Furnace 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 23 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers, three pages are the front matter and most of three are the Open Game License.
The opening paragraphs explain that representatives of an interstellar polity have heard rumours that an expansionistic family is building weapons intended for use against some of the polity’s members. Though it isn’t stated, the adventure is in the Frontiers of Space setting. The characters are hired to destroy a factory producing these weapons.
Complications are the problems that could arise; the factory is on a world that is heavily populated, heavily polluted and heavily guarded. Another complication makes the adventure extremely dangerous.
Random Encounters in the Factory has a table for rolling these.
Key to the Furnace covers the different areas in the factory.
Random Jorum Workers, Random Scientists, Random Management, Random Jorum Factory Guards and Random Engineers have pages of stats for NPCs to encounter.
Random Warship Encounters in the System has potentially hostile warships.
Heat, Radiation and Pollution has the effects of these; radiation is largely ignored unless the characters do something really stupid.
Charges and Timers covers the demolition explosives.
Completion Objectives are how to successfully complete the mission.
There is a full-page map of the factory.
Furnace 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 covers and the map, which doesn’t come in a player-friendly version, there are no illustrations. Presentation could be better.
The patron for the adventure is, as is common, withholding details from the characters. In this case, it makes sense to do so, but this has the side effect of making the adventure extremely lethal. If the players don’t think to check something, and there is nothing to suggest they should check it bar (justified, as it happens) paranoia, the characters will all die. This makes the adventure a little too dangerous. Furnace is an overly dangerous adventure and it can be found by clicking here.
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