Got this the day it was released and printed it up and laminated that weekend. Folks, it is beautiful. It is a simple and elegant way to present the key rules for Ironsworn: Starforged. It's also super portable and fits into a traveler's notebook. It makes it easy to travel with just the relevant bits for a game. Highly recommended.

3 stars if only for the concept. Issues: Not enough Spanish by far. Not acknowledging one of El DF's biggest issues - water. Also, unless there are major global climate changes, desert won't be near Mexico City - should be mountains. Earthquakes I can believe, hurricanes I cannot. Also, shouldn't the artists get credit for their pieces in the book? Generic dystopian cyberpunk city.

Simple system, easy character creation with role protection for the character. There is an adventure system, but there really needs to be some genre specific oracles. Only art in the book is the cover.

Not bad, I'm not sure it's worth 15 bucks though. No art save the cover. Lots of white space. And it reads like a WIP - the sections on law are incomplete - they all repeat investigation, jurisdiction and punishment without any details. The three factions are fun and seem to fit with what I know about Solarpunk. The sample adventures are good and fit with the idea.

Folks, I bought Altered State for art, hoping it would be the same as the other ICRPG games with the art ready to be used. If you need a map or VTT tokens, this game will set you up. But if you're hoping for more art for cards like the other games, this one doesn't deliver.

Utopia is a game and open ended setting for solo, GM-less play or GM’d play. This review is for solo play using the actual book. For 238 pages you get a pretty good bit - character creation and rules, setting and worked examples of cities, oracle/newsfeed for events.

The book is pretty with what I consider wide margins, lots of art (some of which is reused) through out that gives a pretty good feel for what the world will be like. Also, it’s a post-apocalyptic setting - asteroid strike - but feel free to use what you want.

Character creation starts with your character’s basics (name, pronouns, description), 2 personality traits (no real game effect), origin/social level (non-human (artificial human, clone, AI, datawave (aka uploads), murkblood, lowborn, riser or highborn), specialization (aka class), assign 2 extra skill points and picking a long term and short term goal for your character.

The rules are pretty compact, taking only 31 pages from skill rolls (2d10 + d6 for each point of relevant skill, + d6 for each relevant knowledge) to combat. Players can roll with advantage (3d10, planning ahead, ambushes, doing the homework) or disadvantage (1d10, being ambushed, someone else planned ahead, etc.). Any of the d10’s come up a 10, that’s a critical which can give Bravado, do extra damage or a bigger pay out. Rolling a 1 on any of the d10’s means a complication or fumble to the contest. A player can choose to succeed with a complication (failing forward effectively) if they need to succeed but it ramps up the danger level of the setting. Players may also choose to spend Bravado (the meta-currency of the game) which adds an additional d6 for each Bravado point spent. And there are no limits on the number of Bravado points that can be spent at one time. In my experience, this system is a bit more generous than other ones I’ve dealt with and great for playing big damn heroes. Equipment can make a huge difference - just an electrified stun stick that did an extra wound of damage made a big difference in a fight for my tanker (a hand to hand heavy specialization).

Each interval of the game is a week, which works pretty well for setting the pace and getting your character into trouble (and detailed combats and other messes). And each specialization has a special ability that can be used 3 times a week, or for certain specific effects. In my experience, this works out pretty well, and there are ways the number of uses per week for technological based abilities can be increased (see the machinist specialization).

Actions are part of the way skills can be used - getting a job, assembling resources, adding new people to the character’s circle, laying low, etc., etc. Basically, they’re worked examples of how to use the skills to do specific things.

There are 16 skills (Athletics, Bartering, Deception, Dodge, Engineering, Hacking, Investigation, Medicine, Melee Weapons, Persuasion, Ranged Weapons, Science, Sneak, Software Programming, Tough, Unarmed Combat). One thing - Investigation is a sort of über skill - it’s used for so many actions (Find Another Way, Gather Information, Meet Someone New, Search), so I really suggest characters get a dot in Investigation no matter what.

Equipment covers weapons, cybernetics, a few drugs, some technology, hacking programs and drones. No vehicles though, but I think a large drone could easily be tweaked around to cover a motorcycle sized vehicle and that the table could be extended to include larger drones (Cybertanks and autonomous killer aircraft anyone? Or how about just self driving cars?) for those that want to include such things in their games. I also think the equipment misses some options (vehicles, some cybernetic and implant options (more stealth, less shooty & stabby), primitive weapons), but that’s more of a personal thing.

The city building can be a neat mini-game, randomly generating a place for the adventures to take place. I’ll also say it’s a bit weak because the tables don’t include some more science fictional options like a gerontocracy of datawaves, or an AI dictator and so on. I’ll admit I have my finger on the scales for cities that are more solarpunk than cyberpunk, but that’s a personal preference. The table for generating the cities goes for the wastelands outside your city is also kind of limited - some of the “neater” options like a poison jungle of genetically modified plants and animals aren’t there, but you can plug them right in if you want. I’ll also admit to hacking around on developing a 6x6 table for governments and wasteland environments. Also, I found I could plug in cities from Uprising, fiction and even Shelter One from Hack the Planet without much trouble at all.

Finally, some things that can be very useful for the game are Hack The Planet (particularly the reference sheets, pages 24-30), Dystopia (plus supplements), Augmented Reality the Holistic City Kit, Remote Control (drones, drones and more drones), 13 Things: Gene Spliced Dogs, Shadowrun's Paranormal Animals of North America and Europe.

Overall, Utopia needs more and better organization. The newsfeed needs to be up in the front of the book near where the rules for using it are. Same goes for the NPC generation tables.

