A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Patrons of the Frontiers of Space

Patrons of the Frontiers of Space 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 43 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 supplement is intended for use with the Frontiers of Space although it could be used with other Cepheus Engine universes and that it contains people who want jobs doing.

For the Game Master explains the supplement is divided into two parts, the first being patrons for any size of group, the second being mercenary tickets and complications are offered with each job.

Patrons for Any Size Group has rough details on who is hiring, such as relatives, corporate executives and so on, the required skills, if any, and required equipment, again if any, a description of the job and a list of possible complications which are, as mentioned in the previous section, not necessarily complimentary. This section has 80 patrons.

Mercenary Tickets is laid out in a similar way, except that instead of skills and equipment it lists mission type and size needed and there are no complications. There are 20 patrons in this section.

Patrons of the Frontiers of Space in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and given its length some would have been useful. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a single column format and some minor errors were noticed. Bar the covers, there are no illustrations. Presentation is adequate.

This is effectively a supplement containing 100 different adventure hooks that can be fleshed out more. Moreover, they can be used with systems other than Cepheus Engine as well, and as mentioned other settings, though variable amounts of changes will be needed for some of the hooks to remove the setting-specific references. Patrons of the Frontiers of Space is a decent collection of adventure hooks and it can be found by clicking here.