown number of traitors, working for the Dark One to foil our rituals.

Turns and phases

Turns were roughly 30 minutes long. They started slightly longer, and as the game progressed and we knew what we were doing, they all got a little shorter. I’m not sure how many turns we had during the game overall, but we played from 11 am to about 4:30 pm with a short break for lunch.

Each turn was broken into four phases.

Action time

The longest phase, where everyone can move between locations, activate their boards, trade and negotiate with everyone else, and perform rituals to banish the dark. The council sits during action time, and a Shadow attack can happen during this phase (at which point those with military powers move to the battle board while everyone else returns to their table).

Faction time

A short few minutes at your faction table to discuss what happened during the previous phase and to plan for future phases. (Often a good time to take a comfort break.)

News

Megagames include heralds, players whose job it is to find out what’s going on and report that to everyone during news phases. At the end of the phase, Control awards bonuses to various factions based on the reported outcomes.

(I like this – it’s something that freeforms could probably learn from. Players often dislike being reporters – but reporters become more interesting when they have a mechanical effect on the game.)

Resolution

An upkeep phase. Reset your workers and make your morale check. And if morale slips too far, start making riot rolls.

Morale checks are modified by events such as Shadow attacks or damage to your boards, and more significantly if you fail to feed or water your people. (Trading water and food is a big part of Action time.)

And then it all goes around again.

Freeform actions

All that sounds like a gloriously complicated board game. What makes a megagame different are the freeform actions that people can take. Which are literally anything. In ours, the druids began to grow a sacred tree while the Stonegrip clan held a morale-boosting rock concert and the alchemists seceded from the Empire. We started creating paladin cavalry units to help defend against Shadow attacks.

How the game went

The game was busy. During the first few sessions, I built up my team of clerics. I started with one and a couple of workers, and could train a worker each turn. Then, after the first shadow attack (where we had a lot of casualties), I could help heal them.

Megan, meanwhile, was negotiating and trading madly to get us the food and crystals she needed. She would berate me when I was too generous with first aid, telling me to drive a harder bargain. (That really didn’t work. I’m not as ruthless as she is.)

As the game progressed, I had no problem keeping the Temple of Light’s morale up, but we were losing ground to the druids in the battle of the faith. We discovered they had converted almost everyone else, and we couldn’t convert anyone back.

We had a second shadow attack, which we fought off more successfully. Towards the end of the game, I had expected a third attack, which never materialised. (Control ran out of time – too many other things going on.) That was a shame, as I was poised to assist for a battle that never arrived.

Start of a shadow attack

But apart from waiting for a battle that never arrived, Megan and I had a great time. The day was busy, and we met loads of lovely people. Lots of people had clearly signed up in groups, or had started plotting and scheming beforehand. (We signed up about 10 days in advance, when I realised that the weekend was going to be free after all.)

I think I was probably the oldest player – I would guess most players were in the twenties or thirties.

Did we win?

Honestly, I don’t know how we did. As a faction, not so great. All of the other factions converted to the druidic faith (they were very convincing with their sacred tree – we should have countered with a burning bush, or something).

And I’m not entirely sure whether we beat off the dark. Not that it mattered – we had lots of fun trying, which was the main thing.

Overall

Anyway, Touched by Darkness was a lot of fun, and both Megan and I would play a megagame again.

Next time, I will try and think about potential freeform actions before the game. I know I’m unlikely to imagine them during the chaos, but perhaps I can think of something beforehand.

The next Pennine Megagame is Henry VI Part 1 in Manchester in October. I’m not sure if I can go yet.

Good Society: second editon

A second edition of Good Society, the ttrpg that lets you create Jane Austen-style stories, is coming to Kickstarter soon. You can read about it here, and if you follow their campaign, you can download the playtest packet and see some of the planned changes.

So that’s what I did, and this week we wrapped up our short but very satisfying two-cycle story. These are my thoughts.

First edition revisited

I’ve written about Good Society before on my blog. I played in a game a couple of years ago, and I’ve run one-shots at Furnace and AireCon, with a third one-shot (with the updated rules) planned for Continuum next week.

Much as I like Good Society, it’s not perfect, and I found a few issues with it:

Resolve tokens

Two problems with resolve tokens. The first is that there are too many. You can get resolve tokens from characters, rumours, reputation tags and more. It’s not long before the table is covered in resolve tokens. Worse, I find I often don't use them. Resolve tokens are used to “force” a character to do something they might not otherwise want to. But in so many cases, the players I play with quickly see the drama in whatever is presented and say “that’s a great idea,” and so spending the resolve token becomes unnecessary.

(I do wonder if that’s a structural problem with meta tokens like this. Resolve tokens work fine with players with a “my character wouldn’t do that” mentality – but I haven’t seen anyone like that in many, many years – if ever. Most players I see are happy to put problems in their character’s way – especially for a light game like Good Society.)

That means (for us at least) a surfeit of rarely-used resolve tokens.

Reputation

Reputation doesn’t do very much. Characters can gain a reputation, which has a mechanical effect (more resolve tokens), but is mostly just a roleplaying aid. But only if you pay attention, and in my experience, reputation isn’t something anyone pays much attention to. 

Fiddly character sheets with teeny font

I found this when I ran Good Society at Furnace (I mostly play online), but goodness, the character sheets are fiddly. They look nice, but each character consists of a basic character sheet, a family sheet, a desire card, and a relationship card. Oh, and two connections (more cards). And the font on the cards is tiny – my ageing eyes struggle to read it.

