Freelance
TravellerBarreller
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2022 issue.
Barreller.
Christer Åström.
Klomster’s workshop No website found
9pp, PDF
Pay What You Want (DTRPG), no suggested price
Barreller is a TAS-badged ship/deck plan based supplement for Mongoose Traveller available as pay what you want on Drive through.
- You get an introduction to Company B
- You get an introduction to the ship (The Barreller)
- You get the stats for Mongoose (and a variant)
- You get Mongoose-style deck plans
- You get a short bit of fiction “It’s a Haulers Life”
- And a hand drawing of the exterior of the ship on the cover which isn’t bad (a lot better than I can do anyway).
B company is a cheap-as-chips producer of … stuff (including a shoddy coverall work outfit) and the Barreller. Everything they produce is bare minimum, and so is the Barreller; a no-frills (and some inconvenient quirks) 100-ton merchantman, with a cargo hold and just enough stuff to make it work.
I don’t especially like the Mongoose style deck plans. They are ok to look at and give you a flavour of the ship, but you can’t use in play easily (or rather I can’t (or in other words it might just be me)). If can’t set-up a snapshot scenario on them they are a bit of a waste. I’d like a 2d version of them as well so I can print it out to the size I want and then, well … use them in play.
The “It’s a Haulers Life” piece gives you a flavour of what it might be like to live and work on the ship, and Christer does an ok job of this.
You get three pages of text, a ship and a variant, a deck plan and a drawing. It’s pay what you want, and it’s not that bad. As for value, well if you don’t pay anything it’s no loss to you, and that’s how I would suggest you start with this supplement. If you use it for anything, or it sparks some thoughts for you to use in play, then you know buy it again for 50p or £1.