This could be a little more high-octane and less serious than the blurb might suggest .. Pretty good engineering description of a hydrogen airship with all sorts of crawlspaces and exposed walkways to rove around and ambush bad guys. The pregenerated characters, more or less lifted from various action movies, look well suited to hijinks, one-liners and mayhem. Especially the one with the flame rifle.

A nitpick: Ferrets are not rodents.

I suspect I'm only going to say what's been said many times before. Regardless: The bulk of this fairly short document, the Traveller News Service items, is basically wargame fiction, but it's not badly done. It gives a lot of detail about the progress of the Rebellion and a fine portrayal of propaganda in the different factions.

But the Virus? Just now I find out that silicon-based creatures from planet X are used as major computer components across the Imperium? A virus that physically reshapes computer chips? A virus written for starship transponders that runs on a combine harvester? This is some sort of arbitrary plot voodoo. There's nothing there that improves on what I could make up myself, or that explains anything that needs to be explained to run a game.

A new creature that could set a nasty ambush (I'd like to see how this would look for 4e). The setup described in the text seems unlikely to work with ordinarily cautious players - not because they find the clue described in the blurb, it just isn't a feasible location for several other reasons. Some good ideas for further implications out of combat, such as a new healing spell (dropping the Harry Potter-ish name) that could be helpful at low levels in a number of circumstances.

Good to see this. It gives a positive view of the quality of ideas at the core of the setting. The description goes quite a way to reconcile the very different D&D and Biblical/rabbinical ideas of such a halfbreed and addresses as a prime consideration how the Exalted might work as player characters of diverse personalities and morals.

Besides the culture and history of the League itself (I liked the period of Fadds), this is a very diverse sector with a wide variety of interesting worlds and political tensions.

Nothing like an infected corpse to get players wondering what the GM is up to, and they'd be right to worry. I suspect the party will think hard before volunteering for any future "dragon-slaying". Includes some well-considered combat and skill effects that you won't often see in the world's most popular fantasy game.

I've read a bit about Obsidian Twilight earlier, and thus, this isn't really the preview I would have liked to see to get a better idea what the setting's about. In terms of the lykians themselves, though, it looks pretty and the text gives a fair amount of background. A couple of unexamined assumptions might have yielded more depth and logic to the race if more thoroughly developed, or ditched if the author couldn't justify them.

Hope the text in the covers shown on the last page will be fixed before release.

This is a huge download considering the number of pages and simplicity of art. The style is not particularly descriptive, with no army lists (special notes for particular nations and units are interspersed throughout the body of the rules) and a 4e-like opacity to the game mechanics themselves, so setting up a game will practically take some extra research. The idea of specifying slightly different rules and options for each of the four periods is intriguing, rather than trying to come up with universal descriptions to apply to every possible army.

Not a bad-looking book with good-quality art (also see the addendum which has more dramatic race depictions) and layout. The PDF would be better with bookmarks. Rules and equipment are quite derivative of other products, mainly D&D with some Star Wars elements. The setting is a fairly simplistic science fantasy. Each has some points of interest - particularly some of the races and the skill-based character generation, with careers mostly as a guideline (some mechanical effects persist in the form of starting skills).

Constantly inventive and useful, no matter the ruleset. It fits very well in a somewhat primitive world where the events of creation still resonate. Addresses some larger difficult questions of narrative and player agency also.

Pretty good description of a tribe of primitive but vicious humanoids with their lair, traps, tactics and motivations. Some paid products could learn from this. Their relationship with their "gods" is particularly interesting.

The cover text is still wrong in the download, but without the spell-check highlight. Why fix one and not the other? Very odd.

It hasn't been easy in any era to make a game funny but not dumb, light but not arbitrary, true to its genre but at the same time fresh and individual. I'd say this is well worth a read, whatever SF game you play (name checks David Brin and transhumanism, though I wouldn't want to overstate its depth) or if you're looking for Spaceman Spiff: The RPG, I haven't seen a closer approach.

As the publisher has taken pains to point out, some of the cartoons are a bit salty.

You'll need a calculator handy, or just 3d10 if you're not quite so old-school.

I do like the picture emerging here of a border nobleman arming for war against his king (both of them evil bastards). The castle looks strong, though not without its drawbacks, and with the depth of detail to be expected from Harnmaster.

If it wasn't clear, this sourcebook covers two alien species, the enigmatic Hivers and happy, funny, lethal Ithklur, each in great detail, with slight mention of some other Hiver clients and creatures. As such, it's a specialised resource, but particularly strong for what it covers in a philosophical, hard SF tradition. Some campaigns might not favour the Santa hats, jingle bells or "Blissful Warrior"'s personality from the Hiver section, though they build up to more subtle connotations than is immediately obvious.

Scan quality is mostly pretty good. Even a couple of pages with black text on a dark, complex background remain readable. The PDF is not bookmarked.

From the species-specific classes here, the Oomusachi Trader is interesting, gaining a series of enhancements to space travel and influence within the Tulmath trade network as well as access to their traditional weapons and improved starships. I found definitely enough here to justify the purchase.

The Macroist/Microist consolidates many fields of science into one and uses this remarkable insight to .. generalise even more, to the point where it barely has a discernable theme to its abilities.

Not much to note about the cultural description or subspecies, besides their reproduction, if that's not detailed in the core setting. Let's not get started on real-world snail sex ..