The table at Furnace. It's all a bit chaotic. And hard to read.

Part of the problem is the huge image – which is lovely, but condenses everything else. For AireCon, I completely rewrote the character sheets to be more legible. (And moved the image to a table tent.)

Second edition changes

So while the second edition preview does nothing about the character sheet (although it did introduce a very nice online Google sheet character keeper), it does change resolve tokens and reputation (and some other points).

Resolve tokens

While the rules for resolve tokens have not changed, there are fewer of them because they are no longer generated by reputation or rumours.

Reputation

The biggest change is reputation. There’s an alternative way to earn reputation tags, and during the reputation phase, they now trigger reputation consequences that might be good or bad. (These are great, more on them below.)

Rumour and scandal

Rumours now start as whispers, and the main change is that there’s a new action: overhearing a rumour. So you can roleplay hearing the rumour, which works well. You can also spend a resolve token to turn a rumour into “the talk of the ton,” which is a nice touch.

Epistolary phase and upkeep

These are tweaked slightly but didn’t affect our game much.

Play materials

Finally, the pack includes revised characters, family backgrounds and a playset.

Our game

Our game ran for five two-hour sessions. One session zero, followed by four sessions of play. We completed two full cycles, and we were in our third when we reached a satisfying conclusion.

We had three players: me, Thomas and Terry. I facilitated the game and played a major character. We played online, using Discord and the new Good Society character keeper.

I didn’t use the included playset because it’s the one we played last time, so I chose Family Matters from the rulebook. That was slightly awkward as Family Matters uses the Heir (not part of the 2ed pack), and so I replaced the Heir with the Hedonist from the second edition preview.

We spent a full session on session zero, and we needed that to get the characters and background sorted properly. (I reflected after Furnace that creating a coherent backstory in under 30 minutes is a challenge; I’m not going to try that again!) Even then, we ended up revisiting part of the background later on.

Family matters

The heart of our story was a feud between the Bainses and the Hardwicks.

Terry played Captain James Baines (Careerist, New Money).

Thomas played Solomon Bains (Dependent, New Money), the disinherited son (and previous friend of Eleanor).

I played Eleanor Hardwick (Hedonist/Heir, Old Money), who wanted to bring the families together.

Our minor characters included:

• Arthur Bains (played by me), stern father of James and Solomon
• Marley Jones (played by Thomas), James’ assistant
• Horatio Flinders, Lord Mountwick (played by Terry), Solomon’s benefactor
• Henrietta Bourbon (played by me), Solomon’s friend
• Lizzie Hardwick (played by Terry), Eleanor’s younger sister
• Miss Charlotte Collins (played by Thomas), Eleanor’s friend

Our story

Over our three cycles of play, our story involved Solomon and Eleanor repairing their relationship (after the slight that Eleanor caused), James and Eleanor getting engaged (yikes – she’s engaged to the wrong brother!), Solomon impressing his father and regaining his inheritance, and, finally, James breaking off his engagement to Eleanor (at his father's behest), leaving Solomon to propose to Eleanor.

Along the way, minor characters Lizzie and Marley threatened to steal the show by courting and becoming talk of the ton. 

It was delightful to play, and it felt like a proper Jane Austen-style story with setbacks, complications, and a happy ending. Towards the end, I was aware that I was thinking “And now we need a scene with these characters…,” as if I was an author, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

The new rules and mechanics

Resolve tokens

Even with fewer resolve tokens, we rarely spent them.  Maybe two or three a session? Most often we used them to seal a decision already made. I think that’s fine, and it’s useful to have them in the rules as a fallback – as long as you’re not expecting them to be a big deal.

Reputation

We used the new “reputation by fashion” rules, which sound great in theory but were a bit odd in practice. These work by selecting two reputation tags which represent the current fashion in the ton. The playset includes a table of sixty tags (eg plain or rigid), from which we randomly chose. This meant some headscratching to work out which character best embodied them. Maybe choosing tags shouldn’t be random.

On the other hand, the reputation consequences were great, adding drama to our story. For example, at one point I decided that Eleanor’s father had cut off her allowance, forcing her hand. (I found the consequences that cause your character trouble are more interesting than the others.)

We found that as we approached the game’s climax, we didn’t want to trigger new consequences because they didn’t support the flow of the story. (We had four reputation phases, but only triggered consequences once each, early in the game.)

I don’t think that matters (triggering consequences is always optional), and I wonder if that’s a common experience – focusing on the story rather than the rules as the story approaches its climax. (We did the same with one epistolatory phase as well, when we realised we didn’t have any letters to write.)

I guess if the trajectory hadn’t been so obvious, or had we wanted more complications, we could have triggered more consequences to see what would happen. But it felt unnecessary.

Rumour and scandal

The new rules worked well, particularly having a character overhear a rumour.

My thoughts

So that was Good Society second edition. The new rules are an improvement, especially reputation consequences. I’m not sure how much I would want to play a longer game of Good Society – the game we played felt just about right. 

So, am I going to get the second edition? I am torn between wanting to support the publishers, but not wanting more stuff that I don't actually want (like a book that is 80% the same as I already have, or the alternate settings in Good Society's second volume, which don't interest me much and no doubt will be part of the new set).

And while I would like to play more Good Society, it’s not the only thing I want to play.

