A while back, I thought to myself that I'd take the chassis of Dungeons & Dragons 3.x and fiddle with it a bit. Remove classes and levels, make it even more skill-based, switch from d20 to 2d10 for the bell curve and to do something interesting with the dice, scale damage based on the attack roll, break the enormous block of spells down into smaller, more thematic lists...that kind of thing.

Then I found out that Novus already did it for me, so I just bought that instead.

That's not to say that Novus is derivative of D&D 3.x so much as that it drew on the same well. The author also worked on Rolemaster and HARP, and you can see elements of those games in here. Always roll high. Rolls are open-ended. Small spell lists with the possibility to learn multiple lists and each spell being customizable on the fly. That kind of thing.

Anyway, the game. I'm not going to cover the setting because there's nothing explicit, but the rules lend themselves to generic D&D elf-dwarf-orc fantasy. There is a class and level system, but it seems kind of vestigial to me. The only thing they determine is what skills you get a discount on buying, called Favored, and what Talents you start the game with. Level just provides a pacing mechanic to prevent someone from sinking all their points into their Stab Fools skill right away and becoming a combat god, though it also provides a somewhat-useful comparison with the monsters since all of them have an implied level too. The classes are a bit more diverse because of the skill system, but while they still fall into the Fighter/Mage/Thief/Hybrid paradigm, it'd be pretty easy to build your own as well. The attribes are exactly what you'd expect, except Dex is split into Dexterity and Speed (covering fine motor control and gross movement) and Willpower and Wisdom are separate attributes. Somewhat confusingly, it's called Wisdom instead of Perception even though the latter is basically what it does.

The basic mechanic revolves around rolling 2d10 and adding a bonus from your skill and trying to beat a set difficulty. Everything, from combat to casting spells to searching for traps to resisting magic to talking to people, follows this format. If either die rolls a 10, that die explodes, and if either die rolls a 1, then that die implodes. If you roll a 10 and a 1, neither die explodes or implodes, but you get a Fate Point, which can do various things like add static numbers or rolls, add Boon or reduce Snag points, add an extra d10 to your roll or, for multiple Fate Points, to another's roll, and so on.

Boon and Snag Points are the other major lynchpin of the system. Whenever a roll is a full 10 points above the difficulty, then it earns a Boon Point, which can be spent for different effects, like bonus to further uses of that skill during the day, extra damage in combat, special maneuvers, and so on. Similarly, every 10 points the roll is under the difficulty earns a Snag Point, which must be spent to have various mishaps and terrible things happen.

There's plenty of fiddly bits on top of that, too. The combat system has a system of maneuvers to buy, like All-Out-Attack or Trip or Ranged Disarm or Dive for Cover, and the actual combat uses an action point system where each movement, attack, spell, or other action taken in combat requires a set amount of action points and the various maneuvers modify how many actions points each action takes. Armor is damage resistance instead of making the wearer harder to hit, though shields do the latter, and while there is different armor for different locations, normally that's abstracted away unless the attacker deliberately goes for a called shot.

The spells are all modifiable at the time of casting, with the ability to add more damage, a greater range, other targets or other effects at the cost of making the spell more difficult to cast and cost more spell points. I know this is one of the most widely-praised aspects of HARP's magic, so I'm glad it's carried forward into Novus

There's also a small bestiary with all the Generic Fantasy™ staples, like orcs, trolls, skeletons, imps, and so on. And dragons all the way up the ancient wyrms that will eat you in a single bite. Finally, there are rules for finding treasure and a small sampling of various potions, scrolls, and magical items. There's also a note that a character has to attune to magical items and can only carry seven at a time, ostensibly because chakras, but I think it's a good way to help work against the Christmas Tree effect.

Novus actually reminds me most of the D&D Basic Set in its construction. It's a complete game in just over 100 pages, focused mostly on low-power spells, low-level monsters, and low-level magical items, but with hints of how the game works at a higher power level and the ability to extrapolate up if the GM wants. The focus is pretty similar too, with the idea that the PCs are kind of nebulous "adventurers" who go out, descend into dank holes in the ground, and beat up The Other for their silver and shiny magics. It doesn't have the advantage of simplicity that the Basic Set does--I imagine many people who play pre-3.x games or their clones would recoil in horror at the action point rules--but I don't particularly care about that because I like some crunch in my rules.

That's not to say there aren't some oddities that stand out to me. One thing I find weird is that opposed rolls aren't really opposed. If, say, one character is trying to sneak past another one, the first character rolls their stealth, and then their roll modifies the difficulty of an independently-derived roll the other character makes instead of just pitting the rolls against each other, which is really odd because there's actually a Perception skill. I can see this in cases where there's only the attribute saves to rely on since they don't scare nearly as well as saves do, but if there are skills, why not just have them roll against each other?

Also, there's a random table to determine how much treasure is found, but just a note about how there's no random table to determine what type of each object rolled on that random table is found because the GM can suit it for their game. That's true, but doesn't that apply to how much treasure is found too? Some kind of guidelines would be nice, at least to know what the design assumptions are. And it's minor, but enchanted weapons have an equal cost to gain +1 to hit and +1 to damage, even though +1 to hit is far better because the amount by which you hit is the amount by which your damage is increased.

If you want D&D-style fantasy but aren't all that enamoured of the gameplay of D&D and its various spinoffs, Novus is a good alternative. And there's several small expansion PDFs out to add more options, like a system for building new spells, one for removing classes or building new classes, getting rid of spell points in favor of a fatigue system or casting from hit points, and so on. I eagerly look forward to further products in this line.

Like most early RPGs, Runequest was originally developed because someone was unhappy with parts of D&D. Originally it was pretty closely tied to Glorantha, but this edition has decoupled itself and is a more generic fantasy system, though a lot of Glorantha's setting assumptions still carry forth into the end product.

In contrast to most fantasy RPGs, which take place in a kind of nebulous Renn Faire-esque medieval/early Renaissance period, Runequest is designed to evoke more a Bronze Age or early Iron Age feel (though it doesn't have to, as the free firearms rules available indicate), and all the examples of rules or concepts in the text are illustrated using a Greek city-state expy called Meeros.

I actually really liked the stories about Meeros and the world around it, and I found it far more interesting than most examples of game fiction usually are. Cynically, rulebooks tend to be fanfic followed by stereo instructions--that was why I found Alternity so hard to read--but Runequest actually manages to be quite readable, even though it's very long and fairly dense. Maybe it's how the examples are sidebars next to the text instead of interrupting the text itself, or maybe it's just that I'm happy for a change to hoplites in formation instead of medieval knights. Regardless, I'd buy a Meeros setting book if they ever published one.

The system is percentile, and is pretty easy to summarize: skills are rated as percentages, roll under the percentage to succeed, on opposed rolls higher numbers are better. If you've ever seen Call Of Cthulhu or Basic Roleplaying, then you already know how it works, and there aren't too many tricks here. It's very much a "roll the dice and it fades into the background" type of system. One mechanic to deal with skills above 100 that I like is that the amount above 100 is subtracted from everyone else opposing the character in contests, so there's still a reason to raise skills when they hit 100 beyond the small increase in the critical threshold.

