Eclipse Phase is one of my favorite games, but I'm not beyond admitting that it has its faults, some of them pretty serious. For one thing, although there was a great range of morphs and the game really felt like it vibrantly embraced the question of not only transhumanism but the practicality of a diverse and exotic range of morphs, it didn't really feel like the rules did. Transhuman, which could best be described as their player's guide, does a great job of fixing a lot of those issues, and introduces a lot of new content.

The first thing I should emphasize is that unlike Rimward, Panopticon, Sunward, or Gatecrasher, Transhuman does not introduce new setting elements; it tends to expound on prior content, by providing deeper psychological and sociological background for certain things, such as the general perception of uplifts or the differences between different types of AGI. It generally adds a lot more depth to the setting, further refining a lot of the psychological things that can go on and clarifying the legal structures of the solar system in the years after the Fall.

Mind you, that's not to say that there's not new content in Eclipse Phase. There are tons of new things, from new morphs to rules diversifications, it's a very meaty book, containing everything from practical adjustments to combat to reflect the fact that a space whale functions very differently than a microbot in battle; Eclipse Phase's core system is such that it's not really possible to achieve a perfect granularity without explicitly relegating certain things to a different scale, but Transhuman does a pretty good job of modeling the differences between a novacrab and a neotenic, and while there will still be some things that fall outside the realms of plausible mechanics there is a lot more stuff here that really adds to the experience.

Looking at the book a little more objectively, it's about 240 pages of well-written content, and unlike Eclipse Phase's usual style a surprisingly large chunk of that is directly number driven, from the life path and package buy character creation systems and the new combat rules, as well as enhanced rules for swarms and other exotic morphs (including Flexbots), not to mention a variety of other non-combat rules for helping keep the game on track. Additional sleights for the asyncs also take up a portion of the book, though asyncs are covered mostly on the fluff side. One important note, though, is that the life paths are not meant to be balanced; as the note beforehand says, some characters will be lucky, some unlucky, so it's perfectly possible to roll a character who dies multiple times before the game even begins while another gets lucky and starts with everything going perfectly, something that GM's may wish to look out for if they maintain strict player balance in their campaigns.

I really did enjoy the book; the typesetting is Eclipse Phase's usual, which still remains fresh after well over a thousand pages, with plenty of color and vibrancy without causing any difficulty with legibility. The art is for the most part good though a couple of the faces caused an uncanny valley response; the majority of the art is of really good quality and really engages the setting well (though with a mite too much action for Firewall agents who want to get out alive).

If you play Eclipse Phase, Transhuman will make a great addition; it doesn't solve all the problems with the system, but it transforms the mechanics into something much greater than they were before while including plenty of new options to customize your game, and generally is a direct improvement, even if it does mean a little more complexity.

I've had a lot of family issues going on and I've been reading in the downtime between stuff going on, so I've just been voraciously going at anything that I can get my hands on that looks interesting. The Void looked pretty interesting to me when I first saw it, and it wasn't disappointing. The fact that it's Creative Commons licensed and available as pay-what-you want was particularly interesting, as I've always been a fan of open licensing, and even though in the past such games as Eclipse Phase have done major releases in CC they haven't made themselves widely available for free.

First things first, The Void is Lovecraftian in many senses of the word. If one got really technical on The Void, it tends to be more action-oriented than Lovecraftian tales, and while some of the in-game fiction is both creepy in the perfect survival-horrror way and manages to pull off the Lovecraftian elements well, you'll be looking at less true-to-Lovecraft and more Lovecraft-inspired, though that's true of most of the things that build upon his works. However, while it's not true to Lovecraft's original vision because the entities can be categorized and studied, it's still relatively truthful to Lovecraft's thematics and the universe builds heavily upon his lore. That said, it feels really a lot more like a late Resident Evil series game than Lovecraft; nasty slimy things wanting to lay eggs within/psychically traumatize/eat the characters is a major theme, which doesn't necessarily mesh so well with Lovecraft's more abstract visions of the genre, but still works very well for horror.

