Just got my print copy and I gotta say, great fluff, better ideas, cleaner rules, awesome writing and great overall presentation. This is what Shadowrun should be but can't. It boiled down the world and everything that made it interesting and somehow made it even more interesting. I'm jonesin' to play this badly and look forward to anything further that will come out for this. Great job, Mr. Campbell!

It's Shadowrun but good, the game you all wish Shadowrun was, the game you should both play and recommend the next time someone comes into r/rpg asking "What system should I use to run Shadowrun?" The dice mechanics are clear and work, the domain play rules are excellent and really uplift the genre from "Disposable assets doing wetwork until they die" to "Societal rejects banding together to carve out their own slice of the world by any means necessary".

Just a good read all around. Sound mechanics, built in domain play that's easy to understand with quick resolution, good character building options, THICC worldbuilding, and great art.

Strong recommend.

Megadungeons - they cause a lot of confusion for many of the hobbyists that have arrived in the hobby in the last couple of decades. They don't see the point of megadungeons. This series of zine-sized booklets are a great starting point to creating an underworld that shows a prospective referee what a Megadungeon could (and should) be.

After buying this, I ended up ordering the rest of the series. Six issues isn't enough for me, though, so I ended up making my own sections of the megadungeon with 'character' to expand the setting. Which is totally the point, right?

If you don't get what a megadungeon is or how its different to the superheroic D&D of 5e, get Issue 1 and read the short essays. All will become clear. Even better, play the first few bits of the levels with your group and see how the game is different- and a lot of fun!

An awesome series that I find myself returning to again and again, if not for content, then for inspiration.

Excellent reference work and resource. A, D, and D is a look at what dungeons are made of. Tables, descriptions and pictures of the many types of rooms you might find in a dungeon, along with descriptions of their purpose and possible contents. Lists of traps, and some very good writing about the nature, purpose and utility of traps. But beyond that, the author delves into the psychology of traps, from the perspective of the players and the DM, not something I've seen before. I normally don't go in for "GM advice" type of stuff, but Courtney Campbell's writing is succinct and very useful. This isn't an elitist "killer DM" screed written by someone who thinks they're smarter than you. It's a set of very practical tools that you can use in your game right now. All in all, this book is indispensable, in my opinion. As are all of this author's books. It's got me thinking of how I can use it, and that's a success as far as this type of product is concerned. Does it inspire? Does it set you to musing on how you can use it to enhance your game? Do you see how you can use it in conjunction with other products that you already have? When it comes to this book, the answer to all of these questions is, "Yes."

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The series, as I understand it, is mostly compiled by the author from communal Google+ posts from the height of the OSR G+ era, with some extras. That time is somewhat legendary in current OSR circles as the original golden age. The monster book (Bestial Ecosystems...) really has a lot of interesting ideas for making common monsters fresh and fun.

This one really felt like 90% of the ideas were the default one I would have thought of on my own anyway. Like sure, it makes sense that some players want to participate in gladiatorial combat during downtime. This has a table for that, but nothing in the table is particularly interesting, just rates of success from a roll.

Other people working in this space have come up with really interesting full systems for this kind of thing--look at MCDM's Strongholds and Followers, for example. And if you just want premade tables for bunches of downtime possibilities, I feel like there are other, cheaper sources. Find them on reddit.

The book does create a kind of menu for the DM to offer players. Maybe you bake in a few options to each settlement or something. You don't have to go to the trouble of thinking what kinds of things generally you want to have, or find tables on reddit (or wherever you find such things). But it feels like a low bar, especially with how interesting and new the monster book was.

Essentially I suppose, it does what it says it will do. But come in with somewhat lower expectations than you might otherwise for this author and these sources of ideas.

