Very cool setting, very interesting game system. The rules are a little rough in play, but not bad (and that could also be the fact that I haven't played it enough to really get into the groove with it.) Interesting core mechanic, amazing magic / karma system. My biggest complaint is that they hinted at this incredibly cool setting, but never came out with any additional supplements for it (and this is the kind of game that needs supplements.)

A great game, but not for everyone.

I really enjoyed the rpg, and still do in an active rpg group. I would highly recommend it, even if the rules may not be for everyone, as the setting in itself is awesome enough to steal from in case you feel other rules systems work better for you. As the setting should be clear to most (Dragons reincarnating, now coming back in the modern age), the mechanical side is what I'll focus on.

The game uses a system called the "dynamic D6" system. Generally this means you have 4 seperate dice pools representing 1 for active physical actions (attacking, climbing, jumping etc), 1 pool for active mental actions (looking for something, casting magic, trying to focus your mind, use a mental skill etc), and then 2 more defensive "reactive" pools; reactive physical (defending, dodging away, etc.) and reactive mental (resisting influences, noticing an ambush etc).

Now the truly interesting part (that makes it dynamic) is that you can shift these dice pools around based on your skill in an action, and the amount of focus you put into it. In example, when attacking using your fists to punch someone in the face, it is a Fire melee action. Your skill in melee is 2, and Fire score is 2. This normally means you roll 2 dice (Fire 2), but using your skill you can fcus more on your action, and gain 2 extra dice, so to roll 4 instead. However, those dice need to come from somewhere.. so you lower one of the other dicepools by 2 due to you more aggresive stance performing this action. (which may make you vulnerable to defense or other actions).

That is what I think, makes the system pretty awesome, but it gets better. During combat it makes things look a bit more like a Matrix style action scene every time an attack is performed. For each point in for example your Fire score, you can build a sequence. So Fire 4 would be 4 "small" actions in the sequence, which can allow you to jump through a window, shoot both you guns in your hand (dual wielding pistols), and roll to cover. (Jump - shoot gun left - shoot gun right - roll for cover)

This does however can make things a bit more complicated/hard to understand in how it works with defending etc. This could have benefited greatly from a better and more clear explanation, but it helps when you have someone who understands the rules to learn from. (You learn best from experience)

What makes the game a bit more metagamey is the Karma bid, which allows your player to push for a success in any action by spending Karma. Karma can be spend for 1 extra success each after the dice are rolled, and can allow an action to completely succeed if not enough successes are rolled. The defender also gets to use Karma however, so it becomes a bid...whichever one gets the biggest total of successes will be the winner, but it might still come back to a partial success if not enough excess successes are obtained. (defender successes and attacker's cancel each other out)

It is rather required however, as Karma will be the thing keeping you alive early in game when you do not have access to draconic powers (which also use Karma). Combat is lethal!

But there are ofcourse downsides to all this;

• Combat is nice and fast when you get into it, but it takes a while tog et your head around it. Making combat and defence sequences can be hard to envision at first. And if poorly understood..makes for a complicated mess at the table with everyone looking confused. It is advised to really learn the system before seriously going into large scale complicated combat scenes. Take it easy with just 1 or two player's to slowly introduce. You will also want the Lost Lore booklet/pdf, it is recomended to answer some questions and give better explanations on soem bits of the game. You can find it still on the G+ community page for Fireborn, along with just about everythign else Fireborn that could still be saved. (why they did not make everythign available here or on the official FFG pages anymore is beyond me)

• Combat styles are nice, and they add specific sequences you can do based on your "martial arts style", in practice however most seem overpowered due to the payoff effects they can give if they succeed the entire chain. As well as cumbersome at times, so..I generally moved towards making it more freeform with your own designs of action sequences that fit your style and providing cinematic action dice instead. (they also gain less powerful payoffs, based on the actions they take). It can work as written, but sometimes just feels more restrictive then it probably was intended to be.

• Lethal combat v.s. cinematic combat. Combat feels like an action movie due to the cinematic "effect", but combat nevertheless is highly lethal as written. Especially the problem of guns being a bit too overpowered, made me down the damage of guns a little to not shoot everyone dead in their tracks every time one uses them. Still, guns are illegal in the game, and should be VERY hard to get. Even if you own one, the GM should be carefull to limit them, and give some drawbacks on carrying one to prevent abuse. But even without guns, combat can be over very quickly, as you have a good chance of wound penalties as well. I decided to remove the dice penalties, and first have the minor wounds completely fill up before wound penalties develop for every minor wound they would otherwise gain in subsequent attacks.

• You have 2 characters to work through.. First a Scion character, and need to make a whole new character for your dragon self in the mythic age. There is theoption to sort of "mirror" your Scion to the mythic Age dragon version, but it severely limits your dragon in flexibility and is not recomended. It's not THAT hard to make a character in Fireborn, so it's recomended to first play an adventure or two with just the Scion character without draconic powers. Let them learn the system, then make their dragon selves and dive in for reall. There are many adventures out there that work well for this purpose. My first intro adventure was "three souls and a smoking gun", a Gencon adventure, which is found as pdf online.

