Retrospective: Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes

When TSR released Star Frontiers in 1982, I imagine the company intended it to be the “science fiction Dungeons & Dragons” in the sense of being very broad in its scope and inspirations. To that end, the original boxed set presented a fairly straightforward system that emphasized accessibility and pulpy space opera-style adventures. Traveller it was not, nor, do I think, it was intended to be. TSR supported the game with the excellent Knight Hawks boxed set, as well as a handful of adventures, the best remembered of which are probably the Volturnus trilogy, a series of modules that functioned much like the The Keep on the Borderlands for D&D – an extended introduction to both the game and its setting.

By 1984, however, TSR seemed unsure of what to do with Star Frontiers. The game had never been as profitable for them as had D&D and the company was already turning its attention to licensed properties like Marvel Super Heroes and The Adventures of Indiana Jones, both released that same year. Star Frontiers would limp along for a few more years – even getting a pair of licensed modules of its own – but its line of support soon started to shrink. Into this environment appeared Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes, the first part of the "Beyond the Frontier" trilogy.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering that it was written by Ken Rolston, Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes is an excellent adventure. The player characters are part of the crew of the titular Eleanor Moraes, a small scout ship operating on the fringes of the Frontier. Their mission is to chart an uninhabited world designated Mahg Mar for potential colonization by the United Planetary Federation. While the characters are away from the ship conducting a planetary survey, the first officer seizes control in an unexplained mutiny, leaving the vessel in his control. Now out of contact with the Eleanor Moraes and thrown on their own resources, the characters must make their way back to the ship to discover what has happened.

From that point onward, the module shifts into a hybrid of a survival scenario and an open-ended exploration one. The characters must find food and shelter, contend with hostile alien fauna, scavenge and repair damaged technology, and even contend with robots reprogrammed by the mutineer to attack them, before eventually devising a way to retake the Eleanor Moraes. Because the mutiny occurs "offscreen," so to speak, the characters have no chance to prevent it, but once it has happened, they enjoy a great deal of freedom of action. The referee is given tools for handling wilderness travel, encounters with alien creatures, and the steady progress of the mutineer's own plans, creating a situation where time and resource management matter just as much as combat prowess.

What distinguishes Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes from previous Star Frontiers modules is its tone. Where the Volturnus trilogy presented the pulpy and highly implausible world of Volturnus, this module feels closer to a science fiction survival tale, like Robert Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky. It asks players not simply to blast their way out of trouble but to endure, improvise, and outthink their obstacles with only limited means at their disposal. It's a great set-up for an adventure in my opinion, which is why I've long held it in pretty high regard.

This approach was something of a throwback to an earlier era. D&D modules of that time were increasingly plot-driven, often built around a central antagonist. While Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes does have one unavoidable story element (the mutiny) it thereafter opens into something much more freeform and sandbox-like. Its survival elements invite genuine creativity, since the characters’ success depends on how they use the limited tools and knowledge available to them. Couple that with a ticking clock – the characters must reach and regain control of the ship before the mutineer attempts to leave the planet without them – and you've got a remarkably engaging scenario.

As I noted at the start of this Retrospective, this module is the first in a new trilogy of adventures, suggesting that, despite whatever confusion TSR had about the game's place within its stable, it was still willing to commit some resources to it. Indeed, the next two modules in the series point toward Big Events in the setting about whose ultimate outcome I was genuinely curious. Unfortunately, nothing lasting came of it, as TSR overhauled the entire game and then completely abandoned it.

This context gives Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes a bittersweet quality in hindsight. It demonstrates that Star Frontiers could have become a much more serious contender in its competition with other well-established SF RPGs had TSR pursued a more diverse range of scenarios instead. Its mixture of betrayal, survival, and wilderness exploration is genuinely engaging in my opinion and, from what I have gathered online, many referees have repurposed it for other systems precisely because the situation it describes is so adaptable.

