This is a quick review after reading about half and skimming most of the other half. Just a couple of impressions. Here they are in no particular order:

• Composition and Art: Excellent. For me, anyway. Feels very old-school, but the text layout is very legible and has a lot of white space. The art is same. Mostly line drawings, not too many (which I like; it's a manual, not an art book), very well done, nice and straightforward. Clean and welcoming to the eye.

• Formal layout: Fair. As others have said, the ordering of subjects could have been better. You're reading about applying stats before you learn anything about what those stats mean. So, not the best.

• Writing style: Good to Excellent. Very well composed, in a simple, elegant style. There are some typos and composition errors here and there but I haven't come across anything that actually confuses one about rules or the writer's intent.

• System: Good to Excellent (no playtest). My group hasn't played it yet but I'm liking most of what I see so far. Not sure how easy it'll be to compute stuff on the fly like "you can scale your 2dx to 3dY, or 4dZ, plus your target here is a 4, with mods", but I do like systems that use dice in more intricate ways. I like the simplicity of stating the whole of what you need to know about a bit-player NPC with "3d8 Soldier". It seems pretty crunchy while still remaining simple enough for mouth-breathers like myself and my pals.

I hope to write a more in-depth review later. At one in-depth glance, I can say I think it might be the best ten-dollar PDF I've bought here at DriveThruRPG, and I have bought a LOT.

I purchased this book after a glance to FantasyDICE Primer (Gods from Below bless "free content of the week" :D)

If you're not in the mood for long readings, just: BUY THIS BOOK! And since you'll be likely to use it for years on, buy a softcover and a PDF, one for the table and one for quick and easy information finding, copy/paste, partial printings for your characters and so on! OK. Since Adam and David already covered both game mechanics and settings information, I'll give some more info on the structure of contents and what you'll find in, and since I'm in a WOW moment, I'll do it with WOWs here and there! :)

First and foremost: I think I didn't see such a quality and innovations since the release of D&D 3rd edition. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about piles of illustrations by famous painters. On that side this book is quite good but clearly a low-budget production. What I mean is that both in content quality, writing style and general information layout (how information is given to you and when, not just graphical layout), this book ROCKS! As I've never seen in indie productions.

Content is prince here. You'll get 331 dense pages, that depict one of the most complete world I've ever seen. At a first glance it's overwhelming and the fact that chapters order is somehow odd at first could scare more than someone (a PDF copy will definitively help rapid cross-references). Inside you'll find (chapter by chapter):

• Core game concepts
• A HUGE chapter on people and their habits (yes, elves and dwarves are there but they are much like "different" humans, not quirky beings... more like melniboneans in Moorcock's Elric saga)
• Rules for character creation
• Paths for your hero (think them not as classes but as heroic archetypal paths to excellence)
• Some detail on skills
• Rules for barter of both goods and money (this is one of the best twist: since GP-based trade would result in a very unlikely world, but tracking different coins and values in different places would be a PITA, a simple but effective wealth mechanic has been used and the barter is often the only way to trade at all. Nothing really new but details here are a lot)
• Weapons and armors
• A chapter titled "Rolls and rules", basically covering all task-resolution related rules, from fatiguing to social conflict, to emotional statuses, to crafting new items, and such
• A two-pages chapter is dedicated to character advancement, both for PCs and NPCs
• Combat rules
• Damage and recovery from various sources like combat, burns, suffocation, etc.
• A sample scenario (The Ambush)
• A useful chapter on game mastering
• Demons and spirits (lore and reality of the evil things from the other side)
• Three chapters on magic: Witchcraft, Sorcery and Black Arts
• A whole chapter on artifacts
• Herbal for magic, poisons, healing and more
• Alchemy
• Geography of the Known World (finally... somewhat tells me that this would have been better put in front of the whole thing! :P)
• Brief but USEFUL information on travels
• A chapter on setting's secrets (wonderful! Finally someone thought about isolating this in a chapter for GM's eyes only!)
• Doom and Gloom, a complete introductory adventure to taste how roaming the Known World is.
• A 20+ pages original bestiary

Well, we can't say it will be a short reading uh?! :) Apart from information quantity, the world itself is not only detailed but it's very likely. It just could be and I like realism in RP.

