Reviews from R'lyeh: 1980s

Showing posts with label 1980s. Show all posts

Sunday, 9 August 2026

1986: Phoenix Command

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

If the apogee of the military roleplaying game was Twilight 2000 in 1984, there was yet life in the genre still. Not in 1985, but in 1986, there were four military roleplaying games published. Delta Force: America Strikes Back! from Task Force Games, Eternal Soldier from Tai-Gear Simulations, Freedom Fighters from Fantasy Games Unlimited, and The Price of Freedom from West End Games were all published in 1986 and that is ignoring the paramilitary elements of the setting for 2300 AD from Game Designers’ Workshop. But in the four decades since, the straight military roleplaying game has been a rarity, and barring the return of Twilight: 2000 with Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was from Free League Publishing, most, such as War Stories: A World War 2 RPG from Firelock Games and Alien: The Roleplaying Game from Free League Publishing, have been set in the theatres of World War 2 and Science Fiction. Of the four from 1986, perhaps the most famous—or should that be infamous?—was Phoenix Command.

Phoenix Command was published by Leading Edge Games, which had already released its first roleplaying game Rhand: Morningstar Missions, in 1984. It was designed as an accurate simulation of gunshot wounds with detailed aiming and firing rules, and authentic modern weapon data to create a simple, fast-paced game with an incredibly realistic feel. It came as a boxed set which included a forty-eight page, spiral-bound ‘Combat System Rule Book’; a twenty-six page, fully illustrated ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’; four double-sided Reference Cards; character sheets; and a single ten-sided die. Like many roleplaying books from Leading Edge games there was a streak of sly humour that ran through the quotations given in the extra-wide margins of the ‘Combat System Rule Book’. For example, ‘Blam. Blam. “Stop.” Blam. “Police.” Blam. Officer Axly.’ and ‘If you can’t dazzle them with style, riddle them with bullets.” Corley Norris’. The tone of that humour is set by the blurb on the back cover of the box:

“Are you tired of your current small arms combat system? Tired of inconsistencies and rules that simply don't work? If so, we invite you to conduct a short test:

Using your current small arms combat system, place the muzzle of a large caliber pistol between your character's eyes. Squeeze the trigger. Continue squeezing the trigger until he falls unconscious. Then have a friend put a band-aid over that nasty .45 caliber dent in his skull, and try not to get him shot too often in the week or two it takes to heal.

Now, using Phoenix Command, place the same pistol in the same place. Squeeze the trigger. You now have a choice: you can either roll up a new character or rush the body to a very sophisticated medical facility and discover the joys of role-playing a vegetable.

If you are nodding your head and smiling, and thinking that it would be nice to have a combat system that really works, welcome to Phoenix Command!”

This then sets out the stall for Phoenix Command. It was a highly detailed, highly accurate simulation of small arms combat designed to be used on its own, but more obvious as a replacement for the smalls combat rules that the Game Master and his players were dissatisfied with from whatever modern or military roleplaying game they were playing. There was fertile ground for this in 1986, whether it was The Morrow Project or Merc, Delta Force or The Price of Freedom, or more obviously, Twilight 2000. Essentially, just like the constituent parts of Rolemaster—Arms Law, Spell Law, Claw Law, Character Law, and Campaign Law—before it became a roleplaying game all on its own, were designed to replace the parts of the fantasy roleplaying game that a group was dissatisfied with, Phoenix Command was designed to bolt onto the modern or military roleplaying game of a group’s choice. However, unlike the various parts of Rolemaster which coalesced into a roleplaying game all of its own, Phoenix Command and its various supplements never would. Instead, stripped down versions of the rules would appear in Living Steel and the Aliens Adventure Game.

The spiral-bound ‘Combat System Rule Book’ is surprisingly short. However, do not in any way think that this means that Phoenix Command is not as complex as its reputation suggests it is. Phoenix Command is complex and that starts with Player Character. First, a player rolls three six-sided each for Strength, Will, Health, and Agility. Then the Game Master or player decides on the Player Character’s Gun Combat Skill Level. This ranges from one to twenty, with an average solider having a 2nd Skill Level, a veteran a 3rd or 4th Skill Level, an elite soldier a 5th Skill Level, 6th Skill Level, or 7th Skill Level, and a marksman a 9th Skill Level at the very least. What determines the actual Gun Combat Skill Level will depend upon the role that the Player Character has in whatever game or encounter that the Game Master is about to run or by the rough skill level in the roleplaying game that Phoenix Command is being used to replace. It should be noted that beyond noting that it represents the Player Character’s competence with small arms, there is no real explanation of what it is beyond that, and it is also the only skill in Phoenix Command.

What the player is instructed to do next is determine Encumbrance. This is the total weight of armour, clothing weapons, and equipment carried into combat. There is a surprisingly short equipment list and no real explanation of what each item is in comparison to the explanations of what each gun is in the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ and the ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’. After that, it gets complex with a lot of cross-referencing on tables. Base Speed is determined by cross-referencing Strength and Encumbrance on Table 2A and Base Speed and Agility on table 2B to find out the Player Character’s Maximum Speed. (This means that should a Player Character drop or shed a lot of weight, such as dropping a Squad Assault Weapon and switching to a pistol, all of this will need to be recalculated…) The Gun Combat Skill Level is checked on Table 2C for the Player Character’s Skill Accuracy Level, which measures his actual skill with weapons and knowledge of small arms tactics. Typically, a Player Character’s Skill Accuracy Level is six points higher than his Gun Combat Skill Level. Skill Factor is the Player Character’s Agility plus Gun Combat Skill Level, but there is no explanation as what it is. The number of his Combat Actions is determined by cross-referencing Maximum Speed with Skill Factor. Knockout Value is derived from Will and Gun Combat Skill Level. This is percentage chance of a combatant withstanding the pain of wounds and not falling unconscious.

Officer John Smith
Strength 11 Will 9 Health 11 Agility 12
Gun Combat Skill Level: 3rd Skill Level
Encumbrance 13.2 lb.
Base Speed: 2.5
Maximum Speed: 5
Skill Accuracy Level: 9
Skill Factor: 12
Combat Actions: 4
Knockout Value: 13

EQUIPMENT
Clothing (5 lb.)
Medium Flexible Armour (2.6 lb.)
Fighting Harness (0.6 lb.)
Holster (0.4 lb.)
Magazine Pouch (two magazines) (2.2 lb.)
Beretta M92F (2.4 lb.)

There is an example character, but not example of the creation process. There is also the basics of pre-generated troops intended to be used as quick NPCs.

Mechanically, there is no skill roll in Phoenix Command and no rules for handling actions that are not directly related to combat. So, the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ quickly moves on to weapons, movement, actions, and shooting. Each weapon has data for length, wait, reload time, rate of fire, ammunition capacity, and ammunition weight and feed device, which you would expect as per any roleplaying game with firearms. Added to this are Sustained Automatic Burst, a weapon’s accuracy during burst fire; Aim Time Accuracy Level Modifier, a measure of a weapon’s accuracy when time is spent aiming; Relative Impact Damage and Damage Class, which measures bullet penetration and bullet damage capability respectively; and Minimum Arc, the minimum number of hexes over which a burst of automatic fire is spread. Then each weapon has Ballistic Data and this is not for the weapon itself, but for different types of ammunition—Full Metal Jacket, Hollow Point, Armour, Jacketed Hollow Point, and Jacketed Soft Point—the Relative Impact Damage and Damage Class varying according to range.

