Check out Michal's full review HERE

Tying it all together, how accessible is the game to players? I would say reasonably so. Liminal’s structure helps the players build their crew and the GM to create a case they’ll work on. The game’s mechanics are on the simpler and lighter side, so creating your character is easy enough.

The flipside to this is that there’s not as much variety among the player characters as in some other games. Unlike with Chronicles of Darkness, you can create magicians, vampires, werewolves, faeries or mortals with the basic book and play them in the same group. But their powers will be ultimately represented by the same traits, rather than the different power sets of Chronicles.

One major upside here is that it’s much easier to play “clued-in mortals” as the game terms them, in Liminal than in the Chronicles of Darkness. The only Chronicles game to really give mortal humans agency is Hunter: the Vigil. Here you can play them alongside supernatural beings and magicians.

All in all, if someone wants to play an urban fantasy game about characters who exist on the boundary between worlds, solve mysteries and play politics among centuries-old organizations and groups, Liminal looks like a fine choice that won’t bog down an unexperienced group, or one that prefers story to mechanics, in details.

See Molly's full review HERE

The world-building aspects of the JCOM RPG are genuinely quite good. A lot of effort went into it, helped along by the fact that there are 11 books and a substantial number of comics to build off of. This results in a few things that lead to a rather open-ended experience for those wishing to create a game.

First of all—and this is quite clever and helps to avoid a common issue in doing a licensed RPG—there are three eras of the world that you’re able to set your adventure in. One is set when the titular character first arrives, before he started making waves, thus allowing you to set your adventures years before he showed up without issue. Another is set during the time when John Carter was established but not quite viewed as the savior of all of Barsoom, and thus allows you to set up your own reputations, or even build a kingdom, without worrying about upsetting him. And the third is set when John Carter rules all of Barsoom, which makes making a name for yourself difficult, but allows for the most interaction with canon heroes if that’s your thing.

And that era system applies to the races you can play as too. There are five races you can play as; your backstory, culture, and how NPCs react to you will all change based on which race and what era. For example, a Green Martian from the early era will come from a very grim and almost Objectivist society, but as time passes they become a much more open and friendly people. The Okar (Yellow Martians) will be very isolationist and arrogant in the early eras, with only a vague idea of what’s happening in the rest of the world outside of their cities, but will be more involved and informed in later ones. Things like that.

It’s honestly a rather good setup. There’s enough to give both the player and the DM (here called the Narrator) plenty of information and a firm foundation (heck, there’s a not insignificant portion of the manual devoted to the history of the planet, and the cultures of the various factions of the races) but allowing for freedom to make your own choices and not be rail-roaded by the canon too much.

Cat's full review HERE

It’s an ordinary day, and you are an ordinary person. Until something happens and you realize you are, in fact, not an ordinary person. This moment, this awakening, will change everything for you. And naturally, you probably have some questions. The good news is there are more people like you out there. The bad news is that they don’t have the answers yet either. Team up together and start investigating in City of Mist from Son of Oak Game Studio (distributed by Modiphius).

City of Mist is a roleplaying game where players take on the role of Rifts—ordinary individuals that are simultaneously a powerful mythical entity. The exact nature of this entity, or Mythos, is largely a mystery to your character, and that mystery is where the journey begins. Your efforts to uncover answers will be thwarted by the very force that kept you in the dark for so long: The Mist. The Mist is what keeps the City seemingly ordinary. Sleepers, those who have not awakened to a Mythos, will forget or excuse any legendary abilities they come into contact with. Players will be balancing their Mythos with their normal lives or Logos. When your character goes through something major, you have the choice to turn it into a Moment of Evolution. This is a player character choice, not the choice of the Master of Ceremonies (MC).

This all works through the Themes that form the basis of a character’s identity. Some of these are Mythos, others are Logos. A Moment of Evolution turns one into the other. If at any point all of a player’s Mythos has become Logos, they become a Sleeper again. The opposite, all Mythos and no Logos, turns a character into an Avatar, completely at the whims of whatever force is inside them.

This focus on character choice is a driving factor in City of Mist. There are rules, of course. Players have eight core actions they can take, though even these emphasize the importance of choice. The Take the Risk action lets players attempt something outrageous, giving fate the chance to let them succeed. Failure results in a consequence, and this is when the MC gets to make their own choices.

From Fandomentals reviewer Molly: As supplements go, this is a very good one. There is, admittedly, nothing especially, well, special about it, but a good amount of effort was clearly applied into making a region not much thought about outside of the hardcore fans into something interesting, alive, and worth exploring. The effort that went into connecting all six adventures, and into the illustrations, are especially noteworthy, and deserving of praise. If you’re interested in Lord of the Rings, but don’t feel like going to anywhere from the trilogy in your game, this is well worth a look and the time you’ll spend with it.

Full review here: https://www.thefandomentals.com/go-beyond-the-hobbit-with-cubicle-7s-erebor-adventures/