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Review of Reach Adventure 3: The Calixcuel Incident
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Blurb from the publisher: 'In The Calixcuel Incident, the Travellers are visiting an underwater city when a disaster causes it to begin leaking. Amid the chaos, they discover they have the means to save the entire city, if they can only reach and start the auxiliary reactor. However, the reactor is located in a secure bunker on the seabed, separate from the city, and between the Travellers and their destination are mobs of panicking citizens, jammed bulkhead hatches and several kilometres of ocean.
Not to mention the squid...
The Calixcuel Incident includes full rules for:
- Robodivers;
- Orbney's Pseudosquid;
- Diving Suits;
- Cargo & Work Submarines.'
What you get: Your USD 14,99 or GBP 10,00 buys you the 38-page, full-colour softcover Reach Adventure 3: The Calixcuel Incident, the third Reach adventure that came out for Mongoose Publishing's new edition of Traveller, along with its pdf iteration. The 41-page pdf can be purchased alone for GBP 5,99.
The adventure takes place in the Third Imperium, Traveller's default setting, porting it to other games however wouldn't require much work. It is very likely to be completed in a single session, even though it can be extended to cover two for those that want to get into more depth. It is self-contained, it contains however hooks towards future adventures.
Spoiler warning: As much as I am not going to describe, let alone detail the adventure, parts of the scenario might be revealed while discussing its strong and less strong points. If you intend to enjoy this adventure as a player, stop reading now.
The strong points: The adventure advertises itself as a disaster movie, something that is extremely accurate. It is the characters and nobody else that can succeed and save the day. No pressure; only two hundred thousand people's lives are at stake.
The scenario is very versatile when it comes to the situations the characters will encounter before they catch the bull by the horns, namely the environmental disaster that can kill them, along with thousands of other people, within a few short hours. It all begins nice and calmly, in a setting that is not usual for characters (namely, they are treated as top-shelf experts before they even demonstrate their prowess). I would characterise it as a sand box with an in-built timer. There is not that much information when it comes to each scene separately, there are however plenty of high calibre ideas that can be used. The characters will not be able to save everybody. Unless a miracle happens the crew of a full submarine will die, seeing how secondary its rescue is in front of a catastrophe that is of a much bigger magnitude. Depending on how you want to run it (gritty or blockbuster), more will die spectacularly, in many occasions just in front of the characters.
Even though there aren't any pre-generated characters, the adventure clearly states from the very beginning the minimal skills that will be necessary for the participants to have a fighting chance. That would be mostly, but not exclusively, shipboard skills. The adventure can be played by almost any crew.
The pdf version is solid. Bookmarks only go down to chapter level (I would have wished for sub-chapter, as usual), but it's a small adventure so it's not a big deal. The table of contents has live links, while the images are extractable for you to use during the session.
The weak points: This is a blue print of an adventure, not much more, and definitely not a plug and play affair. The Referee will have to invest quite the time and energy in order to turn ideas and rough sketches into concrete encounters and scenes. As things stand, there is only minimal direction. It took me a couple of readings to decide how to run it, what to emphasize, where to add, and where to keep things more fuzzy. I start being surprised by the lack of consistency when it comes to new Traveller's adventures. They are written and edited by the same talented people, yet each needs particular tweaks for issues inherent in each adventure. This shouldn't have been the case. Adventures are supposed to be different, diverse; not have problems appear in one which were non-existent before.
There are no maps in the adventure. That's allegedly because they would have been pointless and very similar to one another, I do not however agree with that statement. I would have expected at least a sample map, to be manipulated by the referee in order to create the cramped, dilapidating landscape where everything takes place. As things stand you will have to design everything from scratch.
There are many issues with the setup of the adventure, like for example how the characters are hired for the job (or rather, for the initial aspect of the job) in the first place. To put it politely, the writers have no idea of how public procurement works, even on funny backward planets with limited resources. This isn't a small-scale DIY project a household would undertake. It is a major project of gigantic proportions; nobody, and I do mean nobody, ever gets hired like this by a government body. Movie-like logic can be entertaining, yet it exists because the script-writers and directors have only a couple of hours to produce results. I am not sure why such a sloppy character insertion process was created, and why this couldn't have been done in a more believable way. Discard it wholesale, if you wish to make any sense.
I would have expected additional information about the planet and the situation there. The one that exists is useful, it feels however superficial. The characters should develop some empathy about the situation on the ground, the way however this is done here is not that likely to produce results unless the Referee really insists.
For an adventure that ends with a feat as incredible as the characters saving a major city in the real world, the follow up is inadequate. The adventure hooks are superficial at best, with some generic suggestions. No links are provided whatsoever for Reach Adventure 4: Last Flight Of The Amuar, the adventure that follows the current one. That is thoroughly disappointing.
This isn't the first Traveller adventure where the writing more convoluted than I would have enjoyed. It does not convincingly separate the info that can be immediately presented to the players, descriptions included, and the one that the Referee needs for himself. It is as if somebody wrote this after he had finished it, and we are reading his refined notes along with things that the Referee did or was supposed to do, or other paths the adventure could have followed. It could have been done much, much better.
The few pieces of art and imagery that the adventure has is not really related to it. Generic imagery is not what a disaster movie needs. What do the players see? How does the place feel? Descriptions aside, there was much work here that needed to be done.
There are a few typos here and there. I wish there weren't.
Conclusion: Reach Adventure 3: The Calixcuel Incident is the blueprint of an adventure based on the disaster movie premise. Sound as the concept might be, there is a lot of work to be put in this product.
For more info on Reach Adventure 3: The Calixcuel Incident and Mongoose Publishing, visit its website at www.mongoosepublishing.com.
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