Phoenix Command is intended to be played on a grid of two-yard hexes in a continuous stream of two-second phases. In each phase, the player will expend his Combat Actions on movement and actions that have an Action Cost. Movement takes into account direction of movement—forward, backward, oblique, and sideways; stance, including crouching, hands and knees, and belly crawl; elevation and terrain and depth of water; injury; and more. Actions include assuming a firing stance, ducking, changing facing, getting up and down, breaking and clearing glass from a window, drawing a pistol from multiple different types of holsters, tossing a grenade, and so on. The list is extensive, but advice is included on how to work out what the Action Cost is for any action not listed.

Each phase is broken down into three periods. First, in the Allocation period, players and Game Master allocate their Combat Actions. A player does not have to allocate all of them, but can save some of them for the Response period. In the Movement Period all combatants expend their Combat Actions assigned to movement, whilst any remaining Combat Actions are spent in the Response period. This can be on type of action, except movement. Primarily, it is spent is on combat actions. Fire resolution takes place at the end of the phase.

Fire resolution assumes that combatants take time to aim. The rules allow for hip fire and snapshots, both of which are done at a penalty, but otherwise to gain the full accuracy of a weapon, a player needs to assume a firing stance, which takes Combat Actions, and then spend one or more Combat Actions aiming. The Odds of Hitting is determined by aim time, firing stance, range, visibility, movement, and size of target. Each of these provides an Accuracy Level Modifier (ALM), which are in turn the Aim Time ALM, Target Range ALM, Firing Stance/Situation ALM, Visibility ALM, Movement ALM, Target Size ALM, and Effective Accuracy Level ALM. The Aim Time ALM will vary according to weapon and every weapon has a table for the number of Combat Actions spent aiming and the resulting modifiers. Visibility ALM accounts for smoke, darkness, optical scope, and so on. The Target Size ALM not only includes the stance and position of the target, but modifiers for the head, body, arms, and legs, which can be applied if an attacker wants to shoot at a specific body location. The total number of Accuracy Level Modifiers are called the Effective Accuracy Level and the higher this is, the greater the Odds of Hitting. This is cross-referenced on the Single Shot Odds Table to get a percentile chance and this is rolled equal to, or under, for a single to hit a target.

In addition, Phoenix Command also takes into account visibility of a target if the target moves. So, a target might be visible at the start and in the middle of the Movement Period, but not at the end, it allows a shooter to potentially fire at a target before he moves behind cover. It simply applies an Action Count penalty, the longer the target is out of line of sight the higher the Action Count penalty.

So far, this is the only time that anyone has made a dice roll. And what is important here is that it is not a skill roll of any kind—at least not in the traditional sense of a roleplaying game. Rather it is determined by the choices made by the player as to what stance his character will take, how many Combat Actions will be spent aiming, what weapon he is using, and so on. The character that a player has created and is controlling has no immediate effect on how good, or how accurate, a shot he is. Ultimately what the factors created during character generation influence is how many Combat Actions he has in a single phase. The more he has, the more can move, take cover, and so on, but ultimately, the more time he can spend aiming.

This though, is only for single shots. The process for fully automatic fire is slightly different. It is done in half second bursts into an Arc of Fire that indicates how many bullets are fired into each hex and thus at each target. Target visibility, which already accounted for the amount of time that the target was visible over the course of a single phase also indicates how many bursts can be fired at a target. In addition to aim time, firing stance, range, visibility, movement, and size of target all being factors in finding out the Odds of Hitting, automatic fire adds elevation as well as Arc of Fire. Automatic Elevation target size modifier replaces Target Size ALM and is taken from the Burst Elevation Odds Table. It is rolled first and if successful, the burst is at the correct elevation and a roll to hit using the Automatic Weapon Hit Chance Table. The chance of hitting depends on the Arc of Fire and Rate of Fire and is rolled per target, with the result also indicating how many bullets hit. An attacker can continue to first bursts or fully automatic fire from one phase to the next, but there is a Sustained Automatic Burst penalty for each weapon which is applied to the Effective Accuracy Level on each subsequent rounds of firing.

The next dice roll is to find out where a target is hit. This is a simple roll on the ‘Hit Location and Damage Table’ which gives different results based upon the target was looking around or over cover, if he was firing around or over cover, and if he is in the open. The amount of Physical Damage inflicted is determined by the weapon’s Damage Class and Effective Impact Damage. However, first you need to know what the Effective Impact damage is and that is worked out by subtracting the Protection Factors of any armour worn from the Relative Impact Damage. Relative Impact Damage is a measure of a bullet’s penetrating power and both that and the Damage Class depend upon the range of the attack and the type of ammunition fired. Armour is by location and its Protection Factors will vary from four for Light Flexible to thirty for Heavy Rigid. If the Effective Impact Damage is reduced to zero by the Protection Factors, the shot does not penetrate and no damage is inflicted. If the Effective Impact Damage is more than zero, but less than the Protection Factors, the shot penetrates, but its damage is reduced. To learn how much, the roll for the hit location is cross referenced with the correct Effective Impact Damage for the Damage Class of the weapon. If the Effective Impact Damage is greater than the Protection Factors, the shot penetrates and inflicts the full amount of Effective Impact Damage listed under the Damage Class. (The term used here is “full Damage Class (DC) column”, but there is no Damage Column marked ‘Full’, so presumably, the authors meant the maximum value.) Depending upon the Effective Impact Damage, the Damage Class, and the hit location, the Physical Damage inflicted can range from one to millions of points. Hit locations run from forehead to ankle-foot and also include glancing blows to general locations. In general, hits to the head—forehead, eye/nose, and mouth—will inflict anywhere from hundreds of points of Physical Damage to hundreds of thousands of Physical Damage.

The rules also allow for disabling blows if the shot hits an arm or leg and a target being knocked out by damage suffered. Any damage suffered greater than a target’s Knockout Value and there is a 25% chance that he will be rendered unconscious. This rises to 75% if the damage suffered is more than twice the target’s Knockout Value and 98% if is more than three times the target’s Knockout Value. And to remind ourselves, Knockout Value is not determined by Health, but by Will and Gun Combat Skill Level, so effectively, the better you are at firing guns, the less likelihood you have of falling unconscious due to pain.

After a battle, all wounded characters must check to see if they will live. Physical Damage Total is how much damage a character has suffered, whilst the Damage Total is a measure of the severity of the injuries suffered. To get the Damage Total, the Physical Damage is multiplied by ten and then divided by the character’s Health. The Medical Aid And Recovery Table is consulted to discover the Critical Time Period during which time the character must receive aid and the Recovery Roll to be made at the end of this period. This will vary according to whether the character receives no aid, first aid, goes to an aid station or field hospital, or is sent to a modern trauma centre. There are suggested adjustments for trauma centres, or hospitals, from 1831 to 2345—even though the weapons listed in the ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’ cover the period from 1910 to roughly 1990. The Recovery Roll is a percentile value and if the roll is made, the target will survive, the Critical Time Period also indicating how long it takes for the target to recover. Results of “00” on the Medical Aid And Recovery Table mean that the character cannot survive. The rules also account for the lingering effects of old injuries.

In general, if a target suffers a Damage Total of one hundred or more, he is in trouble without dedicated medical aid. At a Damage Total of a thousand and more and the Recovery Roll values plummet. However, there is no chance of a character dying in actual combat. There is a chance of being knocked out—a good chance—and only after a combat is it discovered whether a character has lived or died. For all that Phoenix Command claims to be accurate simulation of gunshot wounds, there is no means of working out if a character is dead in the midst of a shootout and no rules for rendering first aim whilst in combat. Experienced players of Phoenix Command can estimate the likelihood of a target not recovering from the amount of damage suffered, but both omissions make no sense.

