Traitor Supplement

1982

This is another Thieves' World adventure written by Bill Fawcett, and designed and illustrated by Jordan Weisman, Jim Clouse and Mineral Bamletta. The players assume the roles of "Hawkmasks", uniformed thugs in the service of Sanctuary's crime boss, Jubal. One of the players is a traitor, and working at cross purposes with the others. Robert Aspirin contributed an essay "Gaming Jubal", which focuses on the problem of presenting believable villains in adventure fiction.

Back cover blurb:

Jubal has made it clear. In three days deliver the one among you who betrays the Hawkmasks or all must die. In a race against time you must find which of you is the TRAITOR and recover a valuable document. TRAITOR is an adventure in Sanctuary, the city of Thieves' World anthologies edited by Robert Asprin. TRAITOR includes a detailed adventure, dozens of new characters, maps, and locations for Sanctuary, and Gaming Jubal by Robert Asprin.

Review of "Traitor" and "Spirit Stones",
White Dwarf 38, "Open Book"

These are the first of a series of scenarios being produced by FASA for use with Thieves' World, Chaosium's multi-system pack reviewed in WD3O. They are designed to be readily convertible to any system: characters' statistics are listed in the form of percentages in six characteristics (Might, Intellect, Knowledge, Stamina, Co- ordination, and Appeal) and ratings in one or more generalised skills (fighter, thief, cleric) on a scale of 0-9, together with height, weight, age, weapons and armour (if any) and cash in hand.

In Traitor the players (4 or B recommended) are Hawkmasks, employees of the underworld boss Jubal (whose motivation and character are described in a fine essay by Robert Asprin, originator of the Thieves' World concept and editor of the 4 collections of stories about Sanctuary now available). They have been ambushed while collecting a document very important to him and have three days in which to retrieve it and discover the traitor among their own ranks. This can be any of the characters, as the GM chooses; the detachable character-sheets provided for the players present identical information on each side, with an extra paragraph on one side explaining how the player has come to betray information about the pickup, in each case as a result of foolishness or unthinking greed rather than malicious intent. The 'traitor' is doomed unless he successfully shifts the blame to someone else, and the penalty for failure in the main task is certainly death; thus the players, especially the 'traitor', will be under considerable pressure.

In The Spirit Stones the players (3 or 4) are S'Danzo, members of the gypsy-like people introduced in Thieves' World and further explained here by their creator Lynn Abbey. They must recover three Spirit Stones entrusted to their care, the only objects that the S'Danzo truly value, taken by force from an old S'Danzo they should have been guarding. Their only lead is that the thief came from Sanctuary and had a peculiarly scarred face. The trouble that they will face comes not so much from false leads as from the fact that the stones have changed hands several times by the time they reach Sanctuary; there is no time-limit, but tracking down and recovering them will be very difficult, especially as the S'Danzo cannot afford to let the true value of the Stones be known, and will not get much help from their own people even.

The plots and sub-plots have been carefully thought out and all possibilities seem to be well covered; some of the personnel in the two scenarios are the same, helpfully cutting the GM's work. A further restriction upon the players in both cases will be their shortage of cash, which will be needed for private-eye style bribes as well as, in the S'Danzo case, living expenses; complications and delays may well ensue if they attempt to supplement their means by the commonest method in Sanctuary, theft.

Presentation is reasonably good, but each page has a sprinkling of misprints and minor errors and the language is sometimes clumsy. Traitor also requires as background a period when the Ilsig kingdom has not yet been conquered, which would in fact be considerably before the 'present' of Thieves' World, and The Spirit Stones' account of the cult of Shipri does not square with what is said on the last page of the Thieves' World players' guide, but these are minor features which can easily be adjusted. Less easily coped with is the problem of the relative value of coins; reference in the stories suggest that silver and gold are considerably more valuable in relation to copper than the RuneQuest 1:20:200 standard, and this is an area which could do with explanation. But all in all, these look like testing and enjoyable adventures.

Enjoyment: 8
Skill (required): 7
Complexity (of adventures): 6
Overall: 7
Oliver Dickinson