The way that this system intertwines D&D 5e while still making it it's own thing is so refreshing, and the gameplay fully reminded me of when I did my playthroughs of Dark Souls 2 and 3.

So: this is a streamlined version of D&D 5e with a Dark Souls coating. The corebook includes origins (which replace races- you can only be human), classes, all the rules you need to play, and a some specific world info (spells, equipment, NPCs, locations and a decent bestiary.) Everything is illustrated with beautiful artwork from the games (if you already have the Dark Souls Design Works books, there's nothing new here.) There's a heavy bias towards the setting of Dark Souls 3 in the core book, to the almost exclusion of the other two games.

I won't pretend it's anywhere near perfect: there's very little wiggle room within the classes, it doesn't include any trace of what I consider a core Dark Souls mechanic (the world reset, which forces you to explore tactically, look for shortcuts, and all the other aspects of what makes wandering into the dark of Dark Souls so unique) and it doesn't even attempt to explain what Dark Souls 'is' to someone who hasn't played the games. I'm also not convinced with the enemy stats blocks either, as a lot of monsters are way too powerful for their CR and can easily one-shot characters- especially at low levels.

However, I've been running it for the last few months and it's been a blast. The main reason for that is the Position mechanic. Position replaces hit points and allows players (and some monsters) to spend their 'life' to enhance rolls - saving throws, to hit and damage rolls... it adds a lot to the game in the way of options and risk/reward decisions and fixes some fundamental problems I have with the 5e rules (namely, that it's not uncommon for players to miss and spend their combat rounds feeling useless). There's a few other positives; while character builds are lacking in options, it makes character creation a breeze (you can 'roll' most characters in twenty minutes), and there's a hefty equipment roster that allows for further personalization (each individual weapon, shield or armour, even mundane ones, comes with its own ability). Bloodied rules come back from 4e, giving another layer of strategy to the proceeds - different origins grant characters a distinct set of bonuses when they're under half hit poi- ehr, position. This also applies to some monsters, which allows you to have fights with multiple stages.

These rules changes have made for some really enjoyable sessions. While I've had to add a layer of homebrew on top of it (and create my own bosses) to make it actually feel like Dark Souls, the base is so good; I'll seriously miss these mechanics whenever I go back to vanilla D&D. And if that's not worth five stars, I don't know what is.

Great game. Loved it, and my players loved it. It'll do for me.

DS3 is my fave of the series, so loved this. Got the feel of a game like Black Hack or Old School Essentials but I can get my 5e players to actually play it, which makes a nice change! Would have liked more GM advice on stuff like constructing the right kind of encounters, but still think this is a pretty great job all round!

To say that the release of this book has been a disaster would be a hell of an understatement. I originally rated this book 1 star because it was still rife with game breaking errors and spelling mistakes.

I'm happy to say that these have been dealt with as of the most recent update of the pdf. The classes are fun and once you get the position system combat is seamless, fun and challenging. I recommend it.

This game has a lot of potential, and strives to capture some of the game play of the video games using the D&D 5e rules. However, even after the round of revisions from the first release, there are still some inconsistencies in the rules, and on the whole, it feels like the game needed some more playtesting just to tweak the mechanics to get them 'right'. Certainly the style of the book, and the artwork evokes the video games and some elements of the game system attempt to replicate game play, but overall it feels a little unpolished as a game.

The game seems great, but has quite a few major flaws, and one of them is what seems like blatant plagiarism.

I'm going to point out the first one, and this is the one that peeves me the most - there are many bosses in this book that are ripped directly from the 5E Monster Manual. Is this legal, considering the fact that you charged money for this? Do the license holders of both intellectual properties know that you did this?

Artorias the Abysswalker, which is probably the most iconic boss fight in the entire Souls series to anybody that played the games, is a nearly identical rip of the 5E Erinyes.

• They both have 18 AC
• They have the same Attributes of 18 STR, 16 DEX, 18 CON, 14 INT, 14 WIS, and 18 CHA.
• They have the same Saving throws of Dex +7, Con +8, Wis +6, Cha +8
• They both have a truesight of 120 and a passive perception of 12
• The have the same Multiattack property of 3 Attacks.
• Their long sword attack is the same, with Artorias dealing the same
• The Abyss Sludge attack is the Erinyes Longbow attack but with shorter range. It has the same DC 14 CON save against being poison and the poison can still be removed by the "lesser restoration spell." This isn't a spell in the Dark Souls TTRPG! You actually copy-pasted the description of the attack and didn't even take the effort to change the spells name to Remedy?
• The Parry reaction is word for word the same, with only pronouns changed to reflect the fact that Artorias is a guy.
• Artorias has a Bloodied Wrath of the Abyss action which is the Erinyes' Hellish Weapon feature.
• They have the same Challenge Rating of 12.

