Freelance
TravellerLeviathan
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2026 issue.
Leviathan.
Bob McWilliams et alia
Game Designers’ Workshop (defunct, see
https://www.farfuture.net)
52pp., PDF
Available on Far Future Enterprises Classic Traveller CD-ROM,
or
US$5.00/UK£3.71 at DTRPG
This is one of the early adventures of the Classic Traveller days; the copyright date is 1980. As with many of the early adventures, it only requires the module itself plus a set of basic Traveller rules (at the time, Books 1, 2, and 3). Having several other supplements and adventures published before the 1980 release of this adventure is specifically called out as useful; the language is ambiguous as to whether they should be considered necessary, but there are several references in the library data that suggest that the referee should have access to them.
This is a wide-open adventure; the referee is given the basics of the situation: The player-characters are hired as command and department heads of Leviathan, the “class ship” for a line of J3/4G merchant cruisers, and are to hire the rest of the crew and then be sent on an exploratory trade mission – that is, for a maximum of six months, they are to visit the unexplored worlds of Egyrn subsector and evaluate the possibilities of trade (including bringing back samples, where appropriate). As simple as this mission sounds, it won’t be a cakewalk, and combat, at both the ship-to-ship level and at the personal level, is a real possibility.
UWPs and key sociopolitical information on the worlds of the Egyrn subsector are provided in the module, as are details and deckplans for the ship. The Leviathan is large and well-armed for a trading ship, but it is unlikely to be able to defeat a military ship of comparable size. In a confrontational situation, the intent is that the ship should be able to survive long enough to flee the situation, not stand and slug it out.
The ship’s equipment reflects the early publication date, before the background was fully defined; there are “jump message torpedos” listed.
Although characterized as an “adventure”, it’s perhaps more appropriate to think of it as a “short campaign” – there are a dozen worlds to explore and evaluate, and exploration and/or contact on any one of them could easily fill an entire four-hour session at a convention. As a mini-campaign, however, it is self-contained; it could be easily inserted into a gap of appropriate length in a longer campaign without necessarily forcing changes in either the longer campaign or this one.
The referee should be familiar with this adventure before trying to run it; the open nature of the adventure requires that the referee be able to ‘think on his/her feet’, as the player-characters have been given wide discretion in the mission, and can be expected to do the unexpected. There is definitely no railroading here, but the player-characters do need to remember that actions have consequences, and it will behoove them to make their best effort to determine what the possible consequences are before taking irrevocable actions.
Overall, an interesting premise for an adventure, and one that is worth purchasing on its own if you don’t have or want the FFE Classic Traveller CD-ROM (I recommend the CD; there’s plenty of good material on it). The basic idea can also be lifted for a homebrew setting, though that would require a bit of work on the referee’s part.