I love this - this is one of those things that you enjoy. But when I realized that I was returning with fond memories to my sessions playing this much more often than usual, I knew I had to make a review. There's the right amount of crunch and interesting stuff for travel, here, with a fascinating fantasy setting that really makes the world feel full of adventure and every journey truly perilous and consequential. Five stars.

This product is amazing. It's extremely evocative, full of fascinating ideas and well designed random tables that allow you to truly build a near-infinite open sky setting.

No product is for everybody, and if want you are looking for in a setting is something well defined and fully populated, look elsewhere. But if you want the seeds and tools to make your own wild, whimsical, and adventurous setting - Skycrawl is it.

It's a build-your-setting book more than a game, but it does include some useful mechanics in a couple of areas. First, there are extensive PBTA-inspired "moves" around traveling - what to do when you get lost, or how your character can spend a 'drift day.' These are written in a way that lets them easily be adapted to your system of choice (with some specific guidance given for adapting to d20, Fate, and PBTA / 2d6 games) - and they're well designed, so they really make the game adventurous.

The other somewhat mechanical bit is the introduction of Orcery, which is a kind of alchemy concerned with Heavy Elements that are part of this setting. This gives a lot of flavor, allows for PCs to create some useful (but limited in number of uses) magic, and gives additional reasons to go exploring. (Plus Orcery can only be done away from Lands - so it gives something for the detailed-magic-inclined PC to do on those long journeys.)

This product includes extensive charts for creating Folk and Lands either randomly or by design. And as part of that, the BEST guidance I have ever seen for how to come up with names for those Folk and Lands - something few RPG products provide.

I came across this while looking for new hexcrawl games. The idea of a hexcrawl through the sky sounded unique and interesting. Skycrawl certainly delivers on that!

Most hexcrawls use a map that allows players to plan their journeys. In Skycrawl, you use a Chart of lands near and far. The Chart chages every time you travel between lands and this can make the next step on your journey more or less difficult. While the relative positions of lands may make a journey more or less difficult, it rarely makes them impossible. The travel mechanics also reward players who spend time gathering information about a new land before setting off.

Journeys between lands can be difficult but not necessarily deadly.

Skycrawl in intended to be used with any RPG system, not just DnD, so outside of the travel mechanics and Orcery, things are left rules-light. I don't consider this a bad thing as it provides fodder for roleplaying. There is a simple system for ship combat in case your regular rules system doesn't have one.

The creature and ship generators are simple and rules-light for roleplaying but I love the land generator most. It opens up so many possibilities for locations to visit. A GM could sink hours if not days into generating interesting locations for their players to visit.

All in all, I'm very happy with what I found in Skycrawl and look forward to many adventures through the Azure.

"The mechanics are simple and straightforward, and really do link up very well with different dice systems. Orcery is fantastically creative and a really cool new thing for players to fiddle around with. The various tables, from Atmospheres to Situations to Lands to Folk, provide a ton of variety that you're going to have to work pretty hard to exhaust. The overview at the start of the book says that the Azure Etern should be vast, wild, whimsical, and fun, and if you think of them as goals I absolutely think Skycrawl has managed to attain them." - Seamus Conneely

Read the full in-depth CHG review here: http://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2021/01/15/skycrawl-review-serendipitous-adventures-in-strange-skies/

Whilst I wouldn't call this book a traditional hexcrawl, the majority of content in this book is well thought out and is invaluable to anyone interested in running a game in the style of movies such as Treasure Planet. The procedure of play regarding Journeys and Ship Combat seem good enough on their own though may require some tweaking depending on which game system you are playing. The most essential section of the book for me lies in the back half. The random tables of atmospheres, encounters, and the various generators are imaginative and inspiring. All in all, I can't wait to run a campaign using a toolbox such as this one.