Looking back four decades later, Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes stands out for offering players a wide-open field for ingenuity and problem-solving. In doing so, it bridges two eras of TSR design – the freewheeling sandbox of the early days and the more scripted scenarios of the Silver Age. For anyone interested in science fiction roleplaying of the early 1980s or simply in how TSR approached a genre outside of fantasy, Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes is a fascinating artifact. It's also a glimpse of the potential Star Frontiers possessed had it received stronger and more consistent support from the company.

REVIEW: Sun County

When RuneQuest burst upon the roleplaying game scene in 1978, it quickly became known for both its percentile-based skill system (which would later become the basis for Chaosium's house system, Basic Role-Playing) and its rich Bronze Age fantasy setting, Glorantha. Glorantha is steeped in mythology, both real and fictional, which not only distinguishes it from other fantasy RPG settings but has also made it one of my favorite imaginary settings of all time. 

Between 1979 and 1983, Chaosium released numerous superb supplements, many of them boxed sets, fleshing out Glorantha to the delectation of its growing legion of fans. Then, in 1984, Chaosium entered into a deal with wargames publisher, Avalon Hill, who'd publish a new edition of RuneQuest but stripped of Glorantha. Though the company reversed this decision later, its support for Glorantha was desultory at best, much to the disappointment of long-time devotees. 

I wasn't one of these devotees. I knew of RuneQuest, of course, but I was a diehard player of Dungeons & Dragons and indeed somewhat skeptical of RQ at the time. Consequently, I largely missed out on the game until the early 1990s, when Avalon Hill hired Ken Rolston to revitalize its version of the game. This he did through a renewed focus on Glorantha. His tenure kicked off a RuneQuest renaissance that gave birth to multiple excellent expansions of Glorantha, many of which are still regarded as classics. This was the period when I first fell in love with the setting, a love that has only grown in the three decades since. 

Currently, RuneQuest and Glorantha are undergoing what might well be called a second renaissance. Since the publication of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in 2018, Chaosium has released a steady stream of excellent new material for the game and its setting. Just as importantly, the company has made a lot of its older material available again in electronic and print-on-demand form, both through its own store and through DriveThruRPG. Its most recent classic re-release is Sun County, written by Michael O'Brien, with contributions from Rolston, Glorantha creator Greg Stafford, and others. 

Before discussing the contents of the book itself, I'd like to briefly comment on the 2024 remastering. The book's interior layout is clear and straightforward. It makes use of two columns and splashes of column – titles, headers and footers, tables, etc. It's been years since I saw the 1992 original, so I can't say if the use of color is new, but it's attractive nonetheless. There's a new foreword by Shannon Appelcline, which contextualizes Sun County within the larger history of RuneQuest (some of which I've mentioned above). As someone who enjoys learning about the history of the hobby, I love this sort of stuff and am glad it was included. 

Originally published in 1992, the 2024 re-release of Sun County is a 124-page sourcebook, packed with detailed setting material, rules expansions, and adventure scenarios. The first half of the book is dedicated to fleshing out the region of Sun County itself – its geography, culture, and history – while the second half presents a series of interconnected adventure that showcase different aspects of the rigid society of the Sun Dome Templars, a militant theocracy devoted to Yelmalio, Son of the Sun. As a setting, Sun County is one of isolationism and decline. The Sun Domers are a proud but stiflingly conservative people, desperately clinging to a past that has long since left them behind. Their deity, Yelmalio, is cold and indifferent sun and their stiff hierarchy, strict moral codes, and inflexible traditions make them an excellent counterpoint to the vibrant and increasingly chaotic world around them. Sun County leans into these themes, both in its descriptive text and in the several included scenarios.

