A Review of “Caravan to Ein Arris”: Try It!

Caravan to Ein Arris is a very well-known adventure available for free that is designed to introduce players and GMs to the GURPS system. It can easily be run under the free GURPS Lite rules.

In brief: I found it to be a well-written adventure with some memorable scenes and characters. I plan to run it. The positive reviews elsewhere are deserved. With that said, I think it needs a few minor updates to run smoothly. These are easily handled.

I may have played this adventure when it first came out, I’m not sure. In any event, because of my recent attempts to get new players into GURPS I thought since I am focusing on introductions these days I should revisit the official introductory adventure to see if it is something I can use!

Overview

This is a mundane (no magic) one-shot adventure set in a very-slightly-reimagined version of the Saharan camel trains of North Africa or Sub-Saharan Africa in the 14th Century (TL3, no guns). The setting of “Lantara” (sounds like “Sahara”?) is a generic desert kind of medieval place with an Arabian Nights feel.

The text recommends 125-point characters, but no pregens are provided (this write-up has three pregen ideas). This adventure is recommended for 3-6 players. In one actual play recording that does not include character creation, running the entire adventure took 16 hours. However at least some of this included combats with the advanced combat rules and hex maps, and to me that group seem like they take a very leisurely pace, so this is likely the high end for the run time. Other write-ups say two sessions of about four hours each (8 hours total) including character creation.

Caravan has been reviewed many times (here’s a written example, here’s a video). In written reviews and forum posts that I can find it is remembered fondly and praised, but it only has 5.5/10 on RPGGeek. There are a variety of actual play experiences for this adventure online (here’s a very complete recording), and you’ll find GM notes from actual play also (see here or here.) Someone has even tried to play it specifically using Chat GPT.

A 10-page add-on for this adventure, called “Return to Ein Arris,” was published in Pyramid magazine, issue #3-52 (the PDF is $9). I am not reviewing the add-on here.

The adventure has an episodic, modular structure that is very flexible, with the players being sent on different small missions by a powerful employer, Halmaro The Red. This adventure has been criticized as somewhat “railroad-y” by other reviewers but I did not find that to be true. The modules do not have to occur in order, and some can be dropped.

The Adventure Structure

Although the adventure write-up has many sections, there are really only seven episodes, and some of them are quite brief. There are actually 2-3 important episodes. Here is my summary, with the important episodes given an asterisk (*) in front of them.

1. The Tests [PDF section 1]: complete some skill checks to get hired onto the caravan (learn how success rolls work); talk to a recruiter; if skill checks are handled perfunctorily, this can be extremely brief
2. (*) The Tavern Scene [2]: have an optional intrigue and some minor encounters (learn how persuasion/influence works); if the minor encounters are not used, this can be extremely brief; if you want an intrigue to be part of the story, this can’t be skipped as a player is recruited to spy for one of their employer’s wives and this comes up later
3. Acting as the Advance Party for the Caravan [3, 4, 5]: prepare the way to Tatsori; includes a sandstorm and some desert survival — you can become lost or late
4. The Wedding [6]: journey to represent your employer as guests at a wedding that is happening en route, deliver his gifts; this can also be quite fast
5. (*)The “Kidnapping” [7, 8, 9, 10, 11]: investigate the disappearance of your employer’s daughter — there is a ransom note but also a suspicion she has run off and had a hand in writing it; this is the bulk of the adventure and can be quite involved; it includes encounters with random bandits [8] and the actual “kidnappers” (called the brigands in the text); there are a variety of ways to resolve it, including avoiding any fighting
6. Pick up Some Jewels [12]: A complication makes this pick-up/delivery into an interesting problem-solving task, but with a skilled merchant it might be fast
7. (*)The Assassination Attempt [13]: the players must prevent an assassination; the earlier intrigue from the tavern is resolved; this can work well as a big finale fight scene, failing it likely creates a sense of failing the whole adventure; it is not obvious how to avoid a fight here

For me, the modular structure is a big strength.

Episodes #1 and #2 (using my numbering, above) are totally optional and not really necessary. #3, #4, and #6 can come at any time and don’t depend on anything else, and could also be dropped for time but they do give the meat of the adventure and provide interesting situations. If the players screw up or do exceptionally well at one of them it can influence the flavor of the next episodes in the sequence (“after that fiasco, you have to prove yourself,” etc.). #5 is the bulk of the adventure as written.

