A Garbage Skow! by Joseph Mohr is a role playing game supplement published by Old School Role Playing for use with Cepheus Engine. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
The supplement is available as a 22 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers, three the front matter and three the Open Game License.
The opening paragraphs explain that many of the worlds of the Sonora sector – the adventure is set in the Frontiers of Space – have hazardous junk in orbit, and a company that specialises in the removal of this wants to hire the characters and their ship to clean up a minimum of one world and up to three.
Patron has details on the employer.
The Contract Worlds has details on each, including the kinds of junk.
Complications are things that can go wrong or which aren’t known.
The Choice has the characters given a choice for the first mission and the chances of doing the second and third.
Cleaning Up a World has the GM determining the number of objects.
Random Orbital Objects (Fleraleravma) has a 2d6 table of objects to find around this world.
Random Orbital Objects (Horanon) is similar, but with objects for this world.
Random Orbital Objects (833-480) again is a 2d6 table for the third world.
Possible Cargoes is a 4d6 table of cargoes that might be found on wrecked ships or in cargo pods.
Alien Artifacts Table is another 4d6 table expanding on one of the options from the previous one.
Pirates has a potential pirate ship encounter.
Gold Rush is an encounter with another ship looking for valuables.
Reputations has the damage this work might do to the characters’ reputations.
Doing the Work explains much of this is at the GM’s discretion, but gives some examples.
Claim Jumpers has a rival ship trying to do the work for another company.
Hazards of Clean Up Duty looks at the dangers.
Continuation looks at more potential jobs like this.
The final three pages of content have maps of the three worlds.
A Garbage Skow! in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a single column format and some minor errors were noticed. Bar the maps and covers, there are no illustrations. Presentation is okay.
This isn’t really a discrete adventure, as it has the possibility to go on indefinitely, if the GM wants to just decide the characters can do the jobs until they quit or fail. It does have the potential to be highly dangerous, given that some of the debris can include live nuclear warheads, never the safest thing to deal with. The potential reaction penalty to the job might be considered excessive. A Garbage Skow! can be found by clicking here.
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