I will discliam here - I am not the biggest fan of the Cypher system. Lots of folks like it, and that is cool as far as I'm concerned. There's plenty of room for everyone says I. Regardless, my preferences are not natural law or anything, so pick up the ding danged book.

Respect is strength. Consideration is courage. Inclusion lifts us all.

That's why this book and books like it are important.

An excellent freshman effort! This little dandy sprung forth from discussions on the Conan RPG G+ group, and while I personally don't agree with everything said here, it's still a gem of a book. Well worth your time at ten times the price, it's a worthy addition to any GM's library.

I snagged this little gem because I needed, well, some one-room scenes for an upcoming game. By and large, it's a great bargain - the dungeons that hit the mark hit it dead-center, combining novel concepts, interesting hooks, and excellent art work. There's a few that don't really work, at least for me, because they go a little too old school - simple maps on faux graph or notebook paper, hard to read fonts, and overall dullness, typically. In a couple of cases, the dungeons are flat-out silly (Piece of Cake), which doesn't fit my own tastes.

Regardless, OPDC 2017 is a top-notch product, and the good bits within far outweigh the drawbacks.

SLEEPER: ORPHANS OF THE COLD WAR impressed the hell out of me - it's one of the most focused, clearly-written in terms of its setting games I've purchased lately.

As you can see from the marketing text, you play a Sleeper - enhanced agents flash-frozen to do battle in a post-nuclear wasteland that never came to pass. Now, in the 21st century, you've been thawed out by an organization called OBSIDIAN to help battle against renegade Sleepers, Col War super-weapons, and technological atrocities. To this end, experiments performed on your character have granted them a number of superhuman abilities; more on those later.

Concept-wise, the game owes a lot of its robust DNA to Warren Ellis' Global Frequency stories and the video game XCOM: ENEMY WITHIN, with a dash of ABOMINATION: THE NEMESIS PROJECT and THE MORROW PROJECT thrown in for spice. Nota bene: that is emphatically not a complaint. Rather it's an example of the fun, nicely-detailed world that Death Spiral's created for GMs and players to have fun in.

SLEEPER is a game that wears those influences on its sleeve and doesn't make any bones about it. Conceptually, the game maintains a laser-like focus on its core elements and everything in both background and mechanics serves that end, a rare occurrence in many games these days. That focus is the game's greatest asset...and also its greatest flaw.

System-wise, SLEEPER uses a simple stat/skill+d10 (or d12 if you have a specialization) vs. target number mechanic, which would lend itself extremely well to fast, easy play were it not for a number of conditions and modifiers that show the designers' roots in wargaming. Movement is determined by die type and takes place on a grid; non-grid play requires significant modification to make the system work.

My other criticism of the game comes from personal preference - while the book is well laid-out, featuring a very useful section tag on the right-hand margins of the PDF, easy to read text, and some excellent artwork, it lacks bookmarks, which can slow down browsing or quick switching to a specific section to check a rule.

All of that said, I'm going to return to what I like about the game - the setting is evocative, pulpy goodness with a liberal dose of Cold War paranoia and body horror thrown in for good measure. The various factions in the game, ranging from the CIA-backed MKJESTER to the bizarre alien tech of GRAY DUST and the Nazi-derived surgeries of NECTAR V all have distinct and disturbing ways they originally powered up their Sleepers, and the flexible way sets of powers can be described lends itself well to creating truly bizarre and flawed characters.

Another thing in SLEEPER's favor is that everything is described just enough to get the job done...but don't mistake that for a bare-bones effort; far from it! The descriptions give enough flavor to whet the appetite while allowing players and GMs to expand or adapt the default setting in whatever way they might want to. There's enough meat on the bone here that if you don't use the game's house system you could very, very easily take bits from it and adapt it to your favorite game.

Overall, I'm exceedingly pleased with the book and whatever criticisms I have are small indeed. If you're looking for a game that's not just a labor of love by the designers but provides a fun, exciting background to get to some high-action shenanigans mixed liberally with bloody body horror, do yourself a favor and grab SLEEPER; you won't be disappointed.

The first free release for Evil Hat's Dresden Files RPG is here - and let me tell you, it's a doozy.

Clocking in at a hefty 25 pages, Neutral Grounds presents newcomers or fence sitters for DFRPG with a solid, enjoyable offering that could be wrapped up in about 1-2 sessions, depending on the group involved and their familiarity with the FATE system as presented in the Dresden Files RPG. Neutral Grounds is presented as 3 PDF files - a Mac friendly format, the full-color version, and a printer-friendlier file as well.

The writing is highly conversational, which might put off those looking for the bare facts needed to run the adventure. I found Clark Valentine's asides and advice enjoyable and quite tone-setting, along with being in keeping with the in-character style of the DFRPG books. Art in the casefile is provided by Amy Houser and Chad Sergesketter, and provides nice flavor for the scenario - all of the PCs and major NPCs are given the full-color treatment, and the artwork carries a quality that might be best described as the sort of work you'd get from particularly talented street artists, which further reinforces the feel Evil Hat is aiming for in the Baltimore/Nevermore setting.

Neutral Grounds acts as expansion material to the Nevermore setting presented in the Your Story corebook for DFRPG, and provides 7 pre-generated PCs to play. These characters are not, the text notes, fully fleshed out - thus giving players a chance to customize before play or, as recommended, during play, providing a nicely organic customization.

After the basics on the PCs and a few important NPCs, Neutral Grounds provides some guidelines on filling in the Aspects left open, utilizing a series of questions relevant to the scenario at hand, allowing players to further flesh out the provided PCs.

After the initial presentation, the scenario launches into a brief description and setup - the PCs, members of Baltimore's supernatural community, arrive at the titular coffeehouse to find a pair of local college students dead inside. Several clues as to what's happened are presented at the outset, and the author takes care to advise on setting the scene and mood using small but important details - the shop's bookshelves in disarray, bullet holes in the walls. There's a twist in the opening scene that leads to some action along with the investigation as well.

Act 2 of the casefile heads back into investigative territory, and, as the author puts it "could go any which way." Several options are presented for the PCs to follow up on, and, depending on the group and GM, the antagonist can be swapped out. Red herrings abound, and the danger steadily ratchets up for the PCs, though it's left entirely up to the GM's devices how the group is led to the bad guy and the scheme behind the events in the adventure.

Act 3 follows on from the consequences of the prior Act in the adventure, leading up to a final confrontation with the antagonist responsible for all of the mayhem and mystery. Suggestions for Aspects on the scene are offered, though spare; the Act assumes quite a bit of improvisational ability on the GM's part.

If Neutral Grounds has a weakness, it's a personal quibble I have - the actual scenario is about 3 pages long, with little details as to how things should go, instead relying on the GM and players to fully guide the scenario. While this might seem a fault with the adventure, the fully-fleshed NPC and PCs provide ample opportunity for an enthusiastic group to springboard from. Ample advice is provided on playing everyone involved, and there's an occasional humorous shout out given - such as the illustration for a tattooed ghoul on page 9. It's all in good fun, and in keeping with the tone of the Dresden Files RPG and novels.

Overall, this is a strong offering for Evil Hat's first adventure for the DFRPG, and an excellent introduction to the kinds of trouble a diverse group of PC can get up to in the game. It's also an excellent move for Evil Hat to pull in the interested - the adventure could easily go for at least $4-5 in this reviewer's opinion, so the free price tag is icing on an already excellent cake. Highly recommended.