I am simply in awe at Other Dust.

I had originally set out to find a setting I could use for a post-apocalyptic campaign. I looked at a few different books out there but none of them drew me in as much as Other Dust.

The writing is superb and I ended up picking up the Free PDF of SWN just to access the timeline and fill my head with more of this world's lore. Kevin Crawford has created exactly the type of world I want my players exploring. The Highshine simply scares the crap out of me. Confronting a terrified but benevolent AI would be an amazing scene. Running away from or fighting against Crazed just gets my GM heart beating.

Character creation is straightforward and simple. I'm thinking of adding aspects of the SWN book in with this campaign and perhaps allowing synthetic humans, VI, or something along that nature. The books compliment each other greatly, however the Revised SWN does change a few things around but a handy section on the coversion helps to bring it into the Other Dust setting just fine.

I would love to see some additional mutations, classes, and backgrounds added in supplements but those can also be created fairly easily using the existing ones as templates.

I'm excited to start building characters with the players soon and getting into the game.

I come at Other Dust, Stars Without Number and Silent Legions from a slightly different angle. The first RPGs I played were crappy D&D 4e (with a minor affair with D&D 3x) and Call of Cthulhu. This means that I've never actually played the original games these systems are attempting to emulate with an "OSR" style. I just want to make it abundantly clear that if you aren't familiar with the older systems, it shouldn't put you off. Other Dust is a fantastically paired down system with enough wiggle room for fiddling and characters to feel different. It's nearly perfect, although I dislike the fiddlyness of figuring out what people are rolling for combat.

Regarding writing, this guy blows my mind. His generators (which can be exported to almost any system you want) absolutely smash it out of the park. They are the best tools for facilitating sandbox gameplay I've ever seen. It's hard to look elsewhere.

Set in the same universe and rule set of Stars Without Number, Other Dust takes sandbox gaming to the top of the radiate genre. A strong OSR game that allows for quick and easy character generation, along with incredible tools for the GM to generate settlements, monsters, NPC's on the fly. The GM tag tools lets you create things like Enclaves not only provide places to visit, but gives the GM flavorful environments, plots and adventures right from the get go. With simplified systems for skill checks/usage, encumbrance(one of my favorite systems), combat and just overall a fabulous fun game. Easily adaptable to any post apocalyptic setting, this my now go-to system for the genre. I can run it serious, or gonzo. Both work, and both are easy to do with this book. I am running my teenage son and a few of his friends in a Fallout game using this system. They picked it up easily, and have run with it in ways that other game systems we have played stumped them. I highly recommend this to any fan of the OSR style of gaming, fans of the post apocalyptic genre and gaming in general.

Another excellent book from Kevin Crawford.

I've been looking for a good post apocalyptic system for a while and this one pretty much ticks all the boxes for me. It is a lot less gonzo that Gamma World or Mutant Future, but because the core system is pretty much OD&D, you can very easily bring stuff across from systems like that. The negative mutations can perhaps be a little excessive (it is possible to create a character with no head), but that sort of thing is so easily house ruled away it really isn't an issue.

As with Stars Without Number, the GM's section on sandbox world creation are fabulous - and as with SwoN system agnostic.

Strongly recommended.

This book is great! As a stand alone is a wondeful sandbox generation system for post apoc settings. I love the SWN variant of the OSR rules and characers while chrunchy early one do feel skillful. The rules are tight and allow for a range of characer options.

If you are a Stars Without Number fan consider this book the ultimate ruined world plug in! It gives you options for mutations, new psi powers, and survial options in destoryed/decaying worlds. The 4 new classes are servicable but might need some skill updates of space travel becomes an option.

Finally the book itself is up to Sine Nomine standards. Easy to read, nicely written, and expertly layed out.

Well worth the pdf at least.

An absolutely excellent "spinoff" in the Old School genre that, above all, provides a thorough and great guide for creating your own Wasteland. For anyone contemplating a Fallout-inspired apocalyptic campaign, this is a must read - if not for use as your primary system, then simply as an inspiration.

