Traveller: Mysteries on Arcturus Station – RPG Overview
“This collection of two investigative adventures aboard a space station can be played individually or as a series. ‘The Hunt for Sabre IV’ is written by myself,”
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Hello Internet. Seth Skorkowsky,
and today I’m going to discuss
a Traveller book that I have
a very special connection to,
and that is Mysteries on Arcturus Station.
Published in 2021, it contains two mystery
adventures set aboard a space station. One is
an updated, expanded, and slightly reimagined
version of the 1983 adventure Murder
on Arcturus Station by J. Andrew Keith.
The other is a possible prequel adventure called
The Hunt for Sabre IV, which is written by me.
So what happened, was last year I did a review for
the original Murder on Arcturus Station scenario
and I had a few criticisms and suggestions
for it, but overall I absolutely loved that
adventure. I believe it is a genius adventure
and I mentioned that I hope Mongoose updates
that to the newest edition because it’s one of
those brilliant scenarios that shouldn’t be lost
to time as editions change, and various books go
out of print, and they end up getting forgotten.
Now one of my big criticisms about it is that it
opens up saying how the heroes have just completed
a job, and how that went, and who they met at the
station as a result of that, but there wasn’t any
adventure that was presented there, just simply
referenced it, and how the Travellers are now
waiting to get paid once this adventure starts.
I also mentioned that for my game, when I ran the
adventure, I wrote a prequel adventure that met
all of the requirements that the intro to this one
alluded to, and then I ran my players through that
adventure and we played it and had fun, and then
the next adventure kind of led straight into that
so that way we had two adventures back-to-back.
What I didn’t mention was that I had reached
out to Matthew Sprange at Mongoose Publishing,
telling him how much I would love to see an
updated version of Murder on Arcturus Station,
as well as my criticisms that I had about it.
Matthew said, “You know what, you’re right.
We should definitely do that,” and then he
offered me the job of writing the new adventure,
as well as offering me the job of updating the
scenario to the newest edition, giving me total
freedom to change it however it was that I wanted.
And this is it: My adventure The Hunt for Sabre
IV, as well as my updated and reimagined
version of J. Andrew Keith’s classic
Murder on Arcturus Station.
Holy crap, you Snyder Cutted yourself?
You were just like, “Hey guys, this stuff
needs to get changed,” and they were like,
“You’re right. You want the job to do it?”
That is like every gamer geek’s dream.
I know, right? I can’t believe that worked. So
starting with the original adventure, which was
54 half-size pages with no art outside from a pair
of maps, Mysteries on Arcturus Station is now two
adventures, coming in at 72 full-size pages, and
has a lot of art. Including images for 21 NPCs,
some of which appearing in one adventure,
with others appearing in both adventures,
gear and equipment that’s found in the
adventures, as well as two new ships,
the 1500 ton Saber Ore Carrier, and the 60-ton
Agrilus Mining Craft. There’s also a new psionic
ability that I got to introduce in these.
These mystery adventures can be played
separately, or together in a series.
Hold on. Back when we did our review for
Murder on Arcturus Station, it was mentioned by
a couple people that there actually already was
an existing prequel adventure that was printed
back in a magazine in 1983. What about that?
Okay, so when I did the first adventure, a few
veteran players pointed out that JTAS issue #18
from 1983 included an Amber Zone Adventure that
was called Without A Trace. Most of them were
pretty polite and informative in them telling me
of that, and a few were kind of condescending in
their mentioning of this prequel’s existence, and
were kind of rude about it. First, Without A Trace
is an Amber Zone adventure, meaning that it’s more
of a rough outline sketch than a module itself.
I mean, here it is, just over two half-size pages,
meaning that it’s really over just one full-size
page. It’s more of a promotional hook for the
then upcoming Murder on Arcturus Station – at
that point still called Murder At Arcturus
Station – and like it’s kind of like a trailer,
really. It also requires that Referees pick up
Adventure 4: Leviathan to get the ship’s deck
plan, meaning that it’s really intended to sell
you two adventures. And among the information
that it lacks is the setup for Arcturus Station,
such as introducing Maria Aguilar, and how that
adventure is intended to end in order to be a
proper setup for Murder on Arcturus Station.