Now all of this takes up sixteen pages of the ‘Combat System Rule Book’! Which begs the question, “What the hell is in the rest of the book?” There is some advice for running Phoenix Command, which includes delegating some of the tasks, using a ranging stick, and using markers to indicate each character’s status. There are two sample scenarios. Scenario one is ‘The Bridge of Oppenheim’, a beginning scenario for five to eight players and involves German and NATO forces facing a Russian invasion just outside Mainz and Wiesbaden. Each player controls a single figure, so all together equal to two squads who must hold off forty-eight Russians! It is designed to teach the rules for Odds of Hitting and damage. The second scenario is ‘The Defence of the Apollo Rey’. It places for four SAS (Special Action Squad) commandos aboard a vessel that has been taken over by nine terrorists. It is not as static as ‘The Bridge of Oppenheim’, with the terrorists searching for passengers and the commandos trying to incapacitate the terrorists without alerting them. Both scenarios come with maps and pre-generated characters.

The remaining ten pages of provide optional rules. These differentiate between non-blocking cover—that is, cover that blocks sight, not penetration and blocking cover that does both; field of view which can be increased by expending Combat Actions to look around; shotguns which involve Base Pellet Hit Chance and a Pattern Radius in working out the resulting Effective Accuracy Level; explosives and grenades, which includes the possibility of damage from both shrapnel and concussion; improved accuracy for all weapons; spotting and sound detection; defensive skills, initiative, and morale; Master Phasing Count; and second shot accuracy, pinned targets, and semiauto bursts. Of these, the Master Phasing Count is a means of determining when detailed timing of fire occurs, such as who fires first. This is discovered by cross-referencing a character’s number of Combat Actions with the Action Count and is measured in tenths of seconds. The defensive skills are the only rule to use a character’s Intelligence and the first mention that a character should have an Intelligence characteristic, but the inference is that it comes from the roleplaying game whose combat rules Phoenix Command is replacing rather be rolled for as in a standard roleplaying game.

The ‘Combat System Rule Book’ packs a lot of rules and a lot of detail in its forty-eight pages. There are moments where it is possible to see what the designers intended and grasp the rules as written, helped by numerous examples. However, turn the page and there is another set of rules for another specific situation and they have their own complexity. And then again. The advice for the Game Master suggests delegating tasks to her fellow players, but that assumes they understand the rules. The complexity of the game means that it is challenging to teach and none of it is necessarily intuitive or easy to grasp, whilst the constant need to consult the tables at the back of the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ can only serve to slow down the play of the game. At the very least, what Phoenix Command needs is a set of flow charts per player, one flow chart per action, and even as much as that would ease play, there is no denying that it would still be intimidating.

In comparison to the ‘Combat System Rule Book’, the ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’ is straight forward. It lists almost one-hundred-and-twenty handguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, squad automatic weapons, general purpose machine guns, light machine guns, heavy machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, anti-tank rockets, and rocket propelled grenades, and twenty-four grenades. The earliest weapon given is the Browning M1911A1, whilst the then most recent are the Italian Benelli CB-M2 submachine gun, German Heckler & Koch G11 assault rifle, and British XLE85E1 assault rifle, all of which were underdevelopment at the time of Phoenix Command’s publication. The only thing missing perhaps is a standard .38 caliber revolver instead of just the Smith & Wesson M36 2” Barrel, Chief’s Special.

Physically, Phoenix Command is well-presented and the production values are high. With its spiral bound format, the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ definitely looks like the technical manual it is supposed to be. There is a glossary of terms, and even though it is only forty-eight pages long, the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ could have done with an index. Arguably, ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’ could have done with one too. Otherwise, the illustrations—nearly all of them guns—are fine and the maps serviceable.

—oOo—

Roman J. Andron reviewed Phoenix Command in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds. No. 47 (Fall 1987). He opened with, “IMPRESSIVE. THAT is the first word that comes to mind when Phoenix Command is implemented in a game. Never before have such high degrees of realism and playability been achieved simultaneously in the gaming world. Compared to this, all other combat systems are nothing.” His only issues were with the use of English (or Imperial) measurements rather than Metric and that the high number of abbreviations slowed down the process of learning the rules. Other than that, the review was very positive and Andron awarded it four stars before concluding with “I heartily recommend this system to weapons buffs or anyone wanting to put realism into their role-playing or wargaming. Phoenix Command provides for a simple yet highly-realistic simulation of modern firearms combat. However, my recommendations cannot do justice to the system. It has to be used to be fully appreciated.”

—oOo—

Although Phoenix Command can be praised for its degree of detail and accuracy, in terms of game design it is a developmental dead end. It represents the simulationist drive for accuracy and detail pushed to the nth degree, to the point of not necessarily unplayability, but at the cost of playability and engagement. More skirmish wargame than roleplaying game, Phoenix Command is a love letter to statistics, the nadir of the trend of military roleplaying games in the nineteen eighties, and today, a dinosaur.

Monday, 3 August 2026

Miskatonic Monday #448: The Horror

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: The Horror

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Poul Erik Holmelund

Setting: Denmark, 1980s

Product: Scenario

What You Get: Forty-two page, 41.15 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Kidstigators do right by the Knights Templar
Plot Hook: ‘Troll’ terror at a Summer Camp gone Cthulhu

Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Kidstigators and sixteen Kidstigator portraits, one NPC, five maps and floor plans, one Mythos spell, and four Mythos monsters.

Production Values: Excellent

Pros

# First scenario to use the ‘Kidstigator’ rules from The Dare

# Good one-shot or convention scenario

# Solid, food-based investigation

# Genuinely jolly policeman

# ‘Murdertoys’ are exactly what you think they are

# iä iä Krôll´Bôll

# Possible resolutions fully explored

# Nice cover

# Now with added Citronmåne (you’re welcome and where’s my slice?)

# Pediophobia

# Teraphobia

# Ornithophobia

Cons

# Needs a light edit

# There really should be a phobia of seagulls

Conclusion

# Linear, but entertaining scenario that nicely balances the joy of childhood versus the terror of ‘trolls’!

# Pleasingly captures the wonder of childhood summer before the horror

# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

Sunday, 26 July 2026

Xanthophobia

Call of Cthulhu is big in Japan. Bigger than Dungeons & Dragons and the Japanese devotees of Call of Cthulhu have their official campaign from Chaosium, Inc., that enables them and devotees around the world to explore a significant period in recent Japanese history. In doing so, they find a country at the height of its economic dominance at the end of the electronic era, unknowingly threatened by insidious memetic virus that finds vectors in prayer books and manga and dreams, mapping on its pattern onto the psyches of its victims who then will seek to spread it wider. It wraps itself around faith and culture and hope, but is utterly alien. That threat is the King in Yellow, drawn from the short story collection by R.C. Chambers, The King in Yellow, and re-interpreted for the ‘Bubble Economy’ period in The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising as the Prince of Pale Leaves. This is not the first time that Call of Cthulhu and Chaosium, Inc. have visited Japan, the supplement, Secrets of Japan being published in 2005. In more recent years, the Miskatonic Repository has become an outlet for titles written by Japanese authors, such as Japonism 2024. Similarly, it is two decades since Chaosium, Inc. explored Hastur and the mythos of the King in Yellow with the campaign, Tatters of the King, published in 2006.

