Review 14: Nunsuaq Station
It's time for another conversion review! The adventure that I ran is Nunsuaq Station, written by Carl Niblaeus with layout by Christian Plogfors. This adventure was originally written for the Death in Space system, but I ran it using Monolith, which is a sci-fi hack of Cairn. The general premise of this adventure is an abandoned station on an icy moon where some undefined thing has happened, and the PCs are tasked with investigating and looking for survivors or salvage.
Getting it to the Table
Since Death in Space is a relatively light system, it was pretty easy to convert to Monolith, using the conversion principles that I have written about previously. There are also relatively few monsters and NPCs in this zine-sized booklet, so there was not a whole lot of converting that needed to be done anyway.
The layout of the booklet is pretty well thought out for ease of use; the inside cover has some random loot tables, and the back cover has stat blocks for monsters and NPCs. Normally this would be a no-no from me, but because I converted them to a different system, I didn't end up needing to flip to the back whenever they were encountered. The booklet opens with a page of background information about the research facility and the situation, which indicates a 2 hour time limit as the entity that the station is studying begins to awaken. This is followed immediately by four hooks to connect the adventure to a longer campaign (or set the tone for a one-shot) along with an overview of general features of the station. There is also a general layout of the station, with the more detailed maps of the levels accompanying the area keys.
One minor critique that I had regarding the maps is that they were a little bit difficult to parse at a glance. Part of this was the condensed nature of the area keys; to save space, there were multiple rooms that had the same function marked with the same number, so that there was only one entry for multiple rooms on the map. This had the additional effect of making the rooms feel more abstract, which was not ideal for a search and rescue type adventure-- with that style, I usually expect having more distinct areas to search, with different things to find in each location. One other personal pet peeve that I have is when maps include information that is not referenced in the area descriptions; namely the ladders between the levels. The map includes a tiny X marking the presence of a ladder, but the room descriptions do not mention them, so it would be very easy to miss the existence of the ladders at all.
The room descriptions themselves are nice and concise, with plenty of environmental details to help built the mood and tension of a creepy abandoned station, and this is helped by a random events table that helps to escalate things as the time limit runs out. All combined, this resulted in a good pace at the table that steadily grew more and more panicked as things started happening and players were getting freaked out!
What Worked?
- Concise, evocative room descriptions. No blocks of read-aloud text that sound stilted, just hints that push the GM in the right direction.
- Maps where you need them. While I did have some issues with the maps themselves, they were paired with the descriptions on a single spread, which is perfect for ease of use.
- Creepy random events table. Not just an encounter table, just things that might indicate an encounter and make the players feel a bit creeped out.
What Didn't Work?
- Slightly confusing maps. I ran this with very little preparation beyond converting stat blocks, so the lack of mention of ladders in the room descriptions and the aforementioned space-saving abstraction caught me a little off balance. Not a huge deal, but not ideal.
- Stat blocks at the end. Again, not a huge deal because I had them written down elsewhere. But you know how I feel about that.
Final Thoughts
I'm super thrilled to see so many horror-adjacent working-class sci-fi TTRPG systems coming out these days, as it's one of my favorite genres. Death in Space puts an interesting spin on things, but Monolith is keeping top spot in my heart for how the system works. The common factor amongst all of these systems is that people are writing some great little adventures for them-- Nusuaq Station is no exception! I ran it for a group of people who had never played the system before, and with whom I had typically been playing more standard fantasy games, and all of the little environmental details and events contributed to an excellent session, and very little preparation was necessary-- even less if I had run it with its intended system!
You can get Nunsuaq Station in print at Kartellian Vaults or in PDF form at the Death in Space itch page. Thanks for reading!