This is a fairly slick PDF magazine with good production quality, although the layout is occasionally rough. The spelling and grammar are fine, and the illustrations nice and colorful.
The content, however, is where this publication shines. While there are only four articles they are very meaty, with specifics and details on their chosen topics. They cover quirky and interesting fantasy items, a personal spacecraft with a full color map and stats for the owner, a classic fantasy adventure, and an excerpt from an upcoming game detailing different types of robots.
The key thing is that most of these are creatively written bits of information, all of them worth considering dropping into your game, no matter the setting. The ideas are good enough to translate into different settings and systems: this is a solid resource for any GM or a player looking for interesting ideas to present to their GM (use the spaceship as your own or propose one of the "useless magic items" as something you created or are looking for).
The length of articles fit the magazine format, which limits two of the articles. The adventure is well written, but is typical for adventures published in magazines: it assumes you will fill in everything between the details of the stats and the broad overview of plot. For experienced GMs, this is not an issue, but like most adventures out of magazines, it would be a poor choice for an inexperienced gamer to run a game with. The robot article is an excerpt from an upcoming work, and there is decent coverage of explaining how robots work in the setting, presenting the three major types of robots. This is followed by only two fairly generic examples, which may be reasonable for a gaming manual, but in a magazine format, most people are either looking for exceptionally quirky and interesting examples to work into their game, or a fair number of different examples with basic stats to use to flesh out a game with background characters.
Overall, this is a well written, well edited magazine, especially given that this is the second issue. I look forward to seeing what comes out of Wicked North Games in the future, and hope that future issues maintain this high quality of content.
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