This is the conversion of the classic I6 Ravenloft module from 1st Edition to 2nd Edition, incorporating some of the rules in the Ravenloft boxed sets released to date.

It's largely an excellent adventure. If you liked the original, this is a perfectly fair adaptation to 2nd Ed. It adds fear and horror checks at the appropriate points, provides the more powerful Strahd of the Demiplane of Dread (but also includes options to scale it back to the original), and updates the Fortunes of Ravenloft reading to alternately use the Tarokka Deck provided in the Forbidden Lore boxed set. One of the most notable improvements is the "Strahd's Opportunity" sections, suggesting places and times where the vampire may attack, using his extensive spells or vampiric powers to good effect.

The problems are due to the PDF itself. Unlike the I6 pdf, it (a) does not have the poster map as a single viewable (instead having it cut into individual 8.5"x11" pages), and the text itself is not OCR'd. You can't search the text or copy any of it out.

With those caveats taken into consideration, it's an excellent value for $4.99, but you'll probably want to pick up one of the other versions of Ravenloft (I6, 3rd Edition's Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, or even 5th Edition's Curse of Strahd) or find maps of the castle posted online.

A classic BattleTech history book -- it walks you through all the events of the FedCom Civil War, in a more-or-less in-universe style, covering the actions in all parts of the Federated Commonwealth, and the additional fighting against Jade Falcon and the Draconis Combine.

There are some flaws, however. The index doesn't differentiate units by designation -- for instance, "Avalon Hussars" gets a single entry, with no indication of which pages would be telling you about the 17th Avalon Hussars, or the 42nd Avalon Hussars.

The atlas skips over some of the worlds that were involved in the fighting -- six of the worlds in the initial Flashpoint chapter don't get write-ups in the Atlas, for instance.

As warned, this is a scan of the book rather than an original printing file. As such, there are some spots where the scan leaves something to be desired. The maps, with star systems marked in small print, are absolutely unreadable.

The Deployment Tables are difficult enough to read given the small font, close spacing, lack of borders on either columns or rows, or any sort of distinguishing shading. Enlarging it to read the text just makes it fuzzier and harder to read.

Still, if you're looking to cover the 3062-3067 period, there's nothing better to have as a reference at hand.

This is a mixed bag. When it's good, it's very good. It's deliciously atmospheric, with a nice mixture of suspenseful horror and thrilling combat scenes. It feels like it fell down somewhere in the editing process.

Two NPCs who each get extensive vignettes describing their pasts, but one of them is a mindless horror by the time the PCs encounter her, and the other we don't meet until the very end of the adventure. In the first case, it definitely feels like wasted space, and in the second, that background text is on the other side of the book from the characters' statistics.

There's proofreading errors -- references to a missing Appendix 2 (there are no Appendices at all) that looks to have been helpful to tie new PCs into the scenario rather than using the four pregenerated PCs. The background information tells us that the player characters have been experimented on and modified with cybernetics -- but there's no actual discussion of what that might be, or if the PCs can find out what's been done to them. Even the pregenerated PCs don't seem to have any such modifications described in their sheet. Perhaps this was described in Appendix 2.

At one critical point, an NPC is in danger of falling to the influence of the Dark Symmetry. It's suggested that one of the pregenerated PCs can intervene using his Brotherhood Arts -- but that PC does not have the power (Exorcise Dark Influence) described in the text!

I want to love this. There's some excellent work in here, but the flaws in the text are disappointing enough that I can't give it more than 3 stars.

The theme is clever -- quasi-post-apocalyptic biplane mercenary pilots in a Germanic fairy-tale inspired world.

The art is phenomenal -- color art all the way through, well-executed both of people AND machines.

The writing is crisp, clear, and still maintains a witty conversational tone without. It sets a strong tone on how to view the game, but explains the rules clearly every step of the way. It neither shies away from in-jokes nor makes the whole thing silly -- it confronts potential dark sides to its work clearly and honestly.

The worldbuilding is clever.

In short, there's nothing about this that I dislike, and a very great much that I do. I don't normally go for PbtA and I love this and want to play it, soon.

As said above: this is for either new players who are just starting out, or people who absolutely must own every BattleTech product ever made. It's literally a compilation from prior sources: there's no new text, and, for that matter, no effort to rationalize the timing of any given entry, so references to "recent events" on one 'Mech's entry may be ancient history for another one, which for a new player might lead to some confusion, especially as then the opening fluff is referring to an even farther-in-the-future period of BattleTech history.

The artistic style varies wildly based on what book it was taken from: the rough line sketches from the original TRO: 3025 sit alongside the clean well-inked drawings from TRO: 3050-Upgrade. It does omit all the Unseen (those classic 'Mechs whose original art was the subject of a rights dispute). Given that many of the Unseen 'Mechs have had revised artwork in either Project Phoenix or in the Combat Manuals series, I would have really liked if they had included those 'Mechs as well.

This is fantastic. The campaign setting is a refreshing step away from Eurocentric fantasy without being so unfamiliar that players will not understand where they are and what is going on. Every bit of the setting information drips with hooks and ideas; just flipping through it, I was inspired for adventure upon adventure to write. My sole quibbles were stylistic with some of the ideas all the way in the Secrets of the Mist chapter, giving some DM's background information; but that is maybe 5 pages out of 173, and none of it is necessary and all of it can be ignored safely; it's not even worth knocking the rating down from five stars for that.

Even beyond that, the book is equipped with some awesome tools to generate an entire setting to play in. It really gives you the confidence to set down, build a region, and cut loose; and while the tools are built initially around the setting, it's looks to be fairly easy to repurpose them to any other fantasy setting. I cannot recommend this more highly both to referees of sandbox-style games and those just looking for an excellent setting to play in.