The book is mostly a toolkit, and there's heavy emphasis throughout on including the elements that fit the individual GM's world. This is most evident in the magic chapters (about which more later), but shows up earlier as well. Character creation is filled with options, advice on how to determine where the characters come from, how to tailor the available professions to the setting of the game, how to integrate social classes and the influence of culture, and so on. The skill list is somewhat fiddly, but it avoids the problem most games with fiddly skill lists seem to have by giving the characters about ~20 skills to cover the normal things the average person can do--try to persuade people, run, climb, swim, resist physical or mental assault, and so on.

Also, boating. I wouldn't think that's an innate ability, but maybe I'm an outlier? Anyway, characters are rounded out with "Professional Skills" based on their jobs, upbringing, and any organizations they're a part of.

In one really neat change from the way most RPGs deal with combat skills, Runequest doesn't have separate skills for various weapons. Instead, they have "combat styles" that draw several weapons designed to be used together and trained with together under the same skill. These are designed to be campaign-specific and GM-created, though there are some examples given. Anathaym, the character that illustrates most of the Meeros examples, has the Meerish Infantry combat style that provides training in spear, shield, and shortsword. She also learned Meerish Slinger during her girlhood running around the hills outside the city. Each combat style also has a special trait associated with it. The first lets her lock shields to form a shield wall, and the second lets her sling while on the run. There's a full list of traits provided. All in all, it's a great way to deal with fighting that prevents a proliferation with weapon skills while providing some useful context to how each character learned to fight.

Combat itself is a gritty, brutal affair. A good hit to a character will probably cripple or kill them outright if they aren't wearing any armor, combat is typically over in three turns or less, and much emphasis is based on footwork, flanking, ganging up on your opponents, active defense, and other tactical combat measures. Though movement is mostly abstracted, there is an option to make it more tactical at the end of the book, as well as GM advice for how to pace and set up combat so that the deadliness and long healing times don't cripple the game when they come up. Finally, there's a maneuver system, including disarming, tripping, grappling, flanking, getting inside an opponent's spear range (or keeping them on the outside of your own spear range) and so on, all of which are chosen after the dice are rolled, so it prevents the usual problem where players have to choose between doing damage and doing something cool.

The whole section was like catnip for me--I love gritty, grinding, brutal combat in TTRPGs, and Runequest is that with the maneuvers section on top of that base to make sure combat stays interesting. The combat rules made me immediately want to run a combat-focused game, which almost never happens. Even though too many combats might lead to players losing limbs and accumulating masses of tissue. Then again, I love WFRP, which has similar mechanics. Maybe it helps that I'm usually running the games instead of playing?

The section on magic is the longest single section in the book, but mostly because of the toolbox approach. In addition to a basic chapter on magic, giving GM advice on how to integrate it in the game and determine the power level and prevelance of magic, there are individual chapters for Folk Magic, which is low-power common effects like starting fires, cleaning utensils, making plows or swords sharper, creating light, and so on; Animism, involving making contracts with spirits and getting them to perform effects for you; Mysticism, which is new to this edition of Runequest and covers concepts like supernatural martial arts and asceticism; Sorcery, the classic sword and sorcery magic learned from tomes or demons or ancient organizations; and Theism, which is probably the highest-powered magic since the power comes directly from a spirit or deity, but has a limited ability for the caster to replenish their magical energy.

This takes up a lot of space in the book, but it's all designed to pull whatever elements are necessary to properly create the world. This is one place where the influence of Glorantha shows through pretty strongly, because talk about the runes and their influence is woven throughout the text. There's advice on how to determine a magical school's repertoire based on their runic influence, or how the runes influence spells, and also how to ignore the runes completely if that works better with the setting.

The magic is mostly template-based. For example, there's a "Teleport" spell under Sorcery, but the examples given indicate how to tweak the spells for setting context--one example is a group of air wizards who cannot teleport unless they're not in contact with the earth, and another is the secret of shadowmancers who can flit from one patch of darkness to another.

I especially like how Theism has a spell specifically for appeasing wrathful deities. Not too many fantasy worlds include the idea of making sacrifices to the storm god to prevent lightning strikes, or to the plague god to prevent epidemics. Usually worshippers of the plague god are sociopaths, but that's not really how historical religion worked.

After that, there's an entire chapter about cults and brotherhoods, and a lot of emphasis is placed on the social connections the characters form with other individuals and with other members of their culture. As before, there's a lot of examples of different generic organizations that can be tweaked to fit the setting.

There's the usual bestiary, some parts of which are suitable for PCs if it fits the setting. The usual elves, dwarves, and halflings--with a note about how their stats can be used for, say, humanoid ducks--are there, but there are also centaurs, hawkmen, panthermen, and lizardmen. The monsters are your standard fantasy mixture with a bit of a mythic Greek twist, featuring cyclopes, gorgons (snake-women, not the D&D rockbulls), harpies, and so on, and there's also spirits to populate the world and interact with Animists.

If I can digress for a moment, the inclusion of Animism and the focus on spirits is something I really like. A lot of fantasy worlds, especially those derived or heavily-influenced by Dungeons and Dragons, will have a pantheon of deities, maybe the ghosts of the dead and other spectral entities, but basically nothing in between. Real-world cultures, especially in the Bronze Age that Runequest takes as the inspiration, tended to have a variety of local deities, nature spirits, tutelary deities, ancestral spirits, and other inhabitants of the unseen world. I always think that's a huge blind spot in most fantasy worlds, and I love that it's explicitly a part of the world here.

On another note, I'd heard a story that part of the inspiration for Games Workshop coming up with the Warhammer world, and specifically with Chaos and the Beastmen it creates, was that it used to produce Glorantha miniatures but lost the license and needed to do something with the Broo miniatures that it had. After seeing the stats for the Chaos Hybrid (Runequest's version of Broo) and the mutating influence of Chaos in the game, that story sounds pretty credible to me.

The book ends with a bunch of GM advice. More on how to tailor cults, how to deal with combat in a system where a single hit can take a combatant out of the fight or even be fatal, how to adjust for slow healing times, a way to adapt the rules for crafting to social situations, ways to structure investigative games so resolving the mystery or discovering the secret doesn't all come down to a single die roll, and how to adapt the structure of magic to fit the setting. It's pretty general, but it wraps up the toolkit approach pretty nicely.

Runequest is quite long, but in being long it's extremely comprehensive, and the toolkit approach means that you don't need to use the entire book if you don't want to. It'd be entirely reasonable to ignore almost all the creatures in the bestiary and all of the magic and run a purely historical game set in the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age, where the PCs are members of a Mycenaean trading group, or members of Sargon of Akkad's army. Nearly half the book would be useless at that point, but it's certainly possible.

All-in-all, it's fantastic. You could get years or decades of gaming from just this book, and I'm really excited to try to use it. Two thumbs up: d(^_^)b

I kickstarted this RPG a while ago based on the premise--an RPG setting with a tribal feel, based on a lot of real-world cultures that aren't usually the subject of RPGs--but I only just recently got around to reading it. I shouldn't have waited so long. It's quite good and immediately set a ton of ideas brewing in my mind as I was reading it, though I did have some small reservations. But before I deal with those, I'll do my usual split review.

