Although the subtitle is "for Writers and Roleplayers," I'm reviewing it from the RPG perspective. This is DriveThruRPG, after all.

Take to heart the message from the "How to Use This Book" section: "There are many elements that go into the creation of a great character. All are optional." The book would be WAY overkill if you applied every element to even a few characters. As the old quote goes, "Perfection is achieved not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away" (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in case you're wondering).

I'll sum up first, and then get to some details. To sum up: The descriptions of 24 different character roles is the best part. A lot of the other sections make up potentially handy checklists, but there's a lot of unnecessary, redundant, or excessive description. Those sections could have been much shorter without a loss of information.

Things to like about the book:

• It's system-neutral and setting-neutral.
• The descriptions of 8 protagonist types and 8 antagonist types are very good. For each type, you get a useful one-paragraph overview, examples of the type from popular media, a description of the type's values, and how others perceive the type. Another interesting element is that you get a "supporting cast" for each type - the interactions a given type is likely to have with other types. This is all great material for making an interesting character. This is mainly for a player creating a PC or a GM creating a major NPC.
• The 8 supporting types are also helpful. For each of these, you get a discussion of how the type interacts with a main character, examples from popular media, and a description of why you might want such a character in the story. This is mostly about secondary NPCs.
• The good part of the Dimensions chapter is that it's a checklist of things to consider when describing your character's "physiology, sociology, and psychology." It's also a 14-page temptation into overkill. Only include the elements that will help you run the character in an interesting way.

Things I liked less about the book:

• The subtitle, "for Writers and Roleplayers," sounds like scope creep. There are things that would matter to a fiction writer that generally don't matter in an RPG. For example, a writer might spend many a paragraph throughout a story just on a character's thoughts and feelings, and how they evolve. In an RPG, you spend no time watching a character ponder. Fiction writing and RPG characters aren't the same thing. If there's too much irrelevant stuff to wade through, the whole work becomes harder to use, and therefore less useful.
• I found the the section on "Stages of Life" to be overkill. Do we really need explanations of how a child is different from a young adult, who's different from a much older person? At 8 pages, it's both too much and too little - too much if you're thinking "Yes, I know the difference between a child and an elderly person," or too little if you want to pursue all the nuances and complexities of a given age level.
• The "Motivations" chapter also felt like overkill. Now, you may well want to understand a character's motivations. However, if that character fits one of the 24 types described earlier, you've already got a decent idea of the character's motivations. Also, the motivations get excessive description. Take the Stakes element, for example, which is under Goals, which comes under Motivations. If your character has Stakes at the Low Stakes level: "Neither the reward nor the consequence will have much impact on anyone." Maybe that's there for some desire for completeness, but if the stakes are that inconsequential, don't include them! The whole motivation section could have been a lot shorter not by describing all five levels of every motivation, but by listing only the useful descriptions, the ones that show that one motivation or another is compelling, not useless.
• The "Aptitudes" chapter also felt like overkill. It discusses 10 different aptitudes - body, empathy, language, etc. - but I found most of it unnecessary for RPG purposes. Besides, if a character has "Below Baseline Nature Aptitude," I already get that he doesn't know much about nature. I don't need extra description to explain that.
• The "Experiences" chapter offers a list of skill categories: Academic, Athletic, Creative, etc. Getting that down to specific skills for your character and your setting is up to you (as it should be, because this work is setting-neutral). Maybe a checklist of skill areas would be helpful to you, but chances are, you already have skill lists in place if you need them, so you wouldn't need this chapter. By the way, this is another chapter that could have been a checklist, but instead it goes into excessive, repetitive description.
• "Resources," like the other chapters, is over-described. Maybe it's a good checklist of the types of resources a character might have or lack, but each item was overdescribed. Besides, once you've developed a basic concept of the character, most of these resource items are going to be fairly obvious.
• "Wonders" felt too generic. It brushes by the topic of adding magic, psychic powers, or superpowers to a character, but with no actionable content.

All in all, the book is worthwhile for the character types at least, but it could have been a lot shorter and more tightly written.

While the subtitle is "for Writers and Roleplayers," I'm focusing solely on the RPG aspect.

