Freelance Traveller

RHI Sandpiper Light Trader

reviewed by Omer G. Joel

This review originally appeared in Nov. 2016 on the author’s blog, and was reprinted in the July/August 2017 issue.

RHI Sandpiper Light Trader. William Byrd.
Out Of my Mind Games (no website found)
18pp., PDF
US$5.00/UK£3.99

RHI Sandpiper Light Trader is a ship book published for Mongoose Traveller, 2nd Edition, describing three varieties of a 100-ton starship originally intended as a trader—the original trader, a militarized gunship, and a “star ambulance”. It includes a good description of the ship with enough flavor and color to make the ship unique. Each variation has a description, MGT2 stats, a deck plan, and a render. The deck plans are very simple but serviceable and the renders are solid but nothing to write home about. The layout is very simple but readable.

For some reason, the book does not mention the ship’s size (100 tons) until you reach the stats on p.5—neither on the cover nor in the introduction nor in the technical details section on p.4.

The one thing which I love in this otherwise unremarkable ship book are the clever designs—the author managed to cram a Jump-3 drive, its fuel, and 30 tons of cargo into a 100-ton trader, and eight marines (!) on a 110-ton gunship.

All in all, a solid, useful booklet about an interesting small starship which you can drop into almost any Traveller campaign.

Grade: 4 out of 5