So we’ll see. I suspect I'll end up backing it, but probably only at the pdf level.

Adventure 14: Travel Hazards

Travel Hazards is Mongoose’s first LBB (little black book) adventure for Traveller. It was published in 2026 (41 years after Adventure 13!) and is written by Thomas Jones-Low, Matthew Kerwin, James Kundert and Robert Eaglestone.

Physically, Travel Hazards is almost identical to the original LBB adventures. The cover is a little thinner and the paper a little shinier, but that’s about it.

This is my first-impressions review of Travel Hazards; I haven’t run or played it.  And spoilers ahead.

Location and overview

Travel Hazards focuses on Double Sun in the Lemish subsector of Corridor. Double Sun is in a neutral stretch of space known as the Corridor Marchland, established by treaty centuries ago following border skirmishes between the Imperium and the Irrgh Manifest. Corsairs from the Irrgh Manifest and their hated rivals, the Glory of Taarskoerzn, patrol the Marchland to counter each other’s operations.

It took me a good while to figure that out. The library data is towards the back of the booklet, and the map doesn’t show the Glory of Taarskoerzn at all. But thanks to the wonderful Traveller Map, I figured it out. I’m not sure why Travel Hazards doesn’t introduce the situation with a big-picture overview, but perhaps it’s targeted at Traveller-grognards, rather than casual players like myself.

Overview

Broadly, Travel Hazards presents an unusual star system for Traveller, complete with a system map, organisations and NPCs. And to draw the PCs (I note they are not called “Travellers” in the adventure, except on the back cover) in, it offers five patrons to hire the players to help them explore Double Sun.

So let’s explore the Double Sun system.

Double system

As the name suggests, Double Sun is a binary star system – a smaller red dwarf orbiting a larger one. The primary star is unstable, not helped by a heavy ball of iron and nickel orbiting extremely closely, enough to interact with the primary and throw dust and flares into the rest of the system. Further out, the companion red dwarf emits bursts of radiation and plasma, and farther still, the turbulent gas giant makes skimming for fuel a challenge.

All this messes with ship sensors, meaning there’s an effective top speed for piloting craft around the system. And although it isn’t defined in terms of the damage a ship might take, there is a table of hazard events. I would have liked full rules for travelling through the system, which would let the players take calculated risks on how fast they travel.

And with that restricted top speed, if you’re travelling more than 2AU, it’s quicker to jump. However, that assumes that you’re outside the various jump shadows…

The system information is presented in Book 6 Scouts format, but is still easy to read if you lack that book. (I didn’t need it.) Unfortunately, the system diagram is confusing, as it shows the companion much farther out than it actually is – and it doesn’t show the jump shadows, which would have been useful given the need to jump around the system.

So it’s an interesting system, which is lovely to see, but slightly let down by the lack of rules for travelling around it and the wonky map.

Anyway, all this means that Double Sun has been classified as a Red Zone due to “Travel hazards.” Quite.

Inhabitants

Double Sun has around 100,000 inhabitants in several groups.

Spiderweb

Spiderweb is an inhabited 550-km-diameter asteroid with 90,000 xenophobic inhabitants. It is the result of two separate mining operations, the first of which (Web Mining LIC) arrived in Double Sun 100 years ago. 90,000 people is a lot – it’s the population of a medium-sized UK town like Hastings or Burnley. Not everyone is a miner; others include families and support teams. The miners extract metals, gems and crystals, which they then barter.

It’s not clear, however, what they live on. The description of the buildings mentions lots of balconies laden with plants. That doesn’t sound quite enough, so maybe there are underground farms somewhere. NPCs for Spiderweb include the dockmaster and a magistrate.

Unfortunately, Spiderweb is on the verge of collapse – equipment is falling apart, and they are getting desperate.

The Icy Manipulator: The Icy Manipulator is Spiderweb’s only ship, a 1,000 dton patched-together cargo hauler with a cargo net capable of moving up to 3,000 dtons of cargo. It’s falling apart, and something critical goes wrong every six weeks or so (throw 10+ every week). It’s frankly a miracle it’s still flying at all. NPCs include the crew, one of whom is a robot.

Vargrholm

Newcomers to Double Sun, Vargrholm is a twelve-year-old mining settlement run by Ungareen VC, with 5000 miners and support staff. NPCs include the mostly-Vargr representatives and admin staff. Vargrholm trades with Spiderweb via the Icy Manipulator.

Unfortunately for Vargrholm, they must pay protection money to Iron Paw. Speaking of which…

Iron Paw

Iron Paw are a group of Vargr corsairs loyal to the Irggh Manifest. It’s not clear how long they have been based in Double System, but their secret base is hidden in a comet, which is fun. Iron Paw are led by the memorable Grand Admiral Beo, a large male Ursa. 

Others

There are a few other small groups dotted around, most of them being malcontents from Spiderweb.

Visitors

Other than the PCs, visitors to Double Sun might include the IISS, archaeologists, and Vargr naval forces. 

Patrons

Travel Hazards details five different patrons, five ways the PCs might end up in the Double Sun system. Job offers include crewing a supply ship, solving a family mystery, and more. The patrons are a bit of a mixed bunch, but there’s plenty in Double Sun itself to keep the PCs busy.