As a gamer, I never quite found the time to explore the combination of cybernetics and magic that was especially popular throughout the 90s to the extent I really wanted. I was busy running and playing other games, and found generally those at the core of cyber-fantasy genre to be somewhat intimidating and hard to get into, either because the rules seemed difficult to grasp, or they were scattered throughout pages and pages of lore, or they utilized a wide variety of systems and sub-systems of resolution that seemed to add another layer of complication to the task of running them properly. Later on, as I got the time to get more into these genres I had always wanted to game with, it seemed the later editions of those very same games just became more and more complex and harder to approach. Not to bash on these games – I'd still play a RIFTS game tomorrow if given the chance, but despite my attraction, it seemed that I wouldn't find the game that would work for me without a lot of research and house ruling along the way.

I figured that my expectations from the get-go were just different. I wanted something simple to grasp, like an OSR game, but with more heft and detail to get a good mileage out of the combination of magic and cybernetics components. I wanted some meat on solid bones of game play, and something that would take me away from D&D and d20 for the sake of variety. I would eye the pools of dice of Mage and Shadowrun with great interest. I wanted some starting point for a universe I could work with. Something with a unique flair, but something I could also make my own, and take in a wide variety of directions.

When Sinless was launched on Kickstarter it seemed to tick all the boxes of my wish list. So I supported the effort, and joined the discord community afterwards. We proofed the game as a community, with an author very receptive to constructive feedback and criticism, though he kept his vision of the project intact and knew where he was going with it.

The results are I think excellent for use at the game table : simple core mechanic of skill + gear, pools of dice you split between your actions, magic that can be specialized or general, robots, uplifted sentient animals, magicked individuals that could each be unique or mimic some of the classic fantasy tropes if you want them to, there is an abundance of possibilities, a richness in the setting that is well thought-out, but also an openness of interpretation to the whole that exploits of the full strength of the medium of role playing games and gives the power of imagination where it rightfully belongs: to the agonarch (the GM in this game) and the players of course.

Sinless departs from the other role playing games in this genre by avoiding a kind of bioessentialism that can work great in worlds of complete fantasy but could become a problem in games based off our real world or at some specific tables. It dodges this bullet by making all characters fundamentally human. The genetics can vary, but the treatment of individuals, their potentials and personalities, the formation of groups and allegiances in society are all the fruit of social behavior and conditioning, prejudices, or lack thereof.

The concept of “the Sinless”, these people that live on the fringe of society without government registration and try to amass influence and fortune to maybe one day gain their independence from the corporations and the world government is a great idea, which can lead to the creation of a wide variety of Brands (organizations for the PCs with their own statistics in the game), where they acquire assets and contacts and grow their influence by becoming super spies, mercenaries, champions of the people or investigators in a noir universe, and leave their own personal mark on the urban landscape as they do so.

The organization of game play into phases of Missions, where you do the heist, secure the asset, retrieve the data, breach the vaults, whatever you'd normally do in such hot jobs for cybered and magicked operators like the PCs, and phases of Sector where you grow your Brand as a group and deal with its gradual evolution in the city, is a really great way to bring some structure and guidance to play with the core conceits and ideas of the game. These tools are meant to be enabling, rather than prohibitive. Want to have a "personal time" phase in between? You can. Want to do a murder investigation that doesn't quite fit the pattern? You can as well, at will, but it seems to be a very good idea to work with the structures given first, rather than ignore them.

Where the game could be light and the rules take a back seat, efforts were made to not encumber the game play needlessly. NPCs have stats that are simplified compared to PCs, much like monsters in D&D compared to player characters. Cohorts, assets and employees can be interpreted as extensions of the PCs rather than characters apart of them. Lots of unique bits of design have been combined to make the game both as sturdy and as light as possible.

The magic section contains spells which create strain on the individuals that use them. Amplifications are genetic changes in the makeup of the individual. Cybernetics do not lead to madness or cyber-psychosis, but they heavily conflict with the practice of magic, keeping both relatively balanced with one another. Some characters with key skills chosen at generation can use drones as cohorts and extensions of themselves, while others with cyberdecks can connect to the local hub and take control of surrounding devices. It all works using the same general logic applied to various fields of knowledge, with enough variations that each specialization feels fresh and cool to explore in play.

