Simply wonderful! A source book which provides a smooth combination of historical information with an arcane twist. The contents are easily transferable to alternate gaming rule systems and the Iridium System itself is easy to use and clearly defined. I bought this as an alternate source for d20 Gaming and have decided to run an Iridium campaign as soon as my current gaming schedule allows.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Clarity, consistency, transferability.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Absolutely nothing wrong with this... other than it has left me anxiously waiting for more product in this line!<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Nebuleon is Hinterwelt Enterprises's setting rich sci-fi RPG . The setting is full of possibilities with numerous organizations, cultures, and governments that could be the seeds of many campaigns. Whether it is a campaign to free Dremin slaves from their Haga masters or political and/or military conflict between trade organizations its all there for the picking. Nebuleon, as is the case with all of Hinterwelt's core books, is a complete game and features eight playable races, twenty classes, lengthy equipment section, and a respectable friends & foes section. Hinterwelt uses their house rules, the Iridium System to power Nebuleon. The Iridium System is a solid moderate complexity rules set that uses a d20 to resolve attacks and stat checks and percentile dice to determine results for skills.

While Nebuleon has many good qualities there are a couple areas that may not appeal to player depending on their taste in RPGs. The art & layout are not what I would call bad, but it is certainly not top notch. Now that I have given a brief overview of the game and its strengths and weaknesses I will explain my points in more detail.

Setting: Nebuleon's focused on a small section of a galaxy called the Nebuleos. The name was given to this area of space by the first space faring race to arrive via sleeper ships, an insectoid race called the Thri-T'Kree. The arrival of the Thri-T'Kree marks the beginning of the first millennium and during the next 1000 years they discover that the Nebuleos has several planets occupied by sentient beings. Near the end of the first millennium the Thri-T'Kree begin to suffer from a disease that kills many of them weakening their dominance over the other races. The other races over throw the last Thri-T'Kree colony which marks the end of the first millennium. The beginning of the second millennium starts with the development of faster than light drives by the Andromedaens. The availability of FTL sparks exploration and expansion among the races which sparked the many wars that plagued the second millennium. The Third millennium begins with the founding of the Gren's Grou-Lynn Imperial Navy. The Gren use their influence to establish peace in the Nebuloes by forming the Republic of Free Worlds (RFW) which somewhat similar to our United Nations. Gren along with rest of the RFW formed the Interstellar Trade Organization (ITO) to regulate trade. The ITO is often at odds with Andromedaen Conglomerate of Guilds (ACG) and their aggressive trade practices. The Nebuleon core rules assume that you will be playing in the third millennium, but there is also plenty of information included if you want to play in the second millennium.

Baleks: are a humanoid people who are descendents swamp dwelling quadrupeds. They look something like small, hairless apes with webbed feet and a head that reminds me of a bat's. Personality wise they come across somewhat like the Ferengi from Star Trek. Given that comparison you can imagine that they are known for their trading practices.

Dremin: If you like giant lizards the Dremin are the race for you. They are by far the biggest, toughest, and most feared in battle of all the races in the Nebuleos. The Haga have enslaved the Dremin for most of their existence, but most of the Dremin escaped when they revolted against the Haga.

Gren: are a race of cat people who in the third millennium are the most powerful race in the Nebuleos. There are 5 subspecies of Gren Emperor, Kezzeren, Tessreck, Chemise, and the Shea T'Kar.

Humans: I like the twist in Nebuleon puts on the Human race. Like in many other RPGs that I have played humans do not get any statistical bonuses or penalties. The twist is that Humans in this setting are considered to be on the same level of a cockroach to most of the other races. The human home world no longer exists. Every time they find a new planet and start to settle another race with better technology comes along and exterminates the colony and take the planet from them.

J'Hat Itar: The J' Hat Itar are an interesting race, being a combination of horse like beings (Itar) and a highly intelligent parasite (J'Hat). When the first J'Hat took to and Itar they found out that symbiosis worked to the advantage of both of them and have lived that way ever since.