== Setting ==

Don't let all the bright colors fool you--this is pretty much dark fantasy, though the backstory is actually pretty similar to the Ainulindalë. WhatMoves created the Songs, who set to work making the Weave. One of the songs, Ok'o-wi, started singing in dissonance with the other songs, creating sorrow, and it eventually led to the end of harmony, the destruction of the old society and the death or disappearance of all the intelligent races except humans in a giant war only ended when WhatMoves came back and banished Ok'o-wi outside the Weave.

After the end of the war, things seemed to be looking up, and humans settled down and started building villages, but as they gathered, they found a present that Ok'o-wi left for them: giant monsters called the Woe, which awoke when humans gathered in sufficient numbers and laid waste to human civilization. Even when the Woe weren't awake, their corruption created monsters called shivers that boiled out of the forests and wild places to attack the settlements. It wasn't until a group of elders traveled into dreams and came back with a rite that could keep the Woe asleep that humanity was able to build their cities in relative peace. Enter the PCs!

There are nine tribes that make up humanity, and each of them takes their inspiration from a historical culture: Barata (Mound Builder tribes from America), Batu (Mongols), Beyduun (North Africans and Arabs), Chi'an (Chinese), D'zul (desert tribes from the American Southwest), Ga'el (Celts), Mic'talan (Mesoamerican tribes), Urali (Norse), and Wiitjasa (American plains tribes). There are some neat twists, like how the Chi'an build their cities on the back of giant hibernating turtles, or how the Urali man The Line in the north, when the long polar night comes and the lack of sun means the shivers can travel freely, or how the Beyduun are divided into traditional desert tribes and a new Salduun Empire that's developing steam and clockwork technology as a new power source, or how the Mic'talan tribes are named after kaiju--G'Jhira, M'Otehr, G'deh'Ora, G'Me'era, among others.

One thing to be clear about. If you hate the fantasy tendency to sprinkle apostraphes on with a salt-shaker, you will hate the names in Ehdrigohr. I'm not sure, but I suspect it might come from the use of apostraphes in Lakota. Some of the cultural vocabulary, like the use of tiyospaye to refer to extended familiar or kin groups, are apparently Lakota concepts.

The world provides a pretty good variety, from the endless winter of The White where the Urali live, to the southern deserts of the Beyduun tribes, from the swamps of the Chi'an's turtle cities to the shiver-infested islands that the Mic'talan live near, to the great plains of The Shil in the center. A lot like Reign, most of the creatures that aren't spawned from corruption are natural animals but are still strange enough to provide a feeling of being another world. Giant spiders the size of elephants, or pillbugs the size of dogs that are kept as pets, or rabbits that are two meters high at the shoulder and used as mounts. There's definitely a good sense that this is a familiar yet different world.

Players are tacitly assumed to belong to one of the four "Great Societies" of the tribes: the Crows, who are warriors and peacekeepers; the Doves, healers who frequently receive advice from spirits; the Owls, mystical wanderers who seek out old knowledge and secrets; and the Jays, talespinners and entertainers. The societies cross tribal boundaries, so there's a ready-made reason to have characters from different ethnic groups working together without having any major conflict.

All in all, it's set up to provide plenty of possibility for adventures and conflict while not unduly constricting the choices players can make.

== System ==

Ehdrigohr uses a version of the Fate Core System to power it. If you're unfamiliar with Fate, the SRD is available for free here, and since it is, I'm not going to spill a bunch of ink covering the system basics.

I will chat about it a bit, though. Fate has a focus on modeling the flow of a narrative, rather than using the rules as a physics engine the way that Dungeons & Dragons 3.x or Exalted does. As such, basically all actions the PCs take fall into one of four possible actions: Overcome a Difficulty, Create an Advantage, Attack, or Defend. Characters, locations, or situations have "Aspects" like "Show Your Might, Be as the Wolf" or "There's Fire Everywhere" or "Phobia of Spiders" and most of the bonuses and penalties on dice rolls relate to invoking these various aspects. The magic system, also ties into these basic actions, though there are a lot of different ways to accomplish them using the four Mysteries: Elements (Earth, Wind, Fire, Water), Natures (Body, Mind, Spirit, Soul), Principles (Love, Life, Honor, Destiny), and the Essences (Weave, Moment, Space, Truth).

The magic system is one of the most complicated parts of the game, but even there it's still pretty simple since everything falls into the basic action types. A lot of it relies on player creativity on coming up with a way they can apply their Aspects and Mysteries to the situations, so players who are used to defined action types and a set list of knowing what they can do might have an adjustment period. And admittedly, I personally would have preferred a more physics-emulating system, but I can't fault the game for being what it is. I knew it was Fate-powered when I backed it, and it seems like a pretty solid implementation of it.

Aspects come from the PCs tribe and Great Society, and also they gain several from their upbringing. During character creation, each PC has six phases of their background they think through and draw an Aspect or important event from--Childhood Remembrance, Becoming (adolescence), Adventure (great deeds), Companions (sharing in another's background), Awakening (develop mysteries), and Nightmares (something terrible that happened). The Winter of Companions is an especially good idea. I always like it when games provide an explict note that the PCs should have met each other before and know each other as more than people who met in a tavern or whatever the local equivalent is.

If I needed to make an elevator pitch for Ehdrigohr, I'd say something like, "Heroes stand against the encroaching darkness and humanity's eternal divisions in a world drawn from indigenous mythology." If any of that piques your interest, Ehdrigohr is definitely worth your time.

Tenra Bansho Zero is billed as "Hyper-Asian fantasy," and I think that's a pretty good short summary. Here's the elevator pitch: retro-future science fantasy Sengoku-era Japan-a-like on an alien planet. It actually reminds me a bit of Shadowrun, except instead of being based on Tolkienian fantasy, it's based on Japanese history and folktales.

Well...actually, maybe it's more like Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light. There are some hints that the whole setting runs on Clarketech and has been deliberately sculpted to create a facsimile of ancient Japan, after all.

The setting/system division that I usually do is more apt here, because there are two books that are part of Tenra Bansho Zero--the World Book and the Rules Book. The first is 240 pages and the second is over 400, so this review will be quite long as well. You have been warned.

---Setting---

The world book begins with a ~30 page intro on the various character types. There's yoroi (鎧, "armor"), suits of mecha that can only be piloted by those without sin, who interface with their armor using what's called a meikyou (明鏡, "clear mirror"...but ), or soul mirror. Because the pilots can't be weighed down by karma or tainted by sin, they're often pre-teens who are cloistered from an early age. There are the samurai, warriors who implant soulstones in their bodies that allow them to call on supernatural powers. The annelidists (虫使い, "Insect-users"), a bizarre cult who have a symbiotic relationship with alien worms. The ommyouji, Buddhist sorcerers who manipulate the Sha and bring life to familiar spirits. Kongouki (金剛機, "Indestructible machine"), smaller mecha that are implanted with the spirits of the sinful dead to act autonomously. Ninjas, of course. Buddhist monks. Kijin (機人, something like "cyborgs"), who have parts of their bodies replaced with metal in order to gain an edge in combat. Kugutsu (傀儡, "puppet," though in archaic slang, "prostitute"), lifelike wooden mannequins who have a human mind and, perhaps, a human soul. Ayakashi (妖, "unearthly, strange"), the word for spirits, demons, and gods, both those of out Japanese mythology and those that used to be human. Finally, there are the oni, or the "Lu-Tirae" in their own language, the original inhabitants of the planet before humanity colonized it, who are treated about as well as the historical Japanese treated the Ainu. They're shamanistic noble savages who can tap into the Resonance--the spirit of Tenra. Also, oni hearts are needed to power yoroi engines, which is not widely known.