I don't think Sinless could be called a "light" game. It isn't an over-complicated monstrosity of a game design. There is a directness and elegance to it, and yet some depth, with plenty of options and combinations for the players and their characters to explore. The ability to play an octopus private investigator, a replicant socialite, or a martial artist using his amplifications to perform incredible feats of daring is enough to please a wide variety of gaming groups and keep them busy for quite some time. My little finger tells me this game won't stop here, though: there will be further development of the line with game aids and scenarios to be published at a later date. The author also spoke of a third-party license to come out this year for others who would want to participate to the growth of the campaigns and community around Sinless.

All in all, Sinless is clearly a labor of dedication that is meant to be played. It has been based on solid math, subjected to plenty of stress tests and been tuned gradually through diligent playtests. It should work and adapt itself to the practice of most TTRPG groups out there, while presenting new ways to enjoy and conceptualize the act of play.

Personally, I cannot wait to explore this game further in depth. I advise anyone interested in themes like the combination of cybernetics and magic, the exploration of the near future through action and heists as well as questions about science and humanity, and simply those among use who love science fiction and fantasy equally, to check out this game. I give it a solid 4.5/5, rounded up to 5/5. I will run it next at my game table, and will purchase any further developments as they are made available for us all.

Recommended purchase. Game on!

Great product, but I really enjoy the Random Trap Generation tables on page 28. I use it often.

Incredible resource for Novice or the Intermediate GM! What I like most is the book starts with lists of the many different types of rooms that you may have in a dungeon/adventure then goes out of it's way to define and make what they are clear (differences between their counter parts very helpful with the many crypts) and provides easy to look at yet simple illustrations as examples.

From there, the book lays out the various types of traps-to the mundane or magical(overall very comprehensive), their purpose that gets overlooked in the dice rolls and the psychology of their intended use. And to go the extra mile, the book lists examples from other d&d adventure classics to prove their point, many from Gygax himself, which is a brilliant touch- I would reccommend that the reader go out of their way to list their own examples that come to mind also.

The book then covers the differences not just between the many traps, but tricks, tools, and dilemmas and the many variations how they can differ and work in tandem together. While also using an in depth topic on how to convey the trap without spoiling it or reducing it to a cheap dice roll or worse yet, an uncalled for TPK. The author states that consequences can be harsh but never unfair or out of reach and I agree, this topic can be hard for the novice GM and takes experience and he handles the topic very well. And to conclude the author compiles a huge list of things that could be used to become not what they seem.

Overall I found this to be an enjoyable read, reading this inspired me to think of situations on the fly or reminisce..But after playing and DMing for a total of 6 or 7 years most of this was mostly stuff I knew and agreed on or disagreed with due to personal taste. Personally I found the Author's introduction and certain parts on agency of D&D verbose to my liking and the final category covering the items was a redundant choice. Page 149 seems to be randomly blank? maybe this makes more sense in the printed version since I have the PDF... Which would bring me to the final gripe, this book when not on sale is a little too expensive IMHO even though it is well made.

So, who is this book for? I feel like this book would be best for the new GM who likely wants to run old school games or have modern games have a more weighted in choice or want a dangerous crawler or megadungeon and wants insight before they begin? or the person who wants to build that really cool trap but never started yet. Id recommend buying the soft cover for the price point and this book would pair nicely with the Dungeon Alphabet by Goodman Games for added inspiration.

