In this wonderful era of open gaming licenses, there are very few RPG Systems out there that fail to benefit from a growing number of indie publishers, who sacrifice their skull-sweat to bring more new products into an RPG’s growing collection of content. And the new Traveller RPG core rules released by Mongoose Games in 2010 is certainly no stranger to this sort of attention from publishers who are clearly also big fans of the game system.
Spica Publishing is definitely one such example here. This indie publisher from the UK has produced nineteen new products for the latest edition of the Traveller RPG since 2011, and are showing no signs of slowing their efforts. Not only have they released general supplements, but have also released a campaign setting, and a few products utilizing their alternate Traveller universe.
Most recently, Spica Publishing released a new supplement, Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour, which takes a look at the complex and unexpectedly exciting mode of travel – as commercial passengers jumping between stars on the space lanes of the sector!
Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour
Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour is a third-party supplement written for the current edition of Mongoose Games’ Traveller RPG, detailing traveling among the stars on commercial passenger starships. The supplement includes information about the various forms of passage, costs, and hazards involved in booking a trip by commercial starships, along with 78 pre-generated NPCs which might be encountered during a jaunt between worlds. In addition, the authors provide an adventure allowing player-characters to experience what can happen when a jump accident shoots their liner off course. There are also detailed deck plans and descriptions of space liner featured in this supplement – The Astral Spendour.
Production Quality
The product quality of Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour is quite good, with great writing and a layout which presents the contents in a logical fashion. The format of tables and content information will be readily useful to any Traveller GM, and the writing style is both factual and engaging.
Navigation through the PDF is made easy through the use of extensive PDF bookmarks and a table of contents. The PDF bookmarks are quite precise, with each major heading, each of the pre-generated NPCs, and each section of the adventure, just one click away.
The artwork in Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour is wonderful, with beautiful cover art of the space liner orbiting a planet, as well as full color blueprint image and the ship’s tropical cruise styled logo. There is also some excellent deck plans in the supplement, detailing each deck and all spaces on board the ship. However, that’s really all the art there is to Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour. There are nearly four score of NPCs (including an alien), plus the crew of the Astral Splendour itself which are given no picture or sketch to accompany their bios. Nor were there any imagery of potential scenes from the adventure included in Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour, and this leaves a lot of unrelieved “walls of text” when reading and using this supplement.
All I Ask is for a Jump-3 Ship and a Star to Sail By
As a 3PP Traveller RPG supplement, the Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour is ostensibly designed for use with some of the products produced by Spica Publishing – specifically, the Outer Veil Campaign Setting released in 2011 as an alternative setting. The introduction to the Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour also suggests that the publishers Career Books (1-3) might also be of use to the GM as well when using this book. However, the authors do point out that the supplement can be used in almost any Traveller campaign setting, which demonstrates a certain conformity to the game rules within the contents.
Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour is divided into three major sections, following the introduction of the suggested additional material and bios of the authors.
The first section, entitled Travelling the Stars, is a thorough walk-through of the rules for using commercial transport for hopping from system to system in the Outer Veil campaign setting. There is a write-up of the various levels of passenger travel, and the services provided with each level. The authors also cover the cost of travel and the availability of passengers in the Outer Veil setting, as well as the chance of attracting passengers to travel by one’s tramp trader or liner. I suspect all these rules are available in the core rules, but the rules and tables have been modified to Spica Publishing’s alternative setting.
In the second section (Passengers), there are 78 unique NPCs, with complete stat blocks, skill blocks, and background information and motivations, to populate staterooms and spaceports in almost any Traveller RPG campaign.
There are six different NPC passengers of each of these categories:
Although these non-player characters were created using the Career Book series by Spica Publishing, it appears quite easy to use them with standard Traveller RPG rules as well. I particularly like the number of story/plot hooks that each passenger can bring into an adventure or a campaign series. To enhance this, there are six complications listed for each NPC, allowing the being to be used six different ways, or re-used with a few minor changes such as a different name or place of origin.
