Freelance Traveller

Fate of the Sky Raiders

reviewed by Ewan Quibell

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2025 issue.

Fate of the Sky Raiders. J. Andrew Keith
FASA (defunct, no website found)
PDF, 63 pp.
US$6.00/UK£4.37

Well I thought I’d better not wait four years ….

I reviewed Legend of the Sky Raiders and Trail of the Sky Raiders, and the reason that I reviewed Legend was because I had held other Traveller material up against it by saying things like “Well it’s not Legend of the Sky Raiders quality …” because the parts of the Sky Raiders Trilogy are held up as some of the best scenarios ever written for Traveller. I’d read them back in the day, and I’d always thought they were good but having used them as a yard stick to beat others with I thought I’d better check. I’ve never run them, and if I had I would have know that they aren’t the best scenarios ever written for Traveller. Legend and Trail have large parts of them that are railroads and I don’t like railroads. I’m not really into fudging die rolls, pulling punches, removing player agency or player choice to get to specific outcomes or to move the plot the way “it’s meant to be …” I’d much rather present the players with a challenge then watch, arbitrate and enjoy the wild, whacky, and wonderous schemes they think up to get over, around or though it.

So to Fate of the Sky Raiders. I’m expecting it to be similar to Legend and Trail. I’m expecting it to be good, but I’m also expecting it to be railroad. And what do we get …. ?

That’s what we get. It’s good, it’s a railroad. The basic plot is the PCs go find the Sky Raiders, get stranded and then explore to find a way home picking up more loot than they can possibly carry while being possibly chased by the bad guys … what? you want more?

Ok. So we start in the same way as we did before with Legend, and Trail. We have a Little Black Book produced in the FASA house style, and I like the FASA house style; it’s easy to read and the production quality is high, and again we have awesome quality maps this time of power complexes, surface complexes, agro, docking control and industrial complexes as well as fields with a grav suspended light source. We have an intro piece about the sky raiders and of course the art throughout is all by William H. Keith. Jr. which is just great.

We’re told we need Books 1, 2 and 3 (or The Traveller Book) and Supplement 4 and that’s it, however it does go on to say Book 4, Book 5, Supplement 1, Snapshot, Azhanti High Lightning and the miniatures rules in Striker can be a help, as well as FASA products Adventure Class Ships Volume 1 and 2 for the deckplans for the space ship in this module, and Legend of the Sky Raiders is helpful in expanding the background. So I have a bit of an annoyance with this type of thing. Now we can forgive having Legend of the Sky Raiders and Trail of the Sky Raiders as well (although Trail isn’t mentioned) because chances are if you’re looking at Fate you’d probably really want to start with Legend and run the whole trilogy … I mean why not … but the deckplans for the ship in other FASA products? What they are kind of saying is that to run this module you kind of need to buy our other modules. This really irritates. Put the damn things in the module if that’s what you’re going to use. It’s only one of the deck plans of the product you’re “enticing” me to buy and if they are that good then I might buy your other product, but try and make me buy it so I can run the module … Hmmm. I known I can swap it out for another ship, I know I can re-write that bit out, I know that I can do all sorts of things to ignore or get around it, but it still bloody irritates. Or even better make a new ship for this module that I could re-use elsewhere, or use one that’s in the core rules (not that Classic Traveller had any deckplans in the core rules but you get my gist I’m sure).

We get some standards and assumptions, and the same pregens as in Trail, although our Ex-Marine Captain must be on an awesome combat drug high because he’s on G for his STR stat up from 6 in Trail. I know it’s a misprint, but hey I might be willing to go with it for the crack.

Next we get a history of what has transpired in Legend and Trail and we find out that our heroine in Legend and Trail has hired the PCs to be security and general support for the mission to find the Sky Raiders. We’re on the 800 ton survey ship (the one that is in FASA Adventure Class Ships Volume 2 … Arrrr) at the end of a 4 month cruise and we’re about to jump into the adventure… 

We get the world description (with a UPP mess-up (although a more likely one is in the standards and assumptions so we’re all right)) that the PCs are orbiting or having a last bit of shore leave on along with period, gravity, diameter rotation and axial tilt etc. Which is good. This stuff can really make a difference allowing the referee to make this world feel different to any other. In this case the small axial tilt will mean smaller bands of temperate climate and larger ones of hot and cold with very little variation between what seasons that they probably don’t even recognise in the 648.7 day year. You can get your teeth into this. You can take this basic information and really use it to extrapolate and make the place unique for your PCs. We get a basic description of the ship, with it’s two cutters, where it says we get deckplans but I can’t find them, and then we go into the Science staff NPC that are the institute personnel. And these are good descriptions. They are short, they are not evocative, but they have insights giving the Referees something to base their interpretations on “Insatiably curious, bored by administrative detail, and not a little bit reckless … This … could lead her to take dangerous risks; Lorain is beginning to overcompensate for the boredom of her post … at the institute” … absolute gold. This is what you need to run a PC you can take this put your own interpretation on it and run Lorain. This is help from the author. This is what you want as a Referee. This is why I’m buying your module. To help me at the table run the game. The rest of the major characters are like this as well. Champion! We also get minor characters including Jeri Marrenda the Cutter Pilot “who is considered expendable by the Captain and knows nothing of the Inquisitor’s real employers” … dun … dun … duuun … !? … Anyway we get the crew of the Inquisitor that “should not be necessary” as a list that the Referee will need to stat if they want more detail (or where Supplement 1 and/or 4 come in) with the Pilot/Captain referred to page 51. There is an equipment list with Expedition Equipment and personal equipment available, and a list of items also available. Some are new but some are from The Traveller Book and are repeated in the module for the convenience of those who don’t own this edition of the Traveller rules …. SO WHY DIDN’T YOU PUT THE BLOODY SHIP DECKPLANS IN THE MODULE!!!! … for the convenience of those who don’t own your other supplement … Sorry … Irritated.

