Imagine visiting a small colony in a strange land, built only a few decades ago. This young colony is so very far from civilization, surrounded by unexplored wildernesses and vistas as yet unseen by human eyes. Now imagine that fresh new colony not in unknown strange lands, but on an unknown strange planet, and the nearest civilized world is parsecs away!
That’s what The Dawn Colonies is all about.
Gypsy Knights Games has released a new supplement this year for the Traveller Core Rules by Mongoose Games. This Third Part Publisher has created not only a Core Sector Setting for their own vision of Traveller, but numerous sub-sector supplements, an adventure series, several other supplements and GM aides. The Dawn Colonies are purported to represent a new way to experience Traveller – where colonies are barely established, set in a scantly explored sub-sector, on worlds which are still being explored. Welcome to the frontier…
The Dawn Colonies
The Dawn Colonies is a Traveller supplement by Gypsy Knight Games, offering players the opportunity to have their characters explore new worlds - and perhaps even colonize a world of their own. The supplement comes with a description of the Dawn sub-sector, and the UWP codes for all the systems, both explored and unexplored in that region of space. It also includes details about four systems where young colonies are struggling to grow and develop a new world. The Dawn Colonies also feature full color maps of planets in the colonized systems, random encounter charts for the colony worlds, and a bestiary of non-terrestrial creatures native to the new lands settled by human travellers.
Production Quality
The production quality of The Dawn Colonies is very good, with a very reader-friendly layout, and excellent writing on behalf of the author. The material in The Dawn Colonies is presented in an orderly and logical manner, and font choice is bold and easy to see.
The supplement does not include a table of contents, but does have PDF bookmarks to all the major sections in the book. Navigation through The Dawn Colonies is handled quite reasonably by bookmark, but might be quite vexing for an owner who decides to print it out as a hard copy.
The artwork in The Dawn Colonies is very impressive, and features full color icosahedral maps of various planets in colonized systems. The cover art depicts a stunning trio of mercenaries on a desert world, their ship a distance behind them in the background. There are a couple vistas of alien worlds, and the ubiquitous map of the Dawn sub-sector. The designers even included globes of various worlds in colonized systems, as seen from space, useful as a nifty handout to the players as they make their approach for landing. The lack of illustration of creature in the bestiary was very disappointing, leaving GMs with only a scant description to present to players.
Care to make a tour of the Frontier?
The Dawn Colonies is a real treat for GMs who like their scifi hard, and filled with tons of facts, numbers, and system data. The supplement has no real chapter structure, but is roughly broken down into nine sections, designed to present the GM with the information needed to add this frontier sub-sector to his campaign.
The supplement opens with a brief introduction, offering a plug for Gypsy Knights Games Clement Sector Core Setting (the neighbor of Dawn sub-sector’s Tranquility Sector), and a bio of the author. It then carries on, describing in brief about the Tranquility Sector, and in more detail about its sub-sector, Dawn, including a map and a list of planets with UWP’s. Four of these are colonized, and are the focus of the supplement, but there are also a handful of unexplored and as yet un-colonized planets with atmosphere.
Next, there are four sections discussing the colonized systems which constitute The Dawn Colonies, and present details on the planets in the system - even going so far as having icosahedral full-color maps of the colony world and the rest of the planets in the system. The description of the four colony worlds have great details, and touch on all the areas needed for a GM to paint a complete verbal picture of the colony and its inhabitants. Each description starts with physical data, atmospheric details, hydrographic details, and geographic details for each world. Then it goes on with details about population, government, legal matters, culture, and important cities. There is even a calendar based upon the orbital revolution and rotation of colonial planets. Obviously, when reading all those details, ideas and hooks present themselves quite readily as potential sources of adventure – some of the colony worlds’ environments are quite imaginative.
Following the discussions about the colony worlds, there are two short sections about generating characters from this frontier region of space, and suggestions for adventures in the Dawn sub-sector. There are a huge number of adventures and campaigns possible in such an uncivilized region of space: trading, smuggling, bounty hunter, planetary exploration, surveying, or even founding a new colony on one if the undeveloped systems!