What this is:

• It focuses on story-driven setting design instead of a top-down approach (starting at the world level then drilling down into local details) or bottom-up approach (starting at the local level and then expanding from there). The story-driven approach has you focus on the story you want to tell. You include elements that help create and/or resolve conflicts for that story. The idea scales well. You could be working on a single story or a grand campaign arc.
• It's game system-neutral and genre-neutral.
• You could use these guidelines for building a very plot-oriented campaign or a very loose, player-driven campaign. You could have a very tight premise statement that supports a single story ("A group of strangers who met at an inn must defend a caravan from bandits as they travel to the big city") or a more open-ended premise statement that gives players a lot of leeway ("The crew of a starship patrols unexplored space seeking scientific discoveries and first contact with alien races").
• The 10 main setting elements it covers are: premise, genre, place and time, theme, stakes, locations, people, technology, events, and vocabulary. Each element gets its own chapter. The writer invites you to "Use as many elements as you choose. Skip over any that don’t resonate with you, or fit the project you’re working on."
• The premise chapter is particularly important for the story-driven approach. I'd compare the premise statement to a logline for a TV series or a movie. The premise chapter helps you craft a premise statement, with examples. It gives you a checklist of things needed to support your premise statement: characters, goals, obstacles, and setting elements.
• Each setting element chapter discusses things you should consider as you pin down the particulars of each setting element. Each chapter ends with a list of questions for reviewing how your choices for this chapter stack up against the other nine setting elements. For example, in the chapter on Place and Time, one of the review items is how place and time interact with the stakes. It includes questions like "What stakes are specific to this particular place and time, as opposed to any other?" These questions help you integrate your choices into a whole that serves the story you want to tell.
• You could go through the chapters in pretty much any order. You probably have at least the germ of an idea: a place and time, a culture, a technology, etc. Start with the chapter corresponding to that idea, and then hop around the other chapters as needed. Each chapter helps you build on whatever you've created so far.

What this isn't:

• This work is story-driven, but not plot-driven. That is, it focuses on creating the environment in which your story will operate. It's not about building plots: no plot outlines, no scene lists or story beats, no plot points, no division of a story into acts, etc. The same publisher has other offerings about building plots. This work is just about the setting.
• There are no tables for rolling up particulars about your world.
• There are no map creation guidelines.
• This isn't a reference source for world-building. There are some broad descriptions of things like climate, terrain, and culture, but only to the extent that you consider them as you establish your setting. You'll need other works if you want more details on those topics.

If you have never, ever, not once, contemplated writing a story or a novel, or creating an original setting for a role-playing game, and you have suddenly been struck with the urge to do so, but are having real trouble sorting out your ideas and your thoughts as to what you want to create, then this is an exemplary guide and I recommend it as a great starting place.

If you have any experience with running games, or writing fiction or comics, and you are looking for a system or a framework to hang your ideas upon, this is not going to be helpful to you at all.

This is real rudimentary, entry-level type stuff. Most of this treatise is a list of types of genres and elements of said genres, with simple one or two sentence explanations. There is no structure or guidelines to the document. it's all theory, and that theory is certainly revelatory, if not overly revolutionary.

Interesting advice book for roleplaying games masters and, to a lesser extent, players and writers. It discusses on of the three pillars of a game world (the other two being characters and adventures) and it does this through a consider amount of repetition of the framework of how it is discussed, useful and self-reinforcing but a little tedious at times. It places the various parts of world building in context of genre of fantasy (dark, high and so on) and setting (contemporary, medieval and such). Useful advice to keep in mind, nothing groundbreaking but solid, useful advice.

I'm really finding value in all of the Story Design guides. They're the difference between starting a campaign plan with an outline and good questions, or just a blank piece of paper. I've read three so far and each is absolutely worth the time and money: 10 or so pages, $2 or less dollars. For each of three acts, this identifies the start, the main character and motivation options, and what happens in the act and what state ends the act. This rhythm has really boosted the wow factor of even short gaming sessions.

Seduction was an eye-opener for me. It could be love, but it's anything the PC wants but shouldn't have. Making that a tangible element in a game could really up the roleplaying around the table, making a much more emotional connection than I've generally had. I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm excited to try it. The writing in this book is as excellent and concise as the others in the set.

This is a concise guide (10 or 12 pages) to a 3-act rescue story: Challenges for each act, the types of characters, a guide to the antagonist. While reading it I kept brainstorming twists and events that would make the 2nd act drive the players to their knees in despair, and from there see a chance---just a sliver---that can help them achieve the rescue. This guide won't waste your time or your money.

Starting to plan an adventure from this is the difference between starting with an outline of good questions or starting with a blank page.

I was a little disappointed to see a handful of editing mistakes, and in something of this quality they stand out more than they might in other books. But the tiny errors aren't enough to take off even a half-star in my rating.

Wow. You can tell a writer wrote this. It's concise, it's insightful, it's exactly the knowledge I needed to make my next campaign hit the marks. Pick one of these Story Designs to match the next campaign you plan to write, and perhaps the next one you plan to run, and you'll know just what to emphasize to make it hit home for your players.

It lays out the prep work, and then the key points to hit in each act of a three-act story (which can be as many sessions as you'd like). This was about 10 pages of actual content.