The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising: Encountering the King in Yellow in 1980s Japan is a published by Chaosium, Inc. for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and notable for a number of factors. One is that it is a modular campaign, that can be expanded with The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Carcosa Manifest, simply ran as is, or run as sperate, standalone scenarios. The second is that the supplement is co-written by residents of Japan, including the Sons of Singularity—responsible for The Sassoon Files: A Sourcebook for the Call of Cthulhu and GUMSHOE Role Playing Games and Journal d’Indochine—and Chaosium, Inc. Which gives it an authenticity and a strong sense of place. Third, almost like a meme itself, the scenarios in The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising can be played over and over again, as the players and their (new?) Investigators search for an alternate ending. Of course, the Prince of Pale Leaves can twist and change and learn, so that what might have worked in a previous playthrough (alternate timeline?) is not guaranteed to work in the current one.

What The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising is not, is a sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu in Japan in the late eighties. It does contain a glossary of terms in the appendix and it does contain source material and useful they are too. The source material covers Japan and its work-orientated culture during the period, examines the life of the working adult and the student, the divide between the generations and its consequences, organised crime, transportation, and more. That more focuses on the technology available, noting that personal computers and pagers are widely available, the Internet has yet to appear, mobile phones are rare, and weapons even rarer! So, no firearms, and despite what some might think, no swords—and definitely no Ninja! The downside to The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising not being a sourcebook book for Call of Cthulhu in Japan in the late eighties is that there is little in the way of advice for creating Investigators for the period. Even then, it only extends as far as telling the Keeper that Investigator should be able to speak Japanese and players to avoid the discriminatory cultural biases endemic to the period, though that was beginning to change. This leaves the Keeper and her players to be inventive should they want to create their own Investigators or have to create replacements in the event of Investigator death. That said, several pre-generated Investigators are provided and they represent a good mix of Japanese and non-Japanese characters.

There are two notable additions in terms of the mechanics specific to the campaign. The first is Exposure Points gained through exposure to the Sutra of Pale Leaves, whether through glancing at it, reading it, hearing it being read, and so on. As they are gained—whether by an Investigator or NPC—those exposed begin to fixate on Sutra of Pale Leaves, suffer dreams and altered perception, gain creative inspiration, and even begin to see the Prince of Pale Leaves. These are the very least of the effects of continued exposure, whilst The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising suggests that Sanity loss and severe orders suffered are ‘side effects’. Surprisingly, being exposed can have its rewards such as unexplained luck and being immune to Sanity loss, though these come at the cost of more Exposure Points. All this reflects the effects of the memetic virus rewriting the code in the sufferer’s brain. Exposure Points are kept secret from the players and count up in contrast to Sanity points counting down. The second addition is more distinctly defined and numbered ‘Endings’. Running from ‘0: Party Wipe (Failure)’ and up, these categorise player success in a scenario and are a common feature of scenarios in Japan where they enable players to simply communicate how well they did in a scenario. Strangely, this number gives a scenario what are effectively ‘winning conditions’, which is at odds with almost any description of how roleplaying works. However, they explicitly support the replay value of the scenarios and campaign since having achieved an Ending and a value in one playthrough, the players can playthrough the scenario with the aim of achieving a different Ending and ideally a higher value.

In addition to being different in how it spreads its influence, the ‘Mythos’ threat and its associated cult are also different in The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising. The cult—the Association of Pale Leaves—is mad and dangerous, but it is not murderous. In other words, no sacrifices before altars at the dead of night at propitious times of the year. It can resort to violence when protecting its interests and its assets, but in the main, what it wants to do is proselytise. To that end, the Sutra of Pale Leaves and its different versions play a bigger role in the campaign than the cult itself, and although the cult is detailed, the focus of the scenarios in The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising is not on the cult itself, but rather on the twistings of the memetic transmission of its master’s message. This also means that there is no real beginning, no real ending to The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising—and that feels wholly appropriate, even though some players may be disappointed.

Similarly, the Prince of Pale Leaves is surprisingly human in its form and face even if it is alien. It is also calm, calculating, and confident, never angry, never Machiavellian, but it is manipulative and several of the scenarios revolve around the Prince of Pale Leaves’ manipulation of the Investigators. In other words, it has none of the sardonic and manipulative qualities of Nyarlathotep, and so perhaps requires much more subtle roleplaying upon the part of the Keeper.

Narratively, the campaign adds ‘Confidants’. These are inspired by Jackson Elias of Masks of Nyarlathotep fame and are designed to serve as hooks, facilitating the involvement of the Investigators in the plots. Several are given, both general and scenario-specific, but the main one is a special agent of the Public Security Intelligence Agency, the equivalent of Japan’s FBI, but the others include a Buddhist monk and abbot, and heiress-turned anti-occult crusader. Their use is not mandatory, but they will flavour and influence how the Investigators are introduced to each scenario and potentially grant them access to various resources. For the players, the campaign includes Lore Sheets which provide them with information about Japan and its culture that their Investigators would ordinarily know.

The trilogy of scenarios in The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising opens with ‘Dream Eater’. The Investigators are asked to look into an outbreak of insomnia in the historic town of Ikaruga. Sufferers also report having been tormented by a six-legged, purple tapir-like beast in their dreams when they do sleep. The incidences seem have started in a particular district of the town, significant only for a recent road accident in which an old man accidentally knocked down and killed a young girl. The old man is a master of traditional Japanese calligraphy. Interviewing him reveals that he is still remorseful, but is not affected by the sleeplessness affecting the rest of the town because a monk gave him a book of scripture to recite from. This is, of course, the Sutra of Pale Leaves, and will be the Investigators’ first exposure to it… What is interesting here is that the Investigators are inadvertently investigating two things at once, both cause and solution, and likewise working for two opposing masters without realising it. This is a scenario where the Investigators are going to be presented with a lot of information fairly quickly and the challenge is what to do with information rather than finding it out. There are hints and intimations throughout that not all is as straightforward as the situation at first might seem and both players and their Investigators need to be on their toes to realise this.

The second scenario, ‘Fanfic!’ explores the world of amateur manga artists and creators as the Investigators are asked to look into a new horror title that has become a much in demand underground hit amongst its ardently devoted teenage fans—and could be propaganda for a cult! Helped by a reserved young manga creator, the Investigators attend a Manga Market to try and find the creator of the subversive comic book. Again, there is the element of misdirection in dealing with a threat that is very much a danger, but not the whole threat. The danger here is that the misdirection actually works and the Investigators fail to realise quite what the other threat is. More than the other two scenarios in the book, ‘Fanfic!’ deserves repeat play to get beyond that misdirection, identify the other threat, and confront it atop a Tokyo landmark. This is an interesting exploration of a Japanese subculture that plays on the nature of viruses and gives it a sharp twist in applying it to the concept of memes.

The third and final scenario is the shortest. ‘The Pallid Masks of Tokyo’ begins with the discovery in an alley of a corpse with no face, or rather no facial features. The body, almost marked with deep and regular scars, is that of a Yakuza foot soldier and his boss will tell the investigators is that the dead man had been associating with a lieutenant called ‘Crazy Kazu’, who had gone rogue after spending time in the Secure Unit of the Tokyo Metropolitan Psychiatric Hospital. The latter is the focus of the latter half of the scenario and is a fittingly creepy location made all the more so by the influence of the Prince of Pale Leaves. Any investigation of Crazy Kazu will lead there and the Investigators might even receive an invitation to visit at night. Here they will find ‘Chateau Carcosa’, the Prince of Pale Leaves’ strongest manifestation on Earth. It brings a weird scenario to surprisingly direct conclusion, but not to the ongoing threat of the Prince of Pale Leaves and Sutra of Pale Leaves.