The author does include a listing of worlds in the Cascadia sub-sector, the sub-sector adjacent to Dawn, but in the Clement Sector. The list is presumably presented to provide trade charts for traders and smugglers, or as starting points for campaigns intended to lead into The Dawn Colonies.
The last two sections of this supplement cover random encounters, as well as the bestiary for adventures in The Dawn Colonies. The random encounter tables are listed for each colony, and feature everything from creature attacks to strange weather phenomena - and all the tables are unique to their respective planets.
The bestiary was disappointing to say the least, with only a dozen entries of alien creatures across four entire worlds. None of these creatures had any accompanying artwork, and only a short couple of sentences to describe each critter. The creature descriptions were bland and lacking in detail, always referencing a terrestrial creature (i.e. bird-like, snake-like, feline-like) to complete the entry. One would expect that an alien world, parsecs from Earth, might occasionally be the birthplace of a creature which defies terrestrial comparisons, but not so here in The Dawn Colonies.
Overall Score: 3.75 out of 5.0
Conclusions
Despite a few shortcomings, I’m fairly impressed with The Dawn Colonies by Gypsy Knight Games. The author has a great writing style, and the presentation of facts and data about the colony worlds makes the hard-scfi-loving-GM in me grin from ear-to-ear just reading it. There are some great maps resented here in the supplement as well, and a few lovely illustrations of vistas on alien worlds – too few of the later in my opinion. The bestiary left a lot to be desired, but the rest of the content is still quite valuable to a Traveller RPG GM.
So if you’re looking to set your Traveller game on the fringes of your galaxy, far from glitz and high tech of the civilized stars, The Dawn Colonies has plenty of content to keep a frontier-style campaign going for session after session… among the stars.
Editorial Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary playtest copy of the product in PDF format from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
That’s what The Dawn Colonies is all about.
Gypsy Knights Games has released a new supplement this year for the Traveller Core Rules by Mongoose Games. This Third Part Publisher has created not only a Core Sector Setting for their own vision of Traveller, but numerous sub-sector supplements, an adventure series, several other supplements and GM aides. The Dawn Colonies are purported to represent a new way to experience Traveller – where colonies are barely established, set in a scantly explored sub-sector, on worlds which are still being explored. Welcome to the frontier…The Dawn Colonies
- Designer: John Watts
- Illustrations: Fotoila: Algol (Cover); Ian Stead, kraifreedom, Angela Harburn
- Publisher: Gypsy Knights Games
- Year: 2013
- Media: PDF (50 pages)
- Price: $6.99 (Available from RPGNow - also available in the Dawn Colonies Bundle, accompanied by the Dawn Adventures 1 & 2 releases for $15.17)
The Dawn Colonies is a Traveller supplement by Gypsy Knight Games, offering players the opportunity to have their characters explore new worlds - and perhaps even colonize a world of their own. The supplement comes with a description of the Dawn sub-sector, and the UWP codes for all the systems, both explored and unexplored in that region of space. It also includes details about four systems where young colonies are struggling to grow and develop a new world. The Dawn Colonies also feature full color maps of planets in the colonized systems, random encounter charts for the colony worlds, and a bestiary of non-terrestrial creatures native to the new lands settled by human travellers.
Production Quality
The production quality of The Dawn Colonies is very good, with a very reader-friendly layout, and excellent writing on behalf of the author. The material in The Dawn Colonies is presented in an orderly and logical manner, and font choice is bold and easy to see.
The supplement does not include a table of contents, but does have PDF bookmarks to all the major sections in the book. Navigation through The Dawn Colonies is handled quite reasonably by bookmark, but might be quite vexing for an owner who decides to print it out as a hard copy.
The artwork in The Dawn Colonies is very impressive, and features full color icosahedral maps of various planets in colonized systems. The cover art depicts a stunning trio of mercenaries on a desert world, their ship a distance behind them in the background. There are a couple vistas of alien worlds, and the ubiquitous map of the Dawn sub-sector. The designers even included globes of various worlds in colonized systems, as seen from space, useful as a nifty handout to the players as they make their approach for landing. The lack of illustration of creature in the bestiary was very disappointing, leaving GMs with only a scant description to present to players.