The module also makes no reference at all to this
magazine adventure, and neither does the Traveler
Wiki. So like most folks in the 38 years since
that magazine issue was printed, I had no idea
that Without A Trace even existed. But once I was
aware about it, once people had told me about it,
I talked with Matthew Sprange to see if
maybe we should modify the Hunt for Sabre IV,
which at that point was already written, but
maybe we could change the names of the NPCs,
or maybe name the ship the Solaria, like it was
in the original adventure or something like that,
just kind of as a nod or an ode to the original
adventure that J. Andrew Keith had done.
But we decided that because my adventure, which is
far longer, a full mystery scenario, and very very
different than Without A Trace, that we were going
to go ahead and leave that as is. We weren’t going
to change it at all, which would leave Without
A Trace available to appear in maybe a future
Journal of the Traveler’s Aid Society
Volume as an alternate prequel adventure,
or if you do the right changes, a group could
end up doing both, where you do Without A Trace,
and that leads you into The Hunt for Saber IV, and
which would then lead you into Murder on Arcturus
station. If you made the proper changes you could
be able to pull that off. So we decided that we
weren’t going to change the original scenario at
all because my adventure was written completely
independent of it with no idea that it existed.
Enough about that. So let’s go ahead and talk
about this book, what it contains, what was
changed from the original Murder on Arcturus
Station, as well as a few tips and tricks on
running both adventures that appear inside of it.
For the most part, Murder on
Arcturus Station is unchanged.
The layout has been changed to make it easier to
use in-game, the mechanics have been updated to
the newest edition, phrasing has been tightened,
and pretty much every single criticism that I made
about it in my review video has been corrected
for this updated version. So that half-hour
video still serves as my tips for running that
scenario. No need to repeat everything that
was already addressed in that video.
This video will focus on this book,
the new adventure The Hunt for Sabre IV, as
well as the changes that were made to Murder on
Arcturis Station, such as the addition of a 10th
suspect from of the original 9 that that one had.
But before we go any further, I must warn you
that there will be Spoilers. So any players in
the audience, please stop here. But send your
Game Master this way to see about running these
adventures for you. But if you keep going, and you
spoil yourself, you have no choice but to run it
and let your Game Master get to play for a change.
Okay Game Masters, let’s get this thing started.
Because this book contains two adventures that are
both set on Arcturus Station 3, the first part of
the book is simply about the system and about the
station itself. The system is a giant asteroid
belt with no planets. Different companies mine
this belt for ores, one of those companies being
Lamarck Minerals, which is based out of Station 3.
We get some information about the station itself,
including a deck plan for both the Lower Deck,
where the casino and restaurants are located,
as well as for the Residential Deck where
the Travellers and the NPCs should be living.
Now this is the Player Version of the
Middle Deck, with no rooms being marked.
Game Masters will get two versions, depending
on which adventure it is that they’re running,
and that gives the room locations for the NPCs
appearing in those adventures. Aside from new
maps, the big change from the original Arcturus
Station is Cameras – which follow my suggestions
that I gave in the first review – and Delivery
Tubes, which get a passing mention in the original
scenario, but they’re now explained and they’re
used in the new adventure that I’ve added to it.
The first adventure, The Hunt for Sabre IV, the
backstory is that Lamarck Minerals, under the
leadership of their president Ringiil Urshukaan,
has earned a reputation for abusing its employees.
Last year, the mining craft L4-M7 was lost in an
accident, and while the company claims that it was
due to piloting error, employees know that that
was due to safety cutbacks that the company had
made. The loss of the ship caused an escalation
among the disgruntled employees, resulting in
sabotage and theft that was done throughout
Lamarck Minerals facilities. A mysterious
figure known as Omega has been linked to many
of these incidents, but Lamarck Minerals has
been unable to identify who Omega is.
Hart Fonroe, a mining boat pilot,
was contacted by Omega, who proposed the idea
of stealing one of Lamarck Minerals’ giant ore
carriers and bringing in a massive profit, while
also dealing a big financial blow to the company.
