#4 - Starship Traveller

Now for something a little different - we're heading into space for the first sci-fi Fighting Fantasy book.

My history with the book

Never had this one as a child. Never even glanced through it as far as I remember. My first attempt with this book was when TinMan Games released the app but I think it was somewhat altered. I know that all the artwork was changed for one. I completed the app and so I vaguely know where to go but I'm sure not 100% with it.

What's it all about?

I am captain of the Starship Traveller. That's it. There's no background information and the adventure begins from paragraph one. This book is pretty unique in that you need to roll for yourself, your various crew and the ship itself. So after rolling a dice for 20 minutes, I'm finally ready to crack on with a space adventure.

The adventure

Captain                            Science Officer                Medical Officer               Engineering Officer
Skill: 12                            Skill: 10                             Skill: 10                            Skill: 9
Stamina: 17                     Stamina: 20                       Stamina: 20                      Stamina: 16
Luck: 11

Security Officer              Security Guard 1             Security Guard 2
Skill:9                              Skill: 7                                Skill 8
Stamina: 20                     Stamina: 20                       Stamina:21

The Starship Traveller
Weapons: 12
Shields:14

Phew! I said there was a lot of crew to roll for. They seem like a fairly decent bunch - the bizarrely buff Scientist, the comically weedy Engineer and the bizarrely inept security guards. Many hilarious yet exciting adventures no doubt await us as we journey around on our starship.

Aaaaand it seems our first adventure is ending in total disaster. The ship has a massive malfunction that causes us to lose power and slowly drift towards a black hole, known to us as The Selestian Void. Knowing that black holes both literally and metaphorically suck, we belt and brace ourselves for a painful death as we disappear. However, in the style of all classic space adventures, we haven't died at all. We have merely passed through into another dimension. None of the crew know where we are so we jet off towards the nearest life bearing system. We soon arrive at a blue looking planet and decide to beam down.

Gotta say....not sure what this is a picture of.

Walking around the planet, I decide to lead us into the nearest building. I see a sleeping man who wakes up and exposes the terrible truth - he's some kind of weird, one-footed stump man thing. He starts screaming at me in an alien language. Resisting the urge to jam my phaser up his stump, I calm him down and have a little chat. Turns out he was a little cheesed off that people teleported down from space and strolled into his house. Fair enough I figure. He explains that the planet is full of people but has no leaders - everybody does what they want. I head to the local meeting room and witness this in action - everyone just yells at each other and gets nothing done (nothing like Earth politics then....). One of them takes me to the map room where they show me some other nearby planets. Let's go find one then!

I head to the a nearby purple planet and beam down with my Engineer and science officer. We're confronted by a some kind of bug man who beckons us over. We go to him and he explains that this planet is just as ridiculous as the last. It is Culematter, and overpopulation means that death squads execute anyone on the streets post curfew. Naturally. Unfortunately for Bugsy, the population controllers decide to execute folk on the street and in this house, as they blow a hole in his poor insect body. We pretend we are complying with the PCs, but then make a surprise attack. This goes abysmally and we get a kicking. One of the guards losing his helmet during this attack though, and this causes him to freeze. A clue it seems. I ask to see the big boss, but they tell me I'm just going to be executed instead. Nice. We decide to fight the guard and, despite my science officer taking a beating, win the fight. We run to the command centre, and find that our communicators freeze the alien guards. I steal a helmet off one, find that they're all androids, and beam off the planet. The alien helmet is top notch though, and gives me an extra point of skill.

We fly to another blue planet and beam down. We immediately see some fat aliens with spears. Another pleasant welcome then.

Yep. Those sure are aliens with spears.

Once again, I use the age old technique of asking them nicely not to stab me. They agree and take me to their leader, who explains that we are now on planet Cliba. These particular aliens worship a 'Rain Lord' who, strangely enough, provides the rain needed for their crops. I tell them I'll have a word, as who could be better to send to talk to a deity than a stranger who just fell out of the sky. Turns out, he just some fella with a weather making computer thats on the blink. My Science officer gives it the ol' turn it off and on again approach and. hey presto,  it starts working again. Rain Lord is so impressed he tries to get us home. Obviously, he can't give us much in the way of help as that would be too simple. Find a black hole and approach at Warp speed 3 is all he can say. Where is this black hole? He doesn't know. Still, better than the other weirdos we've met so far.