Still, back to the adventure and by page 19 we’re here …. There is a whole heap of stuff saying what could have gone wrong with finding where to go … and then doesn’t. The PC’s ship turns up and there it is. So what was the point of that? Apart from telling the PCs that they were just so lucky … only to be railroaded, again. Basically the PC’s are abandoned in space on an asteroid ship without any chance of finding out about the abandonment or stopping it in any way. Because the bad guy from Legend and Trail has paid off the crew of the survey ship to abandon the PCs and science team to then jump back and tell him where the ship is so that he can loot it.

And now the real premise of the adventure, to go search though the asteroid ship in search of a jump ship to take them home again, because we know that some of the asteroid ship is working so there might be a chance … The asteroid ship is basically hundreds of thousands of standardised modules (the ones that there are maps are for) connected together each with individual power supplies to make it more effective.

There follows some rules on going between the modules. What modules they find and the state that they might be in. What might not be working and whether they are inhabited. Notes on not to bother to map, and some advice to the Referee not to use the rules just presented randomly and to avoid becoming repetitive and not to turn the adventure into a room exploration expedition. While this is good advice it doesn’t really help. It just means you’re going to have to do a lot of work making it interesting for your players. They then do the module descriptions (of the maps) and then give advice on how these should be flexible.

We then get the description of the scout ship and its deck plans which is good and a suggestion that all the ships systems need to be checked and made to work before the PCs can escape. Which is completely understandable. The ship has been sitting there for a while. Also this is something that I would probably play on. Like having the PCs find the ship … Yay! ... but it’s not all working … O no! … so they then have to go find another hoping that it has the parts needed to fix it …

We then get Cultures and Civilisations, and Encounters and Events to describe what the PCs may find in the 50 billion ton asteroid ship. We’re basically going into a Metamorphosis Alpha type of environment without the mutated creatures, although I’m sure you could put some in if you wanted, and the encounters that you might find in any of the modules along with Special encounters and the “Hoard”.

We have rules for repairing shipboard systems, and help with interacting with the natives from the NPCs that are with the party along with their motivations to add to the NPC descriptions that we had earlier. Again this is absolute gold this is what you need to understand how the NPC is going to react and why, and gives you insight into how to play them at the table.

We also have a section on the Bad Guy turning up and what his motivations are and how his looting may effect the PCs and the population of the ship. It’s suggested that the Referee orchestrate a showdown between the bad guys and the PCs to bring the whole episode to a climax. However it will need some doing because the Bad Guy comes with an small army of well-equipped troops, which were transported on a couple of 400 ton military destroyers along with a subsided merchant and the survey cruiser that the PCs were abandoned from.

The sky raiders asteroid ship is described and there is a section on ending the adventure and advice to the referee about the likelihood of each avenue. This might have been helpful in the early days of the RPG hobby but not so much now. There is a section of Library Data and the module ends with Referee’s notes about all the types of adventures and even campaigns that can happen in such a place. Also advice on how there may be other interactions and additional to continue the campaign.

So what do we get? We get what I was expecting. It’s good. There are parts of it that still stand today as help for the Referee at the table and stuff you can get your teeth into. Most of the adventure is a premise, a set-up, and the Referee is likely to have to do a huge amount of work to make it run. The opportunities for roll playing are immense. You could literally set the module up as a Metamorphosis Alpha world and have an entire campaign just in the ship. And it’s a railroad. The outcome is already determined. The PCs will get stranded on the asteroid. Not even a chance for them to uncover the plot, not a hint, not any opportunity for the PCs to stop it or change the outcome. There loads that can be re-used but there is a whole section on NPC motivations and reactions that you could just lift into other adventures by just changing their names and appearances and bring them out again. Or you could mix them up to create new and interesting NPCs without much work. You could lift the modules directly to re-use to create a small space station of your own and there are the deckplans and stats for the scout ship. In this one it would be a lot easier to adapt out the railroad and give the PCs a hint that there is something amiss on the survey ship. Give them a chance to stop themselves being abandoned and create a different outcome. So from this point of view it’s better than the other two.

From reading all three this is probably the best one of the lot, but the hardest to run, and the most amount of work. This isn’t a scenario in a module, this is a campaign in itself. The first two modules are just a lead up to this.

Fate of the Sky Raiders is available on Drivethrurpg for $6 for the PDF, and the preview will give you a flavour of the layout and presentation. You can get it as part of the CD from FFE with the rest of the FASA and GameLords material for $35. Is it worth it? Now that’s the question. I have a paper copy from back when I was collecting, and I would have spent less for it than you can buy it for from DTRPG. If you were prepared to do the work, and there would be a lot of work to do, you could make years of enjoyable role playing with just this module.

So what about the trilogy? Are they the best ever written for Traveller? If you are asking me; In a word; No. They are good, they are undoubtedly good, really good in fact, but they are 40 years old and it shows. They are railroads, they lack player agency and player choice, and that’s just not how good adventures are written nowadays and not, as far as I know (which includes myself), what players or referees want from their adventures.