Hart assembled a team to help them with this
plot. The plan was that during their two-week
break at Station 3, the conspirators were
going to steal the access codes to one of the
docked ore carriers from its captain, and then
once that ore carrier was scheduled to leave,
they would just go ahead and pilot that
away and jump away to wherever Omega waited.
Unfortunately things didn’t quite go as planned.
Shortly after they arrived, Lance Gimsa, their
Astrogator, was called back to work early due to
a clause in his mining contract that the company
regularly exploits. The conspirators decided that
instead of Lance causing suspicion by refusing to
deploy with the rest of his mining crew, that
he would go ahead and go and leave with them,
meanwhile the rest of the team would steal the
ship as they planned to do, and then they were
going to disable the transponder, and hide
somewhere in the belt until Lance came back.
Once Lance returns 10 days later, he and another
conspirator Dyrrol Mollik would steal a mining
craft, rendezvous with Sabre IV, and jump away.
The adventure begins when the Travellers arrive
at Wainwright Starport. Why they’re
here is completely up to you. Maybe
they’re just simply passing through, or maybe
they were called in for this particular job.
The Referee could also make it to
where the station manager Marja Aguilar
is who recommended the Player Characters for this
job, meaning that she’s like an existing trusted
friend of one of the Player Characters, or if the
Player Characters might have an existing Ally or
Contact that they might have come up with during
Character Creation, you could just swap Marja
Aguilar for that existing Ally or Contact, making
them an old and trusted friend of the Player
Characters and somebody that they can count on.
They’re contacted by Martin, the assistant to
Urshukaan, saying that he has a job for them.
Because docking space at Station 3 is limited,
the Travellers must take the inner-system liner
to Station 3, which takes 3 days to get there.
The travelers arrive at Station 3 the day
that Sabre IV has been discovered stolen.
The Travellers are then hurried to
Urshukaan’s office where they meet with him,
Martin, his security chief Eayukheal, his
bodyguard Enli, and if they don’t already
know her, the station manager Marja Aguilar.
All of these NPCs appear in both adventures,
meaning that the Player Characters that do
continue on to the second adventure, the players
and those characters will already be familiar
with them, rather than being introduced to them,
the players pretending as if their characters
already know each other. So this way the players
get to have an idea of who these people are and
get to learn a little bit about their personality
before they begin the second adventure.
Urshukaan tells them that the crew of Sabre
IV showed up that day for deployment, only to
discover that their captain, Hummit Madson had
taken the ship out for a routine inspection flight
two days ago and he hasn’t returned. Docking Bay
security footage shows the three individuals
entered the Sabre IV before it took off, and
their faces were covered by hats and goggles and
they couldn’t make out who they were, but one of
them was clearly wearing Captain Madson’s flight
suit, and Captain Madson’s security codes were
used to release the docking clamp on the ship.
The station has been unable to locate Saber IV
and its last known transponder ping was 28
hours ago, so it might have already jumped
away. But Urshukaan believes that there’s
definitely a conspiracy at play here,
and he mentions that Omega is his prime
suspect, and somebody has to know something.
He offers the Travellers 50,000 credits a piece in
order to find this ore carrier, its cargo, and its
ringleader. Because Marja Aguilar is the station
manager, he holds her responsible for this,
and he demands that she give them full access
to her assistance and anything that they need,
including administering stress tests.
50,000 credits? Oh, sure thing,
boss. We are gonna find that missing
ship for you. You don’t worry about that.
Guys, we hit the jackpot here. There is no way
this guy is gonna try to weasel out of paying us.
From here it’s pretty open as far
as what the Travellers can do.
The module includes a Timeline of events up until
when the adventure starts on Day 15, followed by
when events occur unless the Travellers prevent
those, including the criminals escaping on Day 25.