References

The rest of the book is filled with reference material:

• Library data: Two pages of library data, including a useful description of Lagrange points.
• Ships: Six new starships (in addition to the Icy Manipulator) as well as new ship components such as jump nets (well, new to Book 3, they’re not new to Traveller itself).
• Worlds: A non-standard subsector map.
• Contact Ursa: Genetically uplifted bears. New to me, but I believe they have been in the background for many years.
• Generating Characters from Double Sun: A page on creating characters from Double Sun.

What I liked

I found plenty to enjoy in Travel Hazards.

The Double Sun system: It’s lovely seeing an interesting and dynamic star system full of flavour. Whenever I watch Brian Cox talk about the wonders of the solar system and beyond, it’s immediately obvious that the universe is much stranger than it often appears in Traveller, and it’s nice to see that reflected in Travel Hazards.

The Icy Manipulator: I like that it has much more character than most Traveller ships.

Conflict and drama: The system is full of potential drama, from the failing colony to the rickety ice hauler to the secret pirate base extorting protection money from the miners. Plus, of course, the sheer danger just in visiting Double Sun.

Campaign material: And if you don’t fancy running Travel Hazards as written, it contains loads of material that can be used elsewhere: the Ursa, a cool pirate base, a failing mining colony, and more.

Things that made me go hmmmm…

But a few things struck me as I read Travel Hazards.

The Icy Manipulator: While I like the idea of a heavily patched ship held together with spit and sealing wax, I do wonder where it gets its fuel. It isn’t streamlined, so it can’t skim fuel from Double Sun’s lone gas giant (which is notoriously turbulent – I wouldn’t want to take a rustbucket like the Icy Manipulator anywhere near it even if it were streamlined). So, presumably, the Icy Manipulator uses a fuel processor to extract liquid hydrogen from ice, even though the book makes no mention of it. Let’s hope the processor doesn’t break.

Ursa: I found the Ursa slightly underwhelming. Despite weighing 150 to 500 kg, they get a mighty +2 to their STR roll. They’re also shown standing on their hind legs (the portrait of Grand Admiral Beo suggests an upright position) – which feels wrong and a bit too human-y. (Plus, “…but they can usually squeeze into human vehicles and ships with minimal modifications.” I think that depends on the size of the bear!)

And as for personality, they are as varied as humans – just wary of Humaniti.

I would have made Ursa less human: much stronger, quadruped, and with some interestingly bear-ish personality traits to roleplay. (Curious? Quick-tempered? Clumsy, in a bull-in-a-china-shop way?) And “minimal modifications” be damned; if you have a bear crewing your ship, you’d know about it!

AI illustration of a bear crewmember aboard a ship.
I asked for it to wear a harness with tools, but instead it looks
like it’s into bondage!

Spiderweb: Described on page 20 as a “fully functioning colony”, the whole Spiderweb situation snaps my reality suspenders. It just doesn’t make sense to me. 90,000 xenophobes hiding in a rock, with virtually no outside contact. I mean, what are they doing about a sewerage system? Or an air supply? Or their clothes, or any of the thousands of things that a viable colony needs? And why is there only one airlock to the whole place? 

I would make Spiderweb less xenophobic and have them trade (via the Icy Manipulator) with both Vargrholm and systems beyond to get what they need. (The minerals are valuable enough for the original mining companies to ship so many miners to Double Sun, and I can imagine regular trade with Spiderweb.) I’d still have Spiderweb failing – there might be an adventure there, with the miners seeking help to negotiate support from the Imperium, Irrgh Manifest, or elsewhere.

Mining operations: Although many inhabitants of Double Sun are miners, there’s no actual description of how asteroid mining works. Presumably, Spiderweb and Vargrholm do it differently, but you wouldn’t know.

The biggest problem

The main problem I have with Travel Hazards is its confusing structure.

What we get

Travel Hazards is structured so that first we meet four NPCs, and then five different job offers (sometimes from those NPCs, sometimes not – and presented in a different order to the NPCs).

Then, in “The Double Sun System,” we get a description of the system and its groups, followed by a series of events or options (“The Course of the Adventure”) for each part/group in the system.

After that, in “Concluding the Adventure,” are the outcomes for the various patrons – although not in the order the patrons are presented, nor referring back to how they were originally presented. (For example, “The Corporate Historian” is the third patron, yet this chapter starts with that patron’s outcome in a section titled “Wandering Eye”.

This chapter also describes hidden stuff the PCs might encounter. They might be encountered as part of any patron, so they really ought to be in the overall description of the system.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I just have a different brain than most roleplayers, but I found it extremely confusing to read. I’d hit a section and wonder who it was relating to, so I would have to flip back and forth to try and puzzle it out.

What I wanted

Instead, it would have been much clearer if the book had a simpler structure:

• Introduction (with a clear one-paragraph summary of the overall political situation, and maybe a high-level map of the area)
• The Double Sun System (with the description and events grouped – so the description of Spiderweb is immediately followed by its events)
• Patrons (with everything for that patron in one place)
• Reference material (the Library Data, subsector map, new ships, details on the Ursa and so on)

I suspect that would make the adventure flow more easily and be much easier to run at the table.

Bonus: Close Orbit Interceptor

As a nice bonus for ordering directly from Mongoose, they included a four-page booklet describing the Korpen Aerospace/Close Orbit Interceptor. I can’t imagine ever using it, but it was a lovely treat to find in the envelope.

Overall

So that’s Adventure 14: Travel Hazards. It’s nice enough, but it doesn’t compel me to run as written. Perhaps if the situations/patrons were more tightly written, I could get into it. So instead, I’m more likely to mine it for parts.

