Pros Flexible character creation. Huge number of character options. Simple, flexible psionic rules. Excellent art.

Cons The options could be overwhelming for new gamers. Navigation is not optimal.

Short version of this review: If you're an experienced gamer looking for a sci-fi system that's fun and easy to customize buy this book and the other components of WOIN that suit your ideas. Longer version to follow.

There are a multitude of character options in this game. There are several species reminiscent of aliens from various sci-fi media. There are a few dozen careers to choose from. Each career has several abilities, called exploits, to choose from. The species and careers roughly correspond to race and class in D&D style games, but the careers are far more granular and flexible and you're not expected to be in one career forever. Grades in a career give you attribute bonuses, skill ranks, exploits, and increase your maximum dice pool. The careers in the book cover a wide range of sci-fi careers, and some would work well in modern or even older era settings. There are star ship pilots, psionic investigators, space marines, police, criminals, and many more. Exploits further increase customization. Exploits serve the same function as class abilities, feats, or edges in other games. Each career has a selection of exploits you can only take as part of a grade in that career. Then there are universal exploits that anyone can take. All of this leads to an exceptional degree of character customization. Then there's the ability to spend XP for attributes, skills, and exploits in addition to taking grades in careers.

I've played several RPGs and this one has my favorite character creation system. As you layer on the various options you get a real feel for the character and its history. I've never played a game that got me that involved and invested with a character even before play begins.

This book also contains the psionics system for WOIN. As with everything else in this system you can use or ignore the psionics portion of the game without hurting the rest of the game. Psionics are represented as exploits. There are several careers with psionic abilities and there is an array of universal exploits. The universal exploits use a point system to fuel the various abilities, while the career exploits are usually more specialized and cost no points to use. If you want to keep psi simpler just limit it to the careers. You can have just the career exploits, just the universal exploits, or use both for maximum options. The psionic exploits themselves cover a wide range of abilities. Telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, and more are covered. You can totally have your own version of Jedi running around your universe if you want, along with many other types of psi characters.

If you want to customize even further there's a companion tome called Building A Universe that has guidelines for making species, careers, and more. They combine very well to make your game universe your own.

I feel that the art needs specific mention. The art in this book, and others in the line, is wonderful. There's a lot of art and it's all good. The various pieces could fit in many different types of sci-fi, but they all fit together well. I'd say that this game line rivals the D&D and Pathfinder lines visually.

The only downside to this book, for me, is that it's not very easy to navigate. There are no bookmarks or hyperlinks in the pdf. You just have to look at the table of contents and navigate the old fashioned way.