From a presentation standpoint, Sun County stands out for its strong authorial voice. This is not an encyclopedic setting book filled with dispassionate information but rather a living, breathing culture, conveyed through in-character documents, legends, and anecdotes (as well as game mechanics). This has long been a hallmark of the better Gloranthan materials, but Sun County does it with a degree of clarity and usability that makes it, in my opinion, much more accessible than other books of this kind. The reader still needs to be already familiar with Glorantha, of course, but Sun County does a good job of explaining itself without too many references to other products.

The reader is treated to details about the cult of Yelmalio and related subcults, as well as the Sun Dome Temple itself, the seat of both religion and government within the County. Equally well detailed are its elite soldiers and citizen levies, which play significant roles here. A collection of random encounters and events serve both as sparks for adventures and to highlight unique aspects of Sun County, like the Yelmalian beadles who deal with unlicensed beggars or succubi who prey upon the sexually inhibited Sun Domers. These sorts of details flesh out the setting in straightforward, practical ways that I appreciate.

As I mentioned earlier, slightly more than half the book consists of adventures set in and around Sun County. Two of these pertain to a Harvest Festival in the town of Garhound, just beyond its borders. Garhound makes a great starting point for non-Yelmalian characters to visit the land of the Sun Domers. Another scenario affords characters the opportunity to become landowners in the County, while two further adventures concern the locating of lost artifacts associated with Yelmalio. There's also a collection of ideas for the Gamemaster to flesh out on his own. Taken together, these scenarios cover a lot of ground, though I do wish there'd been a few that dealt more directly with navigating the ins and outs of Sun County's often-strict society. 

The book features strong black-and-white illustrations by Merle Insinga and Roger Raupp (the latter of whom also did the cover) that reinforce the setting’s stark, sun-bleached aesthetic. The imagery depicts the militaristic and hierarchical nature of Sun County, though there are also plenty of pieces that highlight other sides of the setting, like the contests of the Harvest Festival and the hidden threats to the region. The maps, though functional, are generally not as evocative as those found in earlier, Chaosium era products like Pavis or Big Rubble, but they serve their purpose well enough.

Sun County is a great setting book. It captures something rarely seen in RPGs: a genuinely believable culture, shaped by its environment and history, filled with tensions that make it ripe for adventure. This is precisely the kind of supplement I like, where cultural and philosophical conflicts drive the action as much as physical threats. More than thirty years after its original release, Sun County holds up very well. Its portrayal of the Sun Domers is compelling but nuanced, like the best Gloranthan supplements, then or now. It makes a great addition to any campaign set in or near New Pavis and the River of Cradles. Sun County's main downsides are that it was written for RuneQuest's third (Avalon Hill) edition and, as such, its game statistics and the political situation depicted within it will need to be updated if used in conjunction with the current version of the game. That's a small criticism of what is otherwise an excellent and well-presented supplement. I hope its publication is a portent of more to come in this vein from Chaosium.

Retrospective: The Lost Island of Castanamir

I'm a fan of the first two entries in the C-series of AD&D modules, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and The Ghost Tower of Inverness, but a guarded one. That's because these modules, filled as they are with tricks, traps, and puzzles designed to challenge the wits – and patience – of the players, are hard to run properly and, in my youth, I was not always up to the task. I don't mean that as a knock against either module, which I do like, but I do recall that they were frustrating for both me and my players, albeit for different reasons. 

To some extent, my experiences were probably due to my ignorance of the very idea of tournament modules. I remember being somewhat confused by the scoring guidelines and sheets included with many of TSR's AD&D modules from the early '80s, since I'd never attended a convention, let alone participated in a tournament. Moreover, our preferred style of play was very loose and rambling and most tournament modules included very contrived framing devices that were hard to fit into that style. 

By the time the third module in the C-series, The Lost Island of Castanamir, was published in 1984, our style of play had evolved further, this time in the direction of epic fantasy under the influence of Dragonlance. Consequently, tournament modules fit even less into our campaigns than they had before. Skeptical as I was, I remained a TSR fanboy, which meant I often snapped up anything new the company might publish, including this module. Besides, it had a colorfully eye-catching cover, courtesy of Jeff Easley, whose art I'd come to like a great deal – though I did wonder about why it looked like the elf was preparing to shoot his bow at the little yappy white dog in front of him. 