But I’m delighted that it exists – I think it’s wonderful that Mongoose is supporting Classic Traveller. I prefer the LBB format over the modern coffee-table books (although I appreciate that the latter keeps Mongoose in business), and I look forward to Adventure 15 whenever it arrives.

Toxic fandom

In this week’s Geekerati newsletter, Christian Lindke looks at The Eye of Argon and toxic fans in fandom.

This is a slightly depressing read, and it argues that toxic fandom is just fandom - and mainstream fandom has always been toxic.

The article made me think about my reviews of ttrpgs, which are often critical (in the negative sense). But toxic?

While I often find problems in games, I’d really rather not find them. Yes, picking them apart can be fun, but it stems from frustration: I want those gamebooks to be better.

I’m also aware that gamebooks are very personal things – what works for me may not work for everyone. (But I rarely find anyone disagreeing with me.)

I don’t think my negative reviews are toxic, but I can imagine slightly awkward conversations should I ever encounter those authors in person.

A positive review

In case you thought I only wrote negative reviews, here’s my review of a game that I couldn’t find anything to complain about: Lady Blackbird.

Adventure 13: Signal GK

Signal GK is GDW’s last LBB (little black book) adventure for Traveller. It was published in 1985 and written by Marc Miller, with additional design from J Andrew Keith.

1985 is over 40 years ago. Why am I reviewing it now? Well, I recently ordered Adventure 14: Travel Hazards from Mongoose. I’m waiting for the physical booklet to read the adventure in detail, but I couldn’t resist taking a peek at the pdf. And I noticed something slightly odd about the layout – unnecessary indents on paragraphs that follow a heading. 

I’m sure Mongoose know better than to do that to a layout, so I got Signal GK down off the shelf, flipped it open, and sure enough, Mongoose appear to be replicating the old GDW format exactly – even down to the pregenerated characters and the unnecessary indents.

And having taken Signal GK off the shelf, I started reading, and here we are.

So, anyway, this is a first-impressions review. I haven’t run Signal GK – and as we’ll see, I probably won’t. 

Oh, and spoilers ahead.

A physical copy of Adventure 13? Really?

Some years ago, probably longer than I care to admit, I got rid of most of my old Traveller LBBs. I wasn’t playing the game, I wasn’t reading them, and they were just taking up space. So I got rid of most of them.

I kept the books I really liked. Twilight’s Peak. Secret of the Ancients (not that I liked that one, but it had Ancients in it). IISS Ship Files (in my opinion, the best Traveller deck plans ever). The alien modules. And Signal GK.

I’m not sure why I kept Signal GK. I certainly never ran it. I can only think that the central premise in it (the silicon-chip lifeform) was sufficiently appealing that I wanted to keep it. Or maybe it was that those lifeforms led directly to the controversial Virus and the destruction of the Third Imperium. I really can’t remember, but either way, I still have my original copy of Signal GK.

All this is preamble! Where’s your review?

Patience, I’m getting there. 

Before starting to write this, I thought I’d check and see what other reviewers had to say about Signal GK. And the answer is… nothing. At least, not in text. I found a single video review of Signal GK – and that’s it.

So this is my text review of Traveller Adventure 13: Signal GK. Maybe the only one on the Internet.

Overview

Signal GK is a 48-page booklet for Traveller set on the border between the Solomani Confederation and Third Imperium. The adventure is broadly in three parts. First, the PCs must help Dr Roshorin, a Solomani researcher, defect to the Imperium. Then the PCs accompany Dr Roshorin to Cymbeline to confirm his theories. There, they find an intelligent silicon-chip-based lifeform. Finally, the PCs accompany Dr Roshorin to Terra aboard the Ad Astra, a 600-dton Subsidized Liner, where a Solomani agent tries to kill Dr Roshorin.

(Signal GK is also the Vilani interstellar distress call. I imagine that the title of the adventure refers to the Ad Astra’s distress call after the bombing.)

Maps, deck plans, library data

As well as the adventure, Signal GK provides plenty of supplemental information:

The Ad Astra: 14 pages of details of the Ad Astra liner, including illustrations, room-by-room descriptions and deck plans. This is rather nice, and I imagine that back in 1985, many referees bought the adventure just for the deck plans.

The Solomani Border: A two-page spread showing the area in question. The map is subsector-sized, but straddles four subsectors to show all the worlds it needs for the adventure.

Library data: Two pages of library data.

The Biology of Natural Chips: Four pages about how natural silicon chips evolved on Cymbaline. This is lovely – I’m all for weird alien lifeforms.

All that adds up to 22 pages. And when you include the contents page, the front matter, and a boilerplate introduction (another five pages), that means less than half of the book is actual adventure material. Not that I’m complaining; as I’ve said before, I find a lot of adventures are overwritten. Signal GK isn’t one of them.

The adventure

The set-up is that after failing to find gainful employment on Scandia (just because…), the PCs are hired by Colonel Joachim Sanchex, the head of the Imperial Army Intelligence, to secure the defection of an important Solomani scientist. They are well paid and given a Type S scout for the mission.

Now, quite why Sanchex would choose a group of ne’er-do-wells like the PCs isn’t well explained. Deniable assets, perhaps. I think this is so that GMs can just drop Signal GK into their regular Traveller campaigns – although that has never made sense to me. The number of Traveller groups running campaigns in that neck of the Solomani Rim was probably in the low tens. If that.