As far as the game goes, it uses a d6 pool system that won't feel strange to people who have played Shadowrun or World of Darkness games; roll above a certain number to get successes, then continue as you would. It's got a lot of good design decisions, and it's both fluid but steers clear of issues that come from, say, percentile based systems where success is too predictable/numerical, since every roll feels like a chance to either succeed wonderfully or fail miserably, reinforcing the genre feel. It's not hyper-lethal (though an unarmored fighter will go down pretty quick), as far as rulesets go, but it's certainly not something that treats combat lightly.

As far as the PDF goes, the text feels oddly large (it's something like 12.5 pt, I think, which isn't bad but sure feels kinda large), but it's pretty and there's lots of art; it may be available as a pay-what-you-want title, but the production values are very good; the art's all in color and pretty lovely. Length-wise it's not the longest, nor does it go into very much detail on any given thing, but it's certainly got a coherent direction and it covers everything that it needs to, plus the fiction's pretty good, though there are some bumps in quality between each of the individual opening stories. At one point there's a repeated part with the planet outlines, which I think are meant to just be handouts but it's still deja vu when you go back and recognize the exact same text as you saw in the beginning of the book at the end.

All-in-all, it's got its flaws that keep it from getting a perfect rating, but The Void really accomplishes what it sets out to do; it's a terrifying Lovecraftian space adventure game with slick and polished rules. It's definitely worth a look, especially since you can check it out for free, and I think it's going to get a place in my collection of things to keep on hand for a rainy day and some unsuspecting players.

I'm a long-time fan of BattleTech, in part because I grew up playing the MechWarrior video games and quickly fell in love with the wargame as soon as I discovered it. Alpha Strike is a bit of an oddity; on one hand, it attempts to include all the features and complications in BattleTech, but do so in a way that minimizes bookkeeping and allows for a faster form of play.

The game comes with Introductory, Standard, and Advanced rules, including another little section for aerospace, all of which are significantly faster than those of traditional BattleTech. It's immediately clear that faster does not equal easier; the game isn't dumbed down (though the Introductory ruleset is good for beginners), so if you were just hoping for a game to play with a couple buddies who hadn't played before, you'll be best off sticking to the Introductory rules. That said, you'll have to do a lot less bookkeeping with Alpha Strike, so even if the rules are more or less as difficult as normal BattleTech, you'll still be able to enjoy an interesting ruleset without having to track how much damage a 'Mech's arm has taken and each of the weapons individually, which does make the game a lot easier for novices to understand. In addition, the fact that you're working on smaller scales than normal BattleTech (i.e. unit versus limb for 'Mechs) means that you'll have to worry a little less about certain rules and weapon functions, and the move to consolidate as much stuff as possible into a one-size-fits all category (for instance, how all 'Mechs all use the same ranges, though some can't attack at Long range) means that there is less worrying about checking record sheets and more play.

As far as the game goes, it's more or less what can be expected-it's not exactly revolutionizing wargaming because BattleTech's already a huge influence in the market and taking this approach has been done before. Fortunately, since part of those expectations include high quality, it's worth noting that you can have a ridiculous amount of complexity going on-Alpha Strike simplifies the record keeping more than the rules themselves, so you can still enjoy advanced features such as C3 or artillery without having to worry about what the new system does to them. Everything's scaled down pretty much mathematically, so you can expect similar results in Alpha Strike as you would in normal BattleTech, with the slight loss of precision that comes from the fact that there are smaller numbers and the like doing little to the expected outcomes of conflicts-a Gunslinger can blow away a Jackal in one turn just as it could when you track all the guns and parts individually using traditional BattleTech rules.

From a production perspective, Alpha Strike is as you expect. There weren't any major errors, but there were a couple typos in there-for the most part, however, the typesetting was spot on without any errors, and the art, which is the traditional "take pictures of a set up scenario on the table" is fine and accompanied by useful diagrams that help drive home the point of things. Toss in some examples, and the nice added touch of all the tables being compiled at the end of the PDF, and Alpha Strike shapes up to be a very well put-together book.

So, in short, Alpha Strike is exactly what it says on the tin, a "fast-playing form of BattleTech" that emphasizes quick results that perhaps lack some of the nuance of its more complex cousin but that still provides a plethora of tactical options.