This is also a game that benefits greatly from a few "helpful" bits and pieces to help speed things up. I used poker chips for Karma, using the colours to make them personal to each player, making it easy to refresh whenever after combat etc.

Having character sheets printed double sided and color coded (look for the costum collour sheets of Scion and dragon characters) is a great help. Whenever a flashback comes around, just flip over the character sheet to the other side.

It helps having stones or (even better) colloured dice for the 4 dice pools. I use stones, so if they get switched around due to stance changes, theya re easily brought back to the original situation at the start of the next round.

Making it easy for your player's (and yourself) makes this game work even faster :)

Very good game, which didn't get the attention it deserves. WARNING, I'm assuming you have and use the errata file. Don't know why FFG aren't offering it as a free download, but it's relatively easy to find on the Net. If you're not using it, the rules are a mess. That said, I like the mechanics. It's giving a very authentic feeling, and is one of the first games to solve both the issues of using mental actions in combat, and the issue of a character attempting multiple actions at once. Add to it playing in both modern-day London, and in the Mythic time, and you get a very entertaining game!

I wasn't sure what to expect when I bought this as I had just recently found a DM I liked and he offered to run this game. I am always willing to try new RPG's as I find the major ones to be getting kind of stale. So I bought this mainly on his recommendation and the fact that it was very cheap. I was pleasantly surprised.

The main thing I like about this game is the simplicity and how smooth the system seems to run. On top of that there seems to be a good bit of realism in the game. The only major negative that comes to mind is that the book is hard to use as a reference in that specific rules are hard to find when you need them. I didn't like the fact that the game is based in London though that isn't anything against London it is more that I don't like it when a game system insists on the setting being in one place. The simplicity factor is that the the game uses one type of dice which is the six sided dice. When you roll you either have a success(4-6) or you don't have a success(1-3). You get several dice depending on your stats and the point is to try to get enough successes to accomplish what you are trying to do. There are no levels to gain which I like a lot. You improve your character by increasing your skills or your stats. You also create a dragon character and a scion character which is a dragon that has forgotten his true nature and lives as a human. I thought this was a unique and cool concept that I haven't seen before. In addition the combat system is fairly intuitive and really simulates combat pretty well which is where the realism factor comes in.

Overall I really like this game and I haven't been this enthusiastic about a game in a while. The only reason it didn't get top marks is because of the less than optimal editing of the book.

great game great product....fast download and the ebook is excelent in quality....extreamly clear :) worth every penny I spent...maybe more would recommend this to a friend

a very cool game world Idea, my gaming group really likes it. But the actually game machanices are a bit rough and have a relatively high learning curve. Part of this is because the game publisher was to short lived the bugs never really got smoothed out.

In the end we will keep the world but most likely shift it into a different game system.

Has an interesting mechanic for taking mental actions in combat at the same time as the physical stuff, but looks pretty complex. There really is absolutely no setting included, which makes it really hard to get an idea of the game. If you're going to buy this then buy the GM guide too or don't bother.

Good game..but definitely flawed in some of the weapons damage and other effect resolutions...however there is hope! im writing an unoffical guid for weapons and other house rules and posting it on fireborn.org...

im also working on some house rules for running it in the us instead of london... so check it out!

I really had high hopes for Fireborn. I really did. I liked the system, the way combat flows, and the, most importantly, the flashbacks. However, many large balance issues just made the game flat-out not fun to play. I ran the game with your average gaming group, not power gamers, not mondo-RPers. Despite some large imbalances in equipment and damage resolution, I decided to run it verbatim from the book. Everything was alright until I noticed this: A basic gun can do as much damage as a Rank 4 spell. The damage is set in stone. A basic attack with this weapon does X damage. Maybe X+5 if he has extra moves left. Why bother tinkering with magic or social situations when I can kill anything with a beginning character.

I know I'm rambling here, but what I am trying to say is this: If one character can lord over all the others just because of his stat choices, the system needs an overhaul.

P.S. For anyone still wanting to play Fireborn, take my advice. Give your character 6 Fire.

Really, really fun. For those of us who love dragons and who love RPGs (and, really, how often do those two interests overlap? Honestly?) this is a great product.

Have to second the previous reviewer's feelings on the organization of the book, though. As I read his review, I found myself going "Yeah...so I see it wasn't just me..."

Very neat start to a new campaign setting; the Handbook offers all the usual information (character creation, play mechanics, some background) in an attractive format. The system mechanics (using D6s, with the ability to shift die from some stats to one other... at the cost of effectiveness in other fields) is inventive and the combat style looks more complicated than it is. And the actual background for the campaign world is cool. I like the flashback idea. Pure and simple, and keeps it from being another angstfest game.

That brings up my biggest problem... I don't like how the book is organized. The mechanics section feels like it's too late in the book... while things work on the second read-through, I didn't understand how the rules meshed together during character creation (of both characters) really at all until I got through the mechanics section two chapters later. The book really needs an example of play in the front to fix this bug, which could throw off people picking it up for the first time.

Despite this organizational failing, I really am excited about Fireborn, and hope that the Gamemaster's Handbook comes to Drivethru shortly.