NEXUM – The Contract of Aurion

By Giuliano Gianfriglia, La Tavola Rotonda APS
La Tavola Rotonda
OSE
Level 1

A SIMPLE CONTRACT. A SILENT WRECK. A SECRET THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN AWAKENED. In the sprawling Citadel of Aurion, an offer too good to refuse puts you on the trail of the Stella Cadente (the Falling Star), a transport ship that vanished under mysterious circumstances. What begins as a simple recovery mission for an ambitious merchant soon turns into a desperate fight for survival on an isolated asteroid. Something lurks within the twisted wreckage, and it has no intention of giving up its new “treasure”.

This 52 page sci-fi waste of space adventure has a giant bird in it. And, like, I don’t know, maybe six locations, if I’m being VERY generous and count the hook/tavern and the Jungle Cruise boat ride. 

I am a hypocrite. I know I’m a hypocrite. This means I am not an asshole. Since the only way to survive in the world is to be a hypocrite, everyone is a hypocrite and that means that if you think you are not a hypocrite then you are an asshole. I do not go up to homeless people and go on and on about how much money I have, disposable that I’m going to waste, and and how I am not going to give it to them. That would make me an asshole. [Exceptions to the above being made for BradleyDragon, of course.] I cannot imagine staring someone in the face and just flaunting things right in front of them. Fucking avert your eyes in an embarrassed manner and move on like everyone else, or maybe drop a few bucks because it’s the holidays. But, again, don’t just stand there looking at them and telling them, for a long amount of time, how rich you are and how you are not going to give them any money.

Naivete? The old Paranoia chutzpah? Why would you even put this in? “I like to masturbate to pictures of anal warts.” Uh, sure thing. We all do. But the rest of us have the decency to make some thoughts inside our heads only. Seriously, why would you thumb your noses at people? We keep our conversations related to the weather and the state of the roads. We do NOT talk about religion, politics, or the use of AI in products. I’m just absolutely gob smacked.

Ah, I see the problem. We’re sharing stories and we’re connecting with each other.

The setting here is pseud-scifi. Let’s call it Gamma World like, but not quite so primitive. I thin we’re going for a Planescape like vibe, except techno. In this “story” a dude hires you to to a ship and recover a thing. You get hired in a bar. You ride a ship to the wrecked ship, and probably do nothing on the way. At the ship you explore, maybe, three rooms and probably make a skill check. Then you fight a giant bird. Then the adventure is over. And it takes 52 fucking pages to do that. And why is that?

Because there’s tons and tons of generic advice for the DM. Is any of this supported, for the experienced DM? No. Did a new DM just wander in here to run this? No. Doesn’t matter through, it’s all still present.

It takes nineteen pages just to get through the hook. By page twelve, above, we do get a description of the bar where the hook takes place. Yeah!

Long italics read-aloud. “Your adventure begins here.” *sigh*

Hey hey! A meaningless location description in town that has no bearing on the adventure! Yeah!

Congrats. You rode a boat to the wrecked ship. This is kind of a weird way to present the entrances, grouping them by challenge phases instead of by location. No consequence to going in via the hash in the hull. Guess you pick that one. No clue why you would though. Life is random. That’s page 24.

Well, we’re doing a Fail Forward anyway. We don’t place critical information in a binary way in front of a die roll. If you want to create atmosphere, then you create atmosphere regardless of the die roll, which is what is going on here. I’m not a fan of the overly mechanistic stuff here. I think it robs the setting of sense of the evocative.

We’re in to the appendix. This is the dude that hires you, although you never meet him, only an agent. “This could elevate his status.” That’s boring. I want some scheming. Tell me his dirty little insipid scheme. Just add some color to the adventure.

And that’s the adventure. It generalizes. It wants to create this very evocative picture but it does by saying “Paint an evocative picture” instead of priming the DM to create that evocative nature. That’s the designers role. TO provide those cues to the DM. To provide things for them to riff on. Not to tell them to riff on things but to provide the specificity that will then allow that riffing.

I get that that the folks behind this were excited. But, also, there seems to be no clue as to what makes a decent adventure. It’s hard to fathom a hook, a boat ride, and four rooms taking up 52 pages.

This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/541172/nexum-the-aurion-contract?1892600