Desperation by Jospeh 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 22 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 discuss a baron who lives on a world on the edge of the Sonora sector – the adventure is set in the Frontiers of Space – in a very old castle that was transported from Earth. The characters are contacted by a member of the Sonoran Interstellar Police who wants them to investigate the disappearance of merchant ships heading to the planet yet apparently never arrived.
Patron has details on the employer, who is actually conducting a rogue operation to find his sister who was on a missing ship.
Complications are things that can go wrong or which aren’t known.
The Cargo is the cargo that the characters are taking to the planet.
Erillia VII has some details on the world.
A Very Old Vampire has stats and more information on the baron.
With a Few Friends has details on lesser vampires and other servants.
A Castle With a Few Tricks describes the castle.
Selling the Paintings and Music looks at various unknown masterworks that can be found in the castle.
Mission Completion Objectives covers these.
Do Vampires Exist in the Future? briefly looks at this and explains this is, after all, a Halloween adventure.
Is the Baron All of these Artists and Musicians? says that maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, and also mentions that, which may have been noticed by this point, the inspiration comes from the Star Trek episode “Requiem for Methuselah”.
The final page of content has a map of the castle.
Desperation in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a single column format and some minor errors were noticed. Bar the map and covers, there are no illustrations. Presentation is okay.
The first thing is, even with this being a Halloween adventure, does the GM want to introduce vampires into the setting? This has a good chance of being “No”, unless this is being done as a one-shot, in which case the baron will really need changing into something else. The next is the artworks; this is easier to deal with as all could just be decided to be fakes, and not created by the baron. Desperation is a bit of a different type of adventure for a futuristic setting and it can be found by clicking here.
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