Rocket Age is a game that sort of came out of the blue for me; I don't tend to keep up on forthcoming games until they've released (I find that being unhyped about something I'm not familiar with makes me more objective), unless it's something that I've explicitly been waiting for like a game in a franchise I've loved previously. Rocket Age coming into my inbox out of the blue quickly became a bit of a pleasant surprise.

I've got a good respect for Cubicle 7; I've rarely been disappointed by them, and Rocket Age is no exception. It's top-notch quality, but with some cautions. It is, after all, heavily entrenched within the pulp genre, and pulp is not exactly the most popular genre these days, what with the common focus on realism and simulation. Of course, that's part of what makes it so incredible; it's a remarkably fun setting and a break from the normal, ignoring plausibility for the basic pursuit of fun, adventure, and the exotic.

The setting takes place in an alternate late 30's, with all the trappings you'd expect from the world powers at the time; for non-historians, players will be wedged in between over-the-top space versions of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperialist Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, as well as all the minor powers that were at play during the same eras. Pulp does not equal happy, and that's immediately apparent-after all, space Nazis are just as hideous as their Earth-bound counterparts, especially when technologically inferior aliens are involved.

The game has a real focus on style and storytelling, which fits it well; the Vortex System was pretty familiar to me, but it works well here and really seems to fit the genre to a "T". It's a great example of mechanics and setting going well together, and I really have to applaud Cubicle 7 for that; I'm often really put off when the same system is brought out again and again, but it works in a way that leaves me with no legitimate gripes, so I really can't complain about that here. It's the perfect blend of relative simplicity and sufficient explanation and mechanic exposition that makes Rocket Age so perfect; you don't need to be a rocket scientist to play, which means that the game retains the fast and adventurous feel it needs to pull off to really capture its pulp inspirations, but it's got enough stuff that it doesn't wind up needing constant arbitration and houseruling to satisfy players who like everything to be governed by a rule.

As far as the setting goes, it's pretty expansive and well thought out; there's enough stuff here to last a good long while, and enough unexplored space to make up your own adventures without having to just resort to the things that have already been written. All-in-all. I like the balance of the known and the unknown, and it's a really immersive setting, made all the better by an adherence to art styles that, laced throughout the book, added a lot to the feel; it's black-and-white art, but that feels like a distinction that hardly matters when it's in context. The typesetting is pretty good; the fonts and page trimming have that perfect feel to them, though I do have to complain that there's some kerning errors or something going on that puts apostrophes or "+" signs in weird places in the text as opposed to where they're supposed to be-that may be on my end, but I'm thinking it's a font issue, and it's pretty inconsequential in the long run.

All-in-all, despite some slight issues with the typesetting, and the fact that while the setting is rich and engaging it is still very much a "pulp" setting, which may not appeal to everyone, I can whole-heartedly recommend Rocket Age, which provides a great sense of adventure and scale with game mechanics that complement its goals nicely.

Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds is a collection of adventures that are intriguing and provide a good starting point for prospective Shadowrun GM's. They focus more on a complex mission rather than a simple one; they'll take a fair deal of getting familiar with to run, and they involve fewer felonies than the average shadowrun, but not only do they show off SR5's new things well and serve as a decent starting-off point for Shadowrun players. Unfortunately, they are not quite perfect, but they're pretty good in general.

I'm not going to go down and break down each adventure separately, because there's some spoilers that could be had and I don't follow the SR:M adventures, meaning that my first experiences with all these characters have been right here. However, none of the plots are overly simple-some of them are more complex, and might frustrate players who want to go in and shoot things, but all offer a decent level of engagement. Unfortunately, some of the twists were pretty obvious pretty early-and this is a spoiler: the uncooperative person, for instance, is obviously a Shedim.

That said, the writing's rather good, and there's stats included for SR4A and SR5; you could even run each edition for different groups of players to get a feel for the different systems of each-I'm pretty sold on 5th Edition and my 4th Edition campaign's in the middle of a story arc, so I can't pull players out to do one of them now, but I'd expect some pretty good results. There's nothing that feels overly dumb; again, some of the things can be guessed by someone who's particularly genre savvy or in touch with the universe, I'm contemplating running Ashes with a group of rookies to see how they respond to the setting and rules and I think it'd work pretty well as an introduction.

