My group is looking for our next game when our current 5E campaign wraps up and had mentioned sci fi, so I bought a copy of NEW while it's on sale. I was absolutely blown away! Not only is the system innovative and really well thought-out, but the presentation is very slick and professional. I like the interoperability with the fantasy and contemporary action games, but NEW can definitely stand on its own. I think the decision to go with a crunch-heavy, fluff-agnostic game was a great one as I can see the rules being easily adapted to all sorts of settings, both homemade and based on existing books, movies, and TV shows.

There are a few quibbles. The book really could have used a good proofreading pass. There's nothing disastrous or incomprehensible, but there are a few more than the average number of typographical errors. Given the otherwise incredibly professional presentation, that's a bit of a disappointment. There's also basically no creatures and very few starship designs, both of which can be easily rectified by the Starship Construction Manual and the upcoming bestiary, but it does make it feel a bit less like a "turn-key" RPG.

Still, those are minor complaints, and overall, it's a fantastic game. I can't wait to give it a try at the table, and I'm definitely looking forward to NOW and OLD.

TLDR: Really awesome game!

We've played several tester sessions with my group and are now graduating onto a full campaign. It's a lot of fun and gives a proper toolbox for Sci-Fi play. We've played some decent 'firefly' style light and punchy short sessions and are now building a Trek inspired 'troupe style' space oddessy - it's going to be great!

I've particularly enjoyed the crunch and depth in character creation, which gives a lot of control and variety. The career development system helps match a story to a character... the exploits ensure characters are each quite different with clear strengths.

What is particularly great is that the 'at table' play is pleasantly rapid. Combat flows nicely and doesn't bog down, works well with or without a tactical map. Non combat, there are some decent work ups for challenge resolution and it felt like everyone could pitch in. We had a really tense repair scenario that worked well - good mix of roleplaying and some tense dice!

Adjustable character creation and flowy at the table. It's the ideal mixture for me.

If you have the slightest interest in sci fi, pick it up and have a look!

Pros Guidelines for making a setting. Useful scale for technology levels. Rules for making star systems. Useful guidelines for making your own everything. Random tables for inspiration. Great art.

Cons No bookmarks or hyperlinks.

This book has guidelines for creating anything you need for your N.E.W. games. WOIN is very much a toolbox kind of game. You use the pieces that make your setting what you want it to be. Building A Universe tells you how to make those pieces. This book is vital for anyone starting a sci-fi campaign for WOIN. Several parts would also be useful for other systems.

There's a detailed section for creating star systems. It's surprisingly detailed and if you're stuck there are random tables. You can tell the author did his homework for this. There's a variety of star and planet types and other astronomical features. This part would be good even you were running another game entirely.

Among the world building guidelines there's a useful scale for technology to determine what kind of ships and gear will be used. You combine the advancement level with a genre rating, from hard sci-fi to science fantasy, to get a rating to use with the Starship Construction Manual and Future Equipment. Future Equipment also had rules for being in organizations. This book has rules for making those organizations. It covers everything from small teams to empires.

My favorite parts of the book are the sections on creating species and careers. I think making your own options for the players goes a long way toward personalizing a setting. There are good guidelines for making these game components and others.

There's also an in depth creature/NPC creation section. I find this an important thing in any game. The guidelines are pretty detailed, but not too complicated.

This book has suggestions and guidelines to make almost everything in the game. It doesn't cover vehicles or starships. Those are covered in their own books. The upcoming Redline for vehicles and the Starship Construction Manual, already available.

There are a lot of suggestions and random tables to give you inspiration. The campaign building guidelines ask questions to help you fill in the blanks for your game.

All of this is enhanced by excellent art. This seems to be a standard for EN Publishing, and certainly adds to the value of an already great book.

The only flaw is a lack of navigational aids. There are no bookmarks or hyperlinks.

Pros Detailed ship building. Lots of options. Beautiful art.

Cons Detail may be too much for some. Sloppy bookmarks.

This book allows you to create and modify starships for N.E.W. These ships are just what you need to fully use the Space book for WOIN.

There are step by step instructions for choosing all the parts. You choose hull size, FTL engines, sub-light engines, shields, weapons, crew recreation facilities, and more. There's an impressive variety of options for your own personal starship. A GM could populate an entire universe with this. There are also several example ships that are good standard ships for common roles in a game.

This book is great for players into building and customizing things in their games. Each part of a ship interacts with other parts to form the final stats for the ship. For example, the range of your weaponry is influenced by how good your sensors are. If you're overwhelmed by huge lists of options this book might be a bit much for you, but if options are what you want it's just about perfect.

The art in this book is phenomenal. I've mentioned art in reviews for other WOIN products. It has been great in all of them. There's a variety of excellent starship and space themed art, and a lot of art throughout.