Finally, there comes the section on the Astral Splendour itself, and the adventure that takes the characters upon the troublesome maiden voyage of the first of these lines out of the shipyards. Player- characters can be passengers or members of the crew, and are presented with a series of challenges when the Astral Splendour mis-jumps on the first leg of its journey, and ends up in a barely explored sub-sector. The threats to the liner and its passengers are quite dangerous, ranging from stellar phenomena to navigational and fuel issues. Without giving too much more away, it’s actually quite a harrowing adventure, and the good old hard sci-fi scenarios Traveller RPG fans have come to expect in the gaming sessions.
Overall Score: 3.9 out of 5.0
Conclusions
It’d be hard to deny that Spica Publishing and their authors hit the Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour right out of the proverbial park when they took a swing at creating an exciting adventure and space travel supplement for Traveller RPG. Not only is the adventure a solid, gritty space opera beloved by Traveller fans, but the lists of NPCs is a fantastic resource for a GM to use time and time again in any campaign setting. Not to mention, the Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour introduce a great looking new ship to the game system, complete with maps and stats, which again can be utilized any number of ways in almost any campaign.
While the lack of interior art was very disappointing, and the unbroken “wall of text” was tedious at times, the enjoyable writing made up quite a bit for those short-comings, and there were tons of “fluff” and plot hooks popping up all through this supplement.
Fans of Mongoose Games’ new edition of the Traveller RPG would be well advised to make a point of giving the Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour and the rest of the Spica Publishing line of products a good once-over – definitely worth the price!
(Sidenote: There are plenty of free Traveller RPG sample goodies from Spica Publishing over at RPGNow.com! Check them out!)
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)
Spica Publishing is definitely one such example here. This indie publisher from the UK has produced nineteen new products for the latest edition of the Traveller RPG since 2011, and are showing no signs of slowing their efforts. Not only have they released general supplements, but have also released a campaign setting, and a few products utilizing their alternate Traveller universe.Most recently, Spica Publishing released a new supplement, Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour, which takes a look at the complex and unexpectedly exciting mode of travel – as commercial passengers jumping between stars on the space lanes of the sector!
Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour
- Authors: Omer Golan-Joel and Richard Hazlewood
- Illustrators: Ian Stead (cover); David Redington, Ian Stead (interior); Ian Stead (deck plans)
- Publisher: Slugfest Games
- Year: 2013
- Media: PDF (55 pages)
- Price: $7.99 (Available from RPGNow)
Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour is a third-party supplement written for the current edition of Mongoose Games’ Traveller RPG, detailing traveling among the stars on commercial passenger starships. The supplement includes information about the various forms of passage, costs, and hazards involved in booking a trip by commercial starships, along with 78 pre-generated NPCs which might be encountered during a jaunt between worlds. In addition, the authors provide an adventure allowing player-characters to experience what can happen when a jump accident shoots their liner off course. There are also detailed deck plans and descriptions of space liner featured in this supplement – The Astral Spendour.
Production Quality
The product quality of Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour is quite good, with great writing and a layout which presents the contents in a logical fashion. The format of tables and content information will be readily useful to any Traveller GM, and the writing style is both factual and engaging.
Navigation through the PDF is made easy through the use of extensive PDF bookmarks and a table of contents. The PDF bookmarks are quite precise, with each major heading, each of the pre-generated NPCs, and each section of the adventure, just one click away.
The artwork in Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour is wonderful, with beautiful cover art of the space liner orbiting a planet, as well as full color blueprint image and the ship’s tropical cruise styled logo. There is also some excellent deck plans in the supplement, detailing each deck and all spaces on board the ship. However, that’s really all the art there is to Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour. There are nearly four score of NPCs (including an alien), plus the crew of the Astral Splendour itself which are given no picture or sketch to accompany their bios. Nor were there any imagery of potential scenes from the adventure included in Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour, and this leaves a lot of unrelieved “walls of text” when reading and using this supplement.
