Review of Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters
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Tramp Freighters is a soft cover book, it has a picture of the Millennium Falcon on the front and a diagram on the back. Inside it’s all black and white with some line drawings, all in the same style by apparently the same artist. The paper is non-glossy, and from the feel I would guess it to be 24#. The binding is a bit weak, my copy was second hand, but it’s starting to come apart, and if I get to run a campaign with it, I do expect it to fully fall apart. The writing style is excellent, as is the pacing and structure of the book. A lot of RPG books I find very tiring to read, and I usually can’t be bothered to read them all the way through. Tramp Freighters was interesting enough for me to read cover to cover despite being a bit tired. It uses good descriptive prose in plain English. Anyone who agrees with George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language would approve. The pacing is great as all the chapters are roughly the same length, and provide a good amount of information in each, but not so much detail as to bog you down.
There isn’t anything I can fault it for in terms of presentation (beyond the aforementioned binding issues, but that’s not really a matter of style) and it is very well written, with a lot going for it – I give it a 5 for style. On to substance; since the book is so well structured in a chapter by chapter fashion, I’ll be giving a run-down of the contents of the eleven chapters (and two appendices, which aren’t named as such) with some commentary.
The first section covers the rules, and includes chapters 1-8.
Chapter 1: How to Begin is probably the most boring chapter, but it is pretty important, and once it’s absorbed the rest becomes interesting. It outlines the basic ideas of the type of campaign Tramp Freighters is. Useful things it covers is whether you want to use existing characters from the Star Wars universe (and the need to have them cut off from Rebellion support, and ways to go about doing this) or using new characters. It introduces several topics that are addressed in more detail in later chapters.
Chapter 2: Player Introduction is one page long. It covers what it is like to be a tramp freighter captain or crewmember. Not much else to say about this.
Chapter 3: Tramp Freighters and the Rebellion is pretty interesting as it explains how tramp freighters integrate into rebellion plans (and naturally how the Empire reacts to this). Since WEG Star Wars assumes the players will be heroes (as opposed to the KOTOR games), and heroes support the Rebellion in the end, this is an important chapter – it provides the framework of how the characters will get involved with the Rebellion.
Chapter 4: Speculative Trading is about what every tramp freighter captain and crew is interested in – making money by buying and selling goods. What I liked was the fact that it covers trade with multiple technology levels, everything from stone-age to space age. It doesn’t go into details of bronze or iron-age, but that really isn’t necessary. For each tech level it covers risks as well as likely profits. It’s a very neat inclusion that I didn’t expect – I suppose watching mostly Star Trek TNG it hadn’t occurred to me that trade would happen with pre-space flight civilisations. What this naturally does is opens the game wide open to some jaunts into fantasy or modern day adventures, which rather model a number of Star Trek TOS episodes. Given most RPG groups, I think it would be quite feasible to take a couple weeks of normal trading, sci-fi and have some short fantasy adventures. The chapter also covers costs of goods, types of goods, finding a seller and negotiating prices.
Chapter 5: Drop Point Delivery should be familiar to anyone who has played computer games like Escape Velocity or Wing Commander: Privateer - rather than buying and selling goods, taking on the risk of profit and loss yourself, you’re just paid a flat fee for transporting goods or people from one place to another. It suggests that regular missions would offer slightly lower pay than one time gigs, but would also provide reliable income. It makes sense, and provides characters with a solid source of income when things are down, but also an incentive to do other missions that earn more money.
Chapter 6: The Black Market covers exactly what you’d expect it to cover. The book repeatedly rubs in the fact that the black market offers juicy adventure hooks. I guess it’s good to make sure everyone gets it, but it’s a pretty standard genre trope, so that’s something that goes without saying. It provides a couple of adventure hooks, with multiple outcomes, although a couple of them are a bit railroady in nature – to the extent that once the hook is placed an adventure of some sort will be forced upon the characters, although what type of adventure it turns out to be is up to the characters. I suppose that’s less of a railroad and more of a railroad switchyard.
Chapter 7: Loan Sharks - ahh loan sharks! It wouldn’t be a Star Wars book on tramp freighters if there wasn’t mention of loan sharks. Han Solo didn’t owe money to Jabba on account of a loan, but the end result is really the same. It’s a trope, and a particularly good one too. The book doesn’t mention the juicy role playing and adventure opportunities that come from this, but they’re pretty obvious to see. It makes loan sharks a mandatory part of the game – you can’t afford to buy a freighter unless you borrow money from a loan shark. I wonder if they got this idea from Traveller or if it’s just something that’s obvious. The mechanics for loan sharks are pretty well laid out, although naturally given there’s no regulated economy with them, you can do whatever you like.
