Classic Era Science Fiction Gaming

Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is a Science Fiction roleplaying game with a long history. If Dungeons & Dragons has its own Systems Reference Document containing guidelines for publishing content under the Open-Gaming Licence, then so does Traveller, the classic Science Fiction roleplaying game inspired by Imperial Science Fiction, published by Game Designer’s Workshop in 1977. This is the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, which contains the ‘Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System’, which provides a common framework for Referees to create and run, and players roleplay, whether for their own table or for actual publication. This is a roleplaying game which enables the Player Characters to travel the stars, explore new worlds, engage in speculative trade, conduct small scale military missions, fight off pirates preying on interstellar trade, investigate strange alien ruins, and more.

Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is published by Stellagama Publishing, best known for the campaign setting, These Stars Are Ours!. It is an update and expansion of earlier versions of the rules. The changes include the inclusion of the hexadecimal notation system beloved of Traveller being optional; combining skill and characteristic modifiers—which means that the target thresholds for actions are higher; Player Character is less random and a Player Character cannot die during the process, although he can be injured; damage suffered by Player Characters and NPCs is not deducted from characteristics, but from Stamina and Lifeblood, instead; Player Characters have Traits, heroic abilities which makes them stand out; spaceships can be larger—ten thousand, rather five thousand tons—and can be equipped with main guns, like Particle Guns and Gravitic Disruptors; technology is shifted up and down slightly, so that Cybertechnology can be available at Tech Level 9 and Force Shields at Tech Level 16; Player Characters can suffer mortal wounds instead of dying and can even undergo Cyborg Conversion or Bio-Reconstruction; and a section for the Referee has been added. There are innumerable changes and additions throughout Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition, but they are compatible with previous editions of the Cepheus roleplaying game. Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is upfront about these changes, but in addition, throughout the rulebook, the Referee is given options that she can include in her campaign.

A Player Character in the Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition has six characteristics—Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing. These typically range between two and twelve, but can go much higher. Then a Player Character has skills. These range from Admin, Airman, and Athletics to Tactics, Watercraft, and Zero-G. Notable omissions are the Mechanics and Electronics skill, replaced by repair, Admin includes the Advocate skill, and Gambling is part of Carousing. Skills range in value from zero to five, and are gained from a Player Character’s Homeworld and his Career. He also gains one or more Traits, depending on the length of that Career. These are tied to particular skills, so for example, ‘Jump Tuition’ requires Piloting 1 as a skill and allows the Player Character to roll with Advantage when making a Jump throw and travel faster-than-light, whilst ‘Explorer’s Society’ grants a high passage ticket once every two months and free stay at the society’s hotels.

To create a Player Character, a player assigns an array of values to the Player Character’ characteristics. He chooses one skill for his character’s Homeworld and then puts him through a Career. There are twelve of these, and include Agent, Belter, Colonist, Elite, Navy, Pirate, Rogue, Scholar, and more. A career lasts a number of terms, each four years in length—though an option allows for their length to be random—and a player picks skills as he takes his character from one term to the next, learning fewer skills as he ages. Once per turn, the player can also choose to give up a skill option and instead increase a characteristic. There is also the chance of suffering from the effects of age, but the main thing that the player will be rolling for is an event each term. This creates an incident which the Player Character can gain from or suffer because of it, and it can be career-related or it can be life-related. At the end of the Career , a Player Character will gain mustering out benefits in terms of money, items, ship’s shares, and characteristic bonuses. In extreme situations, a Player Character will find himself being trained in psionics or being sent to prison!

Using the Event Tables allows a player to create a bit of background about his character. For example, this belter grew up on an inhospitable colony before signing on with a mining concern to strike it rich. He never did, but he was sponsored for university and trained in the sciences and technical subjects. After nearly getting injured during an attack on the company facilities, he decided to retire, believing he had sufficient skills to go it alone and look for his own strike.