Physically, The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising is very well presented and written. The artwork ranges from the ukiyo-e style of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries to modern manga and much in between.

What The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising is not, is a campaign in the traditional sense for Call of Cthulhu. It is instead a framework that sets up a different interpretation of the King in Yellow mythos and showcases how that interpretation can be presented in three different scenarios and three different aspects of Japanese culture. And then further expanded with the companion volume, The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Carcosa Manifest. Unreal and uncanny, The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising: Encountering the King in Yellow in 1980s Japan is superb introduction to an unearthly devious threat whose full range of manifestations and vectors yet remain to be fully revealed and explored.

Monday, 25 May 2026

[Fanzine Focus XLIII] The Travellers’ Digest Number 10

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. However, not all fanzines written with the Old School Renaissance in mind need to be written for a specific retroclone. Although not the case now, the popularity of Traveller would spawn several fanzines, of which The Travellers’ Digest, published by Digest Group Publications, was the most well known and would eventually transform from a fanzine into a magazine.

The publication of The Travellers’ Digest #1 in December, 1985 marked the entry of Digest Group Publications into the hobby and from this small, but ambitious beginnings would stem a complete campaign and numerous highly-regarded supplements for Game Designers Workshop’s Traveller and MegaTraveller, as well as a magazine that all together would run for twenty-one issues between 1985 and 1990. The conceit was that The Travellers’ Digest was a magazine within the setting of the Third Imperium, its offices based on Deneb in the Deneb Sector, and that it awarded the Travellers’ Digest Touring Award. This award would be won by one of the Player Characters and thus the stage is set for ‘The Grand Tour’, the long-running campaign in the pages of The Travellers’ Digest. In classic fashion, as with Europe of the eighteenth century, this would take the Player Characters on a tour of the major capitals of known space. These include Vland, Capitol, Terra, the Aslan Hierate, and even across the Great Rift. The meat of this first issue, as well as subsequent issues, would be dedicated to an adventure, each a stop-off on the ‘The Grand Tour’, along with support for it. The date for the first issue of The Travellers’ Digest and thus when the campaign begins is 152-1101, the 152nd day of the 1101st year of the Imperium.

To best run ‘The Grand Tour’, the Referee will need access to The Atlas of the Imperium, Supplement 8: Library Data (A-M), Supplement 11: Library Data (N-Z), Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats (or alternatively, Supplement 5: Azhanti High Lightning), as well as the core rules. In addition, other supplements would be required depending on the adventure, in the case of this issue, The Travellers’ Digest Number 9, that would only be Book 8, Robots. For ‘Reference Point’, the tenth part of ‘The Grand Tour’, the Referee will also want access to The Travellers’ Digest Number 8 and The Travellers’ Digest Number 9 for the subsector maps that appear in those issues. CHALLENGE Magazine No. 27 will also be useful. Of course, that was in 1987, and much, if not all, of the rules or background necessary have been updated since. The campaign is also specifically written for use with four pre-generated Player Characters. They consist of Akidda Laagiir, the journalist who won the Travellers’ Digest Touring Award; Dur Telemon, a scout and his nephew; Doctor Theodor Krenstein, a gifted-scientist and roboticist; and Doctor Krenstein’s valet, ‘Aybee’, or rather, ‘AB-101’. The fact is, AB-101 is a pseudo-biological robot, both protégé and prototype. Consequently, the mix of Player Characters are surprisingly non-traditional and not all of them are easily created using the means offered in Traveller or MegaTraveller. This is addressed within various issues of the fanzine.

The Travellers’ Digest Number 10 was published in 1987. One major change announced in the editorial is the magazine will no longer print the Universal Task Profile. In past issues, this has explained the mechanical format used in The Travellers’ Digest, but with the publication of and its application in MegaTraveller, it seems redundant. This gives the magazine two extra pages to play with! In previous issue, The Travellers’ Digest Number 9, and ninth part of ‘The Grand Tour’ brought the Travellers to Capital, the heart of the Third Imperium, and the Emperor’s court at ‘Before the Iridium Throne’. When ‘Reference Point’, the tenth part by Gary L. Thomas, opens, the Travellers found themselves with a problem. To get to Capital, the four Travellers were granted Imperial space-required travel vouchers. However, the Emperor’s largesse does not run in the opposite direction. Thus, they find themselves on Capital, the core of the Third Imperium, with nowhere to go and now way of paying for it! Fortunately, three of the four have transferable skills aboard ship and the other is a member of the Traveller’s Aid Society and so can begin make their way. They decide to see more of the Third Imperium and head Rimward towards Sol in the Solomani Sphere.

This is fun set-up, shifting the adventurers of the Travellers into something that is more peripatetic and more like a classic Traveller campaign. In ‘Reference Point’, the Travellers find themselves husbanding a difficult species from one zoo to another, pulling a few strings based on their various reputations, and so on, until they receive a message from Eneri Balan, who had been the protocol assigned to them on Capital. He has a task for them that he can pass on from the Moot, the primary deliberative assembly of the Third Imperium, composed of all nobles holding the rank of Baron or higher. The Baron of Wolton holds his patent on Kigaru in the Ilelish subsector, but it was destroyed along with other records in a fire. Fortunately, copies of all such records are held in the computers on the Scout Base underground on the world of Reference. Here, the records of the Third Imperium go all the way back to the First Imperial Grand Survey and the Second Imperial Grand Survey. Unfortunately, when copies of the records about Kigaru were returned, there was no mention of his barony and it was in fact, public property. This effectively strips him of his title, so he sought help from the Moot. The Travellers are to travel to Reference and investigate this discrepancy, as two of their number are computer specialists. Besides investigating this problem, the Travellers’ arrival on Reference will trigger another couple of plots, which though small, are quite interesting. The Referee will develop some of the NPCs and scenes in the mini-adventures that the Travellers will encounter and so bring them to life, ‘Reference Point’ serves up a thoroughly enjoyable slice of life with small stories that push the Travellers onwards on ‘The Grand Tour’.

‘Reference Point’ is followed by a second adventure, ‘Plague of Perruques’. This is by Gary L. Thomas and Marc W. Miller and is set in the Regina Subsector following the end of the Fifth Frontier War. The party, led by Baron Ganidiirsi hault-Reitan, are touring his holdings, surveying them for damage, when he has arranged a hunting trip for the Rebacked Slonth on Uakye in Regina Subsector. The scenario is divided into two parts. In the first half, the Player Characters go hunting, but in the second, they return to the capital to discover that a strange and unfortunately deadly plague has broken out. Its symptoms include grey fibres appearing at the roots of suffers’ hair and covering the skull in a few days, followed by a film growing over the eyes, leading to blindness and fever. It kills half of its sufferers. This is an investigative scenario in which the Player Characters need to travel to various locations, sifting rumour from fact. It is challenging and needs some set-up by the Referee to ensure that the players have some pointers to get started, but this is a solid scenario, and like ‘Reference Point’ before it, has its world data presented in same format as for The Grand Survey. Task details are provided for the hunting half of the scenario, and whilst the scenario was originally written as a tournament scenario, it does not come with any pre-generated Player Characters.

