I'd like to add a few thoughts to Rob Dean's commentary on Knightfall.
First, let's get my major gripes out of the way-- the underlying premise
SPOILER WARNING!
of the game is just plain silly. "Oh, yeah, there was ANOTHER race BEFORE
the Ancients that made them look PITIFUL and they all died 600,000 years
ago...from boredom!" Literally. The rules state that the Primordials died
of boredom. And so can you, too, gentle reader. The flow of the game is
not open at all in critical junctures: at more than a half dozen points,
the possible scenaria squeeze together into a rigid set of events that MUST
occur if the adventure is to "work." I realize that this is true of most
if not all adventure modules, but I find the multiple-hourglass nature of
Knightfall to be a bit dizzying. "In Chapter 1, this and this and this
MUST happen. In Chapter 2, here's a whole bunch of random mini-scenarios
(most of them not terribly interesting) for people to putz around with. In
Chapter 3, though, you must get the players to here, so this and this and
this can happen. Then we have more random adventures...." And so on. There's
relatively little choice on the part of the players; I much prefer the
Traveller Adventure, whose structure was much less predictable and whose
bones were meatier. There are a number of areas in which the ref is told
to fudge rolls; this is OK as a tactic when necessary, but should not be
an integral part of the adventure: it leaves the players feeling railroaded.
On a less sour note, there are some interesting points made in terms of
general campaign color, not all of which I agree with... the manufacture
of TL11 Gauss weapons on a mining world where smuggling of TL12 guns would
have been better and cheaper. The attempted patching of the Trade and
Commerce system, which Dow Rieder and I are preparing to rebuild from
scratch. The tremendously anti-Lucan, pro-Margaret slant of the story...
yes, Lucan's a scumbag. We KNOW Lucan's a scumbag! But I'm sorry, folx,
as the Travellers' Digest has made abundantly clear, Margaret's no Joan
of Arc either, and it bugs me that the players aren't given enough data
to make an informed decision. In any campaign I ran, the players would
look at me en masse about 70% of the way through the module and say, "Oh,
come off it, Metlay. What are you trying to sell?" But your mileage may
vary: this is a great campaign for idealistic parties, and I may simply
suffer from an overly cynical bunch of players. (Nah.)
So do I consider this a wasted $10? NO! BY NO MEANS! I'm the TML historian,
and I pride myself on knowing more about the Traveller Universe than just
about anyone outside of DGP or GDW (interesting, the order I chose to name
those two...Freudian slip), and Knightfall is a thick book, full of really
worthwhile information. In the old days, we paid $6 and were very happy to
get books with sector maps: well, here's another one, the Massilia sector
in all its glory with full world data! There's a ton of good background
information on the politics and social structures of dozens of worlds, and
hints at all sorts of nifty groundwork for a campaign in one of the more
dangerous and risky parts of the Imperium these days. Combine this with
Trav Digest 11 (on the Geonee and more Massilia stuff) and you've got the
strong basis for a good campaign. The artwork, unlike that of recent GDW
MT releases, is almost uniformly excellent, and there are a number of small
adventure bits that could be spliced out of Knightfall and used in any
campaign that needs a quick adventure in a hurry. So I give Knightfall a
dual rating:
As an adventure: Fairly Limiting
As a data module: Quite Worthwhile
Make your own choices, based on what your game needs. I consider it the
first truly worthwhile GDW MT book since the Rebellion sourcebook or
MAYBE the Referee's Companion. MAYBE.
metlay