Karol Stounten
Strength 4 Dexterity 6 Endurance 7 Intelligence 11 Education 11 Social Standing 8
Career: Belter, 4 Terms Rank: Crew Boss
Stamina: 7 Lifeblood: 7
Age: 34 Homeworld: Inhospitable Outpost
Events: Pirate Protection Racket (Resisted), Study, Specialist Training, Cyberterrorism!
Skills: Athletics-0, Computer-2, Demolitions-1, Engineering-1, Melee Combat-1, Piloting-2, Repair-1, Science-3, Streetwise-1, Zero-G-1
Traits: Sensor Ace, Scientist (Physical Sciences)
Equipment: Spacesuit, CR 10,000 Prospector

Mechanically, Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is simple. For a Player Character to undertake an action, his player rolls two six-sided dice and aims to beat a target number, typically eight or more, for an average difficulty task. The player will add modifiers for the characteristic and the skill being used, a skill rating of two indicating that the Player Character is a trained professional and an experienced professional if three or more. A roll of twelve always succeeds, and sometimes, a situation will give the Player Character Advantage, enabling his player to roll three six-sided dice and use the best two. This is usually due to a Player Character trait. The amount by which the roll exceeds or misses the Target Number is called the Effect. Effect itself is not clearly explained, although there are numerous uses for it throughout the book, such as increasing the damage by a successful attack or the captain aboard a starship in combat using Leadership to ‘Lead Crew’ and create bonuses that his player can assign to the other crew members.

As a Science Fiction roleplaying game, Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition provides a wide range of equipment. This includes armour, exploration and survival gear, arms, armour, and cybernetics. The latter is classified into four grades, which start with A-Grade, superficial or common implants, such as cosmetics or an Internal OmniComp, all the way up to R-Grade cybernetics, invasive, experimental, and irreversible implants like a Berserker Module or a Hercules Frame Replacement. Every cybernetic implant has a point cost. If a Player Character has more than six points worth of Cybernetic Points, he suffers from cyber-disassociation, which will affect his ability to socialise. The weapons include vibroblades, gyrojet guns, tanglers, blasters and laser guns, and even a grav launcher that fires a floating plasma bomb that the user can guide to the intended target. A solid selection of vehicles is included too, as well as a quick and dirty robot design sequence, which allows them to be created in a few minutes, alongside a few examples, ready to be used in play.

The rules for combat allow for cover, aiming, automatic weapons, suppressive fire, grappling, morale, and more. If a combatant suffers more damage than his Dexterity characteristic, he is knocked prone. Damage is deducted from Stamina first, and then Lifeblood, the latter indicating that he has been wounded. If it is less than half his Lifeblood, he is seriously wounded. He is mortally wounded if it is reduced to zero. There are rules for trauma surgery and recovery. The rules for chases cover both foot chases and vehicle chases. Psionics are handled in a straightforward fashion, possible talents consisting of Awareness, Clairvoyance, Telekinesis, Telepathy, and Teleportation. What talents a Player Character might have are determined randomly, but at the very least, he will have Telepathy. His Psionic Strength, essentially an extra characteristic, determines the number of PSI points he has and the abilities he has within a talent. In order to use a psionic ability, he simply spends the PSI points.

Understandably, the longest section in the longest section in Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is devoted to starships. Spacecraft below one hundred tons are smallcraft and do not have a Jump Drive. Interstellar travel is achieved by the aforementioned Jump Drive, rated between one and six, indicating how many parsecs a starship can travel in a single jump. Speed within a system is measured in gees, again from one to six. The rules begin by explaining how starships are operated and the costs of doing so, including speculative trade in terms of cargo and passengers. The procedure for the latter is explained and there are suggestions too, on how to make the ferrying of cargoes more interesting. There is a similar procedure for designing spaceships and starships, all the way up to hulls displacing ten thousand tons. The latter enables the creation of large vessels and arming at that scale with large weapons that fit in triple turrets and bay weapons that displace fifty tons, and even main gun weapons that displace one thousand tons. In general, these are outside of the scope of most campaigns that a Referee might run, but their inclusion allows the possibility of a big, naval-based campaign. The procedure is the most complex in Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition, involving as it does quite a lot of decisions and arithmetic. The process does take a bit of practice to get right and get the numbers to balance. Numerous common spacecraft designs are included too, from a ten-ton fighter and ten-ton gig, all the way up a thousand-ton cruiser. Most of the vessels that will be within the purview of the Player Characters include the two-hundred-ton trader, one-hundred-ton scout vessel, and so on.