All I Ask is for a Jump-3 Ship and a Star to Sail By
As a 3PP Traveller RPG supplement, the Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour is ostensibly designed for use with some of the products produced by Spica Publishing – specifically, the Outer Veil Campaign Setting released in 2011 as an alternative setting. The introduction to the Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour also suggests that the publishers Career Books (1-3) might also be of use to the GM as well when using this book. However, the authors do point out that the supplement can be used in almost any Traveller campaign setting, which demonstrates a certain conformity to the game rules within the contents.
Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour is divided into three major sections, following the introduction of the suggested additional material and bios of the authors.
The first section, entitled Travelling the Stars, is a thorough walk-through of the rules for using commercial transport for hopping from system to system in the Outer Veil campaign setting. There is a write-up of the various levels of passenger travel, and the services provided with each level. The authors also cover the cost of travel and the availability of passengers in the Outer Veil setting, as well as the chance of attracting passengers to travel by one’s tramp trader or liner. I suspect all these rules are available in the core rules, but the rules and tables have been modified to Spica Publishing’s alternative setting.
In the second section (Passengers), there are 78 unique NPCs, with complete stat blocks, skill blocks, and background information and motivations, to populate staterooms and spaceports in almost any Traveller RPG campaign.
There are six different NPC passengers of each of these categories:
- Unique Poor Passengers (Outer Veil)
- Rich and Powerful Passengers (Outer Veil)
- Working Passage Candidates
- Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves
- Military and Science Passengers
- Unusual Passengers
- Rich and Powerful Passengers (non-Outer Veil)
- Middle Class Passengers (non-Outer Veil)
Although these non-player characters were created using the Career Book series by Spica Publishing, it appears quite easy to use them with standard Traveller RPG rules as well. I particularly like the number of story/plot hooks that each passenger can bring into an adventure or a campaign series. To enhance this, there are six complications listed for each NPC, allowing the being to be used six different ways, or re-used with a few minor changes such as a different name or place of origin.
Finally, there comes the section on the Astral Splendour itself, and the adventure that takes the characters upon the troublesome maiden voyage of the first of these lines out of the shipyards. Player- characters can be passengers or members of the crew, and are presented with a series of challenges when the Astral Splendour mis-jumps on the first leg of its journey, and ends up in a barely explored sub-sector. The threats to the liner and its passengers are quite dangerous, ranging from stellar phenomena to navigational and fuel issues. Without giving too much more away, it’s actually quite a harrowing adventure, and the good old hard sci-fi scenarios Traveller RPG fans have come to expect in the gaming sessions.
Overall Score: 3.9 out of 5.0
Conclusions
It’d be hard to deny that Spica Publishing and their authors hit the Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour right out of the proverbial park when they took a swing at creating an exciting adventure and space travel supplement for Traveller RPG. Not only is the adventure a solid, gritty space opera beloved by Traveller fans, but the lists of NPCs is a fantastic resource for a GM to use time and time again in any campaign setting. Not to mention, the Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour introduce a great looking new ship to the game system, complete with maps and stats, which again can be utilized any number of ways in almost any campaign.
While the lack of interior art was very disappointing, and the unbroken “wall of text” was tedious at times, the enjoyable writing made up quite a bit for those short-comings, and there were tons of “fluff” and plot hooks popping up all through this supplement.
Fans of Mongoose Games’ new edition of the Traveller RPG would be well advised to make a point of giving the Outer Veil: The Astral Splendour and the rest of the Spica Publishing line of products a good once-over – definitely worth the price!
(Sidenote: There are plenty of free Traveller RPG sample goodies from Spica Publishing over at RPGNow.com! Check them out!)
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 (Top-notch writing; solid layout; includes detailed PDF bookmarks)
- - Illustrations: 3.0 (Wonderful artwork and illustrations – but scarce!; absolutely needed more artwork!)
- Content: 4.0
- - Crunch: 3.5 (Tons; interesting campaign rules variations; solid NPC and ship stat blocks)
- - Fluff: 4.5 (Copious; wonderful NPC backgrounds and complications; imaginative plot in adventure)
- Value: 4.5 (Great price for a ton of interesting and re-usable NPCs, a very cool ship, and travel rules!)