The only complaint I have with this book is that the bookmarks are sloppy, but there are bookmarks and a hyperlinked table of contents. It's still quite easy to navigate.

This book is an excellent resource for space faring games. There's also a ship building online app at woinrpg.com that works with these rules. You can build a ship on the website to get all the stats. The book and the app are very useful combination.

Pros Fairly simple space travel. Star ship combat that involves multiple PCs on one ship. Great art.

Cons No bookmarks or hyperlinks. Only includes a couple of sample ships.

This book covers what you need for space travel in a game of N.E.W. The rules cover a lot of scientific anomalies to spice things up, but the rules are fairly simple. There are rules for faster than light travel and sub-light travel. The rules are easy to follow. The speed of travel depends on the ships and technology levels of the setting. There are tables to help keep track of the information, and random tables for inspiration. There are several types of FTL drives discussed. They don't really change the game mechanics, but they greatly help in defining your setting. The space combat rules are quite detailed, but similar enough to normal combat to follow easily. There are options to play with or without a grid. Both options seem equally usable depending on your groups preferences. Ships get multiple actions, leading to each PC on the ship having a part in each round of ship combat. For actions the PCs aren't personally handling there are simple rules for crew. All in all, I think this is a good book for the inevitable space travel, and space combat, in most sci-fi settings. To make the most of this book you'll need the Starship Construction Manual for WOIN to populate your space with vessels. There are just a couple of sample ships. As I've mentioned in my reviews of other WOIN books, the art is excellent. The pieces are lovely and convey the wonder of space very well.

Pros Variety of gear to cover many sci-fi universes. Easily customized. Great art.

Cons No bookmarks or hyperlinks.

This is one of the essential books for futuristic games in the What's O.L.D. Is N.E.W. system. I highly recommend this game. There's a good variety of gear for different kinds of sci-fi adventures. There are advancement levels and genre categories. The GM selects both of those for the campaign. The full details are in Building A Universe, but there's enough info here for the players. Those markers help give you the flavor of your game. From near future hard sci-fi to far future science fantasy, you're covered. There are weapons from clubs to phasers, armor from leather to powered armor, and a variety of non-combat gear. There are rules for cybernetics, vehicles, and drugs. A GM can pick and choose which categories of equipment are available and how advanced each category is. Whatever choices the GM makes players will still have plenty of choices for their PC's equipment. The various weapons and armor have enough variation in stats and special features to make them feel distinct from each other. You also have the option to buy higher quality equipment and add upgrades to make your gear more unique. This book also has great art representing the equipment, and other sci-fi scenes. The art in all the WOIN books is top-notch. Overall this is a very good book. I think it would have been better if the information was organized a bit better between books. For example, the advancement level stuff could have been better explained here. The biggest downside for me is the lack of bookmarks to aid in navigation.

Pros Flexible character creation. Huge number of character options. Simple, flexible psionic rules. Excellent art.

Cons The options could be overwhelming for new gamers. Navigation is not optimal.

Short version of this review: If you're an experienced gamer looking for a sci-fi system that's fun and easy to customize buy this book and the other components of WOIN that suit your ideas. Longer version to follow.

There are a multitude of character options in this game. There are several species reminiscent of aliens from various sci-fi media. There are a few dozen careers to choose from. Each career has several abilities, called exploits, to choose from. The species and careers roughly correspond to race and class in D&D style games, but the careers are far more granular and flexible and you're not expected to be in one career forever. Grades in a career give you attribute bonuses, skill ranks, exploits, and increase your maximum dice pool. The careers in the book cover a wide range of sci-fi careers, and some would work well in modern or even older era settings. There are star ship pilots, psionic investigators, space marines, police, criminals, and many more. Exploits further increase customization. Exploits serve the same function as class abilities, feats, or edges in other games. Each career has a selection of exploits you can only take as part of a grade in that career. Then there are universal exploits that anyone can take. All of this leads to an exceptional degree of character customization. Then there's the ability to spend XP for attributes, skills, and exploits in addition to taking grades in careers.

I've played several RPGs and this one has my favorite character creation system. As you layer on the various options you get a real feel for the character and its history. I've never played a game that got me that involved and invested with a character even before play begins.

This book also contains the psionics system for WOIN. As with everything else in this system you can use or ignore the psionics portion of the game without hurting the rest of the game. Psionics are represented as exploits. There are several careers with psionic abilities and there is an array of universal exploits. The universal exploits use a point system to fuel the various abilities, while the career exploits are usually more specialized and cost no points to use. If you want to keep psi simpler just limit it to the careers. You can have just the career exploits, just the universal exploits, or use both for maximum options. The psionic exploits themselves cover a wide range of abilities. Telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, and more are covered. You can totally have your own version of Jedi running around your universe if you want, along with many other types of psi characters.

