Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. As new fanzines have appeared, there has been an interest in the fanzines of the past, and as that interest has grown, they have become highly collectible, and consequently more difficult to obtain and write about. However, in writing about them, the reader should be aware that these fanzines were written and published between thirty and forty years ago, typically by roleplayers in their teens and twenties. What this means is that sometimes the language and terminology used reflects this and though the language and terminology is not socially acceptable today, that use should not be held against the authors and publishers unduly.
High Passage Number One was published by the High Passage Group in 1981, providing content for Classic Traveller published by Game Designers’ Workshop. Its content focuses on the Old Expanses sector of the Third Imperium between Terran and Vilani space, providing a scenario, a new ship, numerous pieces of equipment, and more. From the outset, it is clearly written by fans and despite their best efforts, the fanzine is rough-looking in places. Nevertheless, it still contains plenty of interesting and playable content.
The issue opens with the scenario, ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’. It requires nothing more than the basic Traveller rules and comes with a set of six pre-generated characters. The requirement for the adventure is that the Player Characters have access to a ship. It begins in the Larmix system in the Dethenes subsector of The Old Expanses sector. The plot starts on an odd note. A friend of the Player Characters has been kidnapped. They are not to pay a ransom, but deal with a situation that the kidnapper cannot—the rescue of his father from aboard a starship called the Solar Flare. The Referee is told to dissuade the Player Characters from either investigating the starship in detail—beyond determining its location or the kidnapper. They can discover the ship’s universal ship profile, though that is not actually given in the scenario. So essentially, the plot of the scenario is to move to the Solar Flare as quickly as possible, and whilst that is made difficult in terms of discovering its location, it is not as impossible as following any other line of enquiry. It feels as if the scenario should just start en media res, with the Player Characters aboard their scout ship, scanning the Solar Flare and the shuttle adrift alongside it. The Solar Flare is a large vessel, but there are no stats or technical details for it, only descriptions of the various sixty-eight rooms, spaces, corridors, and shafts across three decks.
As the Player Characters explore the ship, it appears to be a liner, but they will discover that it is a floating casino, running an illegal gambling operation. One that will hold those who cannot pay their debts to ransom until someone can. They will find the kidnapper’s father. They will also find the crew of the Solar Flare—surprisingly few of them given the size of the ship—dead and dotted around the ship, with strange stingers protruding from their chests. They will also find evidence that a newly discovered creature, a ‘Struped’, was being carried aboard the ship. It is of course, free of its confinement and scuttling around the Solar Flare. In addition, they will encounter the many robots aboard, including steward/valet robots, security robots, and gambling attendant robots. Only the security robots are a threat.
Initially, ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’ is an utterly confounding affair. Beyond the set-up provided to the players and the characters, the Game Master has as much idea as the players and the characters as to what is going on. That is, until nineteen pages into a twenty-one-page adventure. All of the information which explains what the scenario is about, is at the back rather than being upfront. The adventure, once the Game Master gets this far turns out to be decent, with much more to it than at first seems. Because at first glance, it looks like a sort of dungeon in space and given that the bulk of the scenario involves traipsing round a seemingly abandoned ship, it feels like it too. Given the nature of the scenario and the nature of the explanation, the Game Master has some work to do. Starting off with creating the kidnapped victim, then deciding where the Solar Flare might be found, where the Struped is aboard the ship, and then, what happens next. Then there are a lot of plot points left dangling… This includes the response to the missing Ministry of Justice agent who was aboard, who owns the Solar Flare now that the crew are dead, and what has happened the Player Characters’ friend? The biggest omission though, are stats for the ship itself. They would have been very useful if the Player Characters had decided to keep for themselves.
‘Small Craft’ details and illustrates several vehicles. They include the Sandcrab ATV; the Star Dart, a TL 14 fighter craft assigned to Azhanti High Lightning Class vessels prior to the replacement by the Rampart close support fighter and the Deception Drone, whose transmitter can be programmed to appear like that of another starship and confuse the enemy. In all three cases, the descriptions of each are nicely detailed and thematic.