Only 3.3 light years to the next planet, so off we trek. We head to a greyish looking planet. This one seems empty except for a a crashed ship. My search party ignore it and head back to ship, making this by far the dullest episode of the adventures so far. Or at least, it would be the search party didn't all suddenly die once they return (convenient that we only sent red shirts on this mission really...). As I rush the survivors to the medical bay, 3 more crew members die, though still no one important it seems. The science officer decides to seal of the lab and the deaths stop. All air is evacuated from the area and the problem solved.

We set off for another blue planet where we receive a transmission from I-Abail, who works for the local government. He invites me, but no one else, to meet him. He seems pretty technologically advanced but still offers me something to eat. I chow down his offerings and immediately pass out - it seems I've fallen for the classic 'drug the main character' ruse. I'm dragged off to the portal lab, which is basically a giant space maze. I wander round in circles for a while until I blunder back into I-Abail's office. His portal experiment is a success! Apparently. His portal is too small to get my ship home and the book won't let me ditch my crew and go home by myself. However, a black hole that will get my ship home will appear in Sector 159. Things are starting to look up.

Next, we head to a yellow planet which looks hot and volcanic. So we immediately go somewhere else (Great adventuring team!).

We head 2.3 light years to a grey planet and find it to be some kind of mining planet. We meet with K'tait and chat until he is summoned to 'the arena'. After waiting for his return, a robot comes and takes us to a room. A guard asks if we are taking part in 'the contest. We telling him where to get off, so he calls up K'tait, who admits there has been a blunder. He's also really sorry about it. To make up for it, he allows us to watch the contest but, wouldn't you know it, he's scamming us. We follow the guards and find ourselves in the arena facing down the giant robot from the front cover. Despite the battle being confusing (the rules for the fight are placed on the paragraph after the fight first appears. So I killed it before turning to the next paragraph to find out that you only hit him when you beat him then roll a 5 or 6) and my engineer taking a massive beating (down to 4 stamina), we prevail. To make up for being such a dick, K'tait tells us that the black hole we need can be found in Sector 83, which is great. It's also a direct contradiction to what I-Abail said, so that's gonna prove problematic later.

We hyperspace to a black planet and beam down with the science and medical officers. Seems that was a good choice as , after a few hours of wandering around, we find our oxygen is running out and the planet is blocking my transmitter signal so we can't call for help. Luckily, the science officer concocts a plan to attract the ships attention by heating up a rock or something. Hey, it works! we beam up and fly to the next planet.

Classic 'sexy' alien family

Once on the new planet, we are confronted by some alien family. One of the children comes and takes my hand and I, of course, follow it. Turns out that on this planet, the children are the intelligent one and the adults are senile and useless. So, lucky I followed the child then, as some planets wouldn't appreciate the 'random adult going off with a child' approach. The kids takes me to his civilisations computer room, where he finds out that my dimension and this one will meet at star date 21. Seems like another clue.

Not a moment too soon either, as the crew are becoming a bit cheesed off in this dimension. They're 'wondering if they'll spend the rest of their lives searching space' which, if i'm honest, seems to be what they would have signed up for to begin with. Rather than critique their whinging, I figure I know how to get home. I need a Sector and a Star date. Having been given two sectors, I take a guess that the trustworthy one was not the fella who tried to kill us in an arena. We head to the black hole, fly in and .... find ourselves back in our own dimension.

We are home!

Back to our lovely squiggle space dimension.

So, how'd it go?

No where near as badly as I thought it would. It took us 4 attempts to get home.

Adventure 1 - Had no sector or star date by the end so flew into a random black hole and died.
Adventure 2 - Beamed down onto a water planet and drowned.
Adventure 3 - Had the wrong star date and sector so flew into a dodgy black hole and died.

I've read a lot of bad press about Starship Traveller. I think a lot of it might be true -
if I only went to the planets I needed to, the adventure would have been over very quickly.

I never used half the staff I rolled for.
I never once used ship combat on my successful adventure.
Some of the planets were literally empty.
The artwork is...interesting.

Despite this though, I still had a good time. I enjoyed beaming down to worlds not knowing what was going to be there. I do have a bit of an issue with me taking the correct path and still ending up with two different sectors. Had I chosen the wrong sector, I might have presumed I'd gone the wrong way and taken another 10 goes before I repeated that route. But, of the 4 books I've finished so far, this one made me smile the most when I finished. Maybe the fact that I'd never finished the book version before made it feel like the first big accomplishment.

Next we have another book that I've never finished - City Of Thieves.