The ‘Library Data of the Core Sector’ is surprisingly extensive, paying particular attention to Cadlion and Chant Subsectors which are also detailed, compete with maps. There is a lot of detail here, and some of the entries are marked with Referee suggestions for their use. The ‘Playing the Characters’ series comes to close with an examination of Akidda Laagiir, the journalist whose Travellers’ Digest Touring Award at the start of ‘The Grand Tour’ sets the campaign off. This is useful, more so if the Referee is starting the campaign from the start. The ‘Traveller Q & A’ provides answers to the readers’ questions. These include a very detailed explanation of what MegaTraveller and Traveller: 2300 are and what the differences are between (and the original Traveller); why nobles are actually banned from taking anagathic treatments (useful in conjunction with the later article in the magazine); the stats for the Princes Lucan and Varian, and Margaret, Grand Duchess of Delphi; and much more. Some of the information here is quite technical, entirely in keeping with Traveller as a roleplaying game.

This is followed by a series of departments, old and new. For the ‘Tech Briefs’ department, any player of Akidda Laagiir will be pleased to see that the device detailed is ‘Holorecorders’. This is a recording and playback device as well as an editing suite using holocrystals. It is a highly detailed description and also suggests other applications too, such as holographic recording robots for hazardous environments, medical imaging, police crime scene recording, and more. The next department is ‘The Gaming Digest—Referee’s Tips—Part 1’ for which Gary L. Thomas explores ‘More Effective Roleplaying’. He observes that the quality of roleplaying varies wildly, especially in Traveller, but points out that actually roleplaying is a skill and can be made better with practice. This is a surprisingly deep examination of roleplaying, exploring the differences between character and player, the limitations of player knowledge in what they know and do not know, tailoring content to players’ interests, and more. The article is aimed at both the player and the Referee and is actually informative and useful, possibly more so when the issue of the magazine was published.

‘Anagathics, the Drug of the Ages’ by Joe D. Fugate Sr. examines the development of the anti-ageing drugs and how they are obtained, what their possible side effects are, and more. Anti-ageing treatment becomes available at Tech Level 12 and rules are provided for this, and then again at subsequent Tech Levels up to 15. There are fewer side-effects as the science advances, but the article also examines what happens if a Player Character takes a break between treatments or runs out and suffers withdrawal symptoms. However, the article is more technical than social, so the social consequences are not explored, which is a pity. Otherwise, this comprehensive guide and useful should players have their character seek out anagathics. ‘Statistics From the Second Imperial Grand Survey’ brings the support for Traveller in the issue to a close. It consists mostly of numbers so is not that interesting.

The last few pages of The Travellers’ Digest Number 10 are devoted to Traveller: 2300. First, William Connors describes ‘Pentapod Constructs for 2300’, a number of biological devices available on the open market from the alien species. They include a ‘Breather’, a lifeform that when worn enables the user to breathe freely underwater (the lifeform does look like a Facehugger though…); the ‘Hibernation Inducer’, a black blob that when placed on the back of an injured person induces unconsciousness and a greatly lowered metabolism to enable the person to be transported to medical safety; and ‘Atmospheric Filter Symbiots’, tiny creatures that can be injected into the lungs to filter out trace elements that would normally harm the host. The ‘Briefcase Library for 2300’ by Robert Parker describes a briefcase-sized device that uses optical storage drives to store vast amounts of information suitable for personal use and transportation to the frontier. Of course, it looks vastly outdated by modern standards, being the equivalent of the modern laptop. Nancy Parker gives a very detailed breakdown of the ‘Medical Kit for 2300’, detailing what medical kit contains and must be carried by vehicles with a passenger capacity of thirty or more and also by emergency workers. Lastly, Robert Parker also describes ‘The Life Foundation “Squid” for 2300’, a relatively cheap and easily customisable submersible for frontier use. Unfortunately, there are no technical details or deck plans, but otherwise, this is a nice description.

Physically, The Travellers’ Digest Number 10 continues the physical improvement begun in the previous issue. The artwork is improved too and overall, this is a much more professional looking issue.

After the tumultuous events explored in The Travellers’ Digest Number 9 with the assassination of Emperor Strephon, The Travellers’ Digest Number 10 settles down and concerns itself with providing solidly gameable support for both MegaTraveller and Traveller: 2300. The scenarios in the issue are good, ‘Reference Point’, the tenth part of ‘The Grand Tour’ is really quite enjoyable. The Travellers’ Digest Number 10 is simply a good issue with good support for both roleplaying games from Game Designers’ Workshop.

Monday, 4 May 2026

[Fanzine Focus XLII] The Travellers’ Digest Number 9

To best run ‘The Grand Tour’, the Referee will need access to The Atlas of the Imperium, Supplement 8: Library Data (A-M), Supplement 11: Library Data (N-Z), Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats (or alternatively, Supplement 5: Azhanti High Lightning), as well as the core rules. In addition, other supplements would be required depending on the adventure, in the case of this issue, The Travellers’ Digest Number 9, that would only be Book 8, Robots. Of course, that was in 1987, and much, if not all, of the rules or background necessary have been updated since. The campaign is also specifically written for use with four pre-generated Player Characters. They consist of Akidda Laagiir, the journalist who won the Travellers’ Digest Touring Award; Dur Telemon, a scout and his nephew; Doctor Theodor Krenstein, a gifted-scientist and roboticist; and Doctor Krenstein’s valet, ‘Aybee’, or rather, ‘AB-101’. The fact is, AB-101 is a pseudo-biological robot, both protégé and prototype. Consequently, the mix of Player Characters are surprisingly non-traditional and not all of them are easily created using the means offered in Traveller or MegaTraveller. This is addressed within various issues of the fanzine.

The Travellers’ Digest Number 9 was published in 1987 and is a very special issue, published at a momentous point in the history of Traveller and a momentous point in the history of the setting of Traveller. It is special because it marked the move to a larger format, both in terms of size and page. It is special because it was the first to have a full colour cover, for this issue depicting a member of the Emperor’s Guard, standing under the Imperial Palace in sight of the Moot Spire, the seat of power for the Third Imperium’s nobility. It was the first to cover content for Game Designers’ Workshop’s other Science Fiction roleplaying game, Traveller: 2300, hence the issue also carrying the tagline, “The quarterly adventure magazine devoted to GDW’s science fiction role playing game”. It was special because it brought the fanzine’s ongoing campaign, ‘The Grand Tour’, to Core, the capital of the Third Imperium. Which was highly pertinent because The Travellers’ Digest Number 9 was published for the tenth anniversary of Traveller, an event marked by that momentous point in the history of Traveller and a momentous point in the history of the setting of Traveller. The former was the publication of MegaTraveller, effectively the second edition of the roleplaying game which the team at Digest Publications had been developing. The latter was the assassination of Emperor Strephon and its calamitous consequences.

However, the momentous occurrences at the heart of The Travellers’ Digest Number 9 would have consequences upon the fanzine—arguably now a magazine—itself. The publication date for the issue is 144-1116, the 144th day of the 1116th year of the Imperium, but the events of the issue take place in 1104. This is because the journalist, Akidda Laagiir, is actually publishing the stories anew over a decade after they happened, long after his Grand Tour is over and with the benefit of hindsight. That year, 1116, is also the year when Emperor Strephon is assassinated. In fact, all of the key figures involved in that assassination appear in the issue’s feature adventure, ‘Before the Iridium Throne’. Which will be odd for any Traveller fan playing through the scenario, knowing what will happen in twelve years’ time and knowing that their characters can do nothing about it.