Layout and text design all work great; nothing super fancy, nothing super poor; the graphics are in black-and-white but still good; if you don't care about color you won't have a complaint, except perhaps on one of the handout maps which has somewhat ambiguous shading (it's still obvious what the objects in the map are, but it bothers me ever so slightly). On the subject of handouts, they're all compiled at the end of the PDF; not exactly a horrible thing, but it's a little annoying for reference purposes, especially since they're not in the end of adventure wrap-up.

As for the value, I'm sort of torn; on one hand, it is four rather lengthy adventures with large fleshed out casts. However, at the same time, the art is in black and white, and the storylines are all rather linear; with the exception of Ashes which has a number of potential failure points that make things more interesting. There's a lot of places where the storyline depends on the players going along happily with them-something that works better at certain places than others; these were missions written for a convention, and I suspect that they'd work better for a one-shot game or an introductory session than for a collection of adventures; they're all satisfying by themselves, but the chance that I'd be able to work them all into a single campaign is rather slim; I'd really have to run multiple campaigns to run them all, and while they all do a very good job of showing off the setting of Shadowrun, they'd be sort of hard to work together. That's the only thing really holding this back from five stars; as is I give it a 4-star rating, because at $3 an adventure it's really not a great deal; but if you only run two or three, like I'm looking at doing, that price per adventure skyrockets.

The Shadowrun Fifth Edition Quick-Start rules are a great asset for people who just want to play a quick game or those who want to see what's changed and if Fifth Edition is right for them. It's short, clocking in at 31 pages (technically 30, since the last is a Fifth Edition ad), but it includes an adventure as well as basic rules for the game.

It's obviously not Fifth Edition itself, with the full set of rules, but it encapsulates the things that have changed to make Fifth Ed. better than its predecessors. It's also a very pretty preview, with high-quality art and typesetting throughout.

If you're not sold on Fifth Edition, download this, and it will most likely convince you to jump on the bandwagon; the updates and improvements over Fourth Edition will be immediately apparent.

Shadowrun 5th Edition is cyberpunk. Real cyberpunk. Not 4th Edition's pseudo-cyberpunk where they tried to go as dark as they could but forgot the core of the genre. Now that we've got that out of the way, where do I start? I'm not going to introduce Shadowrun-its spin offs and massive market mean that almost everyone has heard of it.

I think I'm justified in saying that 5th Edition is what 4th Edition should have done; there are several changes that set it apart from prior editions, but the rules are much superior in general; consolidating armor to a single value, the newly simplified hacking rules, and an improved character creation using a priority system allows for easier entry to the game without really costing anything as far as the games go. Adding in examples is a great idea; not only do the well-written blurbs give an additional sense of immersion, but they immediately clarify some of the potentially iffy rules.

Setting-wise, there's more strife, more authoritarianism, less of 4th Edition's shiny future offset by everyone going psychotic at the mention of technomancers or people of a different race or social status. It's just a whole lot better; there's still the unhappy stuff in there, but it's toned down, and now the world has gotten, in a sense scarier for runners again; GOD watches the Matrix, which is now secured so that the squishy decker/technomancer has to go into the facility with the rest of the team.

Game-wise, the move to the priority system seems to be a stepping stone toward more balanced characters; when I was reading this morning I made a Mystic Adept with some pretty impressive damage resistance for only having 2 Body and casting and combat skills to match, but I need to double-check that I followed the rules and the character is still limited by realistic boundaries, unlike some of the really broken 4th Edition characters that one could build with 400 BP and an unwary GM. At least at the start of the game, this should make things more balanced and fun for everyone; the Limits system also does a fair deal to prevent some of the worst min-maxing that was detrimental to 4th Edition at times.

In addition to the priority system, there's a general simplification of the rules-in a good way. Hacking now works like any other skill, with its Limit being your deck's hardware ratings, which can now be swapped on the fly so that you can decide what you want to have high at certain times and low at others-very interesting, and something that makes having a good deck less important than having a good strategy (a good deck, of course, still helps, and bringing an Excalibur to a MCD-1 fight gives you a distinct advantage). The new matrix rules go along with the streamlined rules of 5th Edition, and in my opinion they're a ready change. Programs function more as gear does, and as someone who's a computer power user I can say that it's a lot more realistic in terms of certain things-the new deck attributes are more based on where processing power is distributed, with the number of programs that can run being separate; something which makes them a lot better really quickly. Technomancers are more balanced now; they don't get to flip their mental attributes around to alter their limits, but they still have an edge due to Resonance; they also are subject to Noise issues like other wireless hacking, and they don't get the new benefits provided by programs (which are essentially boosts rather than the necessities to do certain things).

