There are lots of good ideas and tables in On Downtime and Demenses but the work is marred by some glaring flaws whose presence in the work undermines some of it's utility.

First there is the "City/Village Generation' section on pages 222 and 223. There are great ideas here whose utility is indermined by the fact that there are no numbered tables to allow a GM to utiize these interesting ideas in a dynamic (aleatory) way. It's possible that I have misunderstood the purpose of these blocks of text, but, if so, it's because the author(s) do not describe how these ideas are to be used to do any 'generation'. Since this section has very interesting ideas, it's very disappointing that the author(s) don't provide more guidance on how these can be used in a constructive way their audience.

Which brings us to the question of audience and the application of the rules of technical writing.

One important rule of technical writing is to (a) always explain any uncommon words (or common words used in a technical way) before using them or (b) failing that, define those words at the earliest opportunity to do so.

This rule is not followed.

The problem begins on page 12 with the following statement: There are 5 city types (X54 in Cook Expert)

What is 'Cook Expert'?

This is not explained.

On page 73, one finds a clue in the following: In Moldvay/Cook Retainers were "a person hired by a player character to aid that character on an adventure".

Still not explained, but a bread-crumb on the path leading to an explaination.

The problem is that the author(s) assumes a familiarity with OSE RGP 'short-hand'.

'Cook' is Dave Cook (not Monte Cook) and 'Expert' refers to the 1981 TSR publication Expert Rules.

Would it have been so hard to include this tidbit of information to allow the reader to (a) know what 'Cook Expert' referred to and (b) to research what 'X54' means?

Doing so would also have cleared up references to 'X59' on page 216 and 217 as well as 'X53' on page 219.

Not all of us in the RGP community are historians of the field are Holmes (Sherlock, not Eric).

This is a very interesting product. It has just enough complexity to keep things interesting without being overwhelmingly complex.

This work is a good example of an interesting product ruined by bad decison-making in the art department. It's not printable. Attempting to print it would result in extreme toner usage. And it's not particularly useful if it cannot be printed. Great idea. Terrible execution.

I've been benchmarking a lot of games looking for ideas and Owlbear Omellette if full of good ones. It uses simple names for action-oriented attributes (such as 'Scrapping' and 'Knowing'). It uses a simple action resolution process in the form of 'success rolls'. The philosophy behind the system is one I think should be emulated and expanded upon. Any GM looking to start fresh with a more stream-lined and player-action focused game should look at Owlbear Omelette very closely.

Lots of good ideas well-presented. 'Spell randomizer, very useful in its simplicity.

Very well-written and well-organized. I am reviewing/benchmarking aa bunch of playing systems and this one generated lots of notes. The author knows who their audience is and delivers a system that puts a lot of 'friction' (or 'reality') into the game. Lots of great ideas....and free. Hard to beat that scenario for value.

I found this work stimulating on how to step over 'levels and 'experience points'. Highly compressed,well-organized information. I haven't mastered a game before and am researching/benchmarking a bunch of playing systems. 'Hot Circle' is one system I will be coming back to after my reviews.