Designed to enhance your enjoyment of Gypsy Knights Games's Traveller setting, the Clement Sector, this book concentrates in the main on creating characters that will fit right in. As it is a fairly self-contained region of space, if you run it as written all your characters will have been born and raised there, so the selection of backgrounds provided ought to be useful.

Opening with a couple of pages of fiction to get you into the mood, the first part of the book consists of an extensive series of tables to use - in standard random Traveller manner - to create a past for your character. You can follow through the random process as directed, or if you prefer (and your Referee permits) choose the option that appeals the most. After you have rolled up your characteristics (UPP) according to the core rulebook, the tables here will let you determine which planet in the Clement Sector is your homeworld, and then you can find out the background skills you would have learned growing up there. Note that you are going to need a set of percentile dice as well as D6s. Once you know where you come from, the next step is to determine your native language - Clement Sector was fairly recently colonised from Earth, and people tend by and large to use the language they spoke 'back home'. There's a note on translation technology to ensure that everyone can (more or less) communicate with each other, though.

Next comes the beginnings of the 'lifepath' backstory, beginning with their youth modelled by two rolls to determine significant events in ages 4-8 then 9-12. Some of these are good, some less so. Events for the teenage years are resolved with another two rolls (or, of course, choices - but rolls are more fun and more in the spirit of Traveller character generation). As in real life, next you deal with time in college or university (should your character choose to attend and manages to gain admission). By the time you've finished all this and are ready for a career, you will have a vivid thumbnail sketch of your character's formative years... even if, rather ominously, the final table in this section is Prison Events!

The rest of the book is taken up with Clement Sector careers. There's a list of careers in other Gypsy Knights Games books, useful if you have a good collection or it might even inspire you to pick something up if you like the sound of some of the careers in it, and of course there are plenty more here. You can even be a celebrity or a professional sportsperson, never mind more likely careers such as being a merchant or in the military. Each career has the normal set of tables to help you build a solid backstory.

For those who like things a little less random, a series of Character Packages are provided. These give the skills accrued and other details, but not quite as detailed a personal history. Most are military careers but there are some civilian ones such as journalist, orbital construction worker... and you can still become a celebrity by this route. Finally there's a section on new skills and specialties.

Illustrated throughout with some atmospheric artwork (some of the poses are a bit awkward, but the scenery and spaceships are good), this provides a solid grounding for any character who is going to be played in the Clement Sector.

Return to The Clement Sector Player's Guide page.

Reviewed: 18 May 2015