Kiran: The Kiran evolved from forest dwelling creatures and are humanoids with a broad, powerful build. They have a long mane that they are proud of that runs from the top of their head and down their back. They are barbaric in many ways and military strength is of the most importance. Their society runs on feudal system that rewards good warriors with land grants.

Mog: A race that is descendants of arboreal sloth, the Mog are not known for their physical prowess. They make up for their physical short comings by being very intelligence and their natural ability to heal themselves and others.

Toaffi: A race of desert running people who are very skilled in the technology and the first to create artificial intelligence. They also lost their home planet in the AI wars.

The Next Three races are NPC only races.

Andromedaens: Xenophobic race that is very manipulative and shrewd. Andromedaens were the first to develop faster than light drives. They also have a very powerful military (Andromedaen Marine Crop) composed mostly of soldiers of other races. They will not admit any other race into their trading guild the Andromedaen Conglomerate of Guilds (ACG), but it is ok if other races die defending their interests.

Dras: are large jellyfish looking beings that can only live on gas planets or in specially set atmosphere on a ship. This race could have used much more description.

Haga: a lizard like race of religious fanatics whose mission is to wipe the galaxy clean of sinful creatures (every other race) and dominate space. They claim that the gods gave them domain over the Dremin much in the same way a person has control over a dog. So imagine what they thought when the Dremin revolted!

All of the races, except the Dras, are very well covered and their descriptions give a lot of ideas for role-playing them whether you are a player or the GM.

The governments and organizations in Nebuleon add a lot of hooks for the aspiring GM to run with. There are so many of them that I will not be able to cover them all in this review. In all there are five governments, ten organizations (The ITO, ACG, and RFW for example), and ten Megacorps. Most races have some sort of industry that they specialize in such as the Dremin's Omega Star megacorp. The Megacorps are each races largest economic contributor and are connected through the different trade organizations.

Now I know those reading so far are asking "how about ships & combat?!" In Nebuleon ship to ship combat is fairly rare. Ships are armed with weapons such as matter-antimatter (MAM), plasma, proton, and fusion weapons. Ships are not something that are owned by the everyday person. Most ships are under the control of governments & organizations, but there are a good number of free traders who own ships as a part of their business. There are no cloaking devices or transporters.

Mechanics:

Skills: The Iridium system is a skill based system. Characters rely on their skills and raw talent more in the Iridium System than they do on special abilities. There are not many special abilities and most are related to the characters races. Skills are used by rolling under your skill value on percentile dice (plus or minus GM bonuses or penalties). If the role is 5% or less it is a critical failure and you roll again and subtract then consult the critical failure table. The more you fail by the worse the accident. If you roll 96% or higher you roll again and add it to the previous role, then consult the critical success table.

Skills are bought during character creation or through XP advancement. During character creation skill ranks are bought on a one to one basis. The number of ranks in a skill determines the percentage your skills are at to start. The starting percentage can be modified depending on class, race, and stat scores. XP advancement is done similarly to the way it is done during character creation except that advancement costs more. New skills cost four and to advance a skill costs a number of XP equal to the rank desired plus any ranks in between your current rank and the desired rank. For example if you want to go from 1 rank to 3 ranks it would cost 5 (2 for rank 2 + 3 for rank 3 = 5). Players can also purchase extra attacks, bonuses to hit and damage, and extra dice for damage rolls.

Combat: in the iridium system good mix of realism and playability. Basic combat involves rolling a d20 for each attack you have with the weapon you are using (a starting character will have from 1-4 attacks) and add your to hit bonus to each role. If your total is higher than the targets defense (which is derived from strength, agility, and constitution) you hit. If you roll a natural twenty then you have possible critical hit. To determine if it is a true critical roll against your critical chance percentage (which is based on the characters class and is between 2-5% to start) if your roll is under the critical percentage you have struck with an incredibly powerful or otherwise deadly blow. Once you have scored a critical hit you consult the critical hit table to see how bad you injured the target. Since true critical hits are very rare at low levels the use of tables does not slow down the game. Damage is rolled depending on the weapons stats and you add your damage bonus from your strength stat. The Iridium system uses hit locations numbered 1 through 10. Without a targeting skill you will randomly strike location 1through 10, but if you have a targeting skill you can make skill check and if you pass you get to choose what area is hit. If the character has armor the damage is taken of the armor points in the area hit. If the character has no armor or if the armor is depleted then the damage is subtracted directly from the fortitude points (derived from str, con, and will and dependant on location) in the area hit. A typical character will only have 10-15 fortitude points in area 1 (head) and even an average blaster shot will kill and unarmored character. The ship combat rules are very similar to the regular combat rules except for the use of hull points.