All three books by hack & slash publishing have some interesting ideas and tidbits of information, hidden in mounds of random text, and need some serious editing. First of all the books lack a clear structure. It seems like several articles from the blog were just copypasted together for a book, without much editing or reorganisation. The sentence structure sways between what seems to be the authors personal notes & cryptric sentences like: „The reality of mechanical triggers is relevant only to inform our design of them for play in the game.“ Editingwise the difference between chapters & sub-chapers seem to be rather arbitrary, and all kinds of headings are the same size. There is no clear transition in between. Sometimes the images cover a part of the text. While the books claim to be system agnostic, they contain several concepts which have not been used since 3rd edition or even before (reaction rolls, constitution damage, only thieves can detect traps, etc.). Saves from staffs, rods & wands stems from AD&D and literally has not been used for more than two decades. Also I do not get why the author would assume that all player characters are female. The intro of the last book reads: „These ideas are the way I run campaigns, and the books were created as a reference for me. The fact that they are useful for other people is just a wonderful bonus.“ except that if you sell your ideas to others, I would except a bit more editing & clarity than just personal notes.

Of the three books I think the Bestial Ecosystems is the least useful one. It is just a random collection of -often contradictive- „facts“ about monsters. (There are seven different physical descriptions of chimeras and several „metaphysical“ ones.) While there are a few interesting tidbits the book does not actually talk about ecosystems created by monsters. In the Introduction it says: „ I once had someone ask me "how to use" the information in this book, and that question befuddles me to this day.“ and „There are so many ideas on each page of this book, it's often difficult to read or even look at.“ which sum up pretty well what you can expect. For somebody thinking about how to play monsters as more than just mindless hitpoint bags with teeth, I found „the monsters know what they are doing“ much more useful.

All three books by hack & slash publishing have some interesting ideas and tidbits of information, hidden in mounds of random text, and need some serious editing. First of all the books lack a clear structure. It seems like several articles from the blog were just copypasted together for a book, without much editing or reorganisation. The sentence structure sways between what seems to be the authors personal notes & cryptric sentences like: „The reality of mechanical triggers is relevant only to inform our design of them for play in the game.“ Editingwise the difference between chapters & sub-chapers seem to be rather arbitrary, and all kinds of headings are the same size. There is no clear transition in between. Sometimes the images cover a part of the text. While the books claim to be system agnostic, they contain several concepts which have not been used since 3rd edition or even before (reaction rolls, constitution damage, only thieves can detect traps, etc.). Saves from staffs, rods & wands stems from AD&D and literally has not been used for more than two decades. Also I do not get why the author would assume that all player characters are female. The intro of the last book reads: „These ideas are the way I run campaigns, and the books were created as a reference for me. The fact that they are useful for other people is just a wonderful bonus.“ except that if you sell your ideas to others, I would except a bit more editing & clarity than just personal notes.

Downtime and demises is chaotic, but useful. The lists of obnoxious pesants & weird nobles are entertaining to read by themselves, and make a great addition to play. The activities & labor were clearly created for AD&D & therefore have to be modified quite a bit to be useful for 5e (at which point you may just come up with something yourself.) The henchmen are a cool mechanic, but again younger players (and by young i mean younger than 35) will probably never have played a D&D version including this mechanic, making the whole chapter quite confusing. If you want to use henchmen & morale, consult one of the great retroclones out there. The rules will be more clear & concise. The wealth chapter has some creative random tables & shops. The construction mechanics are quite simple & straightforward. The rumors part is interesting, but again confusing. The campaign truths & secrets from the lazy DMs guide will give you a mich simpler way to incorporate foreshadowing. Of the three books in the series, this is the only one which I would consider buying again. Get the pdf version, so you can copy useful info into tables in your notes & leave the rest aside.

