After a few ups and downs in the Micro RPG series, this book really surprised me at how satisfied I was both with the amount of content provided and how well it worked. Alongside Micro Sci-Fi RPG this is definitely one of the best books I've seen in the series so far. It adds a lot of systems and those systems work really well. I also really appreciate a specific line in the book I'm going to repeat here: "The method for determining when the boss can appear is slightly different than previous core rulebooks. As such, choose the method you enjoy most. " I love this attitude and it's one of the reasons why I keep digging further into the Micro RPG library because even books I haven't been overly thrilled with still usually manage to have value in the options they provide for play.

Of note, the crafting system in the game is fairly well thought out and provides a good system of sinking resources into getting items that otherwise a player can't get access to when they're stranded on the island. The dinosaur companion rules are interesting and expand on combat. Really fantastic is how each enemy you encounter has special rules unique to it. This is something I thought went really well in Micro Sci-Fi RPG that I felt was missing in other titles. Each dungeon-like area has special rules too which also felt really fantastic. The seaside cave has the tides roll in, you search for clues in ancient ruins to reveal more about the island-- the finale might even include an exploding volcano that you have to outrun the flowing lava as it pours down the mountain ascent. The exit tables not following the idea that rolling low on dice is better for the player in general (outside of rolling for damage) was a bit strange, but was a minor nitpick. I also really liked how the core gameplay was kept to using d6s. One thing I've far preferred in the Micro RPG series is using other size dice as little as possible. (d3 and d2 count as d6s for this particular prefernce)

The only big issue I had with the book I encounted at the very end and comes from the confusing way that filling in the map hexes are explained. From the language used, I was expecting "Dinosaur Valley" to be the final location in the center of the isle and finishing reading the final hard location and not seeing this tables for the Dinosaur Valley location confused me. After a lot of ctrl+F and re-reading, I think the intention is that you only ever place one Hard area, that it goes in the center hex, and that whichever one it is, THAT is Dinosaur Valley in addition to the name it already has. There are seven non-Hard areas which exactly match the number of hexes around the island, though with the way rolling for them is described, I'm not sure they will all fill in unless you tweak the rules a bit. It's a bit overly confusing and I feel like it's the sort of thing an editor or playtester would catch.

Otherwise the same minor nitpicks I've had with the series mostly apply here as well. There's mispellings or wrong words used occasionally, and there can be issues with using the same terminology throughout the book to refer to the same thing and issues with the language being unclear if certain things happen regardless of if you pass or fail or if only on a fail, because it's included in a new sentence after previous instructions. Still these don't severely impact this book and if what you're looking for is more mechanics and ideas to expand your options then this is a fantastic choice. Even if the specific genre of surviving on a dinosaur-filled island isn't your specific cup of tea this is a very beefy book with not only a whole lot of material, but a lot of GOOD material and if you're like me and don't mind rolling up your sleeves for a bit of DIY in your solo gaming I think book is a stellar example of the reason I've fallen in love with the Micro RPG system.

This is a fun expansion to the Neon Road rules that add cars for the player's character to own and drive around in. Overall I think it's a good system that I only have a few minor nitpicks about. One is a really minor layout issue where the table for calls includes an extreaneous column that, for all entries, says to refer to the table located right under it. Second I was of disappointed that the player is instructed that they may place a Car Dealership in the City area from the main book, but with no real direction or suggestions on how to do this in a mechanical way. Maybe something like "when you encounter a Parking Lot, you may instead place a Car Dealership instead," for example. Except maybe not the Parking lot since that's only a 2.77% chance for encounting that location! The expansion is also missing any sort of car experiences where anyone other than the player has a car. So no car chases, no shootouts on the road between cars or anything like that. Finally there's a bit of a disconnect that your car can explode when rolling a 3 on 3d6-- most of this game and it's systems want you to roll low for anything that isn't a damage calculation, so I think it would make sense if that was an 18 (same probability chance) instead. Again, very minor nitpicks. Maybe the Wanted Level coul've been realized in a bit more of an interesting way too-- but I feel like I've focused way too much on negatives here already.

And those nitpicks aside I found this to be a pretty helpful book for me. The sort of Fallout/Mad Max meets Shadowrun/Cyberpunk feeling I got from Neon Road was sorely missing the all important car elements and this provided a good expansion of that experience. If you're looking for your character to be able to get a vehicle to run roughshod over their foes and the landscape of Neon Road, this definitely provides that experience and is overall a very interesting expansion to the rules presented in the main book.

