I'm really impressed by the Well of Bones - although I expected to be, given who was writing it! This is a standalone location, which means you can insert it into your own campaign as you see fit, and is written and illustrated in the characteristic grim-but-tongue-in-cheek style the creators are famous for. The layout and art are absolutely gorgeous, as befits the work of Mark Gibbons, and the setting described would probably have been called decadent by H P Lovecraft. The story of the setting is highly original (I won't use the word Fresh for something so macabre) and brings elements both easily recognisable and new to any gm's game. While some might prefer "plug and play" scenarios designed for a specific system with PC's of particular ability levels, most GM's will adjust NPC stats and difficulty levels to suit their players anyway; the system agnostic design of Rookery products is set up to facilitate that, and with the quality of storytelling, I highly recommend you give it a try even if you've never created your own NPC stats before. The PDF is remarkably concise for the weight of flavour it has, like a handful of briny black olives, and comes brimming with adventure hooks for you to draw your players in with ease. It's a steal at $5. An excellent feature that it comes bundled with both labelled and unlabelled maps for GM convenience - so many publishers fail to do this and it's really exhausting as a GM! My only suggestion would be to mark out the statblock explanation with a different formatting style, and/or move it further forward in the NPC description section, as that might make it easier for first-time readers to grasp. Well done to the Parliament of Rooks!

I'm really impressed by this game.

The core concept is great - the beauty of a Ghibli movie, emotional messiness of Skins and nail-biting, thrilling early air combat - and while there are a few points where I trip over rule phrasing somewhat (particularly exotic weapons) it's 99% beautifully well executed.

In fact, if you are a crunch-minded person who's not got that much time, it's the perfect game for you because it requires almost no game prep; although a little campaign prep is a good idea to make things more satisfying, individual missions and enemies can be created on the fly with minimum fuss.

The playbooks for PC's are designed to gradually get closer to each other, through emotional (and optional physical) intimacy, whilst simultaneously causing great heartache and drama at every turn and wrecking up every town the players go to. being a total hot mess is compulsory, and leaning into the drama really ups the fun.

The core of air combat - carefully manage your altitude and speed, lose track of the foe through tunnel vision, hope that your plane doesn't fall apart from maneuvering too hard - are incredibly true to the era being emulated, as is the stress generated from flying in those conditions. The fact that the game revolves around building and relieving stress is just perfectly illustrative of the life of young people under those circumstances, and the fact it's about gradually forming a super-bond of friendship whilst living like a total trainwreck is just so very true to one's late teens/early 20's. Not enough games care about characters emotions, bonds, and mental health.

This game really does.

the book is gorgeous, the emotional heart of the game shines through, and the free online tools are incredibly handy.

Oh, and did I mention that the planes are awesome? because they are Super Goddamn Cool.