basically it was too complicated. Having to build characters from the ground up juggling hundreds of points to build just the character's body as every detail had to be paid for. I just gave up before I even got to the main body of rules.

A fairly good shell of a game if you want to get away from hack-and-slash. Mechanics have the feel of GURPS crossed with Powers & Perils, i.e., there is some complexity to it with lots of formulas to keep track of stats. I'm not sure if that's good or bad yet, though, as I've just skimmed it over and and am going back for an in-depth read.

Overall, the presentation is clean, and there are some interesting ideas like using cards to track character flaws in-game. One thing I would recommend is giving examples - specifically, of basics like character generation, a brief combat, some skill checks, etc. I would be interested in seeing the sort of campaign worlds envisioned with this system.

Adobe opened this without any problems for me; as for the pdf i give it full marks since it is quite elaborate for a freebie.

It won't open. Adobe says its not a valid PDF file.

It downloaded fine and opened ok for me. However, I could not locate the character sheets nor reaction map from the authors website. I emailed him a minute ago and when he responds update this review with the info. looks like a fun game so far.

A few first impressions from me upon reading through the PDF:

1. The layout was pretty good, and most of the information was easily organized (although there were some items I couldn't find in my first readthrough that were rather important). More bookmarks would have helped, but as that's more of a "finished product" type critique and this is still only in beta, it's not like I can criticize it on that.

2. Again with the problem of it still being in beta: There appears to be some text missing, a few tables are oddly arranged, and there were some grammatical mistakes. Although the intent in the PDF is, by an large, easy to understand, it's still kind of disconcerting when an important part of a sentence is just cut off.

3. On to the system itself: I love the idea of actually using skills being the way skills increase. I'm not entirely sold on the expression of it, though. I'd have to see how it works in play. In addition, character creation is very long, and there's not a handy guide to the steps at the beginning of character creation (which could lead to problems). Some of the steps could also be consolidated into one — in particular, the "derived milestone" steps could easily be condensed into one step without loss of information or confusing your average player.

4. Having ages attached to the age categories would be a nice addition, even if it's just human ages.

This is just a counter-warning to the 1-star-"warning". In my Foxit Reader it opens fine. Creator according to file properties: Microsoft® Office Word 2007. PDF Split & Merge also don't notices any problems with it. So this file is not corrupted in general

This is a warning -- not a review. The document is corrupt -- it freezes when you open it in Acrobat Reader. Contact Nightingale Publishing to fix this problem. (Perhaps save it in an older PDF format, to weed out any hidden features that may be causing problems.)