We had a blast playing this. I was pretty new to GMing PbtA games when we tried this. It pretty rules light - when compared to some of the more complex games. It's a great place to start with the system, but also a great time for the whole group. Creating your own terrible action movie with cheesy scenes, stupid catchphrases, over the top action and crazy stories is not only hilarious but really liberating as a group. We got to make bad stories on purpose! This is a must buy for the price and if you are a fan of this system. You will have such fun if you are a fan of role-playing and movies. Top notch stuff.

Beyond the Wall and other Adventures is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best new roleplaying game I have played this decade.

Eschewing complex rules and finicky balance, the authors have returned to what made early roleplaying games great. The rules are simple and streamlined with a really nice twist on magic spells and rituals for mages.

Character creation is one of the gems of this game - it's such an obviously wonderful idea, I really can't understand why other games haven't picked it up. By the end of character creation, the characters have intertwined backstories and a shared history that just cannot be replicated by traditional means.

The game itself does not have the Cleric as the character class, but that's not as bad an idea as you might think. Healing can be performed by magic, so it's easy to imagine visiting the local wise-woman or witch to get those boils cured, which is much closer to the perceptions of those living in the West in earlier times.

If you are planning to play for more than a few sessions, then I would suggest getting the supplement "Further afield", as Beyond the Wall is designed as a pick up 'n play game without much attention to long campaigns. However, a DM worth his salt with a bit of experience under his belt could easily run a campaign from this one book.

I ordered the hardback POD version of this game, and though it arrived with slightly rounded corners, the printing is beautiful and the artwork eery and dreamlike. I will forgive the printers the rounded corners as it had to travel 6,000 miles to get to my door.

If you don't own this game, then I suggest to anyone who enjoys D&D to order it now. It's easily my favourite fantasy RPG since Second Edition AD&D.

Wonderful book, I will be excited to play with my college games club. With all of the free material you can get here it is well worth the price of a download. I love the ethos the writers are trying to make and the system is an excellent stripping-down of the D&D system to its basic components. The focus is on story, and I think if you and your players can immerse yourself in the mythology the game asks you to create you will have a blast!

I truly love this system. Though it appears geared to new players and game masters and seems to be focused on single-night adventures the design method for both the characters and the environment give it a depth typically only found in full length campaigns.

This product really shines in two aspects:

• Creating characters with an interesting, shared background, by rolling on random tables to determine your past. This ensures you have a history that includes bonds with other characters and plenty of story hooks (e.g. you rolled that your wizard mentor left one day without a word, but how and why is something you'll have to figure out at the table)
• Providing Scenario Packs which are broad templates where you again roll on tables to determine the key aspects of the scenario (e.g. which villager is the cult leader or what does the fey king really want)

This makes the game excellent for one shots! However, besides this, the game mechanics themselves are uninteresting and uninspired. It's watered down 3.X DnD. The game apparently aims at keeping things simple to get rules out of the way, but does this poorly: somehow you still need to have 6 attributes, 6 corresponding modifiers, 5 saving throws that are totally unrelated to your attributes or the way you create your character. Worse, why do we need three different resolution mechanics? Skill checks need you to roll under your attribute on a d20, saving throws need you to roll over an arbitrary value on your sheet, and combat is d20+bonus against AC...

I'm definitely going to use playbooks and scenario packs, but I'm getting rid of the rest of the rules and keeping only the roll under mechanic.

I've played RPGs before, but had never been DM until last week. Beyond the Wall gave me the perfect starting point and framework to build plots and stories around, and the playbooks were helpful for players who were completely new to RPGs. The simplified rules (compared to traditional D&D of various editions and Pathfinder) I found massively helpful, while still containing elements that I found familiar and was expecting, like ability scores, alignment, etc.

The premise of all the PCs knowing each other and all living in the same village was helpful too, and makes the world seem more real, while giving plenty of opportunities for plot hooks and motivations.

I really liked this, and after purchase I downloaded the other free materials that contain plenty of ideas for future adventures, how to build encounters, monsters, villains, and the like.

There are a few elements here and there that aren't explained perfectly from a new DMs point of view (I had to read through how hit dice worked a couple of times) or don't seem to quite work (breath weapon saving throw to dodge things that aren't breath weapons) but there are alternative rules and workarounds, or you can just adapt these as you see fit.

