Freelance
TravellerShort Adventure 8: Memory Alpha
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue.
Short Adventure 8: Memory Alpha.
No author credit.
Game Designers’ Workshop/Far Future Enterprises
https://farfuture.net
28pp., PDF
Available as part of Classic Traveller CD-ROM
Author’s Note: I’ve tried to avoid spoilers here. That leaves it somewhat more nebulous than is usual for me, and I apologize for this. The front matter mentions that a version of this adventure was available for Traveller 4, but that version does not figure into this review.
Memory Alpha is unusual among the short adventures that appear on the Classic Traveller CD-ROM: It was never in general public release, but was only seen at GenCon and Origins as a tournament adventure in 1984. It is only through the efforts of some fans that the text was recovered for inclusion on the Classic Traveller CD-ROM.
It’s also unusual in that it’s “wide open” – that is, it allows the players to set the mission and goals, and decide how they will go about it. There’s certainly an implied self-defined mission in the setup, and the information and events in the module assume that the players choose that implied mission, but they go in with essentially zero information.
In the early days of Traveller, an adventure was defined as having a ‘push’, a ‘pull’, a ‘gimmick’, and an ‘enigma’, with any given adventure emphasizing each in a different way. This adventure centralizes the enigma, and does so in a way that you actually have to “solve” another enigma to discover the central enigma.
Because the adventure is essentially at the players’ discretion, the only thing that you can be certain of needing is the core rules (Books 1, 2, and 3, or equivalent); having other material available could very well be convenient (an example, to quote from the folio: “For example, if animal encounters are called for, Traveller Supplement 2, Animal Encounters, can be used to provide the tables.”.
Most of the folio is for the referee only; it contains the information that “solves” the enigma that the players are presented with. The information that can be revealed to the players is limited, and the referee cautioned not to reveal anything beyond, except as a result of appropriate player actions.
Solving the enigma isn’t necessarily the end of the adventure; if the player-characters acquire all of the relevant information, a follow-on mission will suggest itself, and the player-characters will need to decide whether or not to continue.
This adventure was written as a scored tournament scenario, so the assumption is that the eight pre-generated characters provided will be used, and that all of the entire adventure can be completed in a single four-hour slot. Scoring is based on several factors; there are 120 points available to be awarded. (Naturally, if this is not being used as a tournament scenario, scoring can be ignored – but the scoring information does summarize the important parts of the scenario.)
I consider this to be a “hidden gem” on the Classic Traveller CD-ROM; its differences in style from other contemporary adventures make it interesting, and an experienced referee could quite possibly turn it into the core of a campaign.
Editor’s note: The referenced T4 version of this adventure is credited to Marc Miller as author, and appeared in the Traveller Game Screen for that edition of Traveller.