Spaceship combat is similarly complex. It is conducted in six-minute rounds which allow for weapon recharge cycles, the distances that missiles have to travel to reach their targets, the time needed for repairs, and so on. In that period, each crew member has time to take a single action. For the captain, that will be to ‘Lead Crew’ to orders, and more importantly, possible bonuses, or to ‘Outmanoeuvre’ the enemy and gain a better Position in relation to them; the Pilot has a choice of Attack Vector, Disengage, Evasive Manoeuvres, Plot Jump, and more; the Sensor Operator can Spoof Missiles, Jam Sensors, Target Systems, gain a Sensor Lock, or Break a Sensor Lock; the Gunner can Fire Energy Weapons, Launch Missiles, Launch Sand (which screens against attacks), or fire Point Defence weaponry; and the Engineer can Overcharge weapon or Redline Engines, or conduct jury-rigged repairs. It starts with attempting to gain Position over the enemy, this replacing what would be Initiative or Range in ground or air combat, as there is neither in space in Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition. Combatants can target specific locations on a spaceship, and if an attack does get through and hit an enemy vessel, it can inflict surface, internal, or critical damage. Internal and critical hits can damage or destroy specific components or locations aboard a vessel. The rules also allow for radiation damage too. Overall, the rules are busy and detailed—but not overly so, and they do work to keep every Player Character aboard a ship busy and useful in a fight.

The rules for world creation remain unchanged. The procedure enables the Referee to roll for the various factors which make up a world—size, atmosphere, water percentage, world government, law level, starport, and tech levels. All these will together indicate trade codes and the presence of bases, whilst the Referee determines what travel zone the world lies and what allegiances it has, if any, plus communication and trade routes. The procedure is straightforward and much less complex than the rules for either starship combat or design. In addition, there are rules and tables for social encounters, detailing NPCs, plus some sample generic stats, plus a guide to creating and running animals or xenofauna. This is perhaps the shortest section in the rulebook.

One new section specifically for the Referee provides her with a range of advice. This is broad in its coverage, its primary suggestion being for the Referee to start small with a handful of worlds and build as her players and their characters begin to explore the setting. There is advice on using contacts, enemies, and so on, as to what to allow or terms of technology since Cepheus Deluxe has a high number of baked-in features. These start with no Faster-Than-Light communication, slow interplanetary and interstellar travel, physical rather than virtual activity, and so on. The Referee is further supported with six detailed adventure seeds and then several appendices. These include a bibliography, options for using the ‘UWP’ or ‘Universal World Profile’, cyborg conversion or bio reconstruction to avoid death, and options for aliens. In general, Cepheus Deluxe is a humanocentric setting, but it is also a Science Fiction rules set, so rules for creating NPCs or Player Characters from alien species are almost obligatory. There are three given here, the Greys, the Reptiloids, and the Insectoids.

Lastly, Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition does include what every player and Referee wants for their Science Fiction roleplaying game—starship floor plans. Presented in ‘Appendix F: Schematics’—and not Appendix ‘F’ for ‘Floor Plans’, these accompany the full stats given for various spaceships earlier in the book, including an Assault Ship, Explorer, Prospector, Research vessel, Scout, and System Defence Boat. Many have a rocket-like quality to them, landing on their ends and having multiple small decks rather than fewer, but larger decks. However, they separated from their stats, and worse, they produced far too small to use with any ease.

Throughout Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition the Referee is constantly given two things. The first is options. For example, the ability to increase characteristic value once play starts; Hero Points to allow rerolls by both the players and the Referee; letting Player Characters switch Careers; allowing dodging and parrying in combat; armour as a penalty to hit rather than absorbing damage; heroes and grunts in combat for more cinematic play; and more. They lessen in number towards the end of the book, but they provide the Referee with numerous choices if she wants to tweak her Cepheus Deluxe game.

The second thing that Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition provides the Referee with, is examples. Examples of Player Character creation, combat, chases, starship combat, and so on. In some cases, more than one example, there being three examples of Player Character creation and two of combat, plus the examples of starship combat is lengthy and detailed, enabling the Referee to understand how the procedure works. In each and every case, they help to bring the rules to life.

What the Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition does is shift the ‘Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System’ away from its Traveller origins, and through that, any association with Imperial Science Fiction and specifically the Third Imperium, the setting for Traveller. However, the problem with that, is where it leaves Cepheus Deluxe, because it is not quite truly a generic Science Fiction roleplaying because its underlying architecture is still that of Traveller. This is not to say that Cepheus Deluxe could not do other types of Science Fiction. It could—and that includes many of the sources of inspiration listed in the roleplaying game’s Appendix A, such as The Expanse, Babylon 5, Dark Skies, and Outland. However, advice on adapting or adjusting Cepheus Deluxe to the possible subgenres of Science Fiction it could encompass, for example, Biopunk, Cyberpunk, Dieselpunk, Military Science Fiction, Space Opera, Space Western, would have been both very welcome and expanded its utility.