Since The Travellers’ Digest is now “The quarterly adventure magazine devoted to GDW’s science fiction role playing game”, the other major consequence is that there will be a dichotomy in its support for Traveller. This is that the magazine will continue to tell the story of ‘The Grand Tour’, taking place from 1101 onwards, whilst also providing content that supports the official timeline from 1116 and the assassination of Emperor Strephon. Which also means a dichotomy between the support for Traveller and MegaTraveller—although the magazine’s development and continued use of the ‘UTP’ or ‘Universal Task Profile’ offsets that. Of course, this is in addition to the dichotomy between the content for Traveller and Traveller: 2300!

After introducing the quartet of Player Characters for the ‘Grand Tour’, ‘Before the Iridium Throne’ sets up them with a deep concern as detailed in a lengthy bit of fiction, ‘Knight Falls on Capital’. This is the fact that ‘Aybee’, or rather, ‘AB-101’ is a robot and therefore not human, and technically should not have been knighted and inducted into the Order of the Emperor’s Guard. Akidda Laagiir, Dur Telemon, and Doctor Theodor Krenstein are guilty of deception at the very least. ‘Knight Falls on Capital’ is meant to be read out by the Referee, which is a lot of exposition to expose. The scenario is short, representing a chance for the Player Characters to explore Capital and the parts of the Imperial Palace complex as well as actually attend the audience with the Emperor himself. However, there really is not a lot for the Player Characters to do and not a lot of actual adventure. So, it can be completed in a single session. If the Referee wants more, the scenario suggests that Emperor Strephon actually asks the Player Characters to arrange a sixteenth birthday part for his daughter, Princess Cencia Iphegenia. Which is an interesting social challenge, but one that the Referee will have to develop herself—and there is not a lot of advice to that end.

The dichotomy in The Travellers’ Digest Number 9 comes to the fore with the second scenario in the issue. This is ‘Lion At Bay – A MegaTraveller Scenario’ by Gary L. Thomas. Being written for use with MegaTraveller, it is set in 1116. However, it is set on Capital and it is set against the backdrop of the assassination of Emperor Strephon. The Player Characters are the crew of the trade vessel, Eiriakh, an Aslan Khtukhao class transport which has ferried an Aslan trade mission from the Yerlyaruiwo clan to Capital. The trade mission is interrupted by the events in Imperial Palace, for which initially, the Aslan are blamed. As the events are reported on the news channels—again leading to a lot of exposition—the Aslan crew, currently tourists, quickly become subject to anti-Aslan sentiment and realise that they have to get off-world. Complicating this is the need to get one of their colleagues out of gaol. Beyond that, although challenging, there is not a great deal for the Player Characters to do, expect be aghast at the news coming out of the Imperial Palace. Given this limitation, the scenario is actually a better read for its historical detail than it is for giving the Player Characters much to do.

To further support the setting of Capital and the Imperial Palace, The Travellers’ Digest Number 9 presents four more articles. ‘Crack Troops: The Imperial Guard’ by Terry McInnes details the history, guard life, dispositions, and organisation of all eleven regiments that protect the emperor and his family as well as serving elsewhere. It suggests the possibility that a Player Character might have served in the Imperial Guard. ‘The Imperial Palace’ by Rob Caswell and William W. Connors describes the Grand Palace of the Third Imperium in the city of Cleon on Capital, including the previous palaces, facilities, and history. This is accompanied by the description of the spire that is ‘The Moot’ by Gary L. Thomas, as well as a good map of ‘The Imperial Palace Grounds on Capital’. Pertinent now to the Player Characters of ‘The Grand Tour’ is Bob Swarm’s ‘Noblesse Oblige: The Imperial Nobility’, which examines the role and place of the noble class in the Third Imperium. It draws a clear distinction between the orders of knighthood, honour nobles (knights, baronets, barons, and maquis), rank nobility, and high nobility, and the broad responsibilities of each. It gives guidelines too on creating nobles as Player Characters and NPCs, and a more granular means of determining status within the nobility. This is very well done article that gives a guide to one of the archetypal NPCs (and potentially Player Characters) in Traveller.

There was element of humour in ‘Knight Falls on Capital’, the ‘Grand Tour’ scenario in the issue in its depiction of Emperor Strephon. This humanised him, as does the subsequent ‘An Interview with the Emperor’, conducted and written in game by the journalist, Akidda Laagiir. Again, it also touches upon what is regarded—in game and out—as ‘Strephon’s worst decision’, the appointment of Dulinor Ilethian as Archduke of Ilelish. He defends the action, of course, but as we know, the Emperor’s critics were proven to be right. Nevertheless, an interesting read that gives his view of the Imperium.

‘The Core Sector: XBoat Routes’ is a simple blocky map, and it is followed by Dale L. Kemper’s ‘Library Data of the Core Sector’. Given its history and prominence in Third Imperium and Charted Space, it should be no surprise that entries do detail a larger number of the great and the good, battles, wars, and the like than is the norm. There is a particular focus on the founding of the insular Interstellar Confederacy (a major opponent to the rise of the Sylean Federation) and the Civil War of the Interstellar Confederacy (both hundreds of years before the foundation of the Third Imperium). It is accompanied by maps of the ‘Bunkeria Subsector’ and Cemplas Subsector’ in Core sector, where the Interstellar Confederacy was established.

‘The Gaming Digest: Let’s Get Physical’ by Gary L. Thomas and Bill Paley examines the definitions, uses, and limitations of the Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance attributes in Traveller. This is a follow up to the earlier examinations in previous issues of the fanzine, providing basic skill rolls, using the UTP—or ‘Universal Task Profile’—for all three.

The issue is rounded out with two last articles. One is ‘Traveller Q&A’ in which both Joe D. Fugate Sr. and Marc Miller answer questions about Traveller. Such as what does the Imperial flag look like and what is the colour is the flag of Third Imperium? The answer being that it is the symbol and shape of a star—originally Capital’s G3 star of yellow on a black background—that matters, not the colour. The other questions cover assigning task difficulties in scenarios and differences between the distribution of high-tech, high starport-rated worlds in the Sol subsector versus the Vland subsector. The answer to the latter is interesting again from an in-game points of view and an out of game one too, examining how worlds are distributed across sector and subsector maps. The other is ‘Civilian Vehicles for Traveller: 2300’ by Rob Caswell. This describes the Saab-Sikorsky ‘Condor VX’ VTOL, which is found on Earth and across the colonies, and the Renault ‘Pioner’ HUV, which is an ATV found on many frontier worlds, but especially those of the French Arm. This is the only support for Traveller: 2300 in the issue.

Physically, The Travellers’ Digest Number 9 feels cleaner and tidier than previous issues. Some of the artwork is also much better and overall, this is a much more professional looking issue.

There is another dichotomy to The Travellers’ Digest Number 9. On the one hand, as a gaming fanzine, there is little to actually game with in the issue. The two scenarios are both short and very specific in their content. On the other, background content is excellent, expanding the world of Traveller and the Third Imperium with intriguing details, from a very high level, but also showing how little that the average Player Character or ‘Traveller’ can do to change things. The Travellers’ Digest Number 9 gives a fascinating prelude of things to come, is a fantastic read about the state of the Imperium years before any of those things come to pass, and will be enjoyed by the Traveller fan for its background rather than its playable content. If The Travellers’ Digest has always been an interesting read, with The Travellers’ Digest Number 9, it becomes a genuine historical artefact as much as it is slice of history.

