Planet of the Mists (1992) is one of the second wave of Star Wars adventures, new trade dress, perfect bound. I find most of this era’s adventures to be a bit more generic — they’re better at feeling Star Wars-ish than their predecessors, but suffer a bit from the lack of weirdness of say, Otherspace, that made the early adventures so memorable.
This one is a bit of an exception to that rule, because it is penned by the always interesting Nigel Findley. It still adheres to the basic template — investigate the Imperials because the Rebels need A Thing (well, need to take a thing away from the Imps — a mineral used to power turbo lasers), crash (there are a lot of crashes in WEGSW modules) run afoul of enemy forces and eventually square off against their leader. In this case, it’s Managing Director Tyne (anticipating Director Krennic of Rogue One perhaps?) who is both a fascist bureaucrat and a dark side force user. Complicating things further is that Imperial mining operations threaten the native alien civilization, giving the proceedings a slight taste of Trek.
The adventure is surprisingly open. The first chunk is a wilderness sandbox, punctuated by pre-scripted events. This leads to the mining facility, which takes up the bulk the adventure. It’s huge and invites players to cause all sorts of chaos infiltrating it. Successfully dealing with the mine leads to a final land battle, followed by a dog fight in space. It’s all surprisingly open-ended. There is a lot of leeway in the event scripting and the NPCs are well-drawn and can be convinced to make big impacts on the proceedings. Tyne is a pretty good villain, and his henchwomen — twin mercs with conflicting loyalties — are fun. There are also no stormtroopers; instead, Tyne’s force is made up of swamp troopers. They’re Imperial Army, with different armor and cool guns that feature a grappling hook. Everyone of your players is going to want to salvage those for themselves…
Cover art is production work from Lucasfilm. I’d guess McQuarrie, but I am not entirely sure. Inside is Tim Eldred. I’ve seen his work before, maybe in Paranoia? I’m not sure. He’s good here, fits right into the vibe established by Vilardi/Nunis in the second edition era.