In some ways, this is not helped by the underwhelming treatment of alien races, either as NPCs or Player Characters. The inclusion of the three in the Appendix D feels like an afterthought. Here perhaps rules for the Referee to create her own would not have gone amiss, again, expanding the utility of Cepheus Deluxe. The inclusion of this and a more detailed examination of other genres would have made the Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition a better toolkit. Perhaps there is scope here for a Cepheus Deluxe Companion with tools, options, and essays to expand on this?

Physically, Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is disappointing. For the most part, the layout is clean and tidy, but it does need an edit in places. Worse, the artwork is often garish and simplistic, really failing to depict the tone of the roleplaying game’s Science Fiction. Conversely, the spaceship illustrations are excellent, though small.

Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition is ultimately a passport to the Classic Era Science Fiction ‘Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System’. It presents and supports the Cepheus engine in a thoroughly accessible and—for the most part—supported fashion, especially with the engaging examples of play, providing the Referee with the tools to create her own content and use content available from other publishers.

On the Star Frontier

The year is 2260 AD. Two years ago, the United Terran Republic and its allies won the Terran Liberation War, forcing the mighty and ancient Reticulan Empire to sue for peace after twenty-five years of uprisings and war. For some one-hundred-and-seventy-five years, Earth and Humanity had been repressively suborned as the Reticulan client state of House Thiragin, the Earth Federal Administration. Humanity was allowed to expand and establish colonies, but in return had to commit auxiliary troops to serve in the wars against House Thiragin’s rival houses in the Reticulan Empire and other alien species, and was subject to both a tight rein on its economy and Reticulan abductions and bio-technological experimentation. The latter not only resulted in the confirmation and development of psionics among humans, but also the creation of Human-Reticulan Hybrids. Besides having a higher likelihood of possessing psionics, Hybrids were favoured by House Thiragin and dominated the Earth Federal Administration government, the loathed Federal Security Apparatus, and the Exalted Order of Fomalhaut, the latter the Earth Federal Administration’s state sanctioned faith. Ultimately, it would be an unexplained mass abduction of children by the Reticulans that would trigger the Terran Revolution and it would be troops who had served with House Thiragin, known as the Returnees’ Circles, who would form the backbone of the Terran forces in the revolution.

As of 2260 AD, the United Terran Republic is a presidential republic attempting to switch from a wartime to peacetime footing; to expand coreward to explore and establish new colonies and make contact with lost ‘black’ colonies established in secret from the Earth Federal Administration; and maintain vigorous defences against Earth’s former master, the Reticulan Empire to rimward. Although there is trade and contact between the United Terran Republic and the Reticulan Empire, the two states are wary of each other and a state of cold war exists between them. The territories of the United Terran Republic and the Reticulan Empire come together in an area known as the Terran Badlands, along with a third interstellar power, the Ciek Confederation. Located within the Terran Badlands are two client states supported and maintained by the United Terran Republic, the Reticulan Technate and the Ssesslessian Harmony. The first of these is governed by the rebel Technocratic Movement, consisting of Reticulans who supported the Terran revolution, whilst the latter was given to the serpentine Ssesslessians as a new homeworld after theirs had been glassed by the Reticulans.

This is the set up for These Stars Are Ours!, a near future setting published by Stellagama Publishing for use with the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document from Samardan Press which details the core rules for a Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System. If the Third Imperium of Classic Traveller draws upon the Imperial Science Fiction of the 1950s, then These Stars Are Ours! draws upon another sub genre of the same period—UFOlogy and ‘little green men’. Or rather, ‘little grey men’, for the Reticulans are akin to the Greys of UFO lore and their spaceships and starships are saucers. What these point to are the space opera or  pulp sensibilities of the These Stars Are Ours! setting, and these sensibilities continue with the other alien species to be found across known space. These include the Cicek, aggressive and personal glory-obsessed warm-blooded, humanoid reptiles complete with tails; the snakelike Ssesslessians, a theocratic species with a complex pantheon who served the Reticulans as assassins; and the Zhuzzh, pragmatic, opportunistic, and nomadic insectoids who all but worship technology and who are inveterate tinkerers rather than designers and innovators. There are other races to be found across known space, but these are the main ones to be found in the Terran Badlands. Behind them though are the ‘Precursors’, one or more ancient species who disappeared millennia ago following a devastating war leaving behind mysterious ruins, who may have seeded and manipulated species across known space and who may be the forebears of numerous species.