Although you can change the sequence, the episodes do increase somewhat in difficulty if you run them in order from #1 to #7. For instance, up through #4 as written there is no mortal danger. #6 also seems like a safe errand, and it feels a bit out-of-order as it does not match the accelerating complexity of the other missions. #7 works best if it comes last.

There are also two additional mini-encounters on p. 20, which I would describe as:

• Visit the Circus: this could be included just for atmosphere, but optionally, a dangerous lion is loose and must be killed
• Who Stole the Jewels? investigate, catch the thief, return a necklace

Since many of the encounters are not connected, this whole adventure does feel a bit like it is itself a well-described random encounter table. Indeed, you can use a random desert encounter table to add material to this adventure if you leave out the magic results.

Still, I would say the structure provides the GM a lot of ways to shorten the adventure on-the-fly depending on how things are going if, for example, it is run in a convention time slot and you find yourself running out of time.

Using This As A Teaching Adventure

The goal of an introductory adventure is to introduce the players to the game system and the rules, and indeed this adventure has e.g. a series of tests at the beginning that are designed to teach success rolls. Good idea!

It’s a minor quibble, but there are also several opportunities to teach the rules that are handled in a way that is not consistent with the rules. Hrm, that is not good teaching! This recurring but minor problem is that some modifiers given in the text seem arbitrary. For example, a specific target’s range (distance away) or the fact that you are defaulting to the wrong skill specialization will be mentioned in the text, using those specific rules or concepts (“range” or “specialization”) but then the modifiers do not match the official rules as far as I can tell. The authors have a kind of “let’s just give the players a -4” attitude of hand-waviness that is a missed opportunity for teaching. An example would be the encounter with desert foxes.

Still, in most ways the adventure does work well as an introduction to the GURPS way. One of the things I always like to highlight for new players to GURPS is that you do not need combat to solve problems. This adventure does highlight that!

In this adventure, there is a slight over-emphasis on minor fights, but if you tone that down there is a good mixture of different ways to solve every problem and many opportunities for different character concepts to shine. You can sneak into the bandit camp or attack it, or you can negotiate. If you have a great merchant they will easily handle one of the episodes and help with others. If you have detective-types there are investigations and clues. A desert survival expert will keep you from getting lost in the sandstorm. Persuasion and influence can be a great asset in most episodes. A tracker would probably be useful. There is some use for a spy type who can impersonate people. Both aristocratic types and scumbag PCs will have people like them to interact with. For animal lovers, there are animals everywhere.

A High Point: Tsorvano’s Complex Family Problems

There are some high points in the plotting that deserve particular praise.

The real “story” across the entire adventure of the caravan is Halmaro’s complicated family problems and his political alliances (and intrigues against him). All of the relationships and motivations of the characters are a little much to keep in your head, but they provide a compelling framework that makes the other parts hang together. These relationships and motivations only feature in episodes #2 (the intrigue), #5, and #7, but that’s the bulk of the adventure.

This adventure is centrally about three women. Kira and Riana are both interesting for the GM to roleplay. Kira’s irritating traits can be played for humor. Discovering Riana’s patrimony (by noticing her resemblance) and her story arc of rags-to-riches is engaging, and can be a fun motivation for the players to defend her. Katsaya does not necessarily appear in person, but the adventure mentions she can be emphasized more. I think that’s a good idea, as she could easily provide a third key woman in the story and a balance to Halmaro. If Katsaya is more sympathetic there can be a real decision here as to whether you ally with Halmaro or Katsaya. This gives the conclusion episode more meaning.

The motivations of the characters are quite well-written and there is a depth of plotting here that you often don’t find in TTRPG adventures. Especially the free ones!

Running This: Some Minor Adjustments

Caravan was originally written for an earlier version of the system, and it is labeled as updated for the 4th edition of GURPS, but there are some errors in the updating. I’d also suggest a few minor plot adjustments to make it run a little more smoothly. I also have a few other thoughts on running it smoothly:

• If you read the adventure from front to back, the authors seem to have had weddings on the brain… this reads as an oops. The players are guarding a caravan going to a wedding, but they are asked to attend a second, different wedding. They also buy jewels connected to a wedding (possibly neither of the weddings described so far), rescue a misbehaving daughter who has run away to be married (that’s a third wedding), and who later proposes marriage to a player (fourth wedding). The most significant plot points involve switching the bride for the first wedding. I would just stick with the first wedding! Make everything else un-wedding-ized. For instance, episode #4 could be the PCs bringing gifts to a ceremony and celebration to appoint a new chieftain. Otherwise you are bound to get to the point where you are asked, “OK… what wedding is this now?”
• In the same vein, let’s not have one episode be about “a tiara and other jewels” (p. 18) and another episode be about “missing jewels” (p. 20) two pages later when they are different jewels. If you use the mini-episode on p. 20 just make that one about about some different treasure.
• As many other reviewers have pointed out, the stats on the enemies are too formidable. An average mook fighter stat block has ST 13 and Broadsword-16. In a few places in the adventure the PCs are faced with groups of from eight to “two dozen” of these NPCs. The text dryly notes that mass combat might take a long time. You think? I pity the first-time GM and players trying to manage a combat with 24 enemies. In another place, the players must catch a rider on horseback who has Riding-18. I would match these stats to the PC stats, and reduce the number of adversaries.
• Similarly, some of the set-ups seem strangely hard for your first adventure and/or 125-point characters. I don’t want to teach new players that GURPS is the system where you always fail! For example, to teach players success rolls and to join the caravan at the very beginning, archers must hit a target 100 yards away. In GURPS that’s a -10 range penalty. You might not want new players to start their very first GURPS dice-rolling experience this way. In fact, I see that in a contemporary target archery competition, basic bow targets are as close as 25 yards.
• There is a lot of text dedicated to minor fistfights that don’t have any consequence for the story. In every episode the authors seem to want to prepare the GM for what will happen if the PCs get into a brawl. I think the authors were just trying to cover all the bases, but the effect (accidentally?) feels as though they are saying that it would be a fine strategy for the players to brawl their way through everything. But that won’t work. The adventure would take hours to resolve all of this combat–especially with new players–and the fights have no particular meaning. In several episodes the PCs would end up in jail for the night if they win a fight. If they lose, they’d be in jail and also be injured. I’d say there should be some advice given for new GMs to alert them that the point of this adventure is not for the PCs to fight their way through all of it, despite fighting being mentioned in every section. The text does mention that it is not a great idea for the players to kill everyone, but that could imply that running the adventure as a kind of continual low-grade scuffle-fest would be OK or even that it is what was intended — just don’t kill everyone! But fighting through everything won’t work as a fun one-shot adventure I think.
• Camel rules are handled inconsistently, and they’re a big part of the adventure. The rules for skills and modifiers for camel riding, handling, chasing, spitting, trampling, packing, etc. should be stated clearly once in only one place. As far as I know, the actual rules are: defaults from Riding (Horse) to Riding (Camel) are -3 and the same is true for Animal Handling (Equines) vs. (Camelids). An animal that knows you gives a bonus, an animal that doesn’t know you should be the unmodified roll. In the adventure and on p. B459, Camels are given an additional -4 penalty to Animal Handling (Camelids) for temperament at all times, but mechanically that doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like saying there is a skill called “Orc Taming” but that the skill always at -4 because Orcs are mean. How can a modifier to a skill always exist and still be thought of as a modifier?
• There are a few typos in the updating, with reference to traits I believe are from the 3rd edition of GURPS that no longer exist (Bard skill?). So you’ll have to fix or ignore these as they come up. This is minor.
• In general I don’t think the setting detail adds a lot. This feels like a mostly-realistic/cinematic depiction of a real place: the camel trains of the Sahara, re-skinned very slightly as “Lantara.” I would run it that way, as a real place! I think that’s a great setting. I would even leave the NPC names the same, no one will care. Other reviewers have complained that the setting detail is a little too interested in imaginary languages (boxes on p. 3, p. 15) and that the world background provided on p. 4 is pretty generic. I agree with that. I notice that the GURPS 4e system for Cultural Familiarities has been left out completely. If you ran this as actually being set in the Sahara camel trains you can bring in other ideas from that history and the connection to real life will make things more relatable for new players. Just change “the Abbey” of section 13’s title to “the mosque” and you’ve removed the biggest difference that jumped out at me.

I have more thoughts about the setting, but as this is quite a long post already, I am going to put that in another post.

The Verdict

In sum, although it is not perfect, I’d say this is a very good adventure that could be useful to introduce people to GURPS. I would also play it with an experienced group.

Edit: Thanks to Chris for correcting me in the comments — Lantara is not supposed to be part of “Yrth,” the GURPS sort-of-default fantasy setting. I have edited the post!