Now one thing that they might do is interrogate
the Saber IV’s crew. They all insist their
captain is innocent. There’s no way that he would
have stolen the ship. Now with interrogations,
Matt McCloud with Lurking Fears, who play-tested
this adventure for me as a Game Master,
and he has since run this several times at various
conventions – he’s run this adventure more times
than I have – he’s added a cool little feature to
this. Taking inspiration from the movie Outland,
suspects are held in 0-gravity cells,
and I love that. But because it’s so
clearly a thing that came from that movie,
I decided not to add that little detail to
the written adventure. However for anyone that
decides to run this adventure for your group,
I say go for it. Absolutely use this. Anything
that you think would make this adventure
cooler – or any adventure cooler – go ahead and
use that, do that, make your adventure cooler. And
Outland is a great source of ideas that you can
steal from to use for your own Traveller games.
Now unless the Travellers discover it first,
the mutilated remains of Captain Madson are
discovered by cleaning staff on the morning of
the second day. In the room are several clues,
such as empty Truth Serum vial and a thumbprint
on a delivery capsule that belongs to Keri Gimsa.
The Travellers of course can have the station’s
Lab Techs either identify the drug or perform
the autopsy on that body. However that’s going
to take a lot longer for them to do that than
if the Travellers just did all that stuff
themselves. The idea being that it’s in the
Traveller’s best interest to go ahead and make
those Skill Rolls and do that work themselves,
than it would be for them to just to pass that off
onto some NPCs. However, if the Player Characters
either lack those skills altogether, or their dice
just really aren’t working well with them that
day, the Player Character can still get access
to that information, but at the cost of time.
Travellers might also interview docking
crew, review security camera footage,
maybe running facial recognition software
against the company’s database of employees,
review the station’s sensor logs, visiting
the station casino, using their Carouse
skills to gather rumors and find out information.
Or make a few bucks gambling down to the casino.
One of our Player Characters just kept wanting
to go back downstairs to gather more rumors.
And he did get a few rumors, but he also made
close to a thousand credits for his time doing it.
Eventually enough clues are going to point towards
Captain Fonroe and his crew who were scheduled to
leave on their mining ship the same day that
Saber IV was stolen. Their craft’s transponder
is working, but it’s not responding to any hails.
Now the Travellers can commandeer a mining craft
to go out and intercept it, but it’s going
to cost them a full day in order to do that.
Or with some good rolls, maybe they could persuade
one of the closer ships just to go off and inspect
that ship themselves. Though doing so is likely
going to cause that other ship to miss their
mining quota. They’re not going to get paid
if they miss their quota. So it’s going to
be a little hard to persuade them in order to
get them to go and check out this other ship.
Or if they miss that clue entirely,
the mining craft is going to be
discovered on Day 4 of the investigation.
It’s going to be found to be abandoned,
with supplies stripped, and a large omega
symbol painted on the flight bridge.
Reviewing the employee profiles for the
GT-56’s crew might notice that none of
them are certified astrogators. However, Kari’s
brother Lance recently qualified as an astrogator,
and rumors state that there is no way
that Kari would leave her brother behind.
Of course, Lance is currently deployed somewhere
out in the belt, giving him a solid alibi for the
night of the murder. He’s going to deny
any involvement with this conspiracy,
but with some difficult rolls – which can be
made easier if one of the Travellers might
have a history as a Belter, so they use that
to kind of form a bond with him, or if they
make him believe that him doing a confession
would be able to save his sister, if his sister
is in danger – they might be able to get him to
talk and be able to confess to what’s going on.
Now Lance returns to Station 3 on the 5th Day
of the investigation, and unless the Travellers
stop him, he’s going to steal a ship and
head out to Sabre IV the following day.
There’s also Dyrrol Mollik.
He works in the station dock,
and is waiting for Lance to come back. And
depending on what clues the Travellers uncover,
might put him on their radar as a suspect.
Getting him to confess it’ll be difficult.
And without solid evidence or a confession they
can’t hold him for any longer than 12 hours.
Now Dyrrol’s big role is that he can serve as
your wild card. Once he realizes the Travellers
are on the right path, he can make his move.
He might search their room, or plant evidence,
or try to ambush one of them. Or if they leave
the station he might sabotage their ship,
leaving them stranded and floating out there,
trying to be able to fix their ship or fix their
radio to have somebody come fix them while he and
the conspirators are trying to make their escape.