I imagine that if anyone did run Signal GK, they either moved it (in which case they’d be rewriting all sorts of stuff) or ran it as a one-shot (which is what I would do). And with a one-shot, we can let the players create Imperial Army agents with the skills they think they will need. 

(I would start the game with Sanchex briefing the players and instructing them to plan the mission and assemble a team. The players would then create and equip those characters to suit the mission profile – and then play them.)

Pedant’s corner: The introduction on page 5 says, “the players may use pregenerated characters supplied later in this adventure. A complete roster of available characters is supplied in a specific section of this booklet; these can be used both as player and non-player characters.” Unfortunately, there is no such section. The only characters in Signal GK are the main NPCs.

Structure

Before I get into the adventure proper, I just want to comment on Signal GK’s weird structure. I’m sure it made sense to GDW, but it doesn’t make sense to me. These are the sections:

1. Introduction
2. Referee’s synopsis
3. Characters (actually the NPCs)
4. On Ochre (the first part of the adventure)
5. The Ad Astra (14 pages of description and deck plans of the Ad Astra)
6. The Solomani Border (the subsector map)
7. On Cymbaline (the second part of the adventure)
8. Disaster (part three of the adventure)
9. The Biology of the Natural Chips
10. Library Data
11. Referee’s Notes

That’s not how I would structure the book. The section on the Ad Astra, in particular, breaks the flow of the adventure. I would rearrange it so that the adventure is kept together and the supplemental information (Ad Astra, Chip Biology, and Library Data) is pushed to the back.

I would move the Solomani Border section directly after Characters, as it helps explain the overall political situation.

Anyway.

High-tech adventure

One thing that’s striking about Signal GK is how high-tech it all is. Well, it would be striking if it actually felt high-tech…

Looking at the map, pretty much every world is TL 9 or higher – often much higher. Signal GK starts on TL 15 Scandia and moves to TL 14 Ochre and Cymbaline. By 2026 standards, these are magical worlds full of technological miracles. TL 15 has black globe generators and anagathics. TL 14 has cloning and robots. And that’s just what I can find in 1982’s The Traveller Book. Mongoose’s core rules add floating cities, implants and high-energy weapons and probably more if I looked a little harder.

But Traveller in 1985 hasn’t quite worked it out. (As an example, on Ochre, a research facility is described as being reachable via a dirt-track road, which is used as a visual aid by grav vehicles. I’d change that. In a TL14/15 society, why would there be any roads at all?)

But I think the very high-tech environment has interesting implications for smuggling defectors.

Part 1: Ochre

Ochre is a small desert world with its population clustered around the polar regions. It is two parsecs from the nearest Imperial world (Tamarind), and being so close is a focal point for traffic (and smugglers) between the Solomani Rim and the Third Imperium. The local government is relaxed about smuggling (despite its strict law level) because of the income it brings in from passage fees and inspection duties, and the Solomani Confederation tolerates the smuggling because it is a channel for acquiring Imperial goods and technology. So it’s a leaky border.

So the PCs must cross the border, arrive on Ochre, find and make contact with Dr Roshorin, convince him that they are genuine, and then smuggle him out across the border without the Solomani authorities finding out.

And while Signal GK describes the overall situation on Ochre, it gives no details on how any of that is to be done. I think that’s for the best – letting the GM and players define the world of Ochre will lead to a memorable game. If nothing else, it gives the players huge freedom in how they approach their mission – they’re not constrained by preplanned set pieces or scenes.

Traveller's politics

The Solomani are the bad guys in Signal GK. So who are they?

It’s 1110 now, and the Solomani Rim War was in 990-1002. So 108 years ago, which by coincidence is how long ago WW1 ended, measured from 2026. So the Rim War is pretty much in living memory – particularly given the anagathics users present on all those TL 15 worlds. (I would make Colonel Sanchex a veteran of the war.)

The war erupted when the Solomani attacked the Imperium in a land grab. However, the Imperium fought back and won, and now occupies half of the previous Solomani territory. (So Scandia, our starting world, is, to many eyes, an occupied world.)

The Solomani Confederation is described as having “belligerent and extremist policies,” but Signal GK says little more than that (and I’m reluctant to dig into the wider Traveller background just for this review).

I have the impression that the Solomani Confederation is a bit like the Cold War-era Soviet Union or East Germany. (Although the Imperium are the occupying force here…) And that’s probably how I would play it.

Defection

Defection is a loaded term. Dr Rushorin doesn’t want to leave the Solomani Confederation; he wants to defect. That reinforces the sense of East/West Cold War tensions that I get from the politics.

So while smuggling might be easy (as discussed above), defecting must be harder.

Presumably, the Solomani Confederation considers Dr Rushorin a valuable asset that they don’t want to lose. And having valuable assets working near the border means he will be watched (with TL 14 surveillance). And presumably, he is prohibited from leaving Solomani space.

One of the challenges that real-life defectors faced was what happened to their families. (Although I say this as someone with no personal experience of this!) I imagine defection is much harder if you suspect your family would be threatened.

Unfortunately, Signal GK lacks this dimension. All we know is that Dr Rushorin is a professor at a university on Aquitaine, and is on sabbatical. He is on Ochre, working on an electronics research project and wants to defect to the Imperium before he has to return to Aquitane. Still, it would be easy to give Dr Rushorin a small family that he has brought with him to make the PCs' task harder.