This will mostly be useful to someone who is writing a campaign or adventure, but it can also be useful if you're a GM about to run a pre-generated quest. By reviewing the material with the key points of the three-acts in mind, you'll know what to emphasize and have a better idea of how to play your scenes. Maybe you'll find something missing in the pregen that you can fill in to make it really leap off the page, blade flashing.

Highly recommended.

If you've never played a RPG, then this isn't for you. If you have, this might be useful for inspriration, but you'll have to do a lot of work to make a game happen. THere are some really nice ideas in here, particularly the game's approach to your skills and skills rolls. The usual "DM of -2 if standing on one leg" tables you find in other RPGs are not here. The focus of the game is on the characters and their interactions with their world. You'll find some ideas for cultures to play. The whole tone is very much in line with Star Trek's Federation's ethics. Whether playing morally good characters is your cup of tea, or whether you'd prefer to play characters more like The Klingons, is up to you and your group. (note, this is not a Star Trek game).

The game does not have any artwork. This makes it cheaper and it takes less space, the author says. I've bought some RPG games where I thought the quality of the artwork was so bad, it ought to have been left out as it made the product worse. However, good artwork can inspire both the players and referees (called The Guide in Starlight Manifesto). The artwork in Traveller helped give their universe a look and feel that was very distinctive. Showing someone a picture of a TIE Fighter or Traveller's TYpe S Scout Courier will inspire them, we are visual creatures.

Artwork can break up pages of text and make it look more inviting to read. I've bought several games because I liked the artwork and wanted to be inspired. I'll happily pay more to help support a decent artist if their artwork contributes a look and feel to a game. Preview Coriolis, Excellium, Polaris or Numenera for good examples of games you'd buy for their artwork. This game feels like they just didn't want to pay an artist.

Starlight Manifesto doesn't have any lists of guns, statistics for vehicles or spaceships, no detailed descriptions of the worlds, nothing about alien animals and plants or any space maps to show the setting. I got really sick of reading "What the (named species) looks like is entirely up to you.....It's more fun to make up something original, so your game isn't the same as someone else's". I personally don't care if my game is the same as someone 4000 miles away, because I'll never know!

I felt that the person writing it had copied and pasted the same text in a lot of places rather than do any creative work. The whole thing has so much repetition in it, you just skim past whole paragraphs. On the other hand, you do get a detailed description of arm-of-service shoulder board colours, complete with medieval heraldic names that add absolutely nothing of value to the game. If the rest was done to this standard, it would have been better, but as it is, it looks odd having a detailed description of something that doesn't matter. I also got sick of reading "Because Starlight Manifesto is space opera..." time and time again.

Personally, I like tables of options as they give you a basis to build your world (or your grav tank or spaceship) . I like star maps, because I don't have to think about what the next world looks like when the players decide to do something I hadn't planned for. A good game designer inspires you to use the game as a basis for your own universe. My version of Traveller is nothing like the original designers intended. Unless you really do like world building, this game doesn't help. If you do like world building, this game doesn't help, as you'll need another game to help you develop worlds to explore.

The text I bought has several typos. There's a huge amount of unecessary repetition that tells you to make it up yourself. Why they ddin't just put that text in once and told you it applies to everything is beyond me. It looks like padding to reach a word count. There's even a recommended play list of music to listen to at the back, but no introductory adventure to get you started.

The author should have got someone to proof read the text and critique the writing style before publishing. Some advice on text layout would also help. This looks like it was typeset in Office 95. On the other hand, it was cheap so good value.

I really can't recommend this as anything more than a cheap source of ideas to use in another game.

I LOVE the story design bundle...I found it so helpful! It breaks down the different types of stories in a clear manner which really opened my eyes and insipred me. A few typos here and there but nothing that made it a problem, so I wouldn't let that deter you from buying it. I really appreciate the hard work that must have gone into putting this together. Thank you Dancing Lights Press for making this available, I feel I learned a lot!

This is a useful book, much more the less you know about literary story structure. Although spelling and grammar problems are annoying, they still let you read the book. However, there are some particularities I think should have been addressed differently. Just in case, I published a more in-deph review here.

Although the misspelled words are annoying, the advices and almost hand-guiding instructions on character design are useful. Other works' advices usually feel too vague when trying to put them in practice, and that is where these ones will come handy. I wrote a longer review here.

Before beginning, I should share that that I have quite a bit of familiarity with this author's past work (especially when it comes to revitalizing and redefining what it means to be "a fighter"). I have always considered this author to be something of an authority when it comes to exploring this concept and wanted to see what they would produce in a system-agnostic format.

