Pros: Good amount of warband types, command actions, and random events. Lots of combat maneuvers and feats for improving your soldiers. The Management Phase between combats runs swiftly. The basic combat routine is familiar for anyone who has played DnD or a derivative. The artwork is really impressive for this affordable a game. And yes, the game is really cheap.

Cons: Some rule concepts are left ambiguous because the rulebook doesn't explain them well enough (e.g. the Morale check and what happens when you fail it, or who can use combat maneuvers). The combat doesn't flow smoothly until you have memorized the meaning of several keywords (e.g. the club is a Simple(1) Bludgeoning weapon -- two keywords there ). Until that it's a lot of page-flipping. Some of these keywords are condition-specific which makes internalizing them difficult (e.g. the Piercing weapons give +2 to damage IF the attacker is acting before the defender).

In the end I found the detail level with the keywords too much for my liking. But I'm sure many players don't mind. And if you have the will you can come up with cheat cards or other play-aids and I'm sure the combats will start running smoother.

Warlock shows that we can have OSR outside the D&D paradigm. If you only knew about AC and HP and classes and levels, you should try Warlock. Warlock is gritty, flavourful and concise. Warlock is easy to grasp: seldom have I read a RPG rulebook so fast and still already felt ready for gaming. As a book Warlock is cheap and short and for a ruleset that's a big plus. It's a matter of taste but in my mind Warlock wins hands down compared to more bloated and crunchy systems.

A nice introduction to Hârn as far as I -- a newcomer -- can tell. I like the slicing of Hârnic knowledge into discrete articles. The flavour of the place really comes through. But you will need a kingdom module and a city or two and a map to start adventuring in Hârn. The Kingdom of Kaldor was bundled up with this title when I bought it but it really isn't enough. A map is sorely needed in the bundle and a city module too. Hence, only four stars for a thing grandiously called a master module that is actually only an introduction.

Yes! Paper minis, medium and large. This is the way! 2D is way easier to manage than 3D and has certain nostalgia about it. Keep on making more of these!

Hârn is full of peculiar small things for a newcomer such as me. Here, an article on potions. Bought this on a moments decision since I got a discount code. The article is certainly interesting in a pseudo-academic way (as seems to be the way of Hârnic articles) and probably useful also outside of Hârnic roleplaying. It does what it says and does it in a no-nonsense way: it tells about some potions. Nothing very special or emotion-inducing but definitely exceedingly adequate.

I wasn't sure of what to expect of an article about potions only but I'm sure those expectations were satisfied.

Simply lovely! I love the artwork and the simplicity of printing and cutting the ones you need. For the next set, can we have even more of the large four-square monsters please?

Too silly for me. Depicting a fantasy archipelago as a tourist attraction is a bold choice for encapturing players' imagination. It didn't work for me and made me hate the book. Besides the funny bits there's also too little about the ways of the society iand peoples' goings on in general. The DM is left in the dark, left to be one of the tourists. Also the usual problem of the GAZ's not acknowledging each other's existence persists. Ierendi is not too far from Karameikos and Darokin but their interaction can hardly be felt. This is a general problem with the Known World: its nations feel like bubbles in a vacuum.

You don't need this product. And if you are a completetist you won't need this book either.

The maps are useless in the POD but that's a sad and understandable given.

A superb distillation of 5e and OSR into a fast-flowing game. Easy to pick up and have game going in no time. Admirably abundant as a quickstart.

As a product, SD is a bit marred by its 5e roots. Why does it have to have Burning Hands, demons and devils, aboleths, and all these DnD lore staples? Why can't SD have ts own flavour in lore?

This is the real thing! I've got hours of enjoyment out of this game. The book has plenty of optional material that makes it grow in usefulness the more I use it. For instance, at first I thought soloing a published group-adventure module wouldn't be for me but soon I'll be doing that too.

Somehow solo RPG'ing is a bit scary thing to start doing. You don't see too many examples and the whole RPG scene is usually explained in terms of group activity. In that respect the book is written in a lovely encouraging way. It gives you the solo player confidence in your decisions.

On a scale from 0 to 5 this is a six-star game for me.

Thematically lovely: I especially liked the laid-back non-conflict exploration of Eridoor and the environmental and eco-reconstruction themes. The myriad random tables lead to excessive flipping of pages and that sadly takes away from my immersion in the story. As a randomizer I prefer dice over deck of cards. Constant shuffling of cards slows down the pace. The skill test mechanic that scales with site difficulty was ingenious.

A charming game even if not the brightest star. A solid add to my collection.

Lots, lots and lots of useful stuff here! The brightest stars for me are the behavior check and the dungeon crafter. Works absolutely fine with the Mythic GME 2nd ed even though some of the material here seems to have ended up the GME2 in a condensed form. But still, loooots of new and useful material here.

A very useful tool that makes your brain work and sprout ideas. For RPG campaign prepping the full version is perhaps too detailed. It's ok if you're doing just one settlement but if you're going to build a set of towns or a small kingdom the interconnections are probably going to be too hard to keep up with. But But as a creative writing tool it's spot on and you can always use the included shorter "express version" if the full experience is too crunchy. A tip for new Pendulum-swingers: At some points during phases 1 to 3 you're going to start to question if some of your choices are probable or realistic. Mark these places down so that you remember to revise them during phase 4. Actually, phase 4 seems to be the most important phase, which is not very obvious since phases 1 to 3 take up the bulk of the Pendulum book. I think I hear echoes of the prepping for the season 2 of TotM behind some Pendulum prompts. Extra love for that!