Cold Justice 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 32 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 in the Sonora sector – the adventure is set in the Frontiers of Space – in some places water is rare and finding it is profitable. The company in the adventure mines vapour from moons and, though workers are treated and paid well, on some the moons there have been recent outbreaks of violence, and the Sonoran Interstellar Police are concerned about this and are paid to investigate some deaths.
Patron has some details on the employer.
Complications are things that can go wrong, that are not known and other problems.
Key to the Karfor Mining Colony details the places at the colony.
Random Events at the Colony is a 2d6 table of random events.
Random Encounters Within the Colony Dome is a 2d6 table of encounters.
Robots has stats for various types of robot that can be encountered.
Clues About the Violence are various things characters can uncover.
Hype has some details on a drug.
Computer Records has what might be uncovered on the computers.
Putting it all Together looks at how the characters might uncover what’s happening.
The Cleaning Team has stats for some company mercenaries.
Personnel at the Mining Colony has 6 company administrators, 24 miners, 6 engineers, 6 rentacops, 6 water processing techs, 6 space bar employees, 6 working girls (including one man), 6 visitors, 6 drug dealers, 6 restaurant employees, 6 communications personnel, 6 computer techs and 6 agricultural personnel.
Cracking the Dome looks at what happens should the colony’s dome be damaged.
Vapor Mining explains this was invented for the adventure; in truth, given how easy it is to make water for an advanced civilisation, it’s unlikely it would be this profitable.
Mission Completion Objectives has what’s needed to succeed.
The final page of content has a map of the dome.
Cold Justice in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a single column format and some minor errors were noticed. Bar the map and covers, there are no illustrations. Presentation is adequate.
The NPC lists suffer from a common problem of there being too many different stats when merely 2 or 3 would have done to cover anyone who wasn’t unique with just a variety of names. As mentioned, the vapour mining is a bit unlikely in the setting, but it would not take much effort to swap this to some other type of mining. The dome is also surprisingly fragile. Other than that, this is a fairly straightforward adventure, though it is full of different clues for the characters to get and they are stationed in a base owned by a company who is not going to want them to cause trouble. Cold Justice can be found by clicking here.
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