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This review is one in a series which will look at some of the many Spinward Marches setting books which have been published over the years and which describe the area. It'll offer advice as to which ones were the best and which will work the best with Mongoose's current, fifth-edition, Traveller gaming system.

In this review, I'll be looking at the third and final Classic Traveller book that detailed an individual part of the Marches.

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This thirteenth review discusses Traveller Alien Module 8: Darrians. Though it was officially categorized as one of Classic Traveller's alien books, it was very different in scope from the rest of the series, covering a minor race who inhabited just a single subsector--the Darrian Subsector of the Spinward Marches, to be precise.

An Overview of the Book

Darrians is an ill-organized book, and that's not helped by the fact that there's no table of contents to let you easily find things. However, if you dig through Darrians carefully, you'll see that it contains: background on the Darrians; character generation rules; and adventures.

The background takes up approximately half of the book. It starts out with an introduction then details: history; physiology; technology; society; government; and language.

These sections all do a great job of describing the Darrians as a people. I like the history most, which is also happily the longest section. Therein we see details of the ancient Darrians' relationship with the ancients, their meeting with the Solomani, their rise, their fall, and their attempts to claw back up afterward. There are certainly a number of details in the history that a GM could hang many adventures upon. The other sections are shorter, but each one does a good job of including precise details that will be helpful to bring the people of the Darrian subsector to life. The language section--laid out in the Classic Traveller standard way--includes a page of charts that you can use to generate Darrian words. I always find these charts useful, and whenever I make up words for other games, I find myself doing the same thing but in a less structured way: figuring out the most common sounds and using them predominantly.

A final section of "Library Data" is more about the geography of the Darrians than their culture. It offers a paragraph on each of the 21 worlds in the Darrian Confederation and is really what locks this book in as a "cluster" book rather than just an alien race overview. If I were running adventures in the Darrian Confederation, I'd want to have something like this as a starting place. The general Data is supplemented by a two-page spread which includes UWPs on the Darrian worlds and full system info on Darrian itself.

The character generation rules provide six basic careers and advanced naval careers for Classic Traveller Darrians. These sections help to highlight what's unique about the Darrians by offering academic careers and the "Special Arm"--a branch of the Darrian navy whose job it is to shepherd the Darrians' armageddon weapon, the Star Trigger. I especially like the advanced Naval rules, which correctly integrate the Special Arm into the Navy as a whole.

(Of course whether these rules are of interest to you or not depends on whether you're playing Classic Traveller. I assume you're not, which will make this section largely valueless except as a basis for new Mongoose Traveller careers ... but as a part of the book in its time, the sections are good.)

The adventures section has two parts. The vast majority is taken up by a single extended adventure called "The Secret of the Star Trigger".

I really wanted to love "Secret". It's an important adventure that delves into the history of the Darrians and touches upon an important secret--something that Classic Traveller always did a great job of not only setting up, but also resolving.

Unfortunately, the organization of the adventure is just a wreck. I can't even believe it was published in this form. It starts off with little more than outlines of the four major elements of the adventure, wherein players start tracking down records concerning the Maghiz event, which caused Darrian's sun to flare and is the basis of the Star Trigger.

Those brief synopses are then followed by more detailed information on different locations which, as far as I can tell, are in a totally random order. If my players ever do get out to the Darrian subsector, I want to run this adventure, but doing so will require unravelling this supposedly professional publication like a puzzle. I just can't even imagine how this organization made sense to anyone.

The adventure itself is also a lot more skeletal than I'd like, but that has more to do with the time and Classic Traveller's style than anything.

Following "Secret" is a short section called "The Structure of Adventures". It has some broad ideas on how to design adventures which I think have held up quite well, using "Secret" as an example. It not really of any use of you're looking for Darrian material, but it's still worth reading.

For the moment I'm going to ignore the generally poor organization of the book--and the atrocious organization of the adventure--and instead just concentrate on the content of the book. The background material, character generation, and adventure are all strong in that regard, and so I give it a "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Applicability to Mongoose Traveller

Darrians is full of good material on the Darrians and their subsector that should be useful to any Mongoose Traveller GM who is planning to run in that area of the Marches. There are only two elements where the data in the book will be slightly off.

Clearly, the Classic Traveller character generation isn't going to do you much good. That's 8 pages out of 47.

You should also be aware of the fact that this book is set after the Fifth Frontier War. Practically, that just means that Entropic Worlds have changed ownership yet again (with the Darrians being the newest proud owners of their war-torn landscapes). Other than that, all of the data should be accurate for the 1105 period.

With 39 out of 47 useful pages, I think on its own Darrians is a slam-dunk for purchase, especially as it's easily available for ~$20 (and probably less with some patience). However a broader question might be if there are any other sources which offers this same information.

As a matter of fact the answer is yes, if you're willing to pick up two GURPS Traveller products.

GURPS Traveller: Behind the Claw contains just as much information on the Darrian worlds as this supplement does (and perhaps more, as this book was doubtless one of many sources for it). It also, of course, covers the rest of the Marches ... but is a bit expensive in the seconddary market.

Meanwhile, GURPS Traveller: Humaniti reprints all of the background information on the Darrian people, except it's been much better edited and organized. I'm going to talk more about organization momentarily, but I'll note that the language section in Humaniti contain material from three different sections in Darrians, and it made much more sense having it all together. Of course, besides the Darrians, you also get info on 14 other minor human races in Humaniti, and you can get the book cheap from Warehouse 23, since it's a GURPS 3 release.

The downside is that even if you purchase the two GURPS books, which together collect all the setting and background material from Darrians, you still don't have the adventure ... but maybe you don't want it, because of its organizational problems.

Whichever way you get the actual information, Darrians is a great resource for Mongoose GMs.

Style & Design

Darrians was produced by GDW at the very end of their Classic Traveller phase. Thus it shows a more mature and nuanced design style for the larger 8.5x11" pages. A map of the Marches on the inside cover is a great touch, and there's art on over half of the spreads. It's all generally good quality black-and-white art, including some diagrams in the adventures which really nicely demonstrate "The Secret of the Star Trigger". I'd give Darrians at least an average rating based on its layout and art alone.

However thats got to be balanced by the lack of a table of contents, the erratic ordering of topics, and the really erratic organization of the adventure, all of which makes Darrians somewhat of a hassle to use. I'd expect an amateur PDF to do better nowadays, and I don't think that 1987 was such a pioneering time in the roleplaying industry to excuse it then.

As a result I've given Darrians a "2" out of "5" for Style (with the adventure itself dipping down to "1").

Conclusion

Darrians contains great background information on that subsector of the Marches, which will be of notable use to any modern GM. Of course, the exact same material is also largely available in GURPS Traveller: Behind the Claw and GURPS Traveller: Humaniti, so you might want to get something with better, more modern editing instead.