Other Dust is an excellent companion to Stars Without Number, and a wonderful modern example of sandbox gaming. Other Dust uses a slightly updated version of the classic AD&D 'engine', adapted for sci-fi gaming. The setting seems a bit grimmer and more serious than older post-apoc RPGs like Gamma World, which is a clear inspiration. That feeling of realism comes from an amazing setting conceit, one I wish I'd thought of first. Instead of radiation causing mutations, a malfunctioning global emergency system, called the HighShine, unleashes out of control healing nano-colonies upon those suffering from radiation poisoning or other trauma. To modern gamers, this might be more plausible than the old 'radiation as magic' tropes.

Aside from the brilliant HighShine concept, the real greatness of the sourcebook is found towards the back. A phenomenally deep random creation system will allow you to build settlements, plot out adventures, dress sets ranging from a limestone cavern to an abandoned factory in seconds.

I'd been waiting to write this review until my print copy of the book arrived. Fortunately, Other Dust looks as good in print as it does on screen. CHRIS

When I first saw the announcement of Other Dust, a while a go, the cover caught my attention and blew me away. I knew immediately I wanted to run a game with this system. Being able to use this with SWN is awesome.

I purchased the softcover+pdf bundle, read the pdf and went back online and ordered a hardcover copy as well. That is how awesome I think this is. The game system is similar to SWN, because it is compatible with it. The character creation is super simple (skills was the only hard part, but I understood it after re-reading the cost chart).

The pdf is amazing, filled with awesome sandbox advice, charts and info for your sandbox and the premade campaign area in the back is useful as well.

I LOVE the System Quick Summary Sheet to hand out to players, as it has the basics of all they will need. I did notice one mistake on either the character sheet (my guess is this is where the mistake is) or the class description for the Speaker class. On the character sheet it gives them athletics as a skill, but in the description it does not.

I would suggest anyone who is even remotely interested in post-apocalypse gaming pick this book up and USE it. I am already planning my players adventures in this world!

No doubt a 5 out of 5 (even with the two little blips), and ranks up there with SWN and Red Tide.

Other Dust is the new post-apocalyptic RPG made by Kevin Crawford, the same writer who brought us the brilliant Stars Without Number. Those who are familiar with SWN will find that Other Dust follow the same formula: This is a game that you already know how to play, packaged in an overflowing toolbox geared for sandbox play.

The rules are classic D&D, so anyone who has ever rolled 3d6 to generate values for character stats will find themselves experiencing deja vu. That said, this isn't just some mechanical ripoff. Kevin Crawford's approach is very simple. The rules aren't the point of this game, but his sandbox is.

And what a sandbox it is. Other Dust presents an interesting vision of the apocalypse, that is also compatible with the SWN setting. The player character classes available for Other Dust are: Scrounger, Slayer, Speaker and Survivor. Each of the classes fills one particular niche, and given the nature of a post-apocalypse I find that they're an excellent selection to choose from.

Kevin goes into detail in all the fun parts of the Apocalypse, with a fun little section on Mutations, which can be anything from psychic powers to less pleasant looking ones like having detachable organs.

Much in the same way as SWN did, Other Dust is a game whose mechanics technically ends in about fifty pages into the book. The book is also 208 pages thick, and it's these 150 that really make Other Dust shine. Kevin Crawford's agenda supporting sandbox gaming is no secret in the book, as he himself calls it out early in the document.

The rest of the PDF is an impressive collection of rules and tables for generating your own apocalyptic sandbox. From random tables to create enclaves of civilization, to strange ruins, post-apocalyptic adventure creation and loot/scavenging mechanics that are a must-have for and game of this genre.

Kevin Crawfords approach to Other Dust mirrors SWN, which is a good thing as the SWN approach works perfectly for post-apocalyptic play. There's a ton of campaigns I could run with this game, and the host of tools to aid me in coming up with session after session of play.

I heartily endorse Other Dust to anyone who is even remotely interested in running a Post-Apocalypse game. There's enough material here to run a game for a good, long time.