Now despite the strong nods to both pulp and space opera sensibilities with these alien species, These Stars Are Ours! is not really a pulp or even a space opera setting. This is because it still uses the dry, technical mechanics and terminology of the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document—and thus ultimately of Traveller. So it employs Tech Levels, Maneuvre Drives, Jump Drives, Parsecs, Sectors, Subsectors, the Universal World Profile, and so on.  Looking to the sources of inspiration in the book’s appendices and it is clear that the tone and feel is other than Pulp Sci-Fi—so Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Barry B. Longyear’s Enemy Mine, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy; films such as Alien, Outland, and Serenity; television series like Babylon 5, Dark Skies, and Space: Above and Beyond; and computer games including Mass Effect, UFO: Enemy Unknown, and Dead Space. The Science Fiction of These Stars Are Ours! is much drier than straight space opera, but the inclusion of both the film Serenity and the television series Firefly point towards another influence and that is the Western genre. Much like both of those sources, These Stars Are Ours! is set after a devastating war, during a period of reconstruction, much like the years after the American Civil War. 

Now as much as there are similarities between the aftermath of the American Civil War and the aftermath of the Terran Liberation War—or the Terran Rebellion as the Reticulans call it—there are numerous differences too. The most notable difference is that These Stars Are Ours! presents an obvious and very alien enemy in the form of the Reticulans whilst moving the Human-Reticulan relationship into one of a cold war. Yet it retains the sense of distrust and resentment that arises from a period of occupation and civil war, which in the United Terran Republic—and beyond of These Stars Are Ours! is aimed at Reticulan Hybrids—humans genetically modified as embryos with Reticulan dna—who were seen as collaborators.

In terms of background, These Stars Are Ours! is richly packed. Not just with a history of the Terran Liberation War, but also the state of the United Terran Republic and its politics, military and intelligence agencies—notably CRC-32 which provides the military and government with covert Psionic Intelligence (or PSINT) support and its civilian research counterpart, the Psionic Research Institute (or PRI). It also covers the major corporations in the United Terran Republic, along with religion and spirituality, legal system, and various criminal and terrorist groups. It covers the various alien races in similar detail, from the Reticulans of the Reticulan Empire and the separatist Reticulan Technate to the eight-limbed, two metres tall, crustacean-like Klax who serve as security forces for the Reticulans, whilst of course adding details about their various biologies, psychologies, and societies. Where a particular alien species is available to choose as a player character, notes are given on how to play them. 

As well as Humans, These Stars Are Ours! offers the Cicek, Reticulans, Reticulan Hybrids, Ssesslessians, and Zhuzzh as playable races. The main major difference in the setting to the more familiar Traveller is that Psionics are more freely available and that Psionic Strength is added as a seventh attribute. In terms of Careers, These Stars Are Ours! uses those from Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, but adds another twenty on top. Those available to Humans are the most diverse, including Teran Navy and Terran Police as well as Terran Naval Infantry and Teran Marines. For the most part,  the new Careers reflect the past quarter of a century that Humans have spent at war. If a character is a Psion, then he will serve in CRC-32 or the PRI, depending upon his Psionic Strength. Those of the Alien species are not as diverse, apart from the Reticulans, typically presenting one Career per species—essentially much like Basic Dungeons & Dragons did Race as Class. There are Event tables for all of the new Careers and the character rules also allow for cybernetics and cyborgs.

Creating a character in These Stars Are Ours! is the same as Cepheus Engine System Reference Document or Traveller. A player rolls two six-sided dice for his character’s seven attributes and then chooses a Career for him. Over the course of the Career, the player will add skills and other benefits to the character. A character may have an illustrious career, be discharged following an injury, and so on. The process will require a little flipping back and forth between These Stars Are Ours! and Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, especially if a player decides on a career not in These Stars Are Ours! Either way, the process is a lengthy one.

