A fascinating concept with an amusing visual theme to its technology. Each element of the setting felt a bit underdeveloped to me, suggesting some period series or author that I could drop in to juice it up and pull it together a bit more, so maybe a page or so on those potential sources would have been helpful. Fully developing two or three adventures for the setting perhaps could have given it more sinew. It's possible, I suppose, that I'm holding this to a narrative standard that most of the pulp writers themselves would have struggled to meet.

A fine collection of holy blades and their histories, dedicated to a series of very different interpretations of Good.

I'm left with a few questions after reading this, particularly over the .. reinvention, I suppose you'd call it, of unholy water. The salesperson on the cover is presumably not Krazy Kragnar, unless he's been drinking some of his own concoctions.

Well-written description for the Warrior, Rogue, Mage rules of a selection of items that, essentially, you'll find in a gamemaster's guide of any edition for well-known RPGs.

Provides a campaign-building resource with several different, sound-looking options for more limited magic, along with historical notes, references, miscellaneous period flavour and campaign suggestions.

The price is about right for a very straightforward combat set-up in an early space opera setting (Solar System, hyperdrive just coming in) with really not enough to it to present significant problems fitting it in with a different background.

This has an interesting structure, with ways for different team members to assist the lone-hacker types who traditionally have posed a problem for game play and a "wrap up" phase that changes the narrative around quite radically. The rule system looks like a pretty simple little toy, but maybe the full game shows more subtleties.

I was expecting .. more, but no doubt, since I praised an earlier part of this arc for its restraint, I can't have it both ways. The big finish seems more manipulative than epic.

Great issue! It's definitely out with the old, in with the new. Things begin moving along and the scope of the conspiracy begins to appear, after a dilatory previous couple of episodes.

I like this new direction, with more restrained art and a storyline with genuine pull.

Treatment of magic and fantasy creatures in Cortex seems to work well here, promising a strong alternative fantasy system in the making.

The sample adventure and its setting have a bit more of a folkloric feel than many standard fantasy offerings. I wonder how players used to other settings will respond to some of the more direct plot-driving events.

Some of the characters and organisations in this scenario are interesting, but it all feels amazingly generic, presenting a series of jobs out of the big list of SF plots that end up with the PCs handed some alien gewgaw that appears to be the hook for later adventures. There's little actively wrong with it, apart from some slips of editing.

This is a superior piece of space opera, good-looking, energetic and just a bit over-the-top, giving character-generation options and campaign nuggets to describe Mafia-run worlds and hardened children of the empire of crime anywhere.

I've run this partway through online, with some extra work on descriptions and graphics, to positive response from the group. The mission is well-structured to throw the characters back on their own resources in an unusual hard-SF environment, playing through a significant event in the campaign's history. Worth the effort, I found, to bring this fairly terse product to life.

It's a well-crafted conversion of a combat-focused race with good-looking layout and art. For me, the concept was a bit one-dimensional and not as interesting as some of the other creatures of Violet Dawn, but I certainly can't fault it if that's what you want from the purchase.