A fun 30 pages of stuff to bring to your table!

The book has a quick bit on dwarven culture in the Weird Wizard universe, about 5 pages. Then goes on to give us some fun stuff to use at character generation – 20 professions, equipment, names, and a new novice path, the Spiritsworn. This is all great for people thinking about playing dwarves, but what about people with existing non-dwarf character you ask? Well let’s address that…

For ALL players we get: 5 new fighting styles for fighters like smasher and tunnel warrior; 3 new rogue abilities like breaker and stone blessed. Chapter 3 gives us new exciting materials used to forge items, new armor types like spiked and ablative (that blows up, wounding your attackers!), new shields like the bladed shield. New weapons with a variety of gadgets and ammo, magical gear and trinkets, like stonemelt and trollblight elixirs, a few animal stats like the stalwart battle ram.

Spells? What about spells? We get the new Ancestor tradition with 14 spells as well as 14 new spells expanding existing traditions, 6 new magical rites as well as rites rules, also covered in Glory of the High One. We also get 5 new exciting items of power.

Well worth $8 and not just for value-conscious and gold-greedy dwarves – a lot of this material can be used for other characters.

Gotta say, I didn't know if this would work - it has a very tight simple structure compared to a lot of games, but wow, he had a lot of fun with this and will probably use it as a fill in game when our normal game has people out. Lots of fun, the toughs get kills and the people that don't get promotions owing to their abilities to spin facts to their superiors. The extra equipment gives a fun advancement mechanic as well - players always want a bigger gun, vehicle or the ability to call in a bombardment!

This picks up where Falling Tears leaves off, continuing the Return of the Witch King adventure path. People travelling through an underground pass are vanishing and the PCs are tasked with finding out why and dealing with it. The reason is pretty creepy, with a horrifying conclusion that presages the Witch King's return. This adventure leans hard into the terrifying and vile when you get to the end, but hey, its Demon Lord, so pretty on brand! If you have sensitive players, the GM can probably edit on the fly a bit. If you are a sensitive GM...well, maybe this one is not for you!

This is the kick off to the Return of the Witch King adventure path. Drudge, having just taken over the empire has sent his orc army to quell any resistance to his rule, and the PCs are going to need to survive them!

This reminded me a bit of Dead by Dawn in that it has mechanics to see if the characters are caught, and in their attempt to flee they might run across many different encounters. You could play this a few times and it might go differently. Its nice to have one more Starting Adventure for the game as well, overall I enjoyed and it falls more in line with SotDL World Lore than the other adventures available, but like most demon lord, make sure your players understand - they are their to SURVIVE not trade fun quips with orcs, or their heads will likely be on pikes by the end!

TLDR: An impressive players book of 20k playable classes for a heroic style game awaiting its other half - a game master’s book with monsters and more.

First, this book should be understood to be a player’s guide - it does not have monsters or gamemaster material in it. It also defaults to the ancestry of human, though many more will come out later.

Having covered what you don’t get, let’s discuss all the things you DO get:

A slightly streamlined (compared to 5e DnD) d20 and d6 based fantasy RPG. It uses a boon and bane system of good (additive) d6s - you only take the highest one. Banes are similar but hurt your rolls. This elegant mechanic takes a lot of weight off the system. He does with 4 abilities what some games require 6 to accomplish. Modifiers make sense, a 10 is a +0 to rolls, 13 is +3, 8 is -2. You do not need to memorize a table, just take 10-the stat to get the modifier. Spellcasting does not use slots, the spell you choose specifies how many times you can cast it. There are only 3 categories of spell power. There are no feats, most of your cool options as a player come from class, which is extremely innovative and leads to a high degree of replayability and theorycrafting if that is your joy.

If you are used to his previous work, Shadow of the Demon Lord, the big differences are a new luck score (basically roll a 10+ on a d20). This is used in a variety of situations, like shrugging off spells or seeing if you can cast or use a potent talent again. Weapons have traits far beyond damage that differentiate them, making them feel different. A critical with a bludgeoning weapon makes your target vulnerable until your next turn ends for example. Spells are divided into Novice, Expert and Master for each tradition - making selection easier on players. The sometimes crude dark or juvenile humor from Demon Lord is excised but some spell effects are still a bit darker than 5e. Tonally I feel this game fits in between the PG DnD and R of Demon Lord, its PG-13 but nothing that would make me cringe over reading to mom. Overall, my sense is these player characters are far less grim and desperate and much more heroic compared to Demon Lord. They have more margin of error and will not die. Starting at level 1 helps as well. This feels very tonally similar to DnD. They also have inherent traits like defense based on class selection and get bonus damage just because they are dangerous. Do not mess with a level 5 fighter, he might kill you with that pen he is holding! The already great Demon Lord initiative system is even further streamlined, making play a nice combo of fast and tactical..

So let’s tally what you get in the game:

23 traditions of spells, like Alchemy, Chronomancy, Technomancy, Teleportation and War. Spells have about 6 novice expert and master spells, so that’s about 414 spells in total.

4 novice classes (for levels 1,2 and 5) these are your classics: Fighter Mage, Priest, Rogue

42 expert classes (for levels 3, 4, 6, 9) in categories of battle, faith, power and skill

121 master classes for levels 7,8 and 10 in categories of arms, gods, magic and prowess.

The class design is the main selling point of this game. There are NO prerequisites for classes. This is one of the few games you can play a Rogue Juggernaut Cryomancer. Some quick math reveals there are 20,328 class combinations in this book. That is without the customization of spells or (eventually) ancestries. This leads to a huge degree of replayability because as a player there is ALWAYS a class combination you have not tried out.

This book is a great buy, my only caveat is you might hold off until the Sage book with monsters comes out to pick it up since right now it is half a system - maybe you want to get started reading the rules though. Overall it's a GREAT buy. Highly recommended.