Looks like the Ubuntu Repo version is v. 0.14.1 (see:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/oneiric/i386/freedroidrpg-data ), so a large number
of changes have happened in the year and a half since that was released (we
switched from svn->git, so it no longer is easy for me to tell you how many, but
the number of changes is in the hundreds, if not thousands).

If you would like to give us the logs, run the game from the command line (for
Ubuntu this should be 'freedroidRPG &> ~/Desktop/freedroid_log.txt', and the
file should appear on your desktop).

Also, you might try attaching a copy of the saved game (in ~/.freedroid/), so we
can see if there is a problem there.