Completely over the top fun. The mechanics and setting both strike a perfect balance between humour and functionality. It's good humour and good mechanics combined. In addition to facing down the alien lizardfolk and their high tech devices scenarios are also provided for battling greedy dwarven artificers and undead farm animals (zombie meat!) looking for revenge against the carnvirous barbarians.

Easily one of the most funny and entertaining rules-light RPGs on the scene.

The setting is loosely defined, with broad strokes that help creating the mood and give more inspiration than hard data, the rules are very friendly both to newcomers to the tabletop RPG world and to old grognards that will enjoy the modicum of creativity given to players and GMs alike. A simple and very intuitive system to handle most situations - from combat to social mayhem, as barbarians are destined to - provides a very solid yet flexible framework.

Players and GMs should work together to build up and better define the world and the situations to face during the adventures, and a fair bit of homework is needed to have something that will work for more than a one-shot adventure. It is also highly customizable for something different than cimmerians against dino-aliens, from something more akin to classic sword-and-sorcery to quite outlandish results.

The real gem, is the sum of the parts: the fun factor of playing a bloodthirsty, loud and headstrong barbarian is surprisingly addictive in such a fast flowing game.

Recommended.

SIX POINT SUMMARY

• Random Barbarian Facts (Barbarians argue with Barbarians, they fight with everyone else) are scattered around the book and are pretty humorous.

• The game reads like it's hard to take seriously, and the adventure backs that up by being too lite. A good, goofy random adventure table could have gone a long ways here.

• The system is simple, but easy to play around with, as evidenced by some of the combat options. Some of those examples serve as a nice example of how a little description can sell the action more than tables of modifiers can.

• The price point is pretty good, especially with the "read the PDF, upgrade to the print" option.

• The sample settings can give you more ideas on how to tweak the setting. Barbarians vs Elves? Barbarians vs Vampires? Barbarians vs Underground Psychic Bomb Worshippers? Most of the book focuses on Barbarians...you can play around with it and figure out who they fight.

• Because this stuff MATTERS in a game about Barbarians, you also get a random loot table to make the GM's job easier when determining what the Barbarians' latest victims had.

Barbarians Versus is a cute and fun book with a solid skeleton under it, and options that allow a GM to play around with the setting, suitable for a one shot or short campaign play and priced accordingly.

For my full review, please visit http://mostunreadblogever.blogspot.com/2015/05/tommys-take-on-barbarians-versus-2nd.html