Smoke over Station Street is an adventure supplement for the Independence Games ‘Rider’ American-western setting, utilising the Cepheus Engine rules set. It is available from the Independence Games webstore or Drivethru RPG for $9.99 in PDF format and in soft cover print-on-demand format for $22.99 (PDF included in offer). The product contains 50 pages and is authored by John Watts and Thomas Manning.
The book is divided into five main sections:
Chapter 1 – Rumours and Gold Dust
Chapter 2 – Sabotage at the Creek
Chapter 3 – The Devil in a Black Hat
NPCs
Pre-Generated Characters
The adventure involves the players trying to navigate the various factions in the town of New Liberty, ahead of a gold shipment that will arrive by train. They will need to try and make the best choice in aligning themselves with the ‘right’ group of people. I use the term ‘right’ loosely as the key players in the town all have their own objectives and opinions regarding the gold shipment and how it may benefit the New Liberty.
The first chapter (pages 5 to 22) can be described as setting the scene; the referee will be introducing the players to the various factions in New Liberty, what their motivations are and relationships with each other. There is a lot to unpack here; the chapter takes you through the historical reasons why each faction likes or dislikes each other utilising a number of scenes. Each scene is labelled as either essential or optional. I would suggest to get the most out of the book is for you to thoroughly read through the chapter, so that you understand who-is-who and who-is-doing-what. There is a great deal of detail and descriptions covering a number of situations and reactions, depending on how the players deal with the various individuals in the town. Having a scene labelled as either essential or optional at least allows you to pick and choose how much depth the referee wants to get the players involved in. There is very much an underlying level of tension in the town and you get the feeling that the NPCs and key characters are only just holding themselves back from exploding. There is a lot of history between some of these key characters and at the moment, they are just about keeping their opinions (and emotions) to themselves.
Chapter 2 (pages 23 to 32) is where things do start to kick off, though the first chapter only has two essential scenes and seven optional ones, this section has four essential and three optional scenes instead. It is much more structured, though there are some tables with rumours for the players to deal with to help keep them on their toes. A major event occurs and a lot of people are left pointing fingers at each other, with the players ending up in the middle trying to work through it all.
The final chapter (pages 33 to 35) is where the real reason for everything happening in the town is revealed and for some of the NPCs (and potentially the players), who they initially aligned themselves with has some serious results. All five scenes in this part are essential and some sections are a little bit more action-orientated, if that is your thing.
The NPCs provided (pages 36 to 39) include most of the the key players, or at least the ones you are most likely to interact with and require some sort of skill roll. Just Cepheus Engine stats and their skills are listed, there are no personality descriptions as these are already covered in the first three chapters.
Finally, you are provided from pages 40 to 46 a set of pre-generated characters to use if you want, or you can use their own. These do include a little background to their personality and own motivations.
Aside from the cover and one full-page colour image on page 2, there are no other images or illustrations inside the book. With so much detail especially in the first two chapters, this makes for quite a heavy-to-read adventure without much to break up the text. However, if you want more background to the town, then it is recommended that you pick up a copy of the New Liberty Campaign Setting.
‘Smoke over Station Street’ is more of an investigatory adventure rather than an action-orientated one. It requires a reasonable amount of preparation on the part of the referee to make the adventure run smoothly and ensure that all the elements (the NPC’s and their various aims) work together. By understanding each of the factions motivations and by selecting what each scene they want to include, the referee can ensure that they make this an enjoyable and interactive adventure which is what ‘Smoke over Station Street’ demands.
If you are a fan of Rider (see my review here) then this is certainly worth checking out and should provide a a good deal of enjoyment on both the part of the referee and players. I would like to thank John Watts of Independence Games for kindly providing me with a copy of Smoke over Station Street to review.
Alegis Downport 