Back to Scandia

Anyway, after all this, the PCs smuggle Dr Rushorin across the border and to Scandia. Solomani Security are soon in pursuit, however… (How soon depends on how effective the PCs have been.)

Part 2: Cymbaline

Dr Rushorin has another reason to visit Imperial space – he wants to go to Cymbaline to prove a theory about naturally occurring semiconductors. So Colonel Sanchex greenlights this (probably to keep the professor out of trouble), and sends the PCs to keep an eye on Dr Rushorin.

Cymbaline is a massive world with a thin atmosphere – the only human-habitable land is at the bottom of vast canyons. Rushorin’s chips, though, aren’t to be found at the bottom of the canyons – his theory puts them on the slopes of outgassing volcanoes.

So this part of the adventure is an exploration into a hostile environment. Unfortunately, Signal GK provides no support for hazards, encounters, or events. Fortunately, Rushorin finds exactly what he is looking for in little over a week – naturally occurring semiconductors etched onto crystal wafers!

(The speed of their discovery by Dr Rushorin suggests that these natural semiconductors are common across Cymbaline.)

Introducing 10987

Remarkably, not only are these naturally occurring semiconductors alive, but some of them are intelligent. And one of them, 10987, is in one of Dr Rushorin’s samples. At which point Signal GK becomes a first-contact scenario, with the PCs meeting a brand-new lifeform.

I’m a sucker for first-contact stories, and classic Traveller didn’t do this very often.

Anyway, obviously, the PCs report this to the authorities (via Colonel Sanchex), Cymbaline is promptly quarantined so that the chips can be studied… Er no. Well, that could happen, but probably doesn’t. Signal GK is silent on the Imperium’s reaction when they learn of the chips, which is a shame.

Instead, the PCs are ambushed by Solomani Security forces intent on capturing Dr Rushorin.

Rather optimistically, Signal GK assumes that the PCs will connect 10987 to a computer. 10987 then warns of the attack moments before it happens. Except that, who in 2026 is going to connect 10987 to a computer? Even in 1985, I’m not sure players were that naïve – that was the era of The Terminator (1984) and Wargames (1983), not forgetting 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). We weren’t short of warnings about intelligent machines!

So I’d probably change this and have 10987 already connected itself to a computer before the PCs discover it.

Assuming he survives, Dr Rushorin states that he has confirmed his theories and wants to return to Scandia – and part 3.

Part 3: The Ad Astra

Back on Scandia, Colonel Sanchex decides things have become too hot for Dr Rushorin and sends him straight to Terra. But before the PCs can take him on their Type S, it is blown up by Solomani terrorists. So Colonel Sanchex books them all onto the Ad Astra, which leaves the following day.

Unfortunately, the Solomani bad guys are thinking ahead and are already on the Ad Astra…

Partway through the journey, in the middle of skimming fuel from a gas giant, the Solomani agent makes his move. He captures Rushorin and escapes in the launch while detonating three bombs that cripple the Ad Astra, condemning it to crash into the gas giant…

GM advice here is painfully thin, and Signal GK breezily says, “The referee must generate a number of different passengers (and insert the <Solomani agent> among them, and then have the entire group interact with the adventurers and Rushorin.” That’s it – no suggestion for potential scenes or ideas for characters or anything else. (And the poor referee has to invent the crew as well – they’re not described either.)

The big problem with this section is that players are reacting to events. They don’t really get to be proactive. As written, the PCs have very little to do until the agent makes his move. And then, once that’s over, while they can help the crew fix the damaged liner, they’re unlikely to be in charge of repair operations because, well, it’s not their ship and the crew is presumably better qualified than they are at fixing the Ad Astra.

(It’s probably telling that Signal GK spends longer on repairing the Ad Astra after the bombing than it does on the characters aboard the liner.)

To be fair to Signal GK, it does say “…the adventures will probably be monitoring their fellow passengers in order to protect Rushorin.” But that’s all it says.

I would make this stronger – just before they enter jump, they receive a message from Colonel Sanchex saying he has intelligence indicating a Solomani agent is on board, but he doesn’t know who.

But then I’d also need summary details of passengers and crew, along with scenes and events. (I’d have one crewmember be suspiciously new, as well.) 

And to prevent the PCs from just hiding in their staterooms for the whole trip, I would have Colonel Sanchex instruct the PCs to identify and capture the agent for questioning.

I don’t know how I’d run this. Previously, when I’ve run Traveller, we’ve skipped most jumps. I ask the players what they’re doing for the week they’re spending in jump space, but we don’t go through it in detail. Managing 20+ NPCs and making the journey interesting? That might be beyond me. (Might be the basis for a fun larp, though.)

What do I think?

It’s probably best to think of Signal GK as three linked adventures. You could run them completely independently.

Defection on Ochre

The first adventure, “Defection on Ochre”, interests me most. It’s the adventure where, as written, the PCs are actually proactive.  And it’s fascinating thinking about TL 14 surveillance and countermeasures, and how the players might help Dr Rushorin defect.

I can’t even imagine how TL14 systems would work, so my approach would be to have my players help set the scene – and have some fun in the planning session exploring future systems and how to beat them. And then we’d run the mission.

Expedition to Cymbaline

Part 2, on Cymbaline, is the weakest. There are few opportunities for roleplaying and few decisions the PCs have to make. This section only gets interesting when 10987 appears – followed by the firefight. (This is potentially an exciting high-tech firefight with plasma weapons and battledress. I mean, Solomani Security are hardly likely to be armed with SMGs.)

