This is a great way to scratch that dungeon-delving itch! The combat is quick, and as the action takes place in your mind's eye, it can easily become more than "I hit, the monster defends". I narrated my own adventue in the "Bloodfyre Mountain" quest just this morning and had a blast while eating breakfast! Now you too can defeat an evil sorceror while wolfing down scrambled eggs!

At first I thought it was going to be another "Choose Your Path" linear adventure, but the randomization of your next paragraph keeps you from memorizing the layout. "Huh. Last time I went to #4 and met a powerful dragon, so this time I'll take #12." The escalation mechanic per encounter ensures that yes, you will eventually meet the main villain or end of the quest without railroading you along carefully planned forks in the road.

If I would ask one thing of the Core Rules it would be a monster list of some sort, maybe just enough to cover the lower levels. Combine this with any of the dungeon generators out there and the quests will never end!

One final nit-pick, but only because my inner-English teacher is nagging me, was a couple of spelling and editting errors. They are truly minor, and you would need to be completely without a brain to not figure it out (use of "passed" instead of "past" in one entry, and "Endurance Reflex" where logic says they meant to write "Reflex").

Easy to pick up, hard to put down. Well done, Crystal Star!

The Battle Wizard seems to be a pretty solid class, like most casters it starts out pretty weak but eventually makes up for it with a bunch of spells with each level advancement.

The mix of spells available are pretty solid and provide some pretty solid buffs or attacks to help you in each encounter.

If you have any intention of playing more adventures as they are released you will need this product. It has numerous items that can be of use to you, not to mention the fact that it has rules on missile weapons which I can foresee making a lot of encounters that much more survivable.

The Knight is a tank through and through. His abilities are geared around taking the hit, laughing, and smashing down any opponent in his way. A neat limitation (probably to prevent being overpowered) is that they have a limit on magical items they can use or risk suffering penalties.

A very nice little idea! You have the feel of the old choose-your-adventure game books with some good dungeon delving. The product is well written, the layout is professional, and the art, well... it is surely worth what you are paying for it.

If I can add some suggestion for improvement: 1)Some a little more complex entry in the adventure. You can add a mini-gamebook in each of them (something like entry 12A, 12B, 12C) even 3-4 options for "room" of the adventure will be nice. 2)Dynamic dice. These products beg to be played directly on the computer/e-reader and so on. So, why not adding a random number generator (a la Destiny Table of Lone Wolf) somewhere, as in the top or lower header? 3)Dynamic character sheet. I am not a pdf pro, but I know the existence of layers. Why not adding a layer, with a form, where you can place an editable character sheet? Then, with a button on the page, you can show/hide it, keeping your character sheet accessible in any part of the document. It would be great!

Chronicles of Arax is a very solid game and delivers exactly what was promised, a way to play a quick game by yourself for when you don't have the ability to bring together a group of people.

Even though it is mechanically different, the game feels very much like a choose your own adventure book where you are reading a narrative and deciding the path for the character. This is a little more left to chance as dice rolls determine your direction of travel (I sad hi to an unfriendly dragon :( ) but the premise is still there.

A great time and I look forward to playing with the other modules.

This is a great system. There are moments when man dire to play some RPG but the party is scatterеd - to work, in school and... In this moments this system can be just a live saver.

A quest is an adventure and an adventure is a quest. Keep this in mind, and you can imagine your own quests and adventures as well as have a good idea of what to expect from Arax and, I suppose, all Crystal Star solo games.

The mechanics are simple. Good. After 34 years of rolegaming, I've about had it with complicated mechanics. Realism CAN be simulated with simple rules (see Fudge and Traveller for examples) especially when combined with good game mastering. With Arax, the game mastering is a combination of the writer of the specific quest and your own GMing (interpreting) of what is happening.

It's very much an "in the moment" sort of game, with paragraphs that are similar to the "choose yer own adventure" type of game. But with a very simple new rule, they lead invariably from tension to tension to a real climax.

I'm definitely looking forward to further quests!

*jeep! and God Bless! --Grandpa Chet

Very good execution of a simple simple idea. Chronicles of Arax plays much like the version of "The World's Most Popular Game" on "The World's Most Popular Social Networking Site."

The Quests your character goes on (of which 1 character and 1 quest come with the book) is merely a series of events that are randomly produced. While there is a small rule to help with progression towards more difficult events, it merely simulates the haphazard events that you may have found in your high-school dungeon crawls of yester-year.

Gameplay is fast, many events being dealt with using a single die roll, then you can collect your swag and move on to the next room. I played through my first quest in about ten minutes, and that was without printing anything out but flipping back and forth through the PDF. Sadly orcs stripped me of all my belongings and I was summarily beaten to death by the Orc Champion. Nuts.

But you know what, I'll probably try again another day when I have a few minutes to kill. Which seems like a pretty good selling point to me. Also the price is just right, and spending $1 on another Quest (especially if it is longer and more involved than the free one) wouldn't cause me to bat an eye. I would also look into buying another character as the base "Adventurer" in this set is very middle of the road...not too good any anything, but not bad at anything either. Of course, I don't see anything that would stop you from making your own characters, though game balance may suffer a bit.

All in all a great quick diversion for those of you who would need a dungeon crawl fix. It won't win any awards, but it's a great value for the price...and the price is nothing!

An interesting take on chess. Looking in the light of its being a playtest, I'm willing to give it a five, just because you can read it quick, play it, and have fun.

The rules are clear and concise (though a cleric, to be less vague, should be noted as lowering the defense scores of allied pieces, rather than raising them, since lower is better). It may also be advisable to note somewhere whether or not multiple cleric defense buffs and similar effects stack, since I'm assuming the intent is for them not to.

All in all, though, despite some minor pedantry, I can't find anything wrong with this. It tries to be a game you could play in the place of chess, and you very well could.

A Brotherhood of Monk-Assassins? The idea isn’t as crazy as it first appears. In a short span of pages, the Black Rose Assassin is introduced and could easily be a fine addition to any fantasy setting. Given that 1/3 of the document is background and rules are eminently transferable by a good GM, this class could slip into any campaign. Realistically, you could use them science fiction or even horror setting as a clandestine power group. The return on investment from the modest price is worth purchase, but I would have liked to see a little more work in fleshing out some history or even organisational chart for the Assassins. It did feel incomplete, but at this price, I’m not arguing too loudly.

Quest is a fantasy-setting, DaD style, simple story-telling game, meant to be a basic entry-level RPG. You pick 1 out of 3 classes to play, apply the simple concepts, and play the game. That's it - that's all you get for $5.

Note: the PDF does not include the cover art.

LAYOUT / ART: Good layout, shows promise for a Work-In-Progress (but fails as a Finished Work). With the sketchiness of the rules, it's hard to tell if this is a "finished work" or if this is an attempt to sell a test-drive advertisement. If it is a TDA, then I am sorely disappointed in CSG's approach and I feel like I have been tricked into buying a "used car without wheels". I hope this is not the case.

GAME SYSTEM: Simple to a fault - if you are looking for something innovative here, you look in vain. Crystal Star Games have a great idea, but they did not "follow through with the shot" and hence, they "fell short of the green".

• (If you like to engineer and tweek your games, this may not be a bad choice for you to tinker with - there's enough here to cook up a decent game with.)

GAME PLAY: It plays OK -- overly simple, but it's so easy, a caveman can do it. Hey, an empty soda bottle could play this game ...

CONCLUSION: It's a decent, simple game that is over-priced at $5. However, CSG promises to make "advanced, expert" rules that may close the gap between a great game and a flop. (Only time will tell.)