I had great difficulty in thinking through how to portray the rebellion. The scenario seems to go out of its way, I can only speculate why, to have them pop up out of nowhere, with no discernable motivation, cause or goal - though that doesn't stop them rolling over a rather stable and well-armed government in short order. It's as if half a dozen Somali militias just dropped through a wormhole onto the planet.

Combats are presented in reasonably organised text blocks. Maps would help. There's a lot of "the GM should arrange for this to happen", which is all very old-school and suggests that the author doesn't have any solid ideas to offer for how to run these medium skirmishes to smallish battles.

Not as much adventure, source material or rules insights as I would expect for the price asked. It's disappointing, after their earlier very useful "Type-S".

A job as security on a hard-pressed mineral outfit's orecrawler presents the party with a chance to end up at least moderately heroic - or to be double-dealing finks, if they prefer - as they deal with the much-feared Duneraider tribes of the deep desert. Echoes here of any number of famous desert worlds and their nomadic denizens.

A nicely constructed world and set of NPCs (within the limits of what they're required to do) in an adventure that doesn't require the PCs to save the galaxy for once.

A well-considered species and culture, with some interesting technology, designs, and really nice spaceship illustrations. They seem to have inexplicably caught the drow's ailment that prevents anyone else from using their gear.

A few useful ideas - phasm juice stands out, for me - amid various fairly trivial notions of Rag this, alchemical solution that and ideas that are just not written to be as cool as they might be. Spark cloth, which figures prominently in the introduction, unfortunately doesn't seem to have any stats. I wouldn't want to pay a lot for this, but a DM might find several entries that germinate further ideas.

This is interesting historically (and not in the sense internal to the game), centering on an event that was quite controversial and not well understood at the time the supplement was written, though it's common knowledge today.

As the blurb mentions, many non-obvious consequences flow from this, some described in detail and others in passing.

What makes the game, I think, is the pre-written character of Kanda Balantu, who in the hands of a thoughtful player may have good reason to question whether he really wants history put back the way it was.

It's an interesting idea for a campaign feature, if your group accepts the core premise. It's probably not the broad solution to an age-old problem that the designer argues, as designers sometimes are wont to do for their work.

I can't help but wonder, if each character possesses this 'influence', why it needs to reside in a piece of equipment. This assumption seems to complicate the idea quite considerably, judging by the space devoted to special rules for the process of influence. Generally could be more concise and better expressed.

This is a good comprehensive listing of encounters and events within a port town, notably with many opportunities to find work (or scams), to get in a fight or in trouble with the law. It might owe something to the 1e DMG Urban Encounters though it goes considerably beyond that.

Spontaneously growing eyestalks is fun! Features and powers expand on each other and on the core rules options in several interesting ways. Graphically, it could be a bit more polished.

"The Munch Bunch (Munch Bunch!) Have run away The Munch Bunch (Munch Bunch!) Are here to stay The Munch Bunch (Munch Bunch!) Have found a home With a garden.." This setting of veggie struggle, torment and death, from the makers of the Space Opera Support line, actually succeeds better in depicting a stark battle for existence than many games that take themselves more seriously. It might be a bit too close to its fantasy roots (heh) with wizards, wolves and the suggestion of a dragon cropping up (heh) - having said that, the prospect of raiding the Big Shed on the Hill sounds like one of the best of the adventure hooks to me.

This strange, inverted, ruined place-between-places, haunted by cannibals, madmen and echoes of mythic events, is hardly a safe way to travel, but pretty darn cool.

This warlock wields the powers of voice and light - but not necessarily of Good. Nicely judged (apart from, I thought, some potentially uneasy interfaces of game mechanics with the Warlock's Curse) and makes great use of historical flavour.

The concept of their deity is rather interesting and the PDF contains some good-looking line art. Design presents mostly generic ooh-I'm-so-evil powers, though they seem competently done.

I expected interesting concepts from this instalment and indeed it delivers. Lots of mechanical problems with this one though. It gets 4 stars on the basis of low price.

Contains 25 consumables, using the "Adventurer's Vault" rules, that grant a variety of useful temporary powers. Despite the occasional minor mechanical quibble, as any product might have (I'd take their design and editing over WotC's) it's great value for a dollar. Also contains item cards.

This is a sizable document - partly due to taking a rather broad and vague concept of its topic to include "black magic", divination, flesh golems and some half-baked Cthulhu Mythos references - but much of it is not particularly usable. I couldn't include the races, necromancer class or many of the rituals as written.

The best of this product is its description of a number of real-world deities centred around the portfolio of death (each with its different interpretation of that concern) and the Acolyte of Darkness abilities for characters serving each of them. The publisher has recently dropped the price to $2.95, which is probably as much as I would want to pay for it and not unreasonable as a sourcebook for some variant abilities for wizards, warlocks and clerics. There is a lot of disappointing material to sift through to get there.

I didn't actually mind the minion creation idea too much, if it is restricted to minions. I somewhat like the idea of a necromancer commanding a horde of uglies all to attack on one of his actions, and it's no worse than what wizard dailies can do.

A particularly poor judgement, though, was the thoroughly gratuitous illustration on page 56.