Our sample character was one of the elite of the Earth Federal Administration who was in training to become a politician and administrator before he discovered the extent of Reticulan activities in Terran space and defected. He was tested for psionic capability and recruited by CRC-32 and constantly trained throughout his career. He was on active military campaign in the last years of the Terran Liberation War, but was captured and held captive until the armistice between the United Terran Republic and Reticulan Empire was signed.

Brigadier Jeffry Ennes
Reticulan Hybrid Age 50
Elite-2 (Rank 3: Manager)/CRC-32-6 (Rank 5: Brigadier)
7B5C8B-D
Admin-2, Advocate-3, Carousing-o, Clairvoyance-1, Comms-1, Computer-1, Gun Combat-1, Jack-of-All-Trades-2, Leadership-1, Liaison-0, Linguistics-0, Medicine-1, Melee Combat-0, Reticulan-1, Telepathy-3, Teleportation-3, Vehicle-0, Zero-G-0
History: Political Infighting, Psionic Training, Strange Science, Advancement, Psionic Training, Battle, Captured.
Benefits: Explorer’s Society, CR 30,000, Pension: CR 12,000
Traits: Bad First Impression (humans only), Engineered (TL13), Notable Dexterity, Weak Strength, Psionic.

In terms of technology, These Stars Are Ours! is roughly Technology Level 11, with military equipment and technology being typically Technology Level 11 and Technology Level 12. This means that starships are commonly capable of Jump-2 (travelling two parsecs in a single jump), fine gravitics is being developed, fusion power is freely available, and so on. Reticulan technology is generally higher, most notably shown in its mastery of gravitics and longer Jump ranges. As befitting the setting, their ships are saucers rather than the sleeker, if not streamlined ships deployed by other races. Some six ships—starships and small craft—are detailed and given deck plans, and where necessary civilian and military versions are both given. They include the Reticulan Abductor and Saucers, the Ssesslessian Infiltrator, Zhuzzh Scavenger, Cicek Raider, and Terran Shaka-class Light Military Transport. The latter is the only Terran ship, which is perhaps a little disappointing, but given the post-war state of the United Terran Republic, these ships are commonly available to purchase and are used as by free traders. Plus the fact that it happens to look not unlike the Firefly class is likely to make it a popular choice with the players (if not their characters). 

Some seventy or so worlds of the region Trailing-Rimward to Terra are described as part of the Terran Borderlands. The latter lies at the point where three interstellar powers meet—the Reticulan Empire, the Cicek Confederation, and the United Terran Republic—and contains the two Terran client-states, the Reticulan Technate and the Ssesslessian Harmony. Each of the worlds comes with its own Universal World Profile and a fairly detailed description, though this can vary in length from one to as many as five paragraphs. Along with the accompanying star map, this gives a good-sized area for the player characters to explore and to support that, These Stars Are Ours! comes with a dozen patrons. These range from supporting a colonisation on a ‘jackpot’ planet and transporting a Reticulan diplomat—hopefully her money will be enough to overcome any lingering antipathy towards the Reticulans, to the exploration of a Precursor site and a hunt for a celebrity’s missing yacht. They represent a good mix of adventure types and make good use of the background to the setting. These Stars Are Ours! is rounded out with a pair of appendices, one a bibliography of inspirations, the other various news entries or Terran News Agency Dispatches, which the Game Master could develop into scenarios of her own.

Physically, These Stars Are Ours! is simply and clearly presented and there is a good index. The few illustrations are decent, the star maps clear, and the deckplans good. As much as the content is interesting and engaging, what lets the setting supplement down is the editing. At worst someone has edited the book, at best no one has, and in places, the unpolished writing in These Stars Are Ours! does sometimes make a cringeworthy read.

If there is anything missing from the These Stars Are Ours! setting it is perhaps a few more starships to individualise the setting some more and certainly some personalities. Apart from the president of the United Terran Republic, no individuals are really mentioned, so the history and setting do feel slightly impersonal. There is no advice for the Game Master, but anyway, she should be able to come up with scenarios and campaign ideas from the background material given in These Stars Are Ours!.

Although using mechanics derived from Traveller, the setting of These Stars Are Ours! is very different to that of Traveller. It is not ‘high’ or Imperial Space Opera, but has a harder, rougher edge to it, drawing from a source that is more pulp Sci-Fi in its sensibilities even as the Cepheus mechanics serve to reduce said pulp tendencies. Nevertheless, These Stars Are Ours! draws deeply upon its source material of UFOlogy and ‘Little Green Men’ and infuses them with a frontier, almost Wild West feel to present a very accessible setting in terms of background and size.

