Freelance
TravellerPatron Encounters
This article originally appeared in the November 2013 issue.
Patron
Encounters. Martin J. Dougherty.
Avenger Enterprises and Comstar Games
http://www.martinjdougherty.com/avenger-enterprises.html
27pp., PDF (listed under Mongoose at DTRPG)
US$3.59/UK£2.24
Experienced Traveller referees, or those who read Freelance Traveller, who purchase this volume so many years after its release will feel like they’ve found an old friend. For little more than a dime each (a bit over 6p each if you insist on British money), you get thirty-four adventure seeds in the familiar format.
Most of the seeds have both Player Information and Referee Information, but in a few cases, everything is on the table and the “Referee Information” is no more than the list of the possible “roll 1D (1d6)” outcomes. There is a wide range of possibilities in the jobs, including three where the PCs are ‘victims’ (in the sense that they have no control over whether to get involved).
The seeds are presented in a two-column format, easy to read. On any given page, there’s never more than one seed per column, but many are of odd lengths (leaving unused white space in both columns), and some have left ‘The referee should determine the subsequent events’ line dangling at the top of a column or the first sentence on a page (effectively wasting the column). A bit more time and effort (and, admittedly, money) devoted to editing and layout might have allowed a few more seeds to make it into this volume at no increase in page count.
Nevertheless, you do get good value for the price; Martin and his “recruiting agents” have come up with a good set of seeds with interesting twists.