What entice me, beside the completeness of this setting, is that it explicitly targets mature players. Its state of the art (!!!) rules will make you enjoy a reflourishment of good old RPG paradigm. Unlike new-age games, GM is there to give you drama and storytelling but with something more. Some examples:

• No math (read again: NO MATH) but a full tactical system. This is really blowing, and you can't see how much without trying it at least once.
• No balancing. You as a GM should give some clue about the menace to your players, but if they enter "that cave" without knowing what they are doing, well... bye bye. So thinking, talking or even fleeing are often better options.
• No balancing but no sheer cruelty: game should be funny and instead of trying to fake your dice rolls or worse, your player have some token to spend to avoid critical situation. But they're a few and won't be back for free. BTW, even wounds don't heal overnight.
• You won't fight for treasures, at least not against a quasi-animal horror in a dark forest. Obviously I'm talking about treasures made of coins and jewels. But more important treasures such as good allies, reputation or simply your life are prizes that worth the effort.
• This is one of my favorites: in action scenes your player will take control of their allies. This relies on maturity and good role-playing, able to avoid metagame, but is a powerful tools for running a great game session as even whole campaigns! First of all, the master could focus on running "adversaries" avoiding long turns with players doing nothing. Moreover players will have a great responsibility in that other characters, maybe those they perceive necessary to the story, are in their hands. From time to time you could switch allies between players so that they feel the burden of their destinies or the excitement of some different mindset/skills. But again (and this is a powerful tool in the hand of a clever GM) you could make players role scenes about their allies in which their characters are not present. This could reveal small parts of the plot and create suspense, giving a great storytelling cut to your campaign. As every power it should be used with wisdom but this book gives you some rules of thumb even on this.

Before closing, just a couple of downsides: an overall detailed map of the land is missing, so it's a bit hard to wrap your mind on geography, jumping back and forth from a small global representation to detailed regional maps, but this is a minor flaw. The chapter order is a little bit odd: some info would be of better use before other ones, but again, you will probably have to read this stuff more than once to grasp it all, and nobody is pointing a gun forcing you to read it in the order they're presented.

Meh, sorry for writing that much but my WOW effect is still on! I think I'll begin planning a long term campaign NOW!

In short, I very highly recommend you buy this game. The long version follows:

Simply put, I think this is one of the best rpg systems currently on the market, and is definitely in my top 5 - simple and elegant mechanics, not too light on the rules but not too heavy either (the perfect sweet spot), the best of the old school and the new school gaming concepts with a healthy dose of innovation - I can't express how awesome the system is in words, it's that good. The setting is also a very interesting one, with many twists on your typical fantasy setting. David Vershaw's review covers the system pretty well - although he doesn't stress how awesome the scaling mechanics really are in play (they are a great innovation giving lots of tactical depth to player's dice rolls like no other system out there). So rather than talk more about the system, I'll give you some information on the setting.

Simply put, the setting is dripping with flavor and has years of gaming potential in the core book alone - there's no clear-cut good/evil, lots of shades of gray. The setting is based around the crumbling of the elven empire as they retreat from the area (the elven banner is the crimson banner, thus the name of the RPG - the crimson exodus - for the Elven exodus). The elves ran a huge empire, but are now retreating as the empire crumbles here on the peninsula (where the setting is focused). There are Elves (widely hated due to their superiority complex and years of harsh rule), Elnar (sort of like "lesser" elves though not as hated as the elves), dwarves, and humans too (of several cultural varieties), that's the bulk of races. There are Orcs (and the "greater Orcs", the Senshoul) as the main enemy races of the other races. There is a black-death-plague-like thing going on in the center of the crumbling eastern empire - except that those that get infected become the living dead (mix of typical fantasy vampires and ghouls). In the far east there are worshipers of an ancient serpent god that are a sort of "enemy" race as they gather strength and try to resurrect the long dead Serpent Empire that the Elves crushed when they conquered the lands here.

Well ok, a little bit more about the system - there are 3 distinctly different magic systems - witchcraft mostly used by elves/elnar, sorcery mostly used by dwarves and the black arts mostly used by worshipers of an ancient serpent god to the far east of the peninsula. There's also a separate system for alchemy magic and an herbal magic system. Each system has it's own unique flavor and feel, which a really awesome touch.

I enjoyed this book a great deal. The resolution systems has a unique twist on the roll and keep system found in such games as Legend of the 5 Rings rpg. The resolution is based on an attribute roll that determines the number of dice rolled and the skill determines the type of die rolled. So someone with an agility of 2 and a skill of D6 would roll 2d6. This can be scaled up or down to 1d8 or down to 3d4. You keep the highest die and compare it to a difficulty or opposed roll. There is a margin of success that can raise the success level of things like damage based on how well you do the task. I did like the idea of being scaled up and down. This system runs throughout the game.

The damage system is result based with a wound level system ranging from superficial to mortal wounds that can occur with one well-placed shot.

The character system is path and skill based. The magic system reminds me a bit of Lord of the Rings rather than D&D. The book ways in at 340 pages and was well worth the 9.99 PDF cost or 24 dollar softback print copy

David