For the rest of my review, visit my site: http://blog.homoeoteleuton.com/?p=978

The Way of the Samurai presents options for making your Shadowrun game more inclusive of Street Samurai. If you run campaigns like I do and find that the majority of your players shy away from cyberware and bioware in favor of having physical adepts, it really provides some nice new benefits. I'm a fan of seeing Boosted Reflexes again, though their high essence cost and lower performance makes them pretty soundly budget-grade cyberware rather than a low-Essence cost solution for a mage who wants another initiative pass like their role often was in prior editions.

As far as the new qualities go, they're heavily focused on giving characters a bonus for a sort of archetype; they require certain cyberware but give a benefit to certain abilities in return in addition to the user's already augmented abilities. Unfortunately, a lot of these have except-if clauses with a lot of cyberware enhancements, so they tend to go unused (fortunately, the most egregious of these have alternate options so someone who buys one for one of the two reasons still can choose something for the other).

All-in-all, the fluff and art was great, and the content had some interesting decisions. I'm not entirely sold on some of the new cyberware packs, but they still provide a good baseline for newbies trying to figure out what they want who weren't satisfied with previous options.

There's some iffy decisions here, in my opinion, but nothing that goes from the realm of slightly redundant (for instance, 2 box pain resistance unless someone already has pain editors-for the tank-style quality bonus for an augmented person seems likely to be of little use; or effects that duplicate the Krav Maga martial art to the point of referencing it) into the realm of actually problematic. Personally, as an avid gamer, I loved the fluff section where Slamm-O introduces the stuff, but that may be a subjective judgment. Some of the qualities have unique functions not found anywhere else, but that somewhat endanger balance (such as the Sharpshooter, who gets a Take Aim enhancement that could redefine the way players approach things in a good or bad way).

In short; good, not quite stellar, some of the qualities could leave players wanting something more than what they can get elsewhere, the minimum essence requirements seem redundant with the need for two pieces of appropriate cyberware on most of the new qualities,

I like Edge of Space a lot because it shows a lot of analysis and design. That said, it has some major issues, one of which being that it's so minimalistic that it's actually suffering for it, while there's some really, really good stuff there in terms of what could be expanded upon, it just doesn't do it and it kinda hurts. I recognize that there's something to be said for a game that can fit on just a few small pages, and if this were an entry for, say, Game Chef, it would be phenomenal. It's still a good game, but I'm just not feeling the pocket mod format, since it provides two formats it could very well be made with an examples and description "fluff" rich version and it would be a lot better, since at its short length (about 1300 words), it feels very good but still lacks some of the things that I'd like to see, namely at least some description of the alien menace, since as is it's not terribly engaging.

Now, I'll confess that I'd never really read Fading Suns before this, so I'm looking at it from a different perspective than someone who is familiar with older editions (basically, I'm treating this as all new content).

For the most part, I like the setting and writing; there's a good amount of stuff here and the setting's pretty nice. There's a lot of content, and it avoids going on tangents. My only complaint is that there are a ton of typos, and you can see places that reference stuff not referenced elsewhere, probably from edition incompatibility. The art is all set in frames, which means it has a nice professional look to it, but the lack of any background images or the like on pages means that they feel pretty boring, though not necessarily horribly so. There's a lot of bookmarks, though like pretty much every PDF ever the index isn't linked (though it could be pretty easily).

I do have some gripes that there's not very much in the ways of provided setting; we get mentions and name drops of a couple planets, but for the most part it is up to the GM to provide planets, jump lanes, and the like, which is perhaps a little lackluster for a production of this scale.

Going to a much more positive side, I love the mechanics provided with the game. The system they use allows a really quick resolution that rewards high skills and tactical thinking without requiring too much complexity, which means that it's really good for newbies as well as those who understand the system.

All-in-all, Fading Suns isn't quite to the grade I expected from FASA, but it's still a well-put together volume, though I feel that it could have benefited from another run by the editor.