Written by Ken Rolston, who'd later go on to bigger and better things both within the tabletop RPG and video game worlds, The Lost Island of Castanamir is, alas, not a very good adventure. Or at least, as presented, it's not very good. 

Its premise is that the player characters are hired by a magician to investigate a mysterious island that, until recently, had disappeared entirely. This island had once been the abode of a powerful magic-user named Castanamir the Mad. Castanamir was eccentric and paranoid, believing that his rivals sought to steal his wealth. Therefore, he protected his island home with all manner of spells to ward off would-be thieves. One of those spells caused the island to vanish without a trace. Its sudden return has aroused the suspicion – and greed – of the magician who hires the PCs to see why the island has returned and what, if anything, remains of Castanamir and his treasures.

As backgrounds to fantasy adventures go, this isn't a bad one. You've got a forbidding locale, a mystery, danger, and, of course, the promise of treasure. That this is an adventure designed for 1st–3rd level characters is also quite appealing, since many low-level modules are much blander and limited in scope. Despite this, the final product is less than it could have been, which is a shame, as there are some genuinely interesting ideas in it. 

For example, the characters soon discover that Castanamir was a master of planar sorcery and his abode isn't laid out according to a straightforward plan. Instead, doors act as magical portals that connect to one another in unexpected ways. The module's maps include codes to indicate how the various doors connect to one another. Initially, this cartographic idiosyncrasy will foil with efforts by the characters to map the place, disorienting them. In time, they'll likely figure out how the various doors and rooms related to one another. It's a fairly simply trick but an effective one. I've used similar tricks in my own adventure locales over the years. 

Other tricks and challenges are more whimsical, even silly, to the point that I'm not sure it's fair to call them "challenges" so much as vexations. I've never been a fan of "Mother, may I?" tricks or traps that depend on the players' ability to read the referee's mind or to use out of character knowledge to succeed. I much prefer challenges that are, in the terminology of commentators more pretentious than even I, call "diegetic," which is to say, explicable solely within the context of the game world. This isn't a damning criticism of the module. Indeed, it's very much in keeping with venerable tradition within the hobby, but, at the time I first read this, I had tired of it and, even now, my feelings about it are decidedly negative.

Perhaps The Lost Island of Castanamir plays better than it reads – I wouldn't know, as I never ran it for my friends back in the day – but I doubt it. In charity, I suppose it could be called a "funhouse dungeon" that just didn't click the way that, say, White Plume Mountain did. I can't quite put my finger on the source of my dissatisfaction. Maybe I'd simply lost interest in that kind of dungeon and was looking for something more naturalistic. By this point, I'd been playing Dungeons & Dragons in one form or another for five years more or less non-stop. Perhaps the truth is that I was simply tiring of D&D itself and workmanlike modules of this sort were simply not up to the task of firing my imagination in the way they might have even a year or two earlier. 

Regardless, The Lost Island of Castanamir was a something of a letdown for me and, in the years since, I've come to associate it with my waning enthusiasm for D&D in the mid-1980s. That's terribly unfair to the module and Ken Rolston, who, as I said, has produced some truly remarkable stuff, but such is the power of memory, I guess. 

Retrospective: The Northern Reaches

I mentioned, in last week's retrospective on The Grand Duchy of Karameikos, that I didn't own many modules in the D&D Gazetteer line, in part because of my disappointment with its inaugural release. Despite this, I did own the seventh in the series, The Northern Reaches, released in 1988 and written by Ken Rolston and Liz Danforth – and, to this day, I consider it one of the most interesting things ever published for the D&D game line. 