Discovering Sabre IV’s location can be done
several ways. Maybe through a confession,
maybe hacking Dyrrol’s hidden computer,
if the Travellers are able to find it,
or attempting to follow when Lance and Dyrrol
steal the craft – maybe the Travelers can take
their own craft and try to follow them out there.
Okay. But once we find it, what do we do then?
I mean, taking out a giant ship that’s
full of desperate murderous criminals,
that don’t sound too good for my health.
I’m a detective. I ain’t a space marine.
That depends. Maybe the Travellers can try
to con their way aboard, posing as Lance or
Dyrrol. Or they might to force them at gunpoint,
like work the Comms and be able to say like,
“Oh no, it’s just us. We’re gonna land,” and
the Traveller’s behind them with their pistol
or something like that. Or they might take one of
the mining craft out there to stage an assault,
either with a forced docking, or even cutting
a door with the laser mining drill. Or they
might call the police, sending an detachment of
the port authority out to the ship’s location.
Of course a patrol cruiser all the way from
Wainwright Starport would take four days to
reach the ship. So if the criminals have their
astrogator they will have escaped by that point.
No matter what tactic they do, Captain Fonroe
should die if you’re planning on running the
next adventure. Maybe in combat, maybe at
one of his crewmates hands, maybe suicide
once he realizes that his ship has been boarded.
One game that Matt McCloud ran, a group managed to
get him alive with a stunner, so you know what,
it can happen. But the GM decided to have Omega
murder him before Captain Fonroe could be brought
in to interrogation. It could be done with poison,
or a sniper shot as he exits his ship, or Omega
being a psion, could just use psionics to do it,
either frying his brain or compelling
somebody else to kill Captain Fonroe for her.
That GM’s way of dealing with that, is he
had Omega hiding outside in the docking bay
wearing a jumpsuit like she was just one of the
regular workers. Then when the ship arrived,
and they marched Fonroe out with his hands all
in shackles, and they’re parading them on up to
get interrogated, his eyes just suddenly rolled
up at his head and he dropped dead to the deck
right there. And everybody’s looking at Fonroe,
going, “What the hell just killed this guy?”
and that’s when Omega made her escape, only
to show up again in the next adventure.
However you want to do that is
fine. But Captain Fonroe should die
before the Travellers or anyone else are able
to glean Omega’s identity from him, because the
Traveller’s failure to get that is what sets
the groundwork for Murder on Arcturus Station.
The original module made a point that the
Travellers failed to capture the ringleader,
something that Without a Trace failed to mention.
This of course then leads us to Adventure 2:
The revised Murder on Arcturus Station.
Again, this adventure can be played as
a standalone if you will. And aside from
the mechanics, and the layout organization,
and new art, the adventure itself is mostly
unchanged. So the original review is still
valid for how to run that adventure, which is more
of a toolbox than it is a written-out mystery.
Game Masters are still gonna need to decide how
the victim dies, be it stabbing, shooting, blown
up by a bomb, strangled, poisoned, whatever it is.
The characters all now have portraits, which the
original module did not. So that can make it
easier for Game Masters to run this version,
especially in virtual tabletops,
where character portraits really
help keep straight who everybody is.
Criticisms that I had of the original
scenario have all been corrected in this
update. Such as the Baronetess has a staff
that’s listed for her now, as well as
some information about each of them.
I also noticed that you corrected her title from
being Baronet to Baronetess, which is actually the
correct title for her. So better late than never.
Yep. We also have gear and equipment now.
Including two types of daggers that
have special stats and information
about them. And the Stress Detector, which I
think this image came out pretty cool looking.
Urshukaan’s original suite had a Computer Room,
because Classic Traveller computers were just
massive and they took up entire rooms. The updated
one has changed to this room just being a basic
Supply Closet. Now I don’t know why on the
map they changed the sequence of room numbers,
and this font that they used made the 7 look like
a question mark, which I do find kind of weird.
The most significant change that I made was
the addition of a 10th suspect Taril Ulgeev,
also known under her alias as Omega.