This PDF is an extended essay on a common fantasy archetype that appears (in some form) in a wide array of compaign settings and rpgs: that of the common (or not so common) man-at-arms. After providing a (surprisingly flexible) definition of what it means to be "a fighter", the author explores two dozen common narrative threads that fighters occupy in both stories and campaign worlds, whether as protagonist, antagonist (or evil Player Character), or as NPCs. This material can be useful for players and DMs alike (especially when players need reminding that mechanically similar entities can be role-played in highly divergent ways) and the author pays attention to the way that fighters fit into the process of building campaigns. While much of the PDF may seem to assume the existence of a "typical" fantasy setting, The author spends time exploring how a "fighter" might fit into campaigns and rpgs with various genres, tones, and types of campaigns.

All of these nods to other settings and genres, however, reveal the one notable flaw I can see with the PDF. While this PDF claims to be system-agnostic, it still carries the fingerprints of games like D&D and Pathfinder. Without the knowledge that "the fighter" class coexists with "the monk", "the ranger", and "the rogue", for example, a reader may wonder why the book does not spare much thought on martial artists, bounty hunters, or assassins being fighters. Likewise, games that stray too far from the traditional fantasy world (such as Paranoia or Call of Cthulhu) may get a little bit less from this work.

On the whole, however, I enjoyed this work. It may be a bit of a niche product (espeically for its price) but if the underdog story of a common everyman with a weapon facing impossible odds holds a special allure for you, this may be up your alley.

This system strikes me as being very similar to Designer X's Violence system; it seems more manifesto than actual game. It's a 200 page meandering diatribe that reads like a thinly veiled ANTIFA recruitment pamphlet and I have no idea how serious it is.

Is it playable? Yeah, the actual mechanics are dead simple and could probably be explained on the back of a napkin. Effectively, you bet a dice showing how much you want to succeed and then roll d20 plus any bonuses you have to the action you are undertaking. Higher than 10 on the d20 is a success and equal or lower is a failure. How "big" you can win or lose depends on the die chosen for effort. Like most "Storytelling" games it feels utterly toothless mechanically, just one level above sitting around a table and telling a story, occasionally flipping a coin to see if something works. This style of game has never been my cup of tea - I've always believed that stories in role playing should evolve organically in response to a ruleset rather than a ruleset existing for the sole purpose of occasionally resolving conflicts in a story - but even among storytelling games this ruleset is pretty uninspired. Fiasco this is not.

However, the largest point of contention I have here is the actual "Story" behind this storytelling game. Like most storytelling games the majority of the book is taken up by the author telling you the kind of story they want you to tell. They give you examples of antagonists, of the setting, of the sort of things you should be doing, the standard setups. There's a big emphasis put on the difference between objective and Subjective reality, with the core concept being that you can use "magic" to manipulate subjective reality. The spell list is a list of logical fallacies. Its a somewhat interesting idea I suppose, framing the ability of logical fallacies to manipulate the way a person sees the world as magic. It goes on to say that a cult of plutocratic politicians are using this magic to create a subjective reality of their choosing. They stop short of saying "Fake News" but I think you can get the gist.

The problem is that the game seems to have a heavy political leaning and I'm not sure how much of it is intentionally done from a semi-satirical standing and how much is honest. Its Poe's Law. Because there are mentions here and there that hint at a deeper understanding, such as the fact that the Cold Iron's attempts to restore reality to its objective form inherently involve the creation of subjective realities focused around their own pet causes. Does the author understand that both sides are prone to use of this "Dark Magik" that is logical fallacy? Is all the raving about the privileged rich, the valiant struggles of the creative, and the mind washed sheep done with a degree of self awareness or not?

If it is satire, its not very interesting satire. It has that core interesting idea but I don't feel like it does anything fun with it. You get that "Oh,I get it" moment of what they're doing and that's really it. If its really as unaware as it seems sometimes, then I feel kind of like I bought some sort of misguided manifesto masquerading as a RPG game. And I don't want to finance this guy and his eventual car bomb.

First of all, I see how this book can help some people. It's certainly not useless. However, this book, like Story Setting by the same publisher, has many typos, feels a bit laundrylisty, and tries to fill in more pages when things could be described in a more concise way (eg. the Low/Below Baseline/Baseline/Above Baseline/High descriptions is used way too much and takes way too much space, and in most cases it doesn't feel useful to me). My personal highlight is the Types and Roles chapter. It's very good and it's a good reference and inspiration source to write characters. The chapters Aptitudes, Experiences, and Resources feel like fillers and I think they could have been a couple of pages each, instead of ~10 pages each.

First of all, I think this book can be useful for a number of people, especially if they are starting absolutely from scratch and they have never tried to write short stories or story-driven RPG scenarios. That said. It really feels a bit like a laundry list, and that some of the advice doesn't come so much from experience but from reading other books. Also, there are many typos which make it irritating to read. Finally, The Three-Tiered Series part (most of the book) feels like riffing on the first part, The Three-Act Structure. In short: not bad, but I expected much more.