WARNING: This review contains spoilers.
"Mission Arcturus", is an adventure book published for GDW's "2300AD" (aka "Traveller 2300"), a 'hard' SF sequel to "Twilight 2000".
There are two ways for the adventure contained to be run, firstly, as a sequel to "Kafer Dawn", the fame and knowledge of the Kafers the PC's have gained as a result of their adventures, has bought them to the attention of the authorities and they are hired to act as advisors to a US Marine company which is being transported to investigate the fate of a scientific outpost orbiting the star Arcturus, point of first contact with the Kafers.
Secondly it can be used as an introduction to the 2300AD universe with the players taking the part of members of the Marine Company.
MISSION ARCTURUS:THE PLOT
The plot of "Mission Arcturus" is simple and straight forward, after the "Fire Team" the PC's are attached to has entered the station via a hole in the stations accomodation section, the ship that bought them to Arcturus is forced to leave when it detects two Kafer ships heading towards Aurore. Shortly after the ship departs the PC's team loses contact with the other two teams which have boarded the station...
MISSION ARCTURUS:THE VERDICT
When I first read the book, I was somewhat concerned when I noted the amount of white space on some pages, but once I had read the book I realised that unlike some material I have read, the white space did not indicate a lack of ideas, but rather that no more needed to be said.
The 'atmosphere' text is well written and evocative, while the information on just what is happening inside the station provides the GM with enough information to handle most reasonable PC actions and even the unreasonable ones.
The background material on the outpost is written so that it can be re-used by GM's who wish to set adventures on other orbital colonies.
The only real niggle is that in the introduction some of the dates are given in the 2390's while the 'actual' events are supposed to have occurred in the 2290's. This does not however effect the adventure.
Overall I'll give this adventure two 4's.