Her addition serves two purposes.
First, she ties the two adventures together
very well. Now she can either be the killer,
because she failed to humiliate
Urshukaan with the ore carrier theft,
or she can be a suspect who looks so guilty
it might allow the real killer to escape.
The second purpose for her addition is
that if she’s used as the real killer,
her means of doing it is very
different than all the others have.
She is a powerful psion. And her plan is to
force a Traveller to do the murder for her.
So on the night of the murder, she approaches
a Traveller in a restaurant or the casino,
and strikes up a brief conversation with them.
Then using her psionics, sends that Traveller
to kill Urshukaan. And then using a unique power
to erase the Traveller’s memory of the incident,
meaning that the Traveler nor the
player have any idea what they’ve done.
Which can lead to quite a surprise as the Player
Characters are tasked with solving this murder,
they start noticing some really weird
things going on around this crime scene,
such as their fingerprints are all over the place.
Or whatever weapon was used to kill this guy,
that’s the same weapon that they use, and
their weapon is missing. And then they
check the disposal chute and they find their
own weapon has been thrown away down there,
and it’s got their fingerprints and his blood
all over it. That’s when they start realizing
that they are not the victims of some sort of
frame-job. They realize that they’re the killers.
Proving Taril’s guilt is
going to be difficult to do.
Public information about the mining ship
that crashed last year lists her brother
as one of the victims. And in Urshukaan’s
private files – if they’re able to hack
his computer – it says that Omega is rumored to
be a psion who can alter their victims memory.
Psi Detectors are pretty expensive, and they
start out at Tech Level 16. So it’s unlikely
that the Travellers are going to have one when
they do this adventure. Though once Inspector
Dragovitch arrives at the station a few days after
the murder, his ship has an old Tech Level 13 Psi
Detector, which the Travellers might get access to
if they can convince him. And on a different note,
I love the image for this thing. Because it’s
supposed to be an old-fashioned Psi Detector, the
little antenna on it has this sort of retro
look to it. I think it’s just wonderful.
I just thought that having the Player Characters
realize, and then having to hide their own
involvement in this murder, while also trying
to simultaneously hunt down the real murder,
would be kind of a fun addition to all the
different things that this murder mystery
game already offers to us. Kind of a neat little
addition to the toolbox that the Game Master has.
Overall, I’m pretty proud of this book. I’m very
happy to have added my own little piece to the
Traveller Universe, and getting the opportunity
to bring back and update J. Andrew Keith’s
classic adventure that I love so very much.
So a huge thank you to Mongoose Publishing
for giving me this opportunity,
and I hope that players enjoy it.
You can pick up a copy at the Mongoose website as
a physical edition and a PDF, or you can pick up
the PDF on DriveThruRPG. And if you liked it,
a rating or a review is always appreciated.
Hey, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed
the video, please give it a Thumbs Up.
If you want to see some more of our
stuff, such as Game Reviews, or How-To’s,
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Traveller, just hit that Subscribe Button.
Until next time, Travellers, you have a great day.
You know, if you want to be extra
devious during that murder investigation,
you have it where Omega really is the killer. But
instead of having a Traveller do her dirty work
for her, she has one of the other nine suspects
do the killing for her. So now the Travellers,
they get tasked with doing this job, and they look
at the evidence, and they look at the motivations,
and they say, “Yep, it was this person right here.
They are guilty.” But that suspect, they keep
going, “No. I have no memory of doing this. You
gotta believe me. Somebody controlled my mind.”
So the Travellers, you know, if they believe them,
they got to start looking around through all the
other suspects and trying to figure out which
one of them is an evil psion with some sort of
power that ain’t nobody ever heard of before.
But meanwhile, the authorities are all like,
“What are you talking about? You solved the
case. You’re a big damn hero, and you’re
gonna get a reward. We’re gonna let everybody
out of this station, and they can go home.”
So now the Travellers, they’re in some sort
of race against time, trying to find some sort
of evil psion out there, and try to prove
the innocence of the person that they had
just proven guilty of murder. That is some Agatha
Christie-level stuff right there… but in space.