The issue’s special feature ties back into the scenario, ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’. This is the ‘Ministry of Justice Special Branch’. A development of the Naval Intelligence Department, the existence of the Ministry of Justice Special Branch or ‘JSB’ has only recently been revealed by Emperor Strephon. It is an elite organisation that conducts counter insurgency, intelligence reconnaissance, protection duties for the Imperial family and visiting dignitaries and typically recruits agents who have already had a career behind them, especially in the military given the JSB’s close ties with the Imperial Navy. As well as background, the JSB is provided as a post-career career for Player Characters and NPCs. The agency has high standards and is difficult to join, but the agent will be highly trained, receiving four skills in the first term of service, let alone those from a commission and promotion. Including the extra skill rolls from receipt of commission and promotion, the Player Character receives one each for the increased rank. So a Player Character could receive a total of eight skills—three automatically for rank and five rolls—in the first term! The Career does feel overpowered as a consequence, but then again, Ministry of Justice Special Branch are meant to be highly trained, elite operatives.
‘The Armoury – Book One Weapons’ suggests the best equivalents of the antique weapons—TL 7 and TL 8—in Traveller Book One. Thus, the Heckler and Koch MP5 A2 is suggested for the submachine gun, the Springfield M14 and Fn FAL for the rifle and autorifle, and so. Not necessarily by name, but rather by illustration, which is odd. That said, any one of the illustrated weapons would have been familiar to viewers of film and television at the time of High Passage Number One’s publication. Nevertheless, the article feels like it is filling space.
For the ‘Starship Files’ section of the issue, High Passage Number One gives full details and deckplans of the Exocet, an intelligence cruiser operated by the Ministry of Justice Special Branch. It is an eight-hundred-ton, TL 15 Jump-3 capable starship armed with eight triple turrets containing beam lasers and sandcasters. It features advanced sensors and an advanced second computer for handling intelligence data. The Reserve Light Cruiser Exocet is a refitted Tral Wolf Light Cruiser, an Imperial Navy design typically assigned to security and patrol duties in the trailing regions of the Imperium. It has not service in any major conflicts to date. Some sixty of the Tral Wolf class light cruiser are listed and this followed by the details of the Exocet and its deckplans. These are both decently done.
Rounding out High Passage Number One is the first part of the fanzine’s detailing of The Old Expanses sector. In this issue it provides the statistics and basic information for the fifteen systems of the Dethenes subsector. It is very bare bones, but that is how the information was given.
Physically, High Passage Number One is decently presented. Apart from the backwards presentation of the scenario, ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’, everything is easy to use, and throughout, the artwork is really not that bad.
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High Passage Number One was reviewed by Tony Watson in the Reviews column of Different Worlds Issue 15 (October 1981). He noted of the authors that, “Their magazine/playaid, High Passage no. 1 is a good example of what ‘amateurs’ with some good ideas and the desire to present them in an attractive and informative manner can do.” before concluding with “I was pleased with High Passage and can give it a solid recommendation. The authors have made a concerted effort to mesh their information with the already large body of Traveller material available elsewhere. The booklet is well worth the asking price, when one considers the large amount of material included. Judging the playaid as an initial offering from a group of relative unknowns, I was very impressed.”William A. Barton reviewed High Passage Number One in the ‘Capsule Reviews’ department The Space Gamer Number 40 (June 1981). He wrote, “If issue one is any indication, HIGH PASSAGE should prove a welcome addition to the growing family of Traveller-related supplements.” He noted that the fanzine was very professional-looking and that a lot of thought had gone into its production, and praised much of its content. He also noted that it was flawed in places, including typesetting errors, printing errors, and crude illustrations, before concluding that, “Although there is room for improvement in future issues, High Passage, based on its first issue, stands quite high among the many approved-for-Traveller items now on the market.”
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To start with the bad, the organisation of ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’ is annoyingly nonsensical, hindering the Game Master’s grasp of the scenario, let alone running it. The scenario is underdeveloped in places and it is also annoying that no statistics are provided for the vessel given that it could fall into the hands of the Player Characters. These though, are the only real issues with High Passage Number One, and for the most part, they can be overcome with some effort upon the part of the Game Master. Nevertheless, there is a pleasing thread of connectivity throughout the articles in High Passage Number One. Thus ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’ is set in the Dethenes subsector, detailed at the back of the fanzine; there is a Ministry of Justice Special Branch agent involved in the scenario, and the Ministry of Justice Special Branch described in detail in the issue; and the Reserve Light Cruiser Exocet, the refitted Tral Wolf Light Cruiser operated by the Ministry of Justice Special Branch is also fully detailed. Consequently, there is a verisimilitude to the ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’ and to the issue as a whole. High Passage Number One is a good first issue and the Traveller fan would have been pleased to have had this at the time of its publication.
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