The Frontiers of Space II 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 107 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 Introduction explains that the original Frontiers of Space was introduced to provide an alternative to the expensive sectors available for Cepheus Engine and Traveller and to have a sandbox with many competing interests. The Sonora sector is on the fringe of human civilisation, far enough that any central empire wouldn’t be able to control it. There are human factions and governments, most confined to a single subsector, as well as alien powers. An overview of the aliens, both those present and those who visit, is given, and a mention of the corporations and megacorporations.
Potential War in the Sector says that currently no hot war is going on – more recent supplements have things heated up – but gives a bunch of potential flash points.
Important Non Player Characters for the Sonora Sector gives details on a number of NPCs of varying levels of importance, up to the rulers of polities. Each is named and given a brief paragraph on them.
Major Events within the Sector briefly describes a number of important events, which have been covered in various adventures.
Notations Used in this Document explains the notations which indicate what polity a world belongs to, though most are unaligned. There are also other notations and trade codes.
Referee Notes explain that there are no empire bases and what notations indicating a base means in this context.
The majority of the supplement is then taken up with descriptions of the various subsectors. Each has a map followed by a description of the various worlds in that subsector. Only reference is made to the mainworld, whatever it is, in that system.
Potential Patrons lists 20 potential adventure hooks.
Rumors has twenty rumours, marked true or false.
The Frontiers of Space II in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and given the length and the number of sections, these were really needed. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a single column format and a number of minor errors were noticed. Apart from the subsector maps and covers, there are no illustrations. Presentation is okay.
This supplement covers a sector in much more detail than most similar supplements. In many cases, a supplement will detail a handful of worlds at most in a subsector in detail, sometimes the entire system, but, although no worlds are described in that level of detail in this, every single system has an entry. This expands the original supplement a bit and could probably, with some tweaking, be dropped into other settings. The Frontiers of Space II can be found by clicking here.
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