Wreck on the Borderlands

Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring is a Science Fiction adventure for three to five players published by Stellagama Publishing. Designed for use with the Cepheus Engine Core Rules and other 2D6 OGL SciFi mechanics, what this means is that it can be run using any version of the Science Fiction roleplaying game published by Game Designers’ Workshop in 1977, from Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller to Mongoose’s Traveller and Traveller 5. Although the plot of the scenario can be stripped out and run using Science Fiction roleplaying game where space travel is common, Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring is set in Stellagama Publishing’s These Stars Are Ours! campaign setting. This is a near-future setting which begins in 2260 AD in the aftermath of Terran Liberation War against the occupying Reticulan Empire. A cold war exists between the new United Terran Republic and the Reticulan Empire, played out in the badlands between their territories, home to client states, pirates, petty warlords, rogue colonies, greedy merchants, brave explorers, and more. It is in these badlands that Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring takes place.

Almost a quarter of a century ago, the interstellar transport Tallmadge’s Splendor was lost, fate unknown. Now, a belter has located her, on an asteroid moonlet of a remote gas giant in a barely-explored frontier system, and wants to hire a team of adventurers—preferably with a ship of their own—to help him salvage the ship. This is a challenging task and ideally, the player characters should possess a variety of shipboard skills, in particular, the Mechanical, Engineering, and Zero-G skills. Getting to the wreck of the Tallmadge’s Splendor—located in the Parvati system on the very edge of Terran space—is the easy part, getting the salvage out is the difficult part. This definitely requires the characters’ technical skills as they will be operating in micro-gravity and the ship is shattered and open to the vacuum of space. 

The technical aspects of the adventure are not its only challenge. There is at least one NPC who has ulterior motives and two NPCs who have motives other than salvage. In fact, one of the interesting NPCs is a member of the Brothers of St. Cuthbert, which is dedicated to recovering the bodies of those lost in space and returning them home for proper burial. This nicely adds a degree of faith and purpose not always present in adventures for the Cepheus Engine Core Rules and other 2D6 OGL SciFi mechanics. There is one other danger in Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring, one that suffuses both the ship and adventure with a sense of unease. Now, in scenarios like these, the cause of this unease, perhaps paranoia, might be some alien thing or crazed survivor, either ready and hungry to stalk and slaughter first the NPCs and then the player characters. And so it is here, but in Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring it does not feel like a cliché because it does not have to play out like a survival horror movie in space. Only if the player characters make every effort to interfere will the scenario turn into one of survival horror in space rather than one of salvage and recovery.

Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring comes as a full colour, twenty-page, 1.91 MB PDF document. Besides the adventure itself, basically the wreck of the Tallmadge’s Splendor and its environs, the scenario provides some background detail to the These Stars Are Ours! campaign setting, stats and write-ups for its NPCs, and a description and a full set of deckplans for the ship. It also includes a glossary. 

Physically, Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring is decently written and presented, although the editing could have been better as it does feel a bit tight in places. The artwork is decent, though not wholly necessary. The deckplans are good, though perhaps they could have been larger.

Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring is not quite perfect though. If the player characters lack a ship, it would have been nice if more detail had been provided about the ship belong to the belter who hires them. It would also have been to seen the NPCs given a little more development perhaps to make them easier to roleplay by the Game Master. That said, what Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring lacks are two vital player handouts—both showing the ship’s manifest. One for the passengers and one for the cargo. Both would have been great handouts and both would really act as good cues for both the players and their characters as well as providing possible plot lines for the Game Master to develop. The inclusion of some NPCs on the nearest planet or space station would not have gone amiss either and their use would have fleshed out the scenario just that little further. 

A nice, little adventure, Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring should provide two good sessions of play, whatever game system the Game Master runs it in. It has a pleasing workmanlike, blue collar sensibility which should make for an interesting and low key change of pace. Even when the ‘monster’ does appear, it is done in a low-key fashion such that it feels like one possible consequence of the players’ actions rather than the whole point of the scenario. Not every Science Fiction adventure needs to feel as if the crew are just going to work, but when the Game Master knows that it is what his campaign could deal with, Borderlands Adventure 1: Wreck in the Ring is a good choice.