There are, of course, the usual array of peasants, conscripted warriors, townspeople, and other inhabitants of the world who are less interesting to play in the context of an RPG.

After the character types, the book goes into multi-page timeline, and then gives a basic explanation of the setting background. Four hundred years ago, for no obvious reason the Shinto Priesthood, who are the power behind all the rulers of the various provinces--not kingdoms: the rulers are "regents" because they theoretically hold their power at the sufferance of the priesthood--said that resolving disputes through war was fine, and it's been all downhill ever since unless you're an arms manufacturer...like the priesthood! Hmm...

Some time after that, there was an event called the "Fall of Jinrai" that led to the modern way the setting is laid out. The Bridge of Heaven fell onto Jinrai, the headquarters of the Shinto priesthood, reshaping the land and causing tidal waves, earthquakes, etc. When everything settled, the priesthood split into the Northern Court, which shed several of its original customs and gave meikyou technology to the masses, who promptly started to mass-produce yoroi, and the Southern Court, who keep an iron grip on their power. The split means that each regent is empowered by one of the courts and their authority isn't recognized by the other court, further fueling the constant war. That's the broad overview.

There's a ton of social, cultural, and political information as well, but it's basically all that of the Sengoku era, so if you understand Japanese history or just want to get to ninjas fighting samurai while giant robots duel in the background, you can skim through much of the setting info. There's a sidebar to that effect, too, which is nice. It's always good when the author points out when something isn't strictly necessary to know in play. However, if you really want to portray how much it sucked to be a pre-modern Japanese peasant, there's plenty of information for you to do it accurately!

There's also a bunch of information on military engagements, recruitment, and command structure, since this is a Grim Retro-Future In Which There Is Only War. This is helpful because while the rest of the setting is like Sengoku Japan, wars are fought much more like World War I, with trenches, early tanks, machine guns, and endless waves of troops dying over a few acres of land. Well, World War I with mecha and cyborgs.

The rest of the book is an in-depth look into the fluff behind the various character types, but since it's another 100 pages and this section is already long and I haven't even gotten to the rules book yet, I'm not going to get into most of it here.

Well, except the annelidists, because crazy worm people. While reading this part, I was actually struck by a comparison between the annelidists and the historical burakumin. Both live on the outskirts of society, both are looked down on and considered weird and unclean, and both perform vital social functions--tanners, butchers, and gravediggers for the burakumin, and doctors and apothecaries for annelidists. The different, of course, is that the annelidists have alien worms living in their bodies, and the reason they deal in dead animals isn't because it's part of their work, but because they need breeding grounds and food for their symbiotes. Ew.

There's also a neat section about the oni rebellion. One country, Kikoku, used to have an attitude toward the oni that could best be described as "homicidal," until an oni monk named Makuu Rindo couldn't bear it anymore. He managed to bring all the oni together and unite them and start a rebellion, which wildly succeeded when the oni performed a ritual that shut down all Sha- and onmyoujutsu-based technology across Tenra. Oddly, the Shinto Priesthood intervened directly and sent one of their airships to put down the rebellion, but it backfired terribly when the rebels captured the airship. Kikoku is now a living example that one can defy the priesthood and win, which obviously makes a lot of people extremely nervous.

It ends with a few sample organizations in the world of Tenra, to act as friend, foe, or story hook.

One of the things I really like are the hints of science fantasy spread through the text. It all but comes out and says the Bridge of Heaven was a space elevator, there's a note that the priesthood's roads have guardian statues watching over them that are actually relays for the "meikyou network" that let the priesthood shut down or subvert any yoroi they want. Or the ancient ban on flight previously enforced by the priesthood and still enforced by the Southern Court, whose violators find their aircraft or flying yoroi mysteriously destroyed. Or the one expedition into Tenra's orbit, which recorded a "ship" floating in the blackness before contact was lost. Even onmyoujutsu originally comes from the Shinto Priesthood, so it might be Clarketech--the existence of onmyouji who use machines to create their prayer strips supports that.

Another thing I noticed is that there's a constant tension between power, humanity, and the price to move from one to the other. Samurai, kijin, and annelidists all explicitly are called out for giving up their humanity in exchange for power, and yoroi riders have to be raised apart from human experience to use their mecha. This plays into the karma economy that drives the game engine.

All in all, the whole thing fairly drips with plot hooks and story ideas. A brief skim should provide plenty of fodder for gaming, even if you don't know anything about the game's setting assumptions.

---System---

After the standard "What is this 'role-playing' of which you speak?" section, it jumps right into character creation, which is done by choosing and combining archetypes--the above-mentioned samurai, ninja, oni, etc.--though there are rule for making characters from scratch for those who want them. The attributes are pretty standard, though as befitting the pre-modern Japanese setting, there's an attribute for your influence and social standing called "Station" that's on part with Agility or Knowledge. Archetypes also all add Karma to the character, and if the value goes over 108 (the number of Buddhist sins), then that character succumbs to their sins. and becomes an asura.

To that end, during the game, players award each other Aiki points for doing cool things, keeping the story moving, and so on. Players can turn those Aiki points into Kiai points (same kanji, just reversed, and both martial arts concepts), which they can spend to aid their rolls, increase their skills, buy more actions in combat, enter scenes that they aren't currently in, and so on. But every Kiai point spent becomes a point of Karma, putting you closer to going over 108 and your inevitable fall from grace.

Characters also have Fates, which at creation are determined by your archetypes, a Destiny, which is a Fate given by the GM that ties into the game's story, and skills, which are linked to attributes. These are just suggested pairings, though, and the skills section gives examples of using each skill with several attributes. Finally, there are Vitality (HP), Soul (MP), and a Wound track for actual disfiguring or dangerous injuries.

For actions, players roll a number of d6s equal to their attribute and try to score a number equal to or less than their skill. Every die that does so is a success, and getting successes equal to the difficulty passes the roll--usually one is fine, but more if circumstances demand it. Simple and avoids huge dice pools that a stat+skill system can run into.

This is where the manga examples start. One awesome thing that TBZ had in Japanese that was translated over was that the examples of play were done as manga episodes instead of text ones. It's way more entertaining to see the characters sit around the table and talk about the rules than it is to just read it again with people's names thrown in. And in the first example, the GM looks appropriately gleeful as the PC fails their jump across the river and falls in.