If you want to customize even further there's a companion tome called Building A Universe that has guidelines for making species, careers, and more. They combine very well to make your game universe your own.

I feel that the art needs specific mention. The art in this book, and others in the line, is wonderful. There's a lot of art and it's all good. The various pieces could fit in many different types of sci-fi, but they all fit together well. I'd say that this game line rivals the D&D and Pathfinder lines visually.

The only downside to this book, for me, is that it's not very easy to navigate. There are no bookmarks or hyperlinks in the pdf. You just have to look at the table of contents and navigate the old fashioned way.

My group has been running the 4e version of the Zeitgeist adventure for close to 2 years, and we're now on Adventure 9. It is, far and away, the best adventure I've ever run. The NPCs, the setting, the storytelling ... all of it just bleeds flavor and has completely absorbed my group.

If you love D&D 4e - as I do - this is the adventure which finally makes the playstyle "click." Forget about the awful slogs that WotC has produced; Ryan understands how a proper 4e adventure should flow, and the right mix of combat and non-combat, to make the system really sing.

You may need to tweak some of the enemies along the way depending on your group, but the monster design herein is as strong as any I've seen in any official product. It's phenomenal.

Pros Flexible mechanics. Solid examples for rule implementation. Engaging gameplay. Easy customization. Excellent art.

Cons A bit of a learning curve, especially for new gamers. Navigation and organization are not optimal.

This book provides the rules and guidelines to use what's in the other WOIN books. The core mechanic is a pool of d6's against a target number. It's simple and flexible. Future Core provides all the info you need to form and use your dice pools with guidelines for skill uses and suggested target numbers. There's also an interesting countdown mechanic for things with uncertain timing, such as the progression of diseases or damaged ships exploding. The various rules have useful examples included, but the real strength of this game is as a toolkit to make the game your own. You can use the rules here to represent myriad things not specifically mentioned. Combat is oriented toward using good tactics, utilizing your character's abilities and the environment. It may be a little complex for those new to RPG's, but once you learn how things work combat flows well and is a lot quicker than I expected in just reading the rules. There's a bit of a learning cuve for this game, but that's true of any of the "crunchy" games. I've been having a lot of fun running my first campaign in this system. What keeps this from being a five star book for me is the difficulty in finding things when questions arise. There are no bookmarks or hyperlinks in the pdf. You just have to look at the table of contents and navigate the old fashioned way. That is further complicated by the organization of information. For example, to fully understand the rules for maximum dice pools you read a few paragraphs on pages 8 and 9 for the basics then find the "Making An Attack" sidebar on page 31 for the details. The information is all there, but not always easily found. Aside from the srengths of the rules and the drawback of organization I feel that the art needs specific mention. The art in this book, and others in the line, is wonderful. There's a lot of art and it's all good. The various pieces could fit in many different types of sci fi, but they all fit together well. I'd say that this game line rivals the D&D and Pathfinder lines visually. Overall this is a rather good book for an excellent game.

I am one of the people who backed the campaign to put this system into print, and I have only just got to the stage where I was able to start reading the books. There is so much information in this handbook that it's crazy, but it's presented in an easy to read manner. There are just enough charts to make even the numerical informaton simple to follow. This book is a fantastic read, and provides enough options and information to be useful in almost any sci-fi space setting. But better still, the material invokes a sense of nostalgia for so many space-based books, movies, and tv series. As a sci-fi buff, and a bit of a science geek, I loved reading through this for the detail, as well as the mood setting of it's examples of play.

This book is a great addition to the O.L.D. Fantasy sourcebook, with many different weapons to choose from and enchantments and other equipment it is a must have for your fantasy campaign. I always criticized fantasy games for a battle Axe being a low damage weapon. This source book got it right! Many other interesting weapons to add flavor to characters or npc's!

This sourcebook offers information that will help flesh out your Fantasy campaign using the O.L.D. sourcebook material. I highly reccomend it if you are planning to run a fantasy campaign.

I am impressed by the system and how career paths are mapped out. The book is put together well and easy to follow.

Zeitgeist is hands-down the best adventure path I've ever seen, and it all starts with this Player's Guide. The book is an indispensible aide to creating characters built for and molded by the continent of Lanjyr, and is brimming full of little tidbits to both inform and immerse you in the steampunky-flavored setting.

VISUAL The art for this guide is very attractive, and instantly sets the mood by giving you concrete visualizations for the fashion and culture of the adventure path's setting. Even the page borders and font style/color choices seem very purposeful here, giving the campaign its own feel while not being overly distracting or difficult to read. Stat blocks, player powers, and feats are all laid out in a manner that readers of the 4E core rulebooks will instantly recognize, making it easy to identify information at a glance.