Chapter 8: Ship Modification and Repairs is what you’d expect, with some sample ships folded in. It’s quite comprehensive, covering repair costs, trade in and salvage costs, and variable recharging costs – something I likely wouldn’t have thought up myself. The sample freighters could easily be used for NPCs, and just as easily one of them could be the freighter the PCs use. It includes pretty much everything I expected from playing computer games in this vein, although the nature of the campaign restricts you to light freighters, as opposed to being able to upgrade to heavy freighters or combat ships. This is necessary for some railroading later on, but not of the severely obnoxious variety.
The next section details the Minos Campaign, which is the default starting point for Tramp Freighters. Initially I balked at having some sort of restriction (and naturally it can be thrown out if you like), but it is actually quite good.
Chapter 9: The Minos Cluster explains the setting. The Minos Cluster is a backwater section of the Galaxy, where the Empire doesn’t have a huge degree of control, and some of the laws are a bit different. It has about 70 inhabitable worlds, 10 of which are described in the next chapter. Pertinent information, which would rather fit within the rules section includes types of infractions, and likelihood of being able to bribe officers for the infractions. Several of the infractions result in jail sentences of up to 30 years. Not much help is given for what to do if you are sentenced to jail – I guess that’s where you get some sandbox action. Deal with it as you’d like.
Chapter 10: Planets of the Minos Cluster gives an overview of 10 planets in the cluster, with interesting story hooks for each one. They’re quite varied and relate well to the individual planets. The planets are Adarlon (which even mentions connection to Alderan, which I guess is some lampshade to the poorly ripped off name), an exporter of holo vids. It has theme parks that are essentially giant LARP sessions. That will probably be interesting, a PnP RPG where you role play characters who get involved in live action role play. Karideph is a planet of insectoid hive minds (called Kari), kept in the information age because the Empire doesn’t want them spreading out and taking over the galaxy due to their rapid breeding and increased mental capacity in large numbers. Mestra is an asteroid system of rich tacky hillbillies and poor miners trying to get rich. Yelsain is a lush forest planet, covered by giant trees with dangerous beasts on the ground level (hmm, remind anyone of anything). It’s colonised by hippies from Adarlon who avoid metal and borderline worship wood. Pergitor is a toxic planet where everyone has to wear gas masks governed by a ridiculously rigid theocracy. Gesaril is a system with two components, a prison asteroid guarded by a Star Destroyer and a planet that’s deemed off limits by the Empire. Travnin is the capital planet of sorts of the Minos Cluster. It’s where the Imperial HQ is for the area. Quockra-4 is a planet inhabited entirely by droids. Eliad is a planet of nobles from the republic who agreed to go into exile to avoid being killed when the Empire took over. Shesharile 5 & 6 are moons orbiting a gas giant, ruled by organised crime.
Chapter 11: A Minos Campaign has some brief advice on random encounters (although no random encounter tables). It then jumps straight into a 5 part meta-plot. I won’t go into detail to avoid spoilers, but I will mention that Princess Leia makes an appearance in one of the adventure outlines. I find this a bit problematic, although I’m sure some people might go “squee!” over it. Fortunately it’s easy enough to take out. What I like about it is the whole plot outline mixes the genre tropes of space trading in with archetypal Star Wars original trilogy plot lines. It makes things quite clear that you’re playing a tramp freighters game, and that you’re playing a Star Wars game.
“Appendix 1” is Characters of the Minos Cluster (incorrectly listed as Character Templates in the TOC) which has a mix of Imperials, Rebels, Tramp Freighter Captains, Criminals, and a Bounty Hunter for good measure. “Appendix 2” is Charts and Templates - charts is right, templates isn’t – there’s only one template, that of a tramp freighter captain. The charts are all referenced in earlier chapters, and rather than being included in the chapter and duplicated in the end, as was popular in AD&D products, they’re all just kept in one place. This is handy enough, although it could lead to some extra flipping.
Index? There is none. I’m rather floored not to be seeing one at all, it’s something I rather expected. I’ve come to expect no index in modern RPG products, but this is from 1990, and I had this (obviously incorrect) idea that there were higher production values back then. The production values are overall still quite good, but this is a bit of a mark against it.
Overall my thoughts on the contents were covered in the sections I was talking about. There was one thing though that cropped up several times that confused me. At times it seemed like the campaign was set right after the Empire took power, by maybe a decade. At other times it seemed to be happening alongside the original trilogy. Ultimately it’s supposed to be flexible, and in the end it is, but I would have liked not having any mention of time periods, just so things aren’t so tightly tied to the plot of the movies. It’s easy enough to strip these things out though, but still a small mark against it.
I really liked Tramp Freighters it has good meat given the page count, definitely seems like it would be fun to run a campaign with and gave me plenty of ideas. Normally I’d go for a 5 in substance with this, but it also wasn’t terribly detailed – there could have been some more material on the freighters, particularly in constructing ships, and as I mentioned there are a couple small marks against it, which bring it down to a substance of 4.
If you find it, and the price isn’t outrageous (I got my copy for free, although not in any way a comp copy) I definitely recommend picking it up.