The GM's Companion serves as a handy addition to Outbreak: Undead that really does add a new degree of complexity to the risk and reward of missions in the zombie apocalypse. While it's not exactly going to turn your game upside down with a ton of new and unexpected things, it provides a good guide of what you can expect to be doing in the zombie apocalypse and things that can be put into play that won't beat the players' characters to a pulp in seconds.

Basically, the GM's Companion serves as a guide to what you want to do to keep a game smooth and on track, and allows you to use random generation to figure out stuff to put in if you lose track of where things should be going. It's not giant, but it's got enough stuff in there to be worth noting as a valuable aid.

The classic Earthdawn is back. With what I consider to be one of the best systems of all tabletop games and an intriguing and unique setting, this venerable title once again sees the light of day with the resurrection of FASA as a company, and it's great news.

The pen-and-paper branch of FASA actually went defunct before I started playing tabletop games, but it quickly earned my affection as I discovered Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and MechWarrior as some of my favorite settings and systems, so I am far from impartial, but I will say this: Earthdawn is just as good as I remember when I discovered it for the first time with a battered old hardcover that I still keep stashed away with all my favorite books.

Now Earthdawn comes back again, with a Revised Edition that builds on years and years of editing and improvements to provide what I feel is one of the best games I've ever seen, built around a well-designed mathematically grounded system and allowing an incredible amount of exploration and adventure in a truly fantastic realm. Throw in the classic elements that I loved from my old copy (including, for instance, some of the high-quality art and the short story that introduces the setting), and I have to say that I'm excited about Earthdawn's future once again.

I'll wrap this up quickly and simply: Earthdawn is just as amazing again as it was when I discovered it in high school, and I'm looking forward to many more adventures in Barsaive.

Radiance is a game with a ton of things going for it; it uses a tried and true d20 base with an analytical look at how the core mechanics work in order to create a system that combines the familiarity and simplicity of the d20 system with a more flexible character handling system that not only reduces the difficulty of learning the system but also allows some pretty neat other things.

As far as the Players Guide goes, it has very high quality; it has more art and a more coherent design than an average free PDF, but it also has superb writing and contains a great amount of content. Its sleek and streamlined rules allow for a book that isn't terribly gigantic but still contains a ton of stuff for players to handle all sorts of situations, and provides an interesting insight to the setting, even though there's not a terribly high amount of connection to a setting within the book.

All in all, for a free game, Radiance is definitely stellar, and I'm seriously considering picking up a hard copy to have laying around should I have to run a game session without my laptop handy.

This is actually a rather good product, but there are a couple glaring issues.

While the textures are of decent quality, there are a couple places where they don't really work, and there are a couple places where there are glaring blue blocks that could just as well be a glitch rather than an intentional decision.

My main gripe with the map, though, is the amount of busy additions there are. Rather than being a true blank slate with entirely user-driven customization, there are a few vehicles added, which are placed in the middle of the street in a way that could be pretty awkward to explain away to players mid car-chase or whatnot. In addition, there's a degree of noise added by what appears to be randomly placed debris, but this is notably absent from the bottom left sections of road, as well as a couple other sections. In addition, the roads on the bottom left don't have lines painted, which also sorta kills the immersion.

I hate to scourge it so heavily on a couple of errors; technically, there's a really good product here, but the built in vehicles kinda kill some of the versatility, and those blue boxes just don't mesh with the map. If they were removed, I'd have fewer qualms with giving this a perfect rating.

Yeah, I'm a major fan of Eclipse Phase, so this shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, but Rimward is absolutely amazing. It lives up to my expectations, delivering Posthuman Studios' high quality and insightful transhuman setting in a simple package.

Rimward is 90% setting, and about 10% numbers, but when you actually look at it it's well worth it-everything is written in such a way as to detail the universe of Eclipse Phase and be a great asset to players and game masters, even if it's not a list of numbers on a page. It's actually a joy to read, with a boatload of new content.

All-in-all, I'd say Rimward is the perfect supplement to Sunward, and makes Eclipse Phase that much better as a game-my normal caution about Eclipse Phase not being for the kiddies still applies, but other than that it's a top-notch product I recommend to anyone who likes Eclipse Phase.