The organization of the book itself is also very intuitive and useful. The introductory chapter brings setting-vital information to the reader's attention, laying out the differences between a game set in the world of Zeitgeist versus a normal game of 4e Dungeons and Dragons. Somehow, in just two and a half pages, you'll be almost completely up to speed on everything important there is to know about the game world, including a brief account of important historical events, the nature and culture of the different races, names of some key NPCs, and how to use the remainder of the book to your best advantage. There's even a pronunciation guide to many of the setting's invented words, which I wish were an industry standard for these kinds of books!

FLUFF Beyond the need-to-know background set down in the Guide's introduction, there are three whole chapters devoted to fleshing out the world around the PCs. In the campaign, the PCs begin as constables--agents of the King of their home nation with authority above normal law enforcement. This ends up being a far cry from the typical identity of freelance 'adventurers' that most players are familiar with, but the book goes above and beyond in its delivery of story and world-building to acclimate them to their new role. Particular attention is wisely given to the topic of the agency the PCs find themselves members of, as well as their main city of operation.

In the chapter outlining the various nations of Lanjyr, mixed into the nitty-gritty details of rulers, population diversity, and geography are stories of heroics from ages gone by. This added lore makes it easier to digest the overall 'themes' of each country, and the 13 adventures of the campaign often reference or breathe new life into these stories, rewarding players who take the time to learn more about their world, while not punishing those who don't.

CRUNCH The biggest draw of Zeitgeist (beyond its wonderfully-crafted and cinematic adventures) has to be the "character themes" from this book. Using an often-overlooked element of 4e D&D character creation, Zeitgeist instantly gives your character a place in the world. Any character can qualify for any of the nine themes, which not only gift you a nifty power or two, but also subtly influence certain parts of the story and gives each character a place in the spotlight during each adventure. For example, choosing the Skyseer theme gives a character limited divination abilities, but also grants them a pre-scripted vision once per adventure about the dangers and opportunities that their party will face in the near future. Choosing Technologist will give a character a robotic companion, and the ability to automatically succeed on Intelligence checks to operate complex new technology they may come across. The Paragon Paths are extensions of each theme, and while they don't tie into the story as much, that's probably for the best. All of them are setting-appropriate and have cool abilities, but they don't pigeon-hole your character's development; you can feel free to use any of the oodles of alternatives from other WotC supplements.

The campaign also uses a new Prestige mechanic to track the party's fame (or infamy) among several of Lanjyr's most powerful organizations. Events in each adventure can enhance or worsen your party's reputation among these groups, which open up new opportunities or trigger optional scenes in the story. One of the most common applications of Prestige is the ability to call in favors: the more Prestige you have with a group, the greater the service you can request. It's a neat addition that gives the DM an easy way to track how the party is viewed by NPCs, and how to determine what resources the party can call upon above and beyond their own wealth and equipment. Also present are rules on how to handle the PCs' government stipends--since they're not adventurers, they can't just loot everyone they come across!

Given the level of technology in the campaign, there are also stats for firearms and other modern trinkets. To function more fully with the (now defunct) 4e online Character Builder, the firearms themselves have similar statistics to crossbows, though they have enough of a distinctness that they're not a simple reskin. Tons of enemies from the campaign use these weapons and (mostly) abide by the same rules of their use that the players have to follow, making for a strong and consistent theme of modernized warfare, even intermingled with magical attacks. Optional rules also exist for phenomena like gunsmoke, misfires, or improving the overall lethality of guns (thus slanting warriors away from the use of bows or swords).

Finally, the appendices in the back contain collections of reference material:

• Stats for soldiers or police officers that may aide the party at various points during the campaign, allowing for players to use them much like summoned monsters.
• Stats for ships and rules for Naval Combat
• Sample skill challenge formats for tailing or interrogating suspects, a HUGE help as these will happen time and again during the campaign.

DOWNSIDES/CRITICISMS The book isn't perfect (minor typos exist, of course), but nothing is so problematic that it detracts from the overall enjoyment or utility of this Guide. If anything, the greatest flaws are not in the Guide itself, but rather missed opportunities in the campaign's adventures that fail to take full advantage of everything that the Guide provides. Yerasol Veterans don't have as much time in the limelight as the other eight character themes, for example, and more story events could have been influenced by the party's Prestige levels, but both of those elements remain as worthy tools for DMs and players in and of their own right.

If I had to identify the greatest flaw in the Guide, it's that it becomes far too easy for players to mitigate or nullify the longer reload times of guns as related to crossbows. If you're a DM, consider making it impossible to reload a firearm without spending at least a minor action.

TL;DR This book is awesome, and a great way to get hyped for the Zeitgeist adventure path, even if you currently know nothing about it. Even if you don't plan on playing Zeitgeist, the Characters section is a great resource for building steampunky characters in 4e D&D.

The Haunting of Calrow Ruins is a well detailed horror adventure, definitely worth getting for a good night of spooky play.