Care to make a tour of the Frontier?
The Dawn Colonies is a real treat for GMs who like their scifi hard, and filled with tons of facts, numbers, and system data. The supplement has no real chapter structure, but is roughly broken down into nine sections, designed to present the GM with the information needed to add this frontier sub-sector to his campaign.
The supplement opens with a brief introduction, offering a plug for Gypsy Knights Games Clement Sector Core Setting (the neighbor of Dawn sub-sector’s Tranquility Sector), and a bio of the author. It then carries on, describing in brief about the Tranquility Sector, and in more detail about its sub-sector, Dawn, including a map and a list of planets with UWP’s. Four of these are colonized, and are the focus of the supplement, but there are also a handful of unexplored and as yet un-colonized planets with atmosphere.
Next, there are four sections discussing the colonized systems which constitute The Dawn Colonies, and present details on the planets in the system - even going so far as having icosahedral full-color maps of the colony world and the rest of the planets in the system. The description of the four colony worlds have great details, and touch on all the areas needed for a GM to paint a complete verbal picture of the colony and its inhabitants. Each description starts with physical data, atmospheric details, hydrographic details, and geographic details for each world. Then it goes on with details about population, government, legal matters, culture, and important cities. There is even a calendar based upon the orbital revolution and rotation of colonial planets. Obviously, when reading all those details, ideas and hooks present themselves quite readily as potential sources of adventure – some of the colony worlds’ environments are quite imaginative.
Following the discussions about the colony worlds, there are two short sections about generating characters from this frontier region of space, and suggestions for adventures in the Dawn sub-sector. There are a huge number of adventures and campaigns possible in such an uncivilized region of space: trading, smuggling, bounty hunter, planetary exploration, surveying, or even founding a new colony on one if the undeveloped systems!
The author does include a listing of worlds in the Cascadia sub-sector, the sub-sector adjacent to Dawn, but in the Clement Sector. The list is presumably presented to provide trade charts for traders and smugglers, or as starting points for campaigns intended to lead into The Dawn Colonies.
The last two sections of this supplement cover random encounters, as well as the bestiary for adventures in The Dawn Colonies. The random encounter tables are listed for each colony, and feature everything from creature attacks to strange weather phenomena - and all the tables are unique to their respective planets.
The bestiary was disappointing to say the least, with only a dozen entries of alien creatures across four entire worlds. None of these creatures had any accompanying artwork, and only a short couple of sentences to describe each critter. The creature descriptions were bland and lacking in detail, always referencing a terrestrial creature (i.e. bird-like, snake-like, feline-like) to complete the entry. One would expect that an alien world, parsecs from Earth, might occasionally be the birthplace of a creature which defies terrestrial comparisons, but not so here in The Dawn Colonies.
Overall Score: 3.75 out of 5.0
Conclusions
Despite a few shortcomings, I’m fairly impressed with The Dawn Colonies by Gypsy Knight Games. The author has a great writing style, and the presentation of facts and data about the colony worlds makes the hard-scfi-loving-GM in me grin from ear-to-ear just reading it. There are some great maps resented here in the supplement as well, and a few lovely illustrations of vistas on alien worlds – too few of the later in my opinion. The bestiary left a lot to be desired, but the rest of the content is still quite valuable to a Traveller RPG GM.
So if you’re looking to set your Traveller game on the fringes of your galaxy, far from glitz and high tech of the civilized stars, The Dawn Colonies has plenty of content to keep a frontier-style campaign going for session after session… among the stars.
Editorial Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary playtest copy of the product in PDF format from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
- Presentation: 3.25
- - Design: 3.5 (Solid design; great and imaginative writing; good presentation of content)
- - Illustrations: 3.0 (Lovely art but sparse; awesome full color maps; needed more art overall)
- Content: 4.0
- - Crunch: 4.5 (Super-crunchtastic; hard core science fiction gamers will rejoice)
- - Fluff: 3.5 (Decent fluff overall; cool details of alien worlds; bestiary of alien critters were snooze-worthy)
- Value: 4.0 (Tons of content for a very good price – their bundle is even better!)
