I've picked the hardcover up at a gaming convention and was initially just impressed by the beautiful artwork, the layout and the love that was put into it. After reading and playing a session with the author, I got hooked. The game mechanics are simple, but offer enough depth to support a shorter or medium campaign. Combat is quick and can end quickly, too. The use of trauma tables to find out how hurt you are is a concept well stolen from some other games - love it. Overall, this game system feels like it has picked mechanics from different games systems I've played over the past ten years.

The System You roll a d20 and add one of your three Attribute bonuses to it. Compare it against a target number (Defense value or Attribute of your target, or a number decided by the GM). Your Attributes (ranging approximately from 8-13) also act as your Hit Points. Once one Attribute has been depleted, you roll on the Trauma Table to find out how hurt you are. Combat is interesting, as you have to make a tactical choice: either go first and have one action, or go later in the turn but act twice. This means the bad guys could potentially act before you ... The inventory system is simple but effective: once all your Slots are filled, you cannot carry anything more. Done. NPCs and monsters are created easily on the fly. Not much prep needed for stats, so you can concentrate on Special Powers.

The Setting Now, this is where it gets interesting (or should I say weird?!). Think of retro SciFi and Horror (before 1980) and mix them all up. This is where you play, in the UltraCosm. You can play an Alien, a Construct, a Royal, an Ultranaut, a Revenant or a Beast. Every Archetype gives you 2 Powers and you can then select 3 more. The UltraCosm is not really described, it is more suggested you play a group of adventurers from different settings and themes. You should then find portals in order to jump from setting to setting (e.g. Fantasy to SciFi and Horror). There is no definitive description or rule to guide you - just come up with something that works for you and your group.

Conclusion This basically describes the game and the mechanics - a lot is left to the GM and it feels very open. Good, if you like to come up with your own stories and are not afraid to play it in a weird setting. The Archetypes support that idea strongly and you might need to come up with a good explanation why your concept fits into one of the available Archetypes. Your characters tend to be over the top and full of greatness - not really the fragile 1st level adventurer. You are someone - or something.

If you like more down to Earth games with many rules guiding you, this is not the game. If you are an experiences gamer, though, you can marvellously pull ideas from different games and settings and incorporate them into one magnificent story.

You will have trouble using this system for standard human characters, e.g. in a Cthulhu setting, if you are not open to the idea of including fantastic beasts or the undead as player characters (or beasts, or … ).

If you want something rules light, narrative and over the top - this might be the game for you!

One thing I would have liked to see: a Difficulty table. I figured out that '12' is good for an Average task, 10 is easy and 15 is about right for something difficult. Having this guidelines in the book would have been great.

A very average narrative RPG with a superficial scifi coat of paint. Definitely not an OSR, despite the advertising as such. Gorgeous book, servicable and functional mechanics (if you like narrative games), but ultimately lacking in cohesion, or setting. I had very high hopes for this product as I'm a huge fan of the (supposed) genre. But there was very little of that genre here. This book could play fantasy as easily as scifi, or some ungodly mix, but it can't play anything to much degree of depth sadly.

I bought this the other day on a whim. The PoD was only a couple bucks more, and the pdf came with it for free, so why tf not?

I am so glad I got this. Finally read through it. I love the system. It's a unique OSR that isn't so far removed form D&D to as not be familiar, but not so close that it's just another clone. Characters are unique and interesting. The archetypes are kind of like classes, in the most general sense for comparison purposes. There is so much room to customize what you want to play.

And it's delightfully weird. A skeleton, an Orc, and a Genie could crew a starship and it wouldn't be out of place.

I just purchased, downloaded, and finished my first read-through of this game book. Wow. It is beautiful. The art and layout are stunning and it is all together well written and worth a spot on your RPG bookshelf. The system will be familiar to those who like running d20 systems, though the traditional number crunching has been simplified a great deal, leaving plenty of space for the game to breathe. The Character Class concepts and the focus on exporation and wonderous discoveries are refreshing and a joy to read. There is even plenty of guidance on how to create your own Character Classes, monsters, items, and spells. I hope I can demo this game for my table very soon.