Like all the other entries in the Gazetteer line, The Northern Reaches is, first and foremost, a detailed examination of one of the regions of the Known World setting (soon to be known as Mystara). In this case, the region in question covers three realms, namely Ostland, Vestland, and the Soderfjord Jarldoms, all of whom share a culture that resembles that of the Norse peoples of medieval Europe. However, The Northern Reaches is more than that. In presenting these three nations, including their histories, societies, and major NPCs, the module also presents several new optional rules for use with D&D and it's these rules that, in my opinion, make the module so fascinating.

Co-author Ken Rolston was already a veteran RPG writer by the time this book appeared (as was Liz Danforth). Among the many games on which he worked was Chaosium's RuneQuest, for which he'd eventually serve as developer during the all-too-brief "RuneQuest renaissance" of the early 1990s. I mention this because, in my opinion, Rolston brings to bear many of the skills he no doubt learned working on the mythical world of Glorantha. The Northern Reaches is a remarkable product that takes inspiration from a real world historical culture to present a fantastical version of the same, without forgetting that this is a module for Dungeons & Dragons and should, therefore, be both accessible and fun. 

By and large, Rolston and Danforth succeed admirably in this. One of the ways they do so is through the use of four different NPCs whose viewpoints on various matters of interest can be found throughout the 32-page Players Book, which, along with the 64-page DM Book, makes up the product. These NPCs – three humans and dwarf – all have unique voices and areas of expertise. Consequently, when they describe aspects of the Northern Reaches, they do so with varying degrees of bias. While this means not everything they say is wholly reliable, it also gives players and DM alike a sense of how the people in this region view the world. It's also a terrific guide for playing Northmen either as player or non-player characters. 

The DM Book, though larger, is the least interesting of the two. This book is written in a matter-of-fact way, presenting the history, geography, society, and current events of each of the three realms, with emphasis placed on those that are most useful for adventuring in them. We also learn about the unique nature of certain nonhuman races here, such as the dwarves and trolls, which are based a bit more on their Norse mythological equivalents (though not too much, lest this run counter to the expectations of standard D&D). There are also extensive treatments of the major personalities of the three realms, in addition to multiple adventure ideas and campaign outlines. Interestingly, there are also brief guidelines for converting the module to AD&D and even making use of the material in campaigns set in either Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms. 

The Players Book presents the three realms of Ostland, Vestland, and the Soderfjord Jarldoms as potential homelands for player characters. To that end, there is a section devoted to generating Northmen, starting with an optional personality traits system that's more or less identical to the one in Pendragon, albeit with slightly different sets of opposing traits (no "Chaste/Lustful," for example – this is a family-friendly game product!). There are also optional systems for determining a character's reputation, background, family status, past experiences, skills, and more. None of these systems is mechanically complex, but they're all sufficiently flavorful that I think they'd go some way toward marking a character from the Northern Reaches as distinctive.

There's also a section on the godar, as clerics are known in this region of the Known World. These Norse priests have different abilities and obligations based on the deity – I mean, immortal – they serve. These immortals should be familiar to anyone with knowledge of our world's Norse mythology. Odin, Thor, and Loki are all here, along with several others. Runes and rune magic also get their own treatments here. Again, the new systems associated with these things are fairly simple and don't deviate much from standard D&D, but they do so just enough that the end result is something flavorful and fun.

I'd be exaggerating if I called The North Reaches revolutionary or even groundbreaking. In many ways, it's a fairly ordinary transposition of the historical Norse to a fantasy setting, with almost no changes to differentiate them from their inspirations. Yet, in the context of late 1980s Dungeons & Dragons, that's more than enough to mark it as worthy of praise. That Rolston and Danforth do so in a way that simultaneously conveys the spirit of its inspirations while never losing sight of its purpose as a D&D supplement sets it apart from many similar products in the history of the hobby. That's probably why, even after all these years, I still retain a great fondness for The Northern Reaches and wish I'd paid more attention to the Gazetteer series at the time.