A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Next Frontier

The Next Frontier 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 19 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 member of the Sonoran Frontier Scout Service – though not stated, the adventure is set in the Frontiers of Space – who wants them to scout a subsector in one of the neighbouring sectors.

Patron has details on the scout.

Complications are things that are not known or which may go wrong.

Unexplored Sector has overviews of the nine systems in the subsector, followed by a map of the subsector.

Random Encounters in Space in the Galakidana Sub-sector has a 2d6 list of random encounters.

Random Starships has a 2d6 table of starships to encounter.

Random Spatial Anomaly has a 2d6 table of such to encounter.

Pirates has details on two pirate ships and their crews.

Mission Completion Objectives explains that the characters need to visit every world and survey it within an eight-week time frame; after that, there is a chance someone else will have done the job. To complete the mission, the characters had better have a jump-6 capable ship otherwise they will have problems.

GM Note explains this provides a bare-bones sub-sector to explore with plenty of room for the GM to develop it.

The Next Frontier 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 covers and sector map, there are no illustrations. Presentation is adequate.

This is a decent framework that can be expanded on, though there are some issues. For instance, should a black hole really be a random encounter when jumping into a system? The pirate NPCs, as is common, have far more stat blocks than needed when two or three would have done. There is plenty of room for a GM to develop the sub-sector more. The Next Frontier can be found by clicking here.