All three books by hack & slash publishing have some interesting ideas and tidbits of information, hidden in mounds of random text, and need some serious editing. First of all the books lack a clear structure. It seems like several articles from the blog were just copypasted together for a book, without much editing or reorganisation. The sentence structure sways between what seems to be the authors personal notes & cryptric sentences like: „The reality of mechanical triggers is relevant only to inform our design of them for play in the game.“ Editingwise the difference between chapters & sub-chapers seem to be rather arbitrary, and all kinds of headings are the same size. There is no clear transition in between. Sometimes the images cover a part of the text. While the books claim to be system agnostic, they contain several concepts which have not been used since 3rd edition or even before (reaction rolls, constitution damage, only thieves can detect traps, etc.). Saves from staffs, rods & wands stems from AD&D and literally has not been used for more than two decades. Also I do not get why the author would assume that all player characters are female. The intro of the last book reads: „These ideas are the way I run campaigns, and the books were created as a reference for me. The fact that they are useful for other people is just a wonderful bonus.“ except that if you sell your ideas to others, I would except a bit more editing & clarity than just personal notes.

The Artifices, Deceptions & Dilemmas is somewhat useful. The book contains three sections: room lists, traps & dilemmas. Some of the lists in the book are cool & novel (for example the kinds and conditions of doors.) The room lists provide an inspiration on room types & what they may contain. Its useful, but something similar exists in the DMG and the Dungeon Dressings series does the same thing much better. The traps section has some interesting „meta“ parts on traps (which part of a trap should be detectable, what kind of interaction is doable), but again it will be tedious to find the usable parts. The trick section again has interesting & useful tidbits, which are hard to extract from the two dozen pages. There is just so much random stuff in those pages (vampires as metaphor for rape, and werewolves for alcoholism) with no discernable connection to the specific chapter or the rest of the book.

this book in particular of the 3 in the bundle has a lot of issues. there are so many things that arent explained, there are numerous errors in the text which makes it feel like it wasnt edited at all, and there are a lot of attempts made to explain the philosophy of design which use the authors personal vocabulary that are very difficult to understand as a reader. really disappointed with this book considering how good the pther 2 are.

The line about orcs being the result of teen mothers drinking alcohol while pregnant on page 114 is disgustingly inappropriate. A substantial portion of the book was cut out for the public edition and the actual subject of ecosystems is limited to twelve pages in the back of this book. Adding twists to a monster's concept is not enough to make them interesting, nor does novelty add depth. If you are bored with classic monsters, just use something else. Severely disappointing given the high quality of On Downtime and Demesnes.

There are lots of good ideas and tables in On Downtime and Demenses but the work is marred by some glaring flaws whose presence in the work undermines some of it's utility.

First there is the "City/Village Generation' section on pages 222 and 223. There are great ideas here whose utility is indermined by the fact that there are no numbered tables to allow a GM to utiize these interesting ideas in a dynamic (aleatory) way. It's possible that I have misunderstood the purpose of these blocks of text, but, if so, it's because the author(s) do not describe how these ideas are to be used to do any 'generation'. Since this section has very interesting ideas, it's very disappointing that the author(s) don't provide more guidance on how these can be used in a constructive way their audience.

Which brings us to the question of audience and the application of the rules of technical writing.

One important rule of technical writing is to (a) always explain any uncommon words (or common words used in a technical way) before using them or (b) failing that, define those words at the earliest opportunity to do so.

This rule is not followed.

The problem begins on page 12 with the following statement: There are 5 city types (X54 in Cook Expert)

What is 'Cook Expert'?

This is not explained.

On page 73, one finds a clue in the following: In Moldvay/Cook Retainers were "a person hired by a player character to aid that character on an adventure".

Still not explained, but a bread-crumb on the path leading to an explaination.

The problem is that the author(s) assumes a familiarity with OSE RGP 'short-hand'.

'Cook' is Dave Cook (not Monte Cook) and 'Expert' refers to the 1981 TSR publication Expert Rules.

Would it have been so hard to include this tidbit of information to allow the reader to (a) know what 'Cook Expert' referred to and (b) to research what 'X54' means?

Doing so would also have cleared up references to 'X59' on page 216 and 217 as well as 'X53' on page 219.

Not all of us in the RGP community are historians of the field are Holmes (Sherlock, not Eric).