I'd only ever played a single one shot of a GUMSHOE game prior to picking this up (Night's Black Agents), and found the system to not be to my liking, but oh man has Swords of the Serpentine turned me around. This is one of few systems that I actually think I'm more excited to run rather than play, cause of how much excellent guidance is packed into this book. The adversary creation system is robust enough to handle a ton of ideas, and the implimentation of traditional and social combat is really exciting for fast but meaningful conflict. As someone who runs a lot of one-on-one and two player parties, I love the attention payed to scaling character power levels, and the freeform magic. Eversink as a seting is wonderfully fleshed and feels fresh as someone who has been playing RPGs for over a decade at this point.
I can also see the base of this system being easily hacked to run more traditional D&D fantasy, but if you're a sword and sorcery fan, this is perfect as is. I'd love to see this system get all the love in the world, expansions, more adventures, further setting books!
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