The Karma chapter deals with the Fate/Aiki/Kiai/Karma interaction mentioned above. Each player should know what the other players wrote for their Fates, because Aiki are awarded pretty much solely at player/GM discretion, for playing to their Fates and just general good roleplaying. Since Aiki drive the whole game economy, it's important that the flow be maintained for each scene. Furthermore, Aiki can be turned more Kiai by rolling your Fates than by a direct exchange, so stronger Fates provide more Kiai, encouraging more ties to the story. But spent Kiai add Karma, so how to avoid that? Simple--much like Buddhism, reduce your Karma by reducing your attachments. You can delete ("sublimate") Fates or reduce their values to reduce your Karma, but then you'll want new Fates so you can get more Kiai, but that gives you more Karma.

It does mention that players might try to game the system, but that can create stories too. The example is of a samurai who spent a ton of Kiai during the game's final battle, winning the fight but putting him at 168 Karma. However! He had enough Fates that after sublimating a few and marking others down, he was exactly at 108 Karma and safe, but with basically no Fates left. So, the GM asked him why he suddenly stopped caring about everything, and after a moment's thought, the samurai's player said that he had taken a blow to the head during the fight and had amnesia, leading to a scene in a later game where the samurai showed up again working for the antagonist, and the PCs had to beat him without killing him and remind him of his past. Awesome!

Speaking of combat, the combat system! It's mostly just opposed skill rolls, with the catch that every melee combat can go either way. There's an attacker and defender, but whoever rolls more successes does damage to the other one, adds their weapon damage value, and the target distributes the damage. This is where it gets interesting: the target can choose where the damage goes, either into Vitality (cuts, bruises, scrapes, etc.) or into the Wound track (serious injuries). Vitality heals quickly and Wounds require treatment, but Wounds provide a dice bonus to all actions, so it's the player's choice whether they want to go for that bonus and be out of commission later, or just stick it in Vitality and hope they can win.

Furthermore, one part of the Wound track needs special consideration: the Dead Box. It's solely the player's choice to put damage there, but if they do, three things happen. First, all other damage from that attack disappears. Second, they gain a +3 bonus to all actions. Third, if they run out of Vitality, they die. This is the only way a player can die, since normally running out of Vitality just knocks you unconscious or otherwise puts you out of the fight. The book specifically mentions surviving an unprotected orbital drop to indicate the importance of the Dead Box, though it does mention that justifying this in the story might be pretty hard. This lets the player indicate the importance of a fight to the GM and also emulates the trope of the protagonist getting beat up, then standing up and proffering a beatdown, or the JRPG boss who seems to die only to burst into flames and grow wings while Latin chanting suddenly starts up.

The chapter on planning and running a game is mostly about Tenra Bansho Zero's structure. See, TBZ is explicitly designed to resemble a kabuki play, with its acts and scenes and intermissions and its self-contained nature as well. The default way of playing a TBZ game is to make characters, spend 6-8 hours telling their story, then finish it up and put them aside, and make new characters and a new story for the next game, with perhaps some appearances of the old characters if that's what the plot demands. The way the Aiki-Kiai-Karma flow works and the Destiny mechanic dictates that there be some kind of story at the beginning of the game, even if it's just a vague idea in the GM's head. The game isn't really designed to support the old-school, "You're people in Sengoku neo-Japan, what do you do?"-style wandering sandboxes. It isn't even really designed for campaigns, though there are some notes for how to use it that way if you want.

Something else that deserves a mention is the Emotion Matrix. It's a 6x6 grid with different emotions or feelings on it, like "A warning!" or "like a brother/sister" or "strange interest" or "unstable emotions." It's designed to be used when new characters, including PCs, meet for the first time. I initially recoiled at this, since it seemed to stray too much into turning the game into a visual novel (theatre novel?), but the explanation specifically mentioned that Emotion Matrix rolls are just designed as an aid to roleplaying. Much like the benefit of random character generation is that it's way easier to turn some rolls on a table into a character than having an entire book filled with attributes and skills and feats/advantages and powers shoved into your hands, the benefit of an Emotion Matrix roll is that it provides a stepping off-point. The GM can bribe the player with Aiki to move a few spots, or the player can spend Kiai to move themselves, so rolling "Killing Intent" for the princess the plot revolves around protecting can be dealt with. Unless the PC is a actually a ninja sent by the neighboring kingdom, and that's why they're so homicidal...

The next 150 pages of the book involves the various subsystems of the different character types. I won't cover everything because this is long enough already, but there's plenty of character customization available no matter what kind of PC you have. Following that is a gazetteer of Torigoe, one of Tenra's domains, and its neighbors, though it takes pains to point out that it's not canon in any way and is mostly here for people who've never heard the words Sengoku Jidai before. Then there's the appendices, including literary references, building characters from archetypes, and a list of 222 things to do in Tenra, with such gems as "In a ninja village: kill everyone" and "At a temple: help firefighters put out the temple, as someone set it on fire."

---Verdict---

If you're used to thinking in terms of the trad/indie RPG divide, Tenra Bansho Zero is hard to pin down. The crunchy combat mechanics, tons of fiddly bits, and long lists of powers seem like an odd fit with the character-driven plot and the focus on short-term play. It's not really like anything I've ever seen--it's probably closest to Burning Wheel, though even that is an imperfect comparison.

If that doesn't bother you, you'll find plenty to like in TBZ. The short-duration focus and character creation through archetypes makes it easy to set up and finish a game, and it's easy to use the parts of the book you want and ignore the others without causing any damage to the setting or screwing up the system. It even suggests an "All [X] except one [Y]" group setup as a way to easily set up a conflict. Three samurai and one Shinto priest? Three Buddhist monks and one annelidist? Just looking at those, I can get some ideas already.

Summary: it's fantastic. If you get it, you won't be disappointed.

Elevator pitch: It's Delta Green in space.

Okay, that's not entirely correct. The Void's Wardens are a sanctioned government agency, with the resources of the Unified World Council behind them, but their mission is basically the same as Delta Green's: seek out paranormal threats, eliminate them with extreme prejudice, and then make sure no one finds out about it. The "in space" part comes out in the influences: movies like Alien or Event Horizon or video games like Dead Space, all examples where the protagonists are isolated, far from any resupply or help, and faced with terrifying circumstances that they have to deal with by themselves. That's the main premise of The Void, which should make it like steak crossed with cheesecake for me.

And, I'll ditch the suspense and say that it was quite good, even though I had some initial misgivings. It passed the main test of, "Do I get ideas for games after I read this?" with an unqualified yes.

---Setting---

The Void is an alternate history, where the 2009 financial crisis turned out a lot worse than it did in our world, leading to the collapse of most international authority, the balkanization of the United States, and World War III, which ended in a nuclear terrorist attack that served to shock the nations of the world into making peace and getting things back on track. This seems kind of unlikely to me, but it takes place a century and a half in the setting's past and is there to set up a single government so that the PCs have the authority to go anywhere, and for that goal it works well enough.

After a new space race and the invention of the "transit drive" that allows travel at rough 50x faster than present-day space propulsion systems do, cutting in-system travel time to weeks or months even for far-away destinations like the Kuiper Belt (but not Pluto. No one goes to Pluto. Or at least, no one comes back), and the invention of the grav couch to allow people to survive the forces caused by acceleration and deceleration at that speed, humanity expanded out into the solar system and founded colonies basically everywhere. Most colonies were founded by corporate interests and are done primarily for mineral resources, but there are the occasional scientific colony or tourist destination. Europa's oceans contain non-terrene life, so there's a heavy scientific presence there, and Ganymede makes a ton of money as a gambling and resort destination for people in the Jovian colonies.

