What looks like a rather good RPG at 328 pages, appears to be ok, rather than good or very good. Why? Every page is coloured a pale olive green (background), with various shades of green, purple, etc; in other words: print heavy (by the truck load). Don't get me wrong, it looks colourful, but it's guaranteed to use up a LOT of ink. I tried printing a few character sheets, and the ink levels dropped noticeably. The task numbers don't appear to have been play-tested, as Near Impossible is only a 20, which seems rather easy. EVERYTHING is bought with gold (Gp). Some items are 0.5Gp or 0.25Gp? What about using silver, might be a good idea.

The usual typos here and there throughout the PDF. A full copy of the core rules set in a print friendly format? Where? I tried the Avalon website as well, but no luck finding the print friendly version. It seems to be a mixture of D20 & Chaosiums Call of Cthulhu & Basic Roleplaying (resistance table).

Some will like it, some won't. I'm more 50/50. It's ok, it's not bad. I'll have a look at Infinite Futures soon, hopefully it'll have a better impact than Worlds of Wonder.

You get what the promo promises, a simple basic game with an amazing amount of character options. The game has 1 mechanic, roll a D20 sum up any modifiers and compare to a target number to see if it is a success or failure. There are a number of modifiers depending on what kind of task is being attempted and what is applicable in the given situation but overall that is it. Out of the 328 pages in the PDF less than 50 are rules, throw in another 50, maybe, for a bestiary and equipment list and you are left with 200 pages of options to build a character.

It is a point buy system with 6 base stats and a couple figured ones. All options and improvements cost Development Points, DP’s hereafter. The base stats come from what your race is and all the standard races are here, plus a few nonstandard ones and you can spend DP’s to up your stats, or lower them for more DP’s. Then there a bunch of background choices you can take when creating a character, a bloodline for example. Your character also has a level that costs a flat 3 DP’s to increase but higher level only controls how many skills; how many ranks in a skill you can have and how well you resist spells and the like. The bulk of the character options are contained in skill sets, groups of 4 linked skills each with 10 levels. They are not what most people think of as skills most of the time though, what are classes and class abilities are specific skill sets in Worlds of Wonder. All of these skill sets have increases to your stats, some up you figured stats. Several ones do give you a skill, which just means you’ll have a far easier time succeeding in a task it applies to. One final thing are picks, high stats and Skills grant you picks a special bonus to some aspect of your character.

The editing has been mentioned elsewhere and I’ll add my 2 cents. What I noticed most often where homonyms, words that sound the same but a spelled differently and have different meanings. It wasn’t a big deal to me because I always knew what the author meant. Also I should point out the pages are in color with a background so printing it out will eat up a lot of ink, but the layout is designed so you only need to print out the rule portions pretty much.

Warren Henderson