This is an ongoing series of reviews of classic West End Games Star Wars RPG adventures. I've run a few, read a few more and not touched a few since I bought them over the past 30 years. I'll look at them for a few different angles, including what I would change to bring the adventure to my table.Adventure title: Otherspace
Author(s): Bill Slavicsek
Published: 1989
The Pitch: The Rebels must journey into another dimension to locate a lost Rebel prison transport and come across the death-obsessed aliens who live there.
Summary: An adventure that attempts to bring the claustrophobic terror of the Alien franchise to the Star Wars universe. Instead, it shows that two great tastes don't always go together.
In-depth review with SPOILERS after the jump!
The Rebels are assigned to rendezvous with a prisoner transport called the Celestial. Instead, they drop out of hyperspace into an Imperial space ambush. The damage to their ship as they try a hasty retreat into hyperspace pulls them into a strange dimension on the other side of the blue wall. They find the transport, abandoned, along with evidence that the prisoners (including guest stars from other adventures) took over the ship before being taken aboard a giant alien bio-ship. The Rebels must board the alien ship not just to find the prisoners but also to scavenge parts for their own hyperdrive to return to their home dimension in their own ship. That's if they survive their encounters with some madness mist, the bug-eyed death-obsessed aliens called the Charon that run the ship, and the various prisoners who have gone mad or cut deals with the Charon to kill the Rebels.
The Design
For anyone looking for a straight up Star Wars dungeon crawl, this is it. The big fold out map is of the Desolate, the giant Charon ship, and it reminds of the ones you'd find in TSR boxed sets at the time. Dungeon crawl is being a little too generous here - in dungeon crawls, players at least get to choose which tunnels to explore. The rooms are laid out in a linear path in the adventure.
One of the strangest elements of the adventure are the Death Mist cards. The atmosphere causes severe hallucinations, which trigger in these cards that GMs hand out to players when they fail resistance rolls. This seems tailor-made for Force-users to have their own "Luke Skywalker at the cave" moment, but the only guidance the adventure gives for what being in a different dimension for Force users is like is "Man, it's creepy in here."
The main thrust of the adventure is a scavenger hunt for five pieces of a hyperdrive motivator for the Rebels' ship. Some of the pieces are easily found, others are hidden behind rolls. Hiding plot necessary materials behind rolls is never great design. The Rebels need to get home, so why not just let them find the pieces as they go through the ship? At the end of the adventure, the whole thing gets handwaved anyway, with the character needing to make a big roll to put together the pieces while the ship flies away from the Desolate...or it all works anyway, but the hyperdive shorts out again once the PCs are safely back in their home dimension.
One of the strangest elements of the adventure are the Death Mist cards. The atmosphere causes severe hallucinations, which trigger in these cards that GMs hand out to players when they fail resistance rolls. This seems tailor-made for Force-users to have their own "Luke Skywalker at the cave" moment, but the only guidance the adventure gives for what being in a different dimension for Force users is like is "Man, it's creepy in here."
The main thrust of the adventure is a scavenger hunt for five pieces of a hyperdrive motivator for the Rebels' ship. Some of the pieces are easily found, others are hidden behind rolls. Hiding plot necessary materials behind rolls is never great design. The Rebels need to get home, so why not just let them find the pieces as they go through the ship? At the end of the adventure, the whole thing gets handwaved anyway, with the character needing to make a big roll to put together the pieces while the ship flies away from the Desolate...or it all works anyway, but the hyperdive shorts out again once the PCs are safely back in their home dimension.
Canon Compatibility
The Charon share a lot of similarities with the Yuuzhan Vong, one of the more controversial elements of the Expanded Universe. They both are threats from beyond the known galaxy, both use creepy biotech elements, and both are trying just a little too hard to be scary.
The adventure also features Zardra from Tatooine Manhunt and Bane Nothos from Strikeforce: Shantipole as returning characters. This means a little more if you've already used those adventures. Zardra is a decent foil as a bad guy who allies with the Rebels to get home, while Nothos becomes the main human bad guy, allying with the Charon to try and kill the Rebels.
The adventure also features Zardra from Tatooine Manhunt and Bane Nothos from Strikeforce: Shantipole as returning characters. This means a little more if you've already used those adventures. Zardra is a decent foil as a bad guy who allies with the Rebels to get home, while Nothos becomes the main human bad guy, allying with the Charon to try and kill the Rebels.
Special Modifications
This one needs some work. I'd be more apt to clip specific characters or situations for use elsewhere in other games. The Death Mist sounds like it could be a fun Sith weapon meant to drive Jedi mad (and possibly fall to the Dark Side), kind of like the Black Sleep of Kali from Indiana Jones. The Charon also feel like they are a better fit for Star Wars than the Vong if you really need a creepy bioship alien. They are giant space spiders who walk around in exosuits and the illustrations really push them into classic Bug Eyed Alien territory.
Still, this could make for a good Halloween one-shot or even a good Imperial breakout scenario if the group has already used Starfall in that capacity. The trick is to flip the main narrative point: the PCs are the ones on an Imperial prison transport that jumps with a damaged hyperdrive. They wake up to the ship docked on the Desolate and the other survivors already on the ship. The scavenger hunt for the hyperdrive doesn't require rolls to find the pieces, but every piece should have an encounter to overcome, like the red mists or one of the other prisoners holding out. They have to work together with the non-Imperial prisoners to get home, or possibly even get that classic "I'll let you go...this time" ending from any Imperials they manage to save.
Still, this could make for a good Halloween one-shot or even a good Imperial breakout scenario if the group has already used Starfall in that capacity. The trick is to flip the main narrative point: the PCs are the ones on an Imperial prison transport that jumps with a damaged hyperdrive. They wake up to the ship docked on the Desolate and the other survivors already on the ship. The scavenger hunt for the hyperdrive doesn't require rolls to find the pieces, but every piece should have an encounter to overcome, like the red mists or one of the other prisoners holding out. They have to work together with the non-Imperial prisoners to get home, or possibly even get that classic "I'll let you go...this time" ending from any Imperials they manage to save.
Final Thoughts
The first Star Wars game I ever ran was a pretty cheap rip-off of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In my defense, I was 12, but Otherspace is a pretty clear knock-off of Alien. I'm sure that was intentional, because that was another popular sci-fi franchise at the time, but the adventure is a terrible fit for the optimistic pulp of Star Wars. Individual elements are interesting, but the adventure as written is brutal, linear and seems like a better fit for a completely different game.
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