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| The Volturnus hexmap |
Recently I have been trying to get into the classic 70s and 80s science fiction adventure modules. This means reading modules from games like Traveller, Star Frontiers, Gamma World, etc... I was lucky enough to find a good reading list on the NSR discord with a lot of depth, as well as plenty of classic sci-fi recommendations on the blog Grognardia. After reading a couple of Traveller modules, I moved on to the Volturnus series, an adventure split into three booklets. The first of these booklets comes as the intro adventure in the Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn box set published in 1980. The complete series makes up a grand adventure set on an alien world populated by inimical sentient races who need to be united to defend the planet from an impending alien threat. The downside is that the series is also written with a very linear narrative with unavoidable plot events that must happen along the way. These are events like an initial spaceship crash, storms that prevent the party from leaving a certain part of the desert, and a kidnapper who takes a prisoner during an assault on a pirate base who is seen disappearing into the desert. I thought that this story railroad detracted from on otherwise awesome mini-campaign, and that Volturnus could be rewritten as a more open ended adventure in the form of a sandbox. I'll try to set up and outline this sandboxing project here, and then flesh out the different factions and dungeons in later posts.
I don't think all of the plot events that happen over the three booklets need to be thrown out. The spaceship crash at the beginning of the adventure is sort of unavoidable to set the stage for the campaign. The starting mission of tracking down the crew of the previous survey mission who disappeared should stay, but doesn't have to be pursued by the party for the world to be interesting. The battle between the Kurabanda and the pirates that is ongoing the first time the party enters a certain forest is pretty cool. The final battle between the united alien races of Volturnus and the invading space worms should stay too, its pre-planned decisive battles can be worked a bit into more of a toolbox for large scale warfare.
The Kurabanda will become Ewoks with the serial numbers filed off, since that's sort of what they are, and because of some recent missteps made by WotC in using another monkey alien race related to Star Frontiers.
I will try to rewrite the setting from memory, so in practice this will be a Volturnus inspired sandbox for me or anyone to use. I guess one day it might be fun to put together into a book and stat out for a system like Stars Without Number or Mothership, so I also plan to come up with alternate names along the way to avoid any future headaches.
Since it is January, I will try and make this my 2024 writing project, and try to shoot for one blog post a month, hopefully.
My current ideas for posts are:
- desert octopii and their pilgrimmage
- traversing the glass grasslands and other dangerous terrain
- the tree dwelling furballs and the megaflora forest
- the pirate base and their operations on the planet
- the ritualistic and religious crustacean/insect people in the north
- the underground city of dying ancient dinosaur gengineers
- the race of sentient robots occupying the city of the ancients
- the evil alien worms and a large scale warfare procedure for the final battle