There are several classes that cover most any archetype you could find in a sci-fi game. In the Iridium System classes are starting point that gives you the skills that are the most important for that class. From there you can buy and skill of any type to take your character in another direction. There are no penalties for taking skills that are not normal for that class. Because of the lack of penalties there is no use for multiclassing in the Iridium System. If you are playing a soldier and you want your soldier to have some tech skills just in case you need to repair a busted control panel, you can , just buy the skill with your next lot of XP. Nebuleon also has rules for free form psionics and rules for playing AI characters. There is also a friends & foes section that stats out several adversaries for your players, anything from AI to humanoids and monstrous beings.

Art & Layout: The cover shows three ships in combat and gets the message across that this is a sci-fi game but at the same time is not eye catching. Inside it is 236 pages, black & white, and has a mix of line and pencil drawings. The drawings done by Mark Brooks are quite good while the line art (mostly in the friends & foes section) give the book and old school feel that doesn't quite capture the feel of Nebuleon.

The layout is good. The PDF has corrected most of the layout issue present in the print version. The chapters are now sequenced correctly for easier character generation. Also some of the art in the section detailing some of the planets has new art in color.

Conclusion: If you are looking for a new SFRPG where players have a lot of flexibility for their characters, I highly recommend Nebuleon. It has a rich setting that I have found in my games to be among the best SFRPG settings. The Iridium system is a fairly quick playing system despite the hit locations and occasional use of tables. Nebuleon is a complete & well written, role playing game well worth the money <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Detailed setting with tons of adveture ideas built in to it. Wide range of organizations and governments. Different take on Sci-FI that is somewhere between hard sci-fi and space opera.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Aside from some art that doesn't quite fit the feel of the setting and a few editing errors, none. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Roma Imperious by Hinterwelt Enterprises is an alternate history fantasy campaign setting running on the Iridium System. It is set in an alternate history of ancient Rome where the Empire never fell but rather embraced the practice of magic and survived.

In real history, Constantine won a decisive battle under the sign of the cross and so legalized Christianity, embracing it politically if not personally and causing the religion to grow in power and popularity. After his death, the Empire collapsed due to plague, barbarian invasion, and a number of other factors. In Roma Imperious history, Constantine won a decisive battle using magic, and it was made legal and encouraged throughout the Empire for its usefulness, creating a whole new social class, the magi.

The world is set approximately 400 years after Constantine?s victory, and the empire still stands strong thanks to its use of magic. Many other factions exist over the rest of the Eastern Hemisphere, which is nicely mapped out early on. There?s the Jade Empire of the Far East, the Skandian Kingdoms of the Far North, kingdoms in Africa, India, and North Asia, as well as barbarian tribes that are sort of part of Roma but also somewhat autonomous, like the druids, from whom Constantine got his magic. Everyone has their own brand of magic in this world.

Roma Imperious also gives the reader an in-depth look at the politics and economics of the Empire, from the general structures to the specific NPCs that run them. More than a handful of new Iridium classes are offered, and more can be made easily due to the flexibility of the Iridium System. The setting also contains rules for era- and setting-specific items, as well as some pretty sweet monsters pulled from the pages of world mythology.

The setting is remarkably complete. A large chunk of the book is dedicated to fleshing out just the setting. The writing can be amateurish at times and there are more than a few typos, but these are easily forgiven as one gets sucked into the mythology being weaved.