There is more! Kalameet is just an Ancient Black Dragon. The Gaping Dragon is just an Ancient Bronze Dragon. The Hydra is an exact 1-to-1 rip of the Hydra from the Monster Manual. There are more examples, such as the Taurus Demon being a Balor Demon or the Mimic being a 1-to-1 rip. I'm astonished that this was allowed to be published like this.

The rest of the review to follow now.

This is mostly just D&D5E scaled up to drastic amounts of stats. Most classes get up to 4 or 5 attacks. Races are now Origins. The coolest concept is the Dark Souls resurrection feature. It's handled quite well in this game and I appreciate the thought that went into it. The system of Background, Memories, and Drives are concise and allow for some great role playing opportunities!

The Position system is... cool, but has some weird problems. Position is your HP. You can only spend Position on special effects once during your turn. Every piece of armor, weapon, and shield have a special ability that cost Position. You can increase the damage of your attacks with Position as well. Spells cost Position to cast, which means that you are unable to do the other special effects that use Position during your turn, even if those special effects are considered reactions, which means casting spells is a very dangerous proposition...

The magic system is cool but I believe it needs a quick home brew to make it competitive and effective in comparison to just using melee or ranged attacks.

• Remove the base Position cost from all Spell-Casting
• Give Spell-Casting the ability to increase damage dice for Position Cost; maybe add a dice per each 3 Position you spend to a maximum of 9 Position?
• Give all Spells their number of casts from Dark Souls 1, or if you're lazy, add +3 casts to all Miracles and Pyro-mancy spells.

Dark Souls has a weapon upgrade system, but there doesn't seem to be one in this game. Maybe a mechanic where you can spend souls to give a weapon an extra dice of damage?

There's more but it has been said better by other people. Please, Steamforged Games - give some TLC to this game because you had an opportunity to make a wonderful TTRPG based on a beloved series of games and it just feels like you took some good mechanics that you half-implemented and didn't playtest it at all... put aside the fact that you guys ripped a bunch of stuff from the Monster Manual. Please come back and give us another update or a content drop.

An innovative and fun take on 5e. Not a huge Dark Souls fan, but wanted some new monsters, and this has them, and I'll probably lift a few of the mechanics and equipment ideas out too. I really enjoyed it!

This is a pretty good example of why D20 is not a great system for a lot of things, the back and forth high stress combat of the souls series just does not translate well with just how much of the core rules that have been changed to try and make it "fit" and only being moderately successful. There are some things that clearly took inspiration from the DS board game that Steamforged games also made, which may or may be a deal breaker for some.

Some of whats here is pretty well written and on the whole the book does a MUCH better job with laying out the rules than d&d does but some of the changes are just a bit baffling.

Instead of the normal hp system D20 uses you have "Position" which is a catch all for health/stamina and general readyness. Functionally its hp but you have your lvl 1 class health but with a hit dice worth of temporary hp per level and you roll it every fight. Position is also spent for casting spells and weapon arts so you can pretty much kill yourself if you arent careful, I get that they were going for a "overcomitting is dangerous" to fit with the Souls theme but it really doesn't play well (on paper at least).

The Initiative system change is also not a good one. Players roll initiative as normal, enemies have a fixed initiative. Players going before the enemies can activate in whichever order they choose as can any going after, this works quite well in a players vs a single opponent scenario such as a boss but when there are multiple enemy types they all activate at the same time as the highest CR enemy rather than having slow undead be slow etc. which......is just bad design.

A great many of the famous weapons, armour and trinkets of the souls series as well as the various sorceries and incantations all have individual entries, sadly very few of them do anything remotely like their ingame equivelant, this is anoither example of trying to force the souls experience into a ruleset not built for it. There is no smithing or anything of that nature either, you get what you get and its honestly quite random what a weapon does, doubly so when Dark Souls staples like bleeding and forstbite aren't included.. An Average shortsword does lightning damage as its skill for example.

