A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Derelict

Derelict 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 28 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 the characters are approached by a representative of the Harlo Equipment Corporation, a company whose primary focus is construction equipment but which also dabbles in many other lines, including asteroid mining. A freighter containing iron pore is overdue after picking up the cargo in the neighbouring sector – though not stated, the adventure is set in the Frontiers of Space. The employer wants to know what happened to the craft and what’s it bringing back.

Patron has details on the employer.

Complications are problems that can occur and what the characters aren’t being told; some of this is significantly dangerous.

Finding the Inferno is finding the missing freighter.

Random Encounters Aboard the Inferno is what it says.

Key to the Inferno details the locations.

The Cocoons are things the characters can find on the ship.

The Foul Smelling Goo is puddles that can be found.

The Creature is a dangerous, and intelligent, predator loose on the ship.

The Ship’s Computer explains what can be found on it and how.

Other Problems are other issues that will arise.

Communications explains things the characters can discover in the logs.

Mission Completion Objectives are how to succeed.

Captain’s Log (Handout One), Small Black Book (Handout Two), Medical Log (Handout Three), Medical Log Secured Entries (Handout Four), Harlo Equipment Company Directive XY-666 (Handout Five) and Encrypted Communications Logs (Handout Six) are various things the characters can discover on the ship that will help them work out what happened.

The final two pages of content are maps of the freighter.

Derelict 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 a number of minor errors were noticed. Bar the colour maps of the ship and the covers, there are no illustrations. Presentation is adequate.

The biggest danger the characters have to deal with is the alien creature – which bears some resemblance to the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise – loose onboard the ship, and the fact that more could spawn. And bringing the creature back to civilisation could be very bad. Perhaps excessively so; most GMs won’t want to destroy entire planetary populations because a monster got loose. Other than that, this is a potentially nasty little adventure with the characters onboard a ship with something hunting them. Derelict can be found by clicking here.