Duneraiders

Game Review

Reviewed by William Barton


Written by William H. Keith, Jr. Gamelords, Ltd. 18616 Grosbeak Terrace, Gaithersberg, MD 20879
Released: 1984
Catalog No. 1989 Price: $6.85
Complexity: intermediate
Solitaire Suitability: Low
* * * 1/2

As Ascent to Anekthor was the companion adventure to Gamelord's The Mountain Environment, so is Duneraiders the companion adventure to The Desert Environment. Designed by Desert author William H. Keith, Jr., Duneraiders drops a team of adventurers into an intercorporate conflict on the desert planet Tashrakaar. Player-characters are hired on as security guards aboard an orecrawler owned by jericorp Mining, a company about to go under in the face of stiff competition and suspected sabotage from another local company Dakaar Minerals, and from the loss of three of the hard-to-replace orecrawlers, one of which simply disappeared in the desert. As such, they become embroiled in intercompany rivalry, a desert mining expedition, potential sabotage by Dakaar agents, and run-ins with the planet's nomadic tribes the Duneraiders of the title, not to mention all the hazards of Tashrakaar's desert wastes.

The module provides the referee with maps of Tashrakaar, detailed information on the climate and geography of the planet and its population, stats for major non-player characters (NPCs), plus encounter tables and guidelines for running the adventure. Also featured are deck plans and descriptions of the orecrawler, plus a simple, playable combat system for resolving battles between crawlers and air/rafts.

Duneraiders is packaged in stanclard Traveller format - 51/2 x 81/2 inch booklet, running at 58 pages of adventure. Overall, it looks to be -- and plays out as -- a solid adventure, though I had my doubts initially when I saw its overworked theme of corporate conflict and wrongdoings. And, of course, as a desert adventure, Duneraiders must face the inevitable comparisons with Dune especially with such echoes of that epic in its orecrawlers and the Duneraiders tribes themselves. Thus the module suffers somewhat on originality, though it gets high marks for suspenseful adventure.

The background and environment of the planet is very skillfully crafted. With the information provided in Duneraiders, a referee would have little trouble running any number of adventures on Tashrakaar, whether he wished to run the situation covered in the module or not. A number of options given the referee on specific courses in the adventure gives Duneraiders a good deal of replay value. Even the same basic situation could take any number of different twists each time it was played.

Organization was a bit of a problem in Duneraiders. Information I kept expecting to find in one place often was separated by several sections-the crawler data and crawler combat sections, for example. Not a serious problem, really, but occasionally annoying. There were a couple oddities in the crawler combat section, such as a +2 die modifier (I)M) on the chance to hit a stationary air/raft; since only a roll of 12 on 2D6 hits any air/raft on the table, and 13+ is a miss, too, the modifier isn't really much help. Overall, though, the crawler combat system is quite playable, and could easily be used for any other Traveller vehicle combat situation instead of having to resort to the more complex Striker rules or simply free-forming it. Another minor problem with Duneraiders is that, contrary to the back cover notes, The Desert Environment is needed to fully run the adventure; on most of the non-Tashrakaar-specific situations of desert life or survival, the referee is referred to that supplement for a resolution.

Duneraiders con-ibines a number of elements to make a satisfying TravellerO adventure: the challenge of a hazardous desert crossing, the thrill of man-to-man and crawler-tocrawler combat, uncertainties in dealing with the different tribes of Duneraiders, and even a mystery to solve - - is Dakaar prepared to go to such lengths to run Jericorp out of business? Only its lack of originality in using the hackneyed corporate theme and that it isn't the first Traveller desert adventure ever published lowers its overall value.

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