I will say that the replacement Character creation system is very well written, rather than try to stat the various types of people in the Souls series you simply pick one of four Origins, which has fixed stats (no rolling atributes) you get a melee/tank, a dex melee/archer, a caster and a jack of all trades. These funcionally replace race in d&d.

The Classes are all there, some kind of close to what they should be, some arent.

One further thing that bothered me was that this is not Dark Souls the rpg, Its Dark Souls 3. It has some things from across the franchise but everything about this is based on Dark Souls 3, from terminiology to the art throughout the book.

Theres also practically zero lore about anything which is a massive strike against in my books, even for core concepts of things like the age of fire. You assumedly are expected to either know going in or have a DM try to explain such concepts.

Overall, not the worst thing ever but a prime example of why jumping on the "5e" bandwagon is not always a good idea.

Loads of corrections and edits through, seems all good to me on that front. Game itself is enjoyable, does a damn fine job of summing up that Dark Soulsy vibe

This book does an amazing job of capturing the ahem soul of the video game and bringing it into a playable and understandable format for tabletop. Basing the system in 5e makes the game accessible to millions of players already familiar with the system. Dark Souls the Roleplaying Game also adds interesting new mechanics and concepts that are easy to integrate and are simple to take to other settings to add some gritty alternatives.

Definitely fun on its own and super useful for players looking for interesting, and sometimes brutal, options.

Well-done implementation of 5E atop the Dark Souls themes and mechanics. Any errors present are pretty easily fixed by the GM. It's nothing game-breaking. People seem to look for things to pile on.

A lot of people have been overly critical of this product by Steamforged games. It's a subtle and refeshing take on the DnD 5e system. It keeps enough that you can rely on your existing knowledge or the massive amount of recorded knowledge on how to play DnD 5e while adding just enough to give you something new and interesting to work with. You could criticize it for using too much from DnD 5e, but it takes a lot of work to adapt the 5e system to a world like Dark Souls. People pay for homebrew all the time on DM's Guild and that should extend to the significant amount of effort that the authors have put into this product. You could criticize it for the errors in its content. The authors have remained committed to fixing those errors and pushing out consistent updates to the PDF. I don't expect anything different from an Early Access game on Steam, and I'm not going to hold Steamforge to a higher standard. The question you need to ask is do you want to play a TTRPG set in the Dark Souls universe without having to do the work yourself? If yes, this is the book for you.

I have not seen a bigger cash grab from any company, regardless of medium. Tons of mistakes, a blantant copy of the D&D OGL-available material, just with different names.

Dark Souls: The Roleplaying Game is massive. Massive in size and a massive undertaking to compact over a decade's worth of material into a tabletop rpg book. At first glance, the PDF (I'm still awaiting my physical copy) is gorgeous. Steamforged Games has captured the essence perfectly. The tweaks to the rules, to make D&D 5th edition fall in line with the universe of Dark Souls, had to be daunting but were succesfully achieved. Spells, weapons, armor, mechanics from the video games, all are there in print form allowing one to craft their own stories around the gaming table.

To be fair, there were and are, some errors within the book. From simple grammatical missteps to larger and more invasive rules issues, the errors are quite glaring at times. But Steamforged has been doing their damndest to correct and update these rules. Not only that, but they have promised the people who have purchased physical copies through their preorder system that those errors will be taken care of. That's pretty good customer service in my book. I know many people are still angry, or at least harbor ill feelings, from the confusing releases of the Dark Souls board and card games that were also from Steamforged. But to their credit, they've been very good on giving free updates and clarifications for those games and I'm confident they shall do the same here with the TTRPG.

I would have liked it if the GM section was a little more in-depth. At times it feels more like advice to setting up a miniatures encounter as opposed to creating campaign or one to two night adventure. But all the bits and pieces are there to have at it. It definitely helps though if you have played the games and have some knowledge of the lore. So it may be a turn off to casual fans or people who are completely new to Dark Souls. I recommend hitting up some VaatiVidya lore videos in that case! Heh! But jokes and minor quibbles aside, the Dark Souls RPG is pretty phenomenal. As a fan who has collected all things Souls, is heavily invested in the games, and purchased both the card and board games I cannot recommend this book enough. I think you'll be pleased.