It meshes quite well with the Level Up Adventurer's Guide in both organization and content.

The content and book deserve five stars, as the game is excellent (as is the print version), but the very low resolution PDF drags down the rating significantly. If you want good quality PDFs for the maps and such, get the individual books, but skip this if PDF quality is important to you, especially at the price it's set at. It's a shame, too, as this is the most cost effective way to get everything.

Really excellent title with great layout, great writing, great scenarios. I really respect the nuanced and expertly crafted combat encounters that use really advanced design principles specific for 4e.

Every adventure has a really different vibe to it and should feel really refreshing for players, between the scenario design as well as the change in locales. I really appreciate the start and end of each adventure being masterfully crafted to be memorable.

I also really respect the line of recurring NPCs that are introduced in earlier chapters that show up again and again later. Very few adventure paths I’ve seen have this tight integration and connective tissue. This is leagues beyond most of what Paizo and WotC puts out. The relevation timeline is also done really well, revealing the grand conspiracy bit by bit and keeping players biting and hungry for more.

The individual scenario design is done really well too. It’s very open ended and the very opposite of a railroaded adventure path. Scenarios are planned to have contingencies for player failure, something rare to see in modern adventures, which really helps equips GMs with the confidence to run the adventure even when players go off the rails. Really great examples here of how to “prep situations, not plots”.

It’s a really unique setting for a really novel style of campaign. Reading this title opened my eyes and raised the bar of quality of adventures I want to run. This is an amazing product.

Awesome art - still recognizeable to veteran players but different enough that if I don't name the token I can generally use each one to reskin a known monster.

I wish I had cut out part the first part of this adventure and just gone straight to "Act Two". Continuing a problem from the first module, there is too much of what's not needed and not enough of what is needed. Add to this, the art is sub-par.

Seems to provide too much of what's not needed and not enough of what is. For example, there a part at a magic academy that just seems unnecessary and forced. However, there is a dearth of information about the city the PCs are supposed to care about.

I'm just rating the foundry implementation of the adventure, not the adventure itself.

There are no player versions of the maps. No tokens for the NPCs. Not even for the Pregen Characters, although those have official art. The overworld map is really low-res, leaving some names of locations hardly readable. No monsters are placed on the battlemaps, no journal notes linked on the maps for ease of use... I do not understand why one would buy this product. It barely makes the adventure prep easier. The only thing I'd say it makes easier is having 3 walled maps (although those are quite easily walled, with them not being very complicated) and statblocks for NPCs and monsters linked in the journal entries. That have to be searched for because they are not linked on those maps...

In my opinion, the Foundry Module for Memories of Holdenshire is barely more convenient than just using the free version on the official a5e.tools website.

Super simple, super fun. A fantastic system and a ton of adventures.

TL;DR: The complex magic system some people complain about is an alternate rule anyway, and new GMs may want to give their players pregens until they have some practice with advancing characters.

WOiN as a whole is my favorite gaming system, it always keeps me coming back.

I don't think I want to elaborate too much on the things the other reviewers have said, about how the core mechanics are wonderful and set it apart from other games in the genre, about how it's easy to build homebrew stuff that's balanced with the core game, about how characters feel much more "character" rather than "stereotype" because of the lifepath system, etc.

Instead, I think I want to dispel a misconception, and give some advice to new GMs.

First, the magic system in Chapter 5, Elements of Magic, is complicated. It's not the most complicated of magic systems, but it has a significant amount to learn.

Second, the magic system in Chapter 5 is optional. The default magic system within WOiN is incredibly simple and follows from every single other interaction that exists in the game: the player says what they want to accomplish, the GM calls for a MAG check with a difficulty, the player adds a relevant skill subject to GM approval, and if the player has an appropriate secret as an exploit, they get +1d6 to the check.

Third, if the GM likes the complex magic system but wants to introduce it slowly, there are recommended alternate rules to combine with the complex magic system. One is a suggestion for low-magic appropriate to a tolkien-esque setting which encourages characters to only use a little magic and diversify their skills. Another is called "rituals" and has the GM build all the spells for the players, and may allow the players to build their own spells between sessions, but during the game is no different from how magic works in spell-list type systems. The core book and the ezine EONS also include many already worked-out spells for this.

If the GM has access to EONS there are also two additional optional magic systems which are both simpler than the Chapter 5 rules, but which have more guidelines than the default magic system. These are called "Sorcery" and "Spell Paths". Sorcery is like the default free-form system but with specific guidelines for ranges, durations, targets, damage, etc. Spell Paths are like spell-list style games, but where "packages" of 10 spells of varying power levels are purchased together as exploits.

Next, my advice to new GMs. Don't let new players build their own characters. Either use the pregens, or have a conversation with them and let them guide you in creating the characters, but don't be afraid to override their decisions.

I don't say this to take agency away from players. They can get that back by advancing their characters how they want, and by making characters from scratch once they know how.

I say this because this game's life-path system makes it very easy for someone who doesn't know what they're doing to make a character that will fall over if a strong breeze comes their way. Making a character capable of combat is not exactly hard, but it's a lot to keep in your head if you've never played the game before.

This is actually made worse if your players have ever played other RPGs before. My experience is that people who have played other games will assume incorrectly that their defenses, health, and attacks will naturally scale with them as they level, even if they haven't read that anywhere.

I've had players go home and make a martial character and come to the table with no skill in their chosen weapon.

I also want to be clear, you build the character while they watch over your shoulder, not the other way around. If you're in a session 0 and have to juggle 4-6 people making their own characters, you will not get everything, and someone will have a moment where they dislike the game because they missed something important and when they have what would otherwise have been an important moment of spotlight it'll be ripped away from them because they're missing a skill.

This is a problem that goes away with just a little experience. Once players have played a few combats and seen what skills get used and how things work when they advance, starting from scratch won't be that hard.

In all, WOiN and OLD in particular is an excellent game that's served me well for the five or so years that I've been running it as my primary game.

Great Art - very useful. I will use these in home game on Roll20.

Great scenario. Die Hard on a spaceship if you want the cliff notes. Definely worth it. Highly recommended

Wonderful addition to the game. Definitely worth the price

This is well worth every penny you spend. Such a varied campaign with flavour and detail oozing out of it. The 5e version (individual files per each of the 12 chapters) if just as good.

I borrowed bits and pieces from this, and it's a pretty expansive packet so there was plenty to choose from. It's a fairly combat heavy story, with a kind of confusing history section (there's a lot of details), and wordy. On the one hand, I would have struggled to follow the story to the letter, and I think it would have gotten repetitive based on the sheer number of encounters with creatures. But I scaled it back, made in a 4 hour session for 2 players, and I liked the framework and details!

Introducted to the sytem via Dredd and worlds of 2000ad. Great for sandbox. Highly recommended