After the setting is laid out, the Iridium Core System rules are given. Now, theses can also be downloaded as a standalone supplement, but they?re here for convenience. Here, as everywhere, the Iridium System offers flexibility at the expense of complication. Iridium allows you to do almost anything you can think of and it is also more realistic than most rulesets, but only if you can down the complications and the often vague or disorganized nature of the rules. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Awesome, well-developed setting built from an interesting premise. Very thorough with politics, social structure, history, timelines, and specific bios. The fiction draws you into its world and makes you want to play. Generally good art. Nice long lists of classes, skills, and spells.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The writing comes of as just plain weak at parts, with strange wording and awkward phrasing, as well as many punctuation problems. The Iridium System is almost as obtuse as it is flexible. The sheer length of this setting may put some off. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Roma Imperious is (obviously) Roman themed fantasy RPG. Roma has strong fantasy elements to it, so if your are looking for a strictly historical Roman RPG this game is not for you.

The basic premis is that instead of the Roman Empire falling Constantine learned magic from Druids who had aided him in an earlier campaign. With the discovery of magic schools(schola magi) were established and new magi were trained. Magic has become essential to the Empires existants. Magic has improved farming, communications, transporting goods & people (the legions), and everyday life in the Empire. While magic has improved most every aspect of Roman life it has also spawned it's own share of monsters, beasts, and tyrants. Some rogue magi summon demons, beasts, and monsters. When left alone monsters to do what they do, they multiply! In some areas of he empire wandering bands of cannibal dwarves,xyclops,giants, and if you are to close the Alkatian border maybe even some Terragena.

Roam uses Hinterwelt's Iridium system which is a skill based system that uses percentile dice for skill resolution and d20 for attacks and stat checks. It also uses a hit location system that (despite what some peple think) does not hinder or slow the flow play.

Magic is handled with three different systems:

Spell Point Magic: Magi are primary and most powerful users of this system, but nearly any character can learn to cast spell magic. When a character uses spell magic he is channeling power from whichever plane the character is schooled in. Casting spell magic takes a toll on the character by draining their spirit points.

Free Form: Priests, Druids, and Shamans are character types that have access to this type of of magic. Instead of channeling magic from the planes as it is done in spell point magic free form magic channels it power from an external source (Gods for example)and through his body. A free form characters body acts as both a capacitor and resistor. To use free form magic the character uses his or her imagination and tells the GM what effect they are trying to get. The GM tells the player if it is possible and if so tells the player what the penalty will be, if any. Then the player rolls their base chance to see if they ge the desired effect and next they make a channeling roll to determine if they had a backlash from channeling. Both rolls should be made @ the same time to speed things up.

Dictated: Monks are the only users of this system which is hybrid of Free form and Spell Point magic. Like Spell Point Magic the effects are fixed and like Free form it requires a roll to use chi. If you make the PIE roll then you can spend Chi to gain the benifit of the discipline you are using.

The magic systems give the players many options and also each system suites the character types they are used for.

Roma is easily the best looking core book that Hinterwelt has published to this date. The cover captures the feel of the game but seems a little cartoonish. Interior art is for the most part well done in B/W with the best piece being the Kuie done by one of the Carmona brothers. The layout is clear and easy to navigate and the pdf has very good book marking.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Great new spin on Roman History and Fantasy. Quality writting and layout.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: most of the art is high quality but there are few pieces that are not good at all and stand out as such next the Carmona brothers excellent art. There is an error in the map but it is otherwise very nice. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

The Nebuleon Revised is a unified RPG package including both a SF campaign background and a complete set of system rules based on Hinterwelt?s Iridium System. The Iridium system is skillfully built around a broad skill system covering the range of situations commonly encountered by the characters. Success is determined using a simple curved progression and a minimum of modifiers. Skills and proficiency in them are gained during the initial creation of the character and as a result of experience. The Hinterwelt portal also offers a complete character generation and storage service effectively maximizing time to play and allowing the players to focus on customizing the background and story of the character.

The introduction contains a short piece detailing the company?s design philosophy stressing a ?Character Driven? play style. ?Character Driven? play ?is a story based on and pushed forward by the interaction of characters with a Game Master?s story?. In other words, the rules take second place to the story. For a GM who thrives on creating a story and having the characters interact with it, the system is full of rich details including a large number of races available to player characters, an array of organizations and governmental styles and a wide range of archetypical character classes.