There is support with 3 free dossiers with 3 NPCs and adventures available on DriveThruRpg.

But overall, 4 out of 5 stars. Yes, it needs better organization, but that’s not a deal breaker. It can be played as is without much trouble.

This looks so good and highlights the flexibility of the system and what other settings it can be adapted to.

Got the individual flavor packs and I bought the collected hard cover version and the physical cards.

What do you get? Versions of Itonsworn inspired by Japanese, Norse, Indian, African and South American myths and legends. Each one includes a version of the Iron Lands adapted to the inspiration and assets that also fit. Some of the assets are companions, others weapons and others rituals. And, oh yes, you get monsters and opposition as well, also inspired by the myths and legends of the regions.

So why take off the star? Because the African section had an asset reprinted twice - The Way of the Buffalo overwrites the Way of the Wild Dog. Also, the card has a spelling error "make due with less." I'm sure there are other errors in the book, but that's the most egregious.

In the meanwhile, I'm going to likely use this, Ironsmith and Delve to stitch together most of a Polynesian/Hawaiian inspired setting.

This is a beautiful, well written product. The art is eye catching and evocative, the writing is clear and helps spark ideas, plus it provides examples. It's Powered by the Apocalypse, so it won't be to everyone's taste, but I enjoy it. One way I described it to a friend is: a cross between Microscope, Pendragon, Gamma World and the Morrow Project. Microscope and Pendragon as your group defines the apocalypse and then as play develops, what came after - how is civilization rebuilt? In what form? Gamma World because the apocalypses you can use range from the conventional to the weird to the whimsical. The Morrow Project because it seems to focus on building a new world. The apocalypse doesn't just have to be major population centers disappearing in a nuclear flash. You can put together a variety - from a failed interstellar colony expedition (Titanomachy), the sun going out (Hordes of Endless Night), to the robot revolt, nanoclysm, hard take off singularity that didn't get very far, to plague, zombie hordes, peak oil or something else you and your players cook up. Players don't just play a character, but also their family (organization really - it can be a faith, military unit, etc), with unique abilities as they negotiate with the other players over their different goals. Family capabilites are defined by their moves and what surpluses or needs they have. And there are many, many categories of those.

Like the Player's Guide I bought this when it first came out. And sadly, it shares many of the Player's Guide's faults (art, layout, lack of bookmarks for the index).

It also has the problem of not giving much advice on how to capture the feel the author is looking for. Lots of behind the scenes and historical material explaining things in the player's guide, but not much on how to use it for what the author was shooting for. And sadly, this game needs a fair amount of advice. I'm an experienced GM and to me it needed the advice. I could write up my own material to make it useful to me, but isn't that what I paid for? For a start, advice on how to handle and use First Empire characters and technologies in the game would have been very useful.

Some better attention to world building, specifically how the gates are operated by the icons that seem to be largely controlled by the church and that has some interesting repercussions right there.

Anyway, again, I wanted to like this more (Arthurian space opera married to the FATE system), but it has some substantial flaws and would require major work by any purchaser to make it more useful for a GM.

I bought this and the GM's book when it first came out and I want to like it so much. I mean, Arthurian space opera married to the FATE system. What could be wrong with that? Sadly, lots. First and foremost, the art could be much better, which is pretty sad given that there is lots of decent fantasy clip art available on rpgnow. Second, this is a .pdf product that does not have a navigable table of contents or bookmarks for the major topic headers. Third, layout could be much better. Fourth, the book is a (and the author comes across as) bit confused about the FATE system and seems to go out of its way to strip away a lot of the open ended aspects of the FATE system by severely limiting the aspects available in character creation, removing the stunts system (not even leaving behind something like Diaspora's build your own stunts). Combine this with an aim at the old school gaming (complete with dungeons to delve in (I kid you not)) and its a bit of a mess. Fifth, the Player's Guide makes reference to a lot of things called First Empire and not really addressed until you get to the GM's Guide. This material should have either been removed entirely, or left for the GM's Guide.

All in all, I want to like this more, but as it stands, it needs more work, from reorganization of the files to the author being more clear in what he's trying for.

This is an OK product. Its worth the $2.50 I paid, but barely. Its got some great adaptations of Spirit of the Century to the steam punk genre. However, it also has some flaws that made me grit my teeth.

First, the computer generated art, with a few exceptions, clashes with the subject matter (hint: ditch the post apocalyptic stuff, also dig up Victorian clip art). Second, page references are incorrect on several points. See the Experiment, Bartitsu Master, Ghost Finder and Mechanical man. See also Military Mind, Dr. Hill's Electric Pentacle and probably more that I couldn;'t find. Third, the table of technologies (day-to-day, modern marvels and soon to come) seem to have lost their labels making them a bit confusing.

All in all, it could be a better product. However, one aspect that stands out is the sample adventure included. If adventures like this could be made available for BBS, I'd buy them.

Since I'm a fencing geek and studying longsword, I saw this and was intrigued. Since it was cheap ($1.75) I decided to give into the impulse and buy it.

Now, for $1.75 it isn't bad, but its not very good either. Of the 4 pages, one of them is the cover illustration, another is the OGL, so the remaining two pages go to the rules and flavor text and it favors the rules over the flavor text. Now, I might just steal large portions of this to use with CLUDGE (Classless, Leveless, Universal Do it yourself Gaming Engine), but as someone who doesn't use a lot of D20 these days I was a little disappointed.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Cover art. The one paragraph of flavor text. <br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: To brief. Not enough to make it stand out and not enough flavor or a worked example.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>