A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Ghost Planet

Ghost Planet 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 17 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 an uncharted planet has been discovered on the edge of the Sonora sector – though not stated, the adventure is set in the Frontiers of Space – and this is unusual as it’s in the shipping lanes. The text here is a bit confusing as it’s stated that the planet was never reported previously but this is immediately followed by a statement saying it was reported previously several decades earlier. The characters are hired to investigate.

Patron gives the stats for the patron.

Complications are things that can go wrong or are not known; in this case, the world was inhabited by an alien species that became extinct when a bioweapon was accidentally released. The world also moves between dimensions.

Finding an Uncharted Planet is how to locate the world.

Alternate Dimensions explains that the world travelled to another dimension as a defensive measure and the mechanism is now malfunctioning and will at some point maroon it in another dimension forever.

The Mondons gives some details on the extinct aliens.

The Mondon Plague covers the disease that wiped them out.

Plant XZ3-FY AKA Duria gives details on the planet.

Mondon Cities that Remain Standing covers the two cities. One has a building with a plea for someone to destroy the world. The second is covered in more detail and is home to the dimensional mechanism.

Mission Completion Objectives are to visit the world, find out who lived there, what’s going on and leave.

The final two pages of content have a map of the planet and a map of the second city.

Ghost Planet 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 maps and covers, there are no illustrations. Presentation is adequate.

This is a comparatively simple adventure, but there are some definite dangers. One is being marooned in an alternate dimension, but this isn’t too likely. The far greater danger is that there is still a viable sample of the plague that destroyed this world. Though valuable, it can kill all the people and animals on a planet very quickly; this is hardly the sort of thing that wants messing with, no matter how much money someone might pay for it. Ghost Planet is an adventure with a potentially world-ending outcome and it can be found by clicking here.