Overall this massively helped me to springboard back into RPGs after a break, and was a lot more accessible than many other systems I've seen.

This is a gem aamongst OSR titles. The combination of familiar mechanics with story-game style collaboration in character creation and the game setting are lightning in a bottle. You can run this, as adveritsed, with minimal prep and have a great time. If you have the time to work on your setting/prep, it can make for a truly epic hex crawl with tons of heart.

My group had a blast playing this game! We spent easily two hours in character creation using the playbooks to really flesh out the bonds between our characters. Once we got going, the Scenario pack (we played 'The Angered Fae') let me produce a compelling story without doing any prep beforehand. The rules are simple and logical, and the magic system is truly one of a kind. If you're tired of spending hours in prep before game time every week I really recommend you give this a shot, it's like the best parts of a narrative game such as Dungeon World (or other PbtA game) combined with the feel of old school D&D.

Honestly one of the best tabletop games I've ever been a part of. Buy this.

I love the Sandbox Creation in this book. It is totally worth the purchase for that itself. Whether you plan to do an Open Sandbox where all of your friends contribute to the world or if you just need extra guidance on creating a world for your campaign, this is a MUST HAVE.

I feel very satisfied with the purchase; there are many good reasons why the system has such sterling reviews.

The book is the best written I've seen (compared with D&D, DH, WoD and Dungeon World), and has excellent alternative rules options to help make the game your own. The playbooks are fantastic and have made for some fantastic roleplaying from my group, which is a nice rarity.

Beyond the Wall is simply brilliant and brilliantly simple.

BTW is two games in one. The headline game emulates a particular genre of low-fantasy fiction by deploying Dungeon World-style playbooks and a collaborative world-building mechanic. Under the bonnet lies a very intelligently house ruled D&D engine (the only real irritation is the old school five saving throw system). The stripped down rules can be hacked into low magic playstyles quite different from the assumed setting. BTW could work for Hyboria or, of all things, Glorantha - the three tier magic system looks a bit like spirit magic, Rune magic, and ritual magic if one squints. Some iPad users may be driven to distraction by Flatland's love of the .zip file.

A fantastic add-on that brings more depth to what is ideally the heart of any Beyond The Wall campaign - the PC's home village. I've already read through it several times and cannot wait to introduce its contents to my regular game!

BEYOND THE WALL AND OTHER ADVENTURES is a stripped-down version of modern D&D (mostly circa 3rd edition, but substantially simplified here) that will appeal to a lot of players who are less interested in the "epic" fantasy experience. If you were one of the people who felt 3rd edition lost its way with too many feats, skills, and welded-on bits of crunch, this will please you very much. The magic system is short and flavourful, dividing up spells into quick-but-risky cantrips, spells, and long-but-powerful rituals. No different spell lists here -- there's only one, no matter if you're a magician or a priest of the old gods.

Although it has three core "classes" that can be played much like traditional D&D games, and they remind me quite a bit of the classes in Green Ronin's TRUE20, to be honest, you're not going to want to play them. The authors don't even recommend it. What you want to play are can be found in the character Playbooks, which bring a lot of modern gaming ideas to the F20 experience. The Playbooks are a bit like what you find in APOCALYPSE WORLD-based games, providing you with a lot of flavour and a strong foundation to start play quickly. Make a few rolls (or choices) and you're playing right away with a well-fleshed out character. The rolls provide you with what used to be called a "Lifepath", describing the events of your character's life up to this point. Each roll gives you some flavour, and provides you with appropriate bonuses to your ability scores. You start with a base amount, and by the end of finishing your playbook, you have fully developed stats with a rationale for why they developed that particular way.

I loved this game a lot, and I recommend it to everyone! Full review at my blog: http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2016/05/beyond-wall-and-other-adventures-review.html

I really like the character setup in this rpg. The bonds for the starting villagers really ties the party together and aids with roll playing.

Julian

PbtA is great at genre emulation and this is no exception. This does exactly what I wanted it to in terms of playing some old action movies near and dear to my heart. The additional benefit of having some surprising mechanics, like when you die you become a part of the cast and still can inject yourself into the fiction. What a brilliant idea that couples so well with the genre.

I've watched some great actual plays and played in a couple games. Always a good time, highly recommend it.