So to make this more memorable, I’d introduce events and scenes and maybe even a random table or two. And perhaps a map of the volcano slopes for the PCs to explore.

Signal GK

And the final part, which I would call "Signal GK", could be about flushing a Solomani terrorist out from the crew or passengers from the Ad Astra. But you’d need NPC details and ideas for scenes and events to make it more interesting at the table.

Conclusion

I can’t remember what I thought of Signal GK when I first got it. I never ran it, never used the deck plans, so I don’t think I was that impressed.

Re-reading it 40 years later, and I find myself intrigued by the ideas it contains, but frustrated by how much is missing. How much the referee needs to invent just to make the game work at the table.

Am I asking too much of a 40-year-old adventure? Maybe. I mean, I am reading this with 40 years more life experience than I had when I first read Signal GK. But all of this is stuff that popped into my head when I read it again. I’ve not spent 40 years thinking about Signal GK.

Anyway, it’s unlikely that I will run Signal GK. Or if I do, it will probably only be the first part (on Ochre), because I can see how to run that with minimal prep. Which is a shame, as with a bit more work it could have been a cracking little adventure.

North Star 2026

Last weekend, I returned to Sheffield’s Garrison Hotel for North Star.

North Star is a two-day SF ttrpg convention, but I was only there for Saturday. I met lots of friends, chatted about games and other nonsense, and played two good games.

The Last Caravan

I didn’t know anything about The Last Caravan before we started playing, but according to the website, it’s a “cars and aliens tabletop role-playing game about a midwinter road trip in the wake of an alien invasion.”

Alien invasions – right up my street!

Neil Gow was running it, and my fellow players were Dom, Jag and Josh. We played family members – I was the responsible father (high school science teacher, Jeff) with my two sons, Jacob (Josh) and Pearson (Jag). Dom played the family dog, Cherokee. Dom didn’t get to name his character – and I left that to my sons.

(I’m not sure how much fun playing the dog would be in a campaign. For a one-shot, fine. But for much longer? Probably not for me.)

So that immediately created a fun family dynamic, which we played on during the game. As for the game itself, Neil gave us a quick rundown of the alien-invasion background, and then I received a text calling for help from my ex-wife, Sarah (who I only referred to as “your mom”). That was followed by an alien attack that destroyed our house (and stopped us dithering over what to take), and so we hit the road, where we fought an alien and rescued terrified citizens from a crazy militia.

As the start to a campaign, it would have been great. I can imagine how the relationships would have developed, and the truth about how Sarah and I had split up would have come out. (We didn’t develop that – but I had chosen “regret” as Jeff’s inadequacy, and I’m sure that had something to do with his ex-wife, but I hadn’t decided what that might be, and inspiration didn’t strike until we were almost done, so I never got to explore it.)

And apparently, there’s plenty in the book to explore. But not in three hours.

My character sheet - and a typical dice roll!

Mechanically, The Last Caravan is a FitD game. I’m sure it was fine, but I failed every single roll but my last one, so I might be feeling a bit sore about that…

Anyway, a lovely session to start the day with. Really enjoyed it.

Gee Cows to the Rescue!

And after lunch, something completely different: Traveller.

Gee Cows to the Rescue! was written and run by veteran Traveller player/ref Timothy Collins. We were playing the crew of a rescue organisation a bit like a cross between Thunderbirds and Médecins Sans Frontières. (This was inspired by an article in JTAS, and the organisation’s acronym, GKAO, led to the “Gee Cows” in the title. Timothy had copies of the article for us to read, and gave us neat patches for our ship uniforms! See the photo below!)

I played Chief Medical Officer Sion Alman, with the other four players (Steve, Jane, Josh, and Chris) playing the rest of the crew. We were a player down, so we had one NPC. Given we only had 3.5 hours and it was quite an involved game, I think we would have struggled with six players.

The scenario was in two parts. It started slowly, at a GKAO fundraising event. I found this a little underwhelming – but luckily we were then summoned to our ship to deal with a distress call (two ships had collided), and then it was all hands on deck as we had to rendezvous with two different ships, avoid collision debris, and treat the wounded.

My favourite bit was choosing whether to prioritise the Type S Scout with no comms, the Long Liner with many injured passengers but an onboard medic, or the four rescue balls with limited air. We went after the rescue balls, dropped a launch off at the Scout and docked with the Long Liner.

The GM carefully timed everything and had a detailed timetable in his notes. (The effectiveness of our dice rolls affected how quickly we did things.) That felt very OSR, and I prefer a more narrative approach – if you’re going to have a countdown, make sure the players understand the implications of their actions. The one time this worked was with the rescue balls – we knew they had only two hours of air, and it was touch and go whether we would rescue them all.

Notebook, character sheet - and patch!

There was an interesting subplot about smuggled battledress, which we got hints of. Some of the other players tried to investigate, but I was focused on the rescue. (To make more of the subplot, I would make one of the PCs an undercover agent. Probably not the Chief Medical Officer, though.)

Amusingly, everyone who tried to diagnose the Long Liner’s captain’s injuries failed their roll – badly. (I rolled snake eyes.) So it became a running joke that the captain was hiding his injuries very well.

Anyway, a fun game and a very different to The Last Caravan.

Overall

So that was North Star. I had a lovely day and look forward to returning next year.