I was one of the playtesters of this adventure and received a free copy this way. Apart from that, I’m not paid or otherwise compensated for this review.

The Kerberos Anomaly is a dynamic, flexible adventure and doesn’t come with a rigid sequence of scenes. After the intro scene (which is a playable, action-packed scene, not a paragraph to be read to the players), the players have a clear goal and the GM has a collection of NPCs, challenges and encounters to throw at them. The adventure is suitable for a one-shot.

To help the gamemaster and keep the tension, there are random elements to decide what’s going on, e.g. a random encounter table. The encounters are described in a short, but distinct way. That works to give the GM an idea what’s going on without having to read a lot of text or skipping to different parts of the document, so you can just roll on the table and get going - no awkward pauses, hectic read-throughs or obligation to memorize everything beforehand. If the GM thinks the encounter needs to be even more dramatic, there’s the possibility to spend GM Bennies and introduce certain additional complications – good idea!

The adventure includes five pre-generated PCs which are all interesting in itself and made in a way that everyone gets their spotlight without being one-trick ponies.

The included maps should help visualizing the structure of a ship you’re boarding and there’s even a battlemap included if you want to use it. If you liked the game FTL: Faster Than Light, I’m sure you’ll instantly like the ship maps.

What I also really appreciate is that the author took the time and page space to explain how certain elements of the adventure could make sense, so nothing is just suddenly there to give the players something to roll. There are also quite helpful tips for the GM to run the adventure without telling him or her what to do. Given the page count, you probably shouldn't be too surprised that it doesn't feature a complicated background story to discover. So if you're more the investigative kind of group, you might need to come up with something to investigate.

All in all, the structure of the adventure provides plenty of opportunities to introduce both action-packed and calm scenes. I presume GMs used to adventures with paragraphs to read out loud and a set order or scenes to play through might have some trouble with this adventure, but since it says sandbox adventure in the description, you can’t really blame it for that.

I happily recommend it to play it yourself!