Monday, 6 April 2026

[Fanzine Focus XLI] The Travellers’ Digest #8

To best run ‘The Grand Tour’, the Referee will need access to The Atlas of the Imperium, Supplement 8: Library Data (A-M), Supplement 11: Library Data (N-Z), Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats (or alternatively, Supplement 5: Azhanti High Lightning), as well as the core rules. In addition, other supplements would be required depending on the adventure, in the case of this issue, The Travellers’ Digest #8, that would be Alien Module 2, K’kree (though it is actually listed as ‘Alien Module 3, K’kree’ in the introduction) and Alien Module 7, Hivers. In addition, Book 8, Robots will be very useful. Of course, that was in 1987, and much, if not all, of the rules or background necessary have been updated since. The campaign is also specifically written for use with four pre-generated Player Characters. They consist of Akidda Laagiir, the journalist who won the Travellers’ Digest Touring Award; Dur Telemon, a scout and his nephew; Doctor Theodor Krenstein, a gifted-scientist and roboticist; and Doctor Krenstein’s valet, ‘Aybee’, or rather, ‘AB-101’. The fact is, AB-101 is a pseudo-biological robot, both protégé and prototype. Consequently, the mix of Player Characters are surprisingly non-traditional and not all of them are easily created using the means offered in Traveller or MegaTraveller. This is addressed within various issues of the fanzine.

The Travellers’ Digest #8 was published in 1987 and is the last to be published in digest format. From the ninth issue it would be larger and have an increased page count, but these were not the only planned changes announced in The Travellers’ Digest #8. They included coverage of Game Designers Workshop’s other Science Fiction roleplaying of the Traveller: 2300. The editorial also highlighted the strengthening relationship between Marc Miller, the creator of Traveller, and Digest Group Publications, and announced the then forthcoming publication of Grand Census, a companion to Grand Survey.

The eighth part of ‘The Grand Tour’ in The Travellers’ Digest #8 is ‘Feature Adventure 8: Shoot-Out at Shudusham’, written by Gary L Thomas and Joe D. Fugate Sr. The publishing date for the adventure is 060-1113, or the sixtieth day of the year 1113, whilst the starting date for the campaign as a whole is 014-1103, or the fourteenth day of the year 1103. The adventure takes place in the Shudusham system of the Core subsector of the Core Sector. The four travellers are just four weeks’ travel away from Capital where they are due to knighted by Emperor Stephon himself! Shudusham is a water world best known for the location where the Shudusham Concords were signed by the Sylean Federation, a century before the founding of the Third Imperium, which governed the types of weaponry which could be mounted on robots. For the past seven hundred years, it has been the venue for the Shudusham Robotics Conference, a year-long event which takes place every ten years and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors and delegates from across explored space. The Shudusham has even built an underwater arcology specifically designed to host the event. OF course, given the nature of the event, both Doctor Theodor Krenstein and ‘Aybee’ are interested to attend.

Of course, nobody expects anything to happen at the Shudusham Robotics Conference, but when a K’kree delegate is accused by the staff of the Hiver Six Eyes booth, relations between the K’kree and the Hiver sour. The travellers get to witness this, but things get stranger when Akidda Laagiir, the journalist, is inadvertently passed a note about a planned theft of a robot. The players and their travellers may think that the intended target is ‘Aybee’, but it turns out that the target is the ‘Baby Bruiser Robot’ model warbot being demonstrated by the Hiver Six Eyes booth. Are the K’kree taking their revenge by stealing the Hiver’s robot? Well, yes, and no. The K’kree are not the only ones interested in stealing the ‘Baby Bruiser Robot’; there is also a local protest group which has decided to take direct action. It will take a bit of work to get all of the travellers involved –and the scenario makes this clear—and to the climax of the scenario. The scenario is quite short, likely taking no more than a couple of sessions to complete, because ultimately, there is not a huge amount of plot to get the travellers involved in. Indeed, almost half of the plot to the scenario takes off-screen and the travellers are likely to be completely unaware of it. Which is exactly how the Hivers like it…

The scenario is decently supported. This includes details of both Shudusham and the Shudusham Robotics Conference as well as full stats and details for the ‘Baby Bruiser Robot’ (it is a tough opponent as you would expect for a warbot), the various NPCs (including both Hiver and K’kree), and the Hiver Explorer starship and the K’kree Xeekr’kir! merchant vessel. There is not a map of the Shudusham Robotics Conference given, but there is a cutaway of the arcology where it is held.

As with previous issues of the fanzine, The Travellers’ Digest #8 details the Subsector where the scenario takes place. This time it is the Core Subsector of the Core Sector, including both a map and its data listing, which notably includes Capital, the capital of the Third Imperium. The corollary to this is ‘Core Sector: Library Data’, which provided expanded information for the whole sector. It highlights how the world of Ameros in the Ameros subsector is being used by the megacorporation Hortalez et Cie, LIC to test a fast, century long terraforming project, which is not going as fast as projected, whilst at the Imperial Navy base on Sabsee in the Apge subsector, an advanced fusion/plasma hybrid, dubbed the FGMP-16, has been unveiled. It is full of fascinating details covering an area which is not generally visited as part of Traveller campaigns.

Gary L. Thomas continues the exploration of the characteristics that are part of Traveller’s UPP, or ‘Universal Personality Profile’. In ‘Brains, Not Brawn’, it is the turn of Intelligence to be examined in Traveller. It explores how exactly to view Intelligence in the context of the rules for Traveller and actually takes the Education characteristic into account, looks at how to handle the gap between the players’ own mental acumen versus that of their characters. In this, the Game Master will need to account for what a character knows versus what his player knows, such as Doctor Theodor Krenstein’s skill of Robotics-5 versus what his prospective player will know. Ultimately, the article differentiates between Intelligence as brains, common sense, and quick-wittedness and Education as accumulated knowledge and training, and presents basic skill rolls, using the UTP—or ‘Universal Task Profile’—for both. The article may well be obvious in its conclusion, but it is interesting to see what how parts of the UPP were considered at the time.

The Travellers’ Digest #8 comes to close with a pair of technical articles. The first of these examines the transmission of information in much of Charted Space. ‘Hand Computers’ (actually wrist-mounted) by Gary L. Thomas looks at how the hand computer is used in the Third Imperium and beyond, how information is updated on it, and so on. This is a ‘future tech of the past’ type article looking at how an advanced technological device works in the then very far future, when today, we have very similar devices widely available. The technical specifications are given and how the information is accessed is explored, primarily through a subscription service, which is updated when new starships, typically the Scout Service’s X-Boats, arrive and transmit new data packets to local servers. Of course, there are limitations too, including how a user might search available databases and that does not take into account network problems. The ramifications feel very familiar to today, such as checking a fact to settle an argument or getting the latest weather details, but at the time, this would have been quite literally Science Fiction.

The second and last is ‘Beyond 101 Robots’. In what feels like a very robot-focused issue, The Travellers’ Digest #8 expands upon the supplement 101 Robots with more examples. Five designs are given from the Naasirka corporation. They include a ‘Ship’s Boat Pilot Robot’, a ‘Clerk Robot’, a ‘Servant Robot’, and so on. All decent designs and would fill certain niches in a campaign if so needed.

Physically, The Travellers’ Digest #8 is, as with all of the issues so far, very obviously created using early layout software. However, there is a marked improvement in the quality of the artwork, even so.

The Travellers’ Digest #8 is an enjoyably readable issue. The scenario is perhaps a little too short, but the supporting material is excellent and the ‘Hand Computers’ article is delightfully prescient and archaic at the same time. Overall, a solidly put together issue.