Project Steel

Project Steel is an adventure trilogy for Traveller, the Science Fiction RPG from Mongoose Publishing. Originally published by Avenger Enterprises via Comstar Games, it is set on Steel, a frontier world in the Spinward Marches, part of Traveller’s classic background. Steel was recently exchanged with the Swords Worlds following the Fourth Frontier War and will be a new Third Imperium communications site. The heroes are hired by the Imperial Colonial Office to help survey Steel, in preparation for the arrival of the colonists. Characters need driving, first aid, light combat, survey, and technical skills, but not spaceship skills. Spaceships are kept off world in this adventure. It can be played with large or small groups, 3 or 4 being a good number. The book is rules light, so can be used with most Science Fiction RPGs. Serenity (Margaret Weis Productions), Star Hero (Hero Games), and Thousand Suns (Rogue Games) are good choices, as is any previous version of Traveller.

Links to other adventures are slight, but enough for the fans. Much of the adventure has the team travelling between settlements, conducting surveys, delivering supplies, exploring anomalies and possible routes, providing chances to make money with small jobs, and for interaction and roleplay with the few inhabitants. Anomalies drive the adventure, the team first discovering a hidden group of Swords Worlds colonists, who they came to rely upon when Steel is attacked by raiders! Eventually an ancient evil needs confronting, this slightly at odds with what is a satisfyingly dry adventure.

The Day After Ragnarok

The Day After Ragnarok is a Savage Setting book written by Ken Hite for Savage Worlds published by Atomic Overmind Press. Post-WW2, post-apocalypse, and post-Ragnarok, the setting begins with Harry Truman dropping the bomb on the Midguard Serpent to prevent Gotterdammerung, the serpent’s body and toxic blood falling to Earth, poisoning everywhere, dividing Europe with the Serpent Curtain, and causing a super tsunami that ravages the USA as far as the Rockies. Now much of Europe and the Near East is in Stalin’s fist, the British Empire is based in Australia, Japan still has her empire, and the USA’s capital is in California under President Earl Warren. Both magic and psionics are recognized, while speleo-herpetologists harvest parts of the Serpent and develop Ophi-Tec, advanced technology like Marconi Guns, Neural Stimulators, Ophiline (better than gas!), and the RRAF’s delta wing rocket planes. Stalin has his own arcane allies, including engineered man-apes, used to infiltrate British Africa.

Most Savage Settings offer a Plot Point campaign, but this book is too big for that, instead giving 4 suggestions and sample outlines. These have the heroes as freelancers, working for a patron, rebuilding after the tsunami, and protecting their home turf in a city. Support includes city and adventure generators, and the brilliant Top Five lists, like Top Five Places To Stomp Nazis to Top Five Place Secret Bases. Describing itself as Conan 1946 or SMGs and Sorcery, The Day After Ragnaroak is rich in gaming detail, superbly imaginative, arguably the best Pulp setting.

Starblazer Adventures: The Rock And Roll Space Opera Adventure Game

Starblazer Adventures: The Rock And Roll Space Opera Adventure Game is Cubicle Seven Entertainment’s Science Fiction RPG designed to do Space Opera from Star Wars to Star Trek and everything in between. Based on a black and white British comic of the 1970s and 1980s, it is both a sourcebook and an RPG, which comes as a big (600 page) book full of rules, examples, explanations, story hooks, and illustrations. Using the Fate 3.0 system (first seen in Pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century), it promotes roleplaying and mechanical interaction between the characters and their environment. Characters have skills, stunts, and aspects. Stunts give bonuses (I’m on Top of It gives you initiative, for example), while aspects show who you are, your relationships, and your beliefs. For example, Scottish Engineer, I Know a Guy, and Seen It! Fate Points activate stunts and aspects to give bonuses, but are awarded when an aspect is compelled by the GM to complicate a story, making play collaborative.

Lots of good (if grainy) illustrations from the comic book that captures the genre of the period’s goofy feel and its sense of scale. Big starships, big aliens, big star monsters, big robots, big empires, big war machines, and big heroes, all with easy guides to create each. On first sight, Starblazer Adventures is an intimidating book, but it is well written and is always clear, even simple in places. Starblazer Adventures is incredibly broad and comprehensive; it is the best Space Opera RPG available.