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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 the early 2000s, Comstar Games and Avenger Enterprises put out a total of three (now out-of-print) setting books for the Spinward Marches.

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This eighteenth review discusses Spinward Marches System Guide 2: Flexos. It offers an in-depth look at one of the ten Bowman Arm worlds, located in District 268 of the Spinward Marches.

An Overview of the Book

Like its predecessor, Datrillian, Flexos offers both a world guide and a set of adventures. However, it's a fair bit longer, with 16 pages of actual text.

The format of the world guide is pretty familiar, starting as it does with a look at all the planets in the Flexos system. Dougherty has done this is a number of his books, and it always impresses me. With each individual planet tending to have its own adventure hook, it's obvious how richly defining a world's system can be. Here we get a quick look at a half-dozen planets, from the icy Nilungedh-Obhekeny (site of a huge mineral strike) to Gugh (home to a monitoring base with a secret mission).

However, once I got past the rest of the system and came to Flexos itself, I had to ask, "How do you make a nearly uninhabited world interesting?" Dougherty answered simply: you have the ruins of a long-lost alien civilization hidden beneath the planet's surface.

Dougherty's description of the dead "isopod" civilization and the subterranean ruins that they left behind is generally evocative, and it just screams for a GM to come in and write adventures. Mind you, there's nothing amazing about this civilization, even though it did predate the Ancients, but its mere existence--and the existence of ruins--gets the GM's mind running.

Beyond that, Flexos isn't a one-trick pony. You see, it's also a Darrian outpost--though one that lies beyond their Confederation. The result is that you can let players interact with Darrians on Flexos without having to get deep into their politics. Mind you, I'm not convinced that any past setting material on the Marches supports the idea of Flexos as a Darrian colony--as not even Dougherty's own Behind the Claw lists the population as Darrian--but I'm not convinced that anything contradicts it either.

And even beyond that, Dougherty sets up Flexos as a big melting pot for the Marches. You have: Aslan warriors, brought along by the Darrians; Vargr corsairs who aren't afraid to operate here in the Outlands; and even some connections with the TTC (mentioned in the main book for this cluster, The Bowman Arm). On the one hand, there's almost too much going on in this little backwater system, but given that any GM could pick and choose wheat he wants in his own campaign, the surfeit of material is probably a benefit, not a deficit.

The book ends with seven adventures, each an extended hook taking up one page or less. These are a little more mixed than the world guide material, with some material being more successful than others.

Here's what they are, in brief:

1. An investigation of missing locals and strange critters, down in the caverns beneath the planet.
2. All about a very special vial of oil.
3. Delving down into newly found Isopod caverns.
4. A look into a Droyne colony which has suddenly moved.
5. Notes on some of the more spectacular geological areas of the planet that can be investigated.
6. An adventure in the outer system when a cutter goes suddenly silent.
7. A conflict with the TTC.

Several of the hooks would make excellent adventures. My main problem with the section is that some are overly vague and others (specifically the adventures about the Droyne and the geological locations) are full of info that should have been in the world guide. For example, I didn't even realize there were Droyne on the planet until I got to the adventure hook in question; they'd previously been mentioned off-handedly in a single sentence.

But what I'm talking about is really an issue of polish. There's still a lot of very good material here, and thus I've given Flexos overall a "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Applicability to Mongoose Traveller

I suppose Flexos is set in 1111, like the rest of this series of Bowman Arm books, but you wouldn't particularly notice from the text. I think it's 100% applicable to Mongoose Traveller and would be a huge boon to any GM running a campaign in this area of the Spinward Marches.

Unfortunately, like its predecessors, it's totally out-of-print in the way that only PDFs can be. So we can simply hope that Avenger Enterprises is able to reprint this book as part of its work with Mongoose Publishing.

Style & Design

All of the Comstar/Avenger Traveller books published prior to their current partnership with Mongoose were pretty plain; this one was no exception. However, I found the text of Flexos pretty evocative, just full of interesting ideas for the planet at every turn. Though the organization of some of the material (particularly having important background info in the adventures) detracts from that a little bit, it's relatively minor in the scope of things.

Averaging all of that together, I give Flexos an average "3" out of "5" for Style.

Conclusion

Spinward Marches System Guide 2: Flexos portrays another interesting world in the Bowman Arm, full of different adventure hooks. Though Avenger was never able to finish their 10-book series on the Arm, what exists--together with classic and GURPS Traveller material--provides a lot of detail for this area of space, making District 268 one of the top areas for Spinward Marches gaming.