A bit of a disappointing purchase, I think I expected more out of the first Neon Road adventure than what amounts to a new Area to explore that does little to expand the Neon Road experience. The Door/Move chart is improved from the ones in the main book, but the Room Chart seems to share the issue as the one in the main books where I'm not sure if it was inteded to be a flat chance for each entry or if the bell curve of 2d6 results was taken into account. I feel like with the enemies and boss you can start to see the thinking that led to the improvements in later Micro RPG products, but it's not quite there.

I struggled a bit on if I should rate this product lower, but at the price point a new set of charts and the boss testing and enemies with ranged attacks mechanics being included pushed me over to the realm of keeping it at "it's mediocre." I wouldn't really recommend this book overall, especially since the same or similar mechanics can be found in other Micro RPG books, but if you're looking for some new tables for inspiration then you might find what you're looking for here.

A bit of an older set of Micro RPG adventures, this was a really good intro to the system that kept things simple, but really showed off the potential of future entries. I really like how it tried to integrate interacting with the tavern keeper at the beginning and I especially liked the system with how you can potential make friends with them and how it can influence the adventure and the subsequent books in the Chronicles. On a whole, this is a simpler implementation of the Micro RPG ruleset, but as an example of the potential or just to get your feet wet, it seems like a very good introductory set to the system. I was really thrilled by the climax of the first book and when I finished it I was all-in on wanting more.

If you're looking for a quick and simple intro to the system this set of adventures might whet your appetite, but if you're more interested in something more complex you might want to give this a pass. As an introductory example to both the system and the types of design space it exists in, though I enjoyed it and find it an easy recommendation to anyone with a passing interest in the system that is okay with the simpler style of play and wants a more directed experience than a randomly generated play space.

As someone who ravenously devours solo TRPGs, I was pretty impressed by Micro Sci-Fi RPG. The basic rolling system isn't particularly inventive, but where it really shines is in how useful each stat is for various activities and the variety in which opponents will change the strategies you might need to employ for any given combat, influencing your decisions on when to spend precious points which can used to re-roll most checks-- provided you aren't ending up with a dreaded 6! The system for mapping out areas and generating an adventure were decent and gave me enough of a push to pick up other Micro RPG books to see what new game systems, settings, and adventures there were. Overall, it's been kind of a grab-bag of both good and bad, but this first book that I picked up was very solid and I've already started to recommend it and the system as a whole to friends and acquaintences who enjoy TRPGs and specifically Solo TRPGs.

I do enjoy a good journaling game from time to time, but if that's the sort of experience you're looking for you should know that this is much more of a dungeon/hex crawl sort of game. Closer to a d100 Dungeons or 4 Against Darkness rather than a Starforged/Ironforged or even further-- Thousand Year Vampire. For what it is though, it's extremely well done and fits a hole that was missing for me in my library. Too many Solo TRPGs I've played like this (calling out both d100 dungeons and 4AD here) combat seems boring, without much choice on the player's part and just rolling a die over an over again. Micro Sci-Fi RPG keeps me engaged at every step with decisions to be made and the variety of different situations that can influence those decisions.

A very neat system that suffers in this specific implementation due to some glaring flaws with the way tables are laid out, the price of items, and the lack of meaningful abilities on opponents. If this was the first Micro RPG book I read I probably would not have gotten into the system at all. I managed to make things work by rewriting a lot of tables so that they didn't use bell curve distribution (you're more likely to roll a good melee weapon or a bad ranged weapon on the weapon table, since it's a 2d6 roll straight down) when clearly something more flat was intended. The consumables list (a 3d6 roll) is espeically bad about this. Well, maybe not so bad since bottles of mini vodka can be very helpful depending on character build. There are other oddities too, like Scavenger Hideouts existing in the Ruins area, which cannot generate Scavenger enemies. They do appear as a non-combat encounter in the Move table for the region, though.

One thing I did like about the rules was that Radiation was used both to represent succumbing to the dangers of the irradiated wastelands, as well as being cybernetically augmented, but for that system you have to pick up the Augment book (Expansion 3.3) as well. At the current pricepoint, picking up this book as well as some of the expansion books and the one adventure book did not break the bank, but I was a bit disappointed overall. Solo TRPG gaming can be a bit of a DIY venture some times, so I didn't mind too much having to write my own tables, but if that's a concern for you then maybe you might want to steer clear of this particular book.

I much more highly recommend the Micro Sci-Fi RPG starter book that has much better math on starting funds (you get 1d6 less starting funds in those rules, but items cost single digit amounts rather than the quickly ramping multiples of 5 in Neon Road) and the opponents available have a variety of different abilities within each category.