The included background features a location where the various races are intermingled and in frequent contact with each other while not yet approaching any type of true integration. Most of the driving forces within the campaign relate to racial supremacy and preeminence. Governments are organized along racial and religious lines and compete on those levels much more than more abstract mercantile or economic lines.. Humans are on the bottom rungs of the social hierarchy, yet retain the youth and vitality common to up and comers in a SF setting.

Nebuleon?s offerings for a SF ?gearhead? or rule driven Game Master are more limited. The background is designed to be customizable by the GM and even dropped if so desired. The gadgets beloved of many SF gamers are dealt with in a small chapter and have little or no background story. Ships and vehicles are merely a method of getting the characters from one scene in the story to the next. Specific situations are run according to generalized rules rather than attempting to have specific rules for each situation.

Overall Nebuleon Revised offers a great deal for the price, but may have missed the market. Hinterwelt?s other settings tend to be better for character-driven play and offer more scope for story with having to met the object oriented demands of many SFRPG players. Roma Imperious players will probably be much more content with having a spear be just a spear and a wagon just be a wagon. Many, if not most, SF gamers seem to thrive on having a huge array of ships, equipment and gear all loving detailed and explained. <br><br><b>LIKED</b>: The nice balance between depth of system and speed of play in the Iridium system. The system is broad enough to handle most any situation yet in a way to avoid bogging down in breadth and depth of detail. <br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The system and design philosophy are perhaps better suited for other settings and situations. SF gamers tend to prefer heavy extensive rules, lots of goodies and objects, and a focus on things rather than people. The production values are adequate, but perhaps not up to the standards of many current products with larger budgets and resources.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Regicide is a fast-playing game of royalty and world power. While you might expect a .pdf card game to come with its own cards, this one uses a standard deck of playing cards. It's an unusual idea, but a clever one, rather like the Cheapass Games philosophy of not selling you anything you don't already have. You'll also need some counters or tokens; again, something you almost certainly have around the house.

What you get with the Regicide download is the board and the rules. Actually, you get four versions of the board to pick from, which is pretty convenient: a large coloured one with quick reference rules around the edge, a small coloured one without the rules, and a black-and-white version of each. The board itself is a fairly abstract network of nodes and lines, superimposed onto a map of the world. Each node represents a continent or major land mass, with each worth a varying number of points.

The game starts with players taking turns to place kings and queens on the board, claiming ownership of the territories in the process. Once all the locations are taken, the rest of the deck is dealt out and the game proper begins. Your turn consists of playing a single card. For example, by playing a spade you can attempt an assassination. If successful, this will allow you to remove the target monarch from the board, and with him or her go the controlling player's ownership tokens. Other suits allow different actions, and higher numbers are harder to defend against. Interestingly, each suit also counters a different action, so (for example) you might want to save some spades to defend against opponents playing clubs. The function of each suit is pretty intuitive; I scribbled out a cheat sheet but barely needed to refer to it. The game continues until all cards have been played. You then count up points, which can be gained from some actions as well as by controlling territories, to find a winner.

The rules as written are solid enough, although they could be cleaned up in places. I was particularly impressed by the extensive example of play, which gives a clear idea of how the game plays and should answer any rules questions you might have.

So how does the game itself play? Well, it's not deep, but it's certainly fast and fun. We went from learning the rules to finishing our first game in about fifteen minutes. Luck isn't as much of a fact as you'd think, either; during the course of that first game, I drew all four jacks (which are the best defensive card in the game) and still came last due to a couple of bad decisions.

Overall, then, a cheap and cheerful game of world domination, well-suited to casual play in between bouts of Risk or Diplomacy.

<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Easy to learn, quick to play and just plain fun.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The editing and presentation could be improved.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>

Its not a bad little game just don't expect anything too detailed given the title of the game. Its all about making a grab for as much land as quickly as possible. There is a small amount of strategy involved (wise use of Jacks) but it largely comes down to the luck of the draw from the card deck. Looting seems like it could be a bit of a game breaker given the relatively low points given for taking land but this is a decent game for your money.