Gold Rush! 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 29 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers, three pages are the front matter and three the Open Game License.
The opening paragraphs, which don’t explicitly state that the adventure is set in the Frontiers of Space but essentially take it as read, explain that the asteroid belt of a particular system has been mined for hundreds of years for metals, though no particularly valuable or rare ones. Recently, a mine of pure gold was found on an asteroid. The characters are recruited by the company that struck gold to find a mining pinnace full of gold that was taken by pirates.
Key to the Xejabornia Starport covers the asteroid port where characters will start. The locations of the port are described and the NPCs are given stats. Characters can purchase items here as well as discover the location of the pirate base; a surprising number of people seem to know this.
The Pirate Base is similar, only it maps out the base and everyone within the base can be considered to be hostile, albeit not always armed. There is a substantial amount of gold present.
Random People in the Starport has stats for various NPCs to encounter and Star Port Security Forces has stats for guards. Random Pirates is similar, but for the pirate base.
Finding the Pirate Base has several different ways of doing so.
Reactions of Other Miners in the Asteroid Belt to New Miners, if the characters decide to start mining themselves, can be briefly summed up as unhappy and potentially violent.
Mining the Asteroids for Profit has some brief rules for doing so.
Conditions for Success explains that this is not an easy or safe mission, due to the number of pirates. The characters could return the gold, keep the gold, which will make the company unhappy and keep the pirate ship, which is more valuable than the gold but hasn’t had payments kept up on it.
Finally, there are labelled maps of the starport and pirate base.
Gold Rush! in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough that these would have been appreciated. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a single column format and some minor errors were noticed; notably, a number of the section headings were at the bottom of the page. Bar the covers and the maps, there are no illustrations. The maps would have been useful in player friendly versions. Presentation is okay.
Much of the supplement is taken up with stats for NPCs, and there are a lot of them, with a substantial number being hostile. Characters who attempt to simply storm the pirate base are probably going to come out of it quite badly, given the numbers. Though there are other possible strands, the adventure is basically investigating to find a pirate base, then head to it. Straightforward but, as mentioned, dangerous. The players will have to come up with ways of finding the base; there are different ones given, but they will need to think of them. It’s possible they could come up with their own way. Gold Rush! is a fairly decent little adventure and it can be found by clicking here.
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