That leads to the modern day, where the solar system is more active than ever, but not entirely due to humanity. An object called the Cthonian Star is approaching the solar system from interstellar space, and in response to its approach, things are waking up. Monsters in the asteroid belt. Whatever it is that lives on Pluto. Even some places are changing--Callisto is apparently spontaneously generating an ecosystem.

That's where the Wardens I mentioned above come in. The PCs play Wardens, travel around the solar system, find bizarre and horrific alien life, and shoot it right in the face or closest face-like appendage. Meanwhile, they have to put up with transit times,

There are a couple small things that bothered me. The inhabitants of each of the colonies are given stereotypical descriptions, like Martians are, "often hardy and resourceful people, though somewhat resigned about life - even bitter" or Dionians are, "often optimistic and plucky, though suspicious of newcomers and provincial." I get that there needs to be a hook, especially since there are free skills provided for the various colonial origins, but it seems a bit like saying "Germans are often industrious and seriously, though they can be excessively detail-oriented" or "Americans are often confident and friendly, though somewhat xenophobic and brash."

Also, other than the transit drive and colonies in space, not as much as I would expect seems to have changed technologically. Organ transplants are done using cloned organs and it's possible to regenerate limbs and extend the average lifespan to 150 years, but there's no kind of genetic or cybernetic enhancement discussed. AI or automation aren't really mentioned at all, and nanotechnology is briefly mentioned but not really detailed. The guns are all still slugthrowers that wouldn't be out of place on a modern battlefield, but the melee weapons include lots of electrified or powered variants. I wasn't expecting out-of-control transhumanism, because we already have Eclipse Phase, but it's more static than I expected it would be.

However, The Void does do one thing that really endears me to it. It explicitly points out the impact of climate change on Earth, and that its effects still linger even though action has been taken to mitigate and reverse it. Of course, even with climate change, Earth is still by far the most hospitable place in the solar system, so not much space is devoted to it, but leaving climate change out of future histories is a pet peeve of mine.

---System---

The system is pretty simple and won't take long for a new player to pick up at all. Characters have six statistics--Cleverness, Grace, Perseverance, Awareness, Demeanor, and Physique--that should be pretty familiar even if the names are new. Those are rated 1 to 5, as are the skills, and a pool of d6s is built using Attribute + Skill. All dice coming up 5 or 6 are successes, and if there are enough successes to match or beat the roll's difficulty, the roll succeeds. Dice pools for humans are capped at ten, and bonuses to rolls tend to be bonus successes instead of bonus dice.

One thing I can see being a turn off is the number of skills. There are something like ~75 of them, with multiple subdivions of Athletics (Balance, Speed, etc.), a Freefall skill for microgravity, multiple Engineering skills to cover the various parts of a spaceship, over a dozen weapon skills, different piloting skills for ground and space, six different social skills...it's quite granular.

Characters are further rounded out with Quirks, which are very limited skills like Fine Wines or Video Games or Whistling While You Work; Advantages/Disadvantages, which follow the old paradigm of paying for advantages and getting points back for disadvantages; and Talents, which are things like not having to make Horror checks when seeing purely human corpses or being able to occasionally make attacks that ignore armor.

I think some of the Disadvantages would have been better going to the system where they provide no points at character generation but provide extra XP during the game when they cause trouble. Getting points immediately for something like Chronic Pain that has a specific rule for when and how it affects a character makes sense, but it runs into trouble for something like Enemy or Tormented where the GM might forget about it entirely. It definitely requires some GM oversight during character creation.

Combat is a simple opposed roll between the combat skill and the target's defense, and the damage is rolled, with additional successes on the attack roll adding to damage, and armor as a static value subtracted from the damage. Combat is deadly enough to make PCs cautious without making instant kills during a straight-up firefight more than an occasional occurence. There's also a social combat system based on shifting the other person's attitude up and down a chart from Friendly to Hostile, and rules for which skills can be used against which attitudes.

There's a brief treatment of money, but mostly in the context of a abstract Wealth system, which is probably best in a game where most of the characters' gear will be issued to them by their superiors.

As you might expect for a Lovecraftian horror game, there are rules for madness and horror (basically, long-term vs. short-term effects). Failing a horror check means the PC runs screaming or curls into a ball or attacks in a blind rage, and failing a madness check has the effects that anyone who's ever played a Lovecraftian RPG is familiar with. There are several levels of madness, from 0 to IV, where 0 is fine and IV is probably permanently institutionalized. It's no Madness Meters, but it works. My big problem here is the nomenclature. The levels of madness have names like "Bonkers" and "Loony," which really comes out of left field and doesn't fit the mood of creeping horror the game is trying to establish.

Last in my coverage of mechanics are Tension Points, which is a lot like the 7th Sea Drama Points economy. The players collectively get a pool at the beginning of each session that can be spend to reroll dice, force the GM to reroll, buy another Fate Point to save a character on the verge of death, find a clue or item that they otherwise would not be able to, and so on, though a majority of the players must agree on any points spent. The "tension" part comes in because every time the players spend a Tension Point, the GM gets one, and can spend them in much the same way. Unlike the players' points, though, the GM's points persist between sessions, so it's always a question for the players of whether they want to use their Tension Points and make things harder for themselves later or trust to the luck of the dice and hope they can carry the day.

There were a few typos here and there, but worse were the areas where I weren't sure where it was a typo or not. The setting chapter mentions the "Sino-China Union" repeatedly. The rules for extended physical activity say that characters can walk for days before having to rest. These are relatively minor issues, however.

Overall, The Void is highly focused on playing ordinary humans pitted against both the mundane horror of space travel and everything that can go wrong and the cosmic horror of Lovecraftian monsters. There aren't even any rules for magic, since it's supposed to be a plot device and absolutely isn't supposed to be used by the PCs. Come to think of it, that's probably why there's no extensive cybernetic enhancement rules or transhumanism at all, since it would override the feel of being fragile humans facing hideous monstrosities.

Sometimes, the game feels a bit unfinished. There's a drone use skill, but no drones listed in the book. There are only three monsters and three ships, and no real rules for ship combat or using the various repair skills to fix ships after said combat. However, since it's being offered for as little as $0, I can't really complain too much about that. And really, what do you have to lose? Get it, read it, and if you think it's great, toss some money the authors' way or buy the supplements, which include more monsters, ship rules, and all that stuff that's glossed over. There's definitely enough here to get a game up and running.

One of the biggest changes between the first and second editions of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was the magic system. Driven mostly by changes in the background of the miniatures wargame in between the two editions, the second edition ditched first edition's system of leveled spells and magic points for the new system of color magic. Most of the basics are covered in the main rulebook, of course, but Realms of Sorcery fleshes that out in nearly every direction.

I'll come back to that "nearly."

As you might expect, there's a lot of fluff in the first half of the book. There's a history of magic usage in the Empire up to the point of the Great War Against Chaos, which I can easily summarize as "BURN THE WITCH! Priest are okay though." During the war, Emperor Magnus the Pious sent for aid to Ulthuan, and the High Elves sent three archmages, which was all they could spare at the time. Those archmages went on to help win the war by teaching humans how to safely become wizards, but unlike elves, humans can only use one color at a time safely. Hence the eight orders.

There's a bunch of exposition about the orders as well, with some neat tidbits. Members of the Amber Order don't have a college in Altdorf like the others, instead lairing in the hills outside the city walls. Members of the Grey Order take strong vows never to use their magic for venal financial gain, precisely because it would be so easy for them to do so. The colleges themselves are well-described, too, in a way that lessens their impact on the landscape of Altdorf. I've read that a lot of people don't really like the Colleges of Magic, because they feel like their overtly high fantasy feel damages the presentation of the Warhammer world. I can see that, but there are some colleges that I think actually make things even more mysterious. Like the Azure College, which is a huge building with plenty of high towers to see the stars, but which is never actually visible due to the workings of fate--anyone who looks at it will get bumped into, or trip, or laundry will blow in front of it, or the person will think of something else they have to do, and so on. The Bright College is in the middle of a burned-out stretch of ruins that Altdorfers refuse to move back into, and the Amethyst College appears as a building that's been deserted for decades unless you actually have legitimate business there, in which case you'll probably turn a corner and meet a magister. Or the aforementioned Amber College, in a series of caves. I think it gives the proper mysterious touch to magic that first edition didn't really have.

Then there are the mechanics sections, which I think are really valuable. One of the problems with the spell list system for color magic as of the main book is that because a wizard gets all the spells they would ever learn immediately on taking the Arcane Magic Talent, the whole idea of knowledge-seeking wizards pouring through ancient tomes of arcane lore is restricted to rituals, and the example rituals given in the corebook leave basically no reason why anyone would actually want to cast them based on how difficult they are to use. Honestly, it's probably easier for a Bright Wizard to just set a town on fire than to gather all the materials to use The Awakening of the Slumbering Earth Dragon. The addition of ten extra spells, a choice of multiple lists (each of which only has ten spells), and the Extra Spell Talent to learn the other spells provides both an XP sink for wizards and a reason to seek out knowledge.

There's also a section on witches and witch-hunters, which is short but does a good job.

Finally, there are parts about alchemy, wizards' familiars, and magical items. The alchemy chapter has a very Warhammery (if I can use that word) take on alchemy; potions, being made of perishable ingredients, have a shelf life and can go bad in all sorts of hilarious ways. Familiars provide bonuses for the wizards who use them, but there's a great table of personality descriptions of the familiars to provide some character to them, including options like "Passive-Aggressive," "Know-It-All," and "Raving Mad." There's options for constructed familiars as well as natural animals, so creepy wizards can have their homunculi. The magic items is mostly just a list--in keeping with their rarity, there's no standard rules for making them--but it's nice to have options.

Now, the problems. One of the major problems I had with Realms of Sorcery is its breadth. It's pretty much entirely focused on Imperial magic, and not only that, on modern Imperial magic. I find it really bizarre that there were never any successful wizards in the 2300 years prior to Magnus the Pious, and kind of sad that the other traditions from first edition, like druids or elementalists, weren't included. It does make a nod to druids in the backstory of the Jade Order, and I suppose that the various colors of magic replicate the feel of elementalism--Bright is fire, Azure is Air, Jade is Earth--but it does hammer down the type of acceptable characters to a very defined set. Especially since Tilea, Bretonnia, Estalia, and Kislev exist and presumably have their own type of wizards, but they aren't defined. Kislev does get a breakdown of its magic in Realm of the Ice Queen, but none of the others ever did. It's a persistent problem with the WFRP stuff being so Empire-centric.

The other problem is elves. The book implies that elves should have mechanical differences in the way they interact with magic, but there's no hint on how to handle that. Despite elves being able to use multiple colors without the apparent certainty of harm (or at least, of going crazy and turning evil) that humans have, they apparently still only have the same Apprentice Wizard career that humans do. Unlike Tileans and Estalians, elf wizards had a direct and obvious effect on the magical development of the Empire, and the complete lack of mechanical support for that was pretty disappointing to me.

Other than those points, it's a great sourcebook, and I think it'd be highly valuable for background and antagonist info even in a game with no PC wizards.

Wayfarers is pretty easy to describe--it's a classless, point-buy version of Dungeons and Dragons, with some inspiration taken from d20 games but mostly rooted in the 2nd Edition-era and earlier game. This sounds like it should be my perfect fantasy game, but unfortunately, the book falls down on a few levels and I can't award it more than 3 stars.

The actual system isn't bad. Since it's based on Dungeons and Dragons, everything is familiar. The primary roll for determining success is the d20, weapons have variable damage (slightly higher than in either 2nd or 3rd edition), character abilities are defined by "proficiencies" and "disciplines" (essentially Skills and Feats) and so on. None of that is any different.

The primary difference comes in with the advancement system. As I said, Wayfarers is classless, and so the advancement is more similar to games like The World of Darkness where the GM awards between 1 to 5 "skill points" at the end of each adventure or session, and then they're spent on the proficiencies and disciplines.

The proficiencies have a neat mechanic that prevents the 2nd edition and lower problem of incompetence or the d20 problem of people ending up with such different bonuses that they can't meaningfully interact. Each proficiency has four grades, and each grade lets you roll an extra d20 and just take the highest out of the pool for your roll. So, it's still possible for a callow youth to beat a grizzled master, it's just vanishingly unlikely unless they really stack the deck.

The benefit of being built from the ground-up as a point-buy system means that abilites with different usefulness have different costs. Beginning with magic will use up most of a starting characer's capabilities, for example, and since the system of Dungeons and Dragons and derived games has historically focused on exploration and combat, abilities dealing with that aspect can cost more than abilities dealing with, say, underwater basketweaving.

The problem comes in with the way it deals with--and doesn't deal with--the costs. One of the major problems it inherits from d20 games is the primacy of spellcasters. If you look at the Table of Contents, you'll notice quite quickly that the vast majority of the book is devoted to spells--pages 42-164 out of 178 (the last portion of the book is an appendix and charts). The vast majority of the book is completely useless to anyone who doesn't use magic, and the sample characters reflect this: out of 8 sample characters, 7 of them can use magic of some sort.

Furthermore, the point-buy system completely breaks down when dealing with magic because new spells don't cost any points at all. That means that wizards and priests can rapidly gain utility and combat effectiveness faster than non-magicians. Here's the math:

Take a character who wants to be the best warrior ever with a longsword. Here's what she buys. Weapon Mastery Grade V, Class E: 30 points Multiple Attacks Grade IV, Class E: 26 points Parrying, Class E: 4 points Quick Draw: 3 points Greatstrike, Class E: 6 points Critical Hit, Class E: 6 poines Disarm, Class E: 5 points Counterattack, Class E: 5 points Feint: 4 points Evasion: 5 points Armor Use, Grade V: 30 points Advanced Counterattack: 8 points Calculated Strike: 6 points Increased Accuracy, Grade V: 45 points Rush, Class E: 5 points Stunning Blow, Class E: 3 points Vital Strike, Class E: 20 points Whirlwind Attack, Class E: 6 points Health Point: 10 points (1 per level) Split Attacks, Class E: 4 points Total: 231 points

Now take the hermetic wizard. Here's what he buys: Hermetic Magic Potential: 17 points Magic Potency, Grade V: 30 points Spell Circle (Hermetic), Grade VIII: 91 points Additional spells for max Circle: 19 points Extra Spell, Grade VIII: 44 points Combat Casting: 5 points Silent Casting, Grade V: 30 points Total: 236 points

So it costs the wizard 236 points to gain all the relevant magic powers, and the warrior 231 points to gain all the relevant combat powers with her sword. I've left off stuff they'd probably both want to buy, like Improved Initiative, Improved Dodge, Increased Resistance, Increased Attribute, or proficiencies. And yes, it costs the wizard more points, but for spending all those points, the wizard's capabilites include "know anything" and "do anything"--literally, through the spells Cognizance and Change, respectively. The warrior's abilities include "longswording better than everyone else," which is pretty nice, but doesn't help against armies, flying enemies, or enemies who can teleport, or remove the warrior's sword, or fill the room full of water, etc.

There are actually multiple types of magic, if I haven't been clear about that. The wizard-like Hermetic magic, cleric-like Faith magic, illusionist Hedge magic, and sacrifice-based or druidic Ritual magic. The first two have eight levels of spells, and the second two have only five. But all of them have the problem that they don't charge any skill points to learn new spells.

It's basically the same problem as d20 where things start off okay, but due to LFQW, the longer the game goes on, the farther ahead the wizard pulls until eventually the fighters might as well just go home. Not that it matters, because the wizard's summoned monsters can just take the fighter's place anyway.

Normally, this wouldn't matter in a point-buy system, but not charging for spells means the point costs are inherently screwed up. Standard D&D magic that starts at "throwing magic missiles" and ends with "do anything" really needs to be appropriately priced in order to actually make sense in a point-buy context, otherwise you end up with each point spent not actually being equal--buying magic gets you more bang for your buck.

There's always the solution the sample characters took, which is to just knuckle under and become wizards or priests, but that's hardly satisfying.

Wayfarers could have been an excellent alternative to class and level-based Dungeons and Dragons for people like myself who prefer skill-based systems, but unfortunately, the assumptions behind the costs means I can't recommend it. It's excellent for inspiration to build your own point-based D&D, but unless you like caster supremacy or have a group that's amiable enough to get along and has enough system mastery that they won't accidentally stumble into an Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit situation, don't run it as written.

Back when Lovecraft was writing his stories, there wasn't the neat distinction between horror, fantasy, and science fiction that currently exists. It was all kind of shoved together under the label of Weird Fiction, so you get stories like John Carter of Mars psychically transporting himself to Mars, or magic-wielding aliens, or--more topically--Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, which has this quote when referring to the Old Ones:

"Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn - whatever they had been, they were men!"

That's the approach that Eldritch Skies takes, and right from looking at the human/mi-go trade mission on the front cover, you know that this isn't going to be like Call Of Cthulhu, or as I often call it, "The Dunwich Horror: the RPG." Aliens are alien, but they're not innately inimical to humanity, and while you'll never have a human and a mi-go drinking together in a bar after work and complaining about their bosses, it is possible for them to interact and get beneficial results for both parties.

Eldritch Skies actually reminds me a lot of Eclipse Phase. Not because of the specific details--the kind of society Eclipse Phase demonstrates is probably intrinsically destructive and dehumanizing in the world of Eldritch Skies--but because of the overall structure. The PCs are assumed to be part of an organization that's tasked with solving various problems that pop up as humanity expands out into the cosmos, the threat of total extinction is hanging over humanity's head, a lot of offworld colonies are based on exploring alien ruins, and so on. This is a good thing, because Eclipse Phase is excellent.

Anyway, what makes Eldritch Skies a sci-fi Lovecraft take other than that the players can talk to the horrible monsters as well as be eaten by them? Part of it is the approach to world-building it takes. When discussing the structure of the universe, the book (albeit obliquely) refers to the Great Filter in the discussion of the fate of every space-faring species. The vast majority of species either go extinct or transcend, though some species find a stable equilibrium and stagnate as their psychology prevents them from making any new technological discoveries unless they experiment with alien technology, and some species try to transcend and screw up or only partially transcend, leading to creatures like the flying polyps or the star-spawn of Cthulhu.

Hyperspace mentioned above is how a lot of the Lovecraftian metaphysics and background is all tied together. Humans who gain "hyperspace exposure" can become psychic, and psychic powers or sorcery can cause hyperspacial exposure, as can alien artifacts based on hyperspacial principles, or even simply traveling through hyperspace (which makes the colonies perhaps more dangerous than they otherwise might be...). Humans exposed too much develop an increasingly inhuman mindset, and eventually transform into hideous monsters. This is the source of ghouls and deep ones.

Similarly, hyperspace is where the servitors of the Outer Gods and the Great Old Ones live. In Eldritch Skies, Great Old Ones might be natural, or they might be the result of certain individuals transcending, or possibly the amalgamation of an entire species transcending. Servitors and Great Old Ones typically don't have much contact with the physical world unless they are summoned or something catches their interest, and one of the ways to attract their notice is...high levels of hyperspacial exposure. This is one of the reasons why extinction is so common: a species begins experimenting with hyperspace, an experiment goes hideously wrong, Cthulhu or the alien equivalent takes notice, and millennia later some other species exploring its local surroundings finds a world with its atmosphere blasted away, or evenly-spaced craters covering the entire planet's surface, or perfectly preserved ruins with no trace that anyone ever lived there, and so on.

This is another point I think connects it to Eclipse Phase--humanity's exploration of the cosmos is probably the only thing that will ensure its survival as a species, but at the same time, it makes it far more likely that humanity will attract unwanted attention leading to its total extinction.

There are a few planets listed here that humanity has discovered, including Firefly, where almost all life is part of vast communal organisms called "metas"; or Colossus, which experiments indicate is actually a Dyson sphere built around a gas giant and has a surface area 300x that of Earth; or Eridanos, where some old catastrophe boiled off the oceans and rent the planet with giant rifts into which life had to descend to survive; or Galatea, where humans used sorcery to travel there millennia ago and the planet is a series of city-states ruled by sorcerer-kings like something out of The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. If some of these sound similar to some of the planets in Gatecrashing, that's because they are, but the similarity is pretty superficial, and anyway Galatea is way more similar to Stargate. And frankly, that's fine to me, because Lovecraftian Stargate is great tastes that taste great together.

I haven't been talking about the mechanics at all, but that's mainly because I don't really like Unisystem. It's a perfectly fine system, it's just not for me, so reading the system parts of the book mostly either put me to sleep or made my eyes glaze over. I bought Eldritch Skies for the fluff anyway so I don't mind, but you might have another opinion.

This gets four stars only because there are huge portions of the book I can't use and that actively resisted my reading them. Taken solely on the fluff and ability of the book to inspire, it's five stars all the way. If you're tired of reading interpretations of Lovecraft that read more like Gnosticism, where the universe is intrinsically inimical to humanity specifically and every non-human species has it out for humanity and the only possible fate is madness and death, Eldritch Skies is an excellent antidode.