377 pages? Uff…. That’s not a rule book that’s a tome!

Just print out the Quickstart. In fact, they should have also had the Quickstart itself as a download for anyone who didn’t want to download the beta ruleset and cards. Cards don’t seem to be shuffled, and they’re only state machines (ie. places to put your token to do something) so you don’t have to print all of them out before play.

That said, I’m seeing evolution, not revolution, so I’m not sold on learning a new game system *and* selling it to a group of gamers, when a $15 D&D starter set works “good enough”. The free rules-light “One Shot World”, based on Dungeonworld, was the only frpg that’s different enough from D&D that I liked. It’s for world-builders and story-builders, not crunchy rollers.

OSW : https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/242339/One-Shot-World

true … but this time it may just about make sense.

Why someone in a wheelchair may want to risk life and limb (ha!) in an adventure or at war is a question this game doesn’t dare to ask … but at least they’ve made it a little more ‘realistic’ that such items would exist given the state of magic in the setting.

@ced1106 I’d say even ‘evolution’ is a bit of a stretch. The concepts of positive and negative modifiers that can be gained from skill rolls isn’t new. They only appear to have added a maximum so players won’t be stuck with an endless supply if they hoard them until the end. And yet at the same time every action has the potential to generate more … so it’s not really capped at all if the players want to exploit the gimmick.

Not sure if the GM has a similar maximum to his ‘fear’ stack, but there would have to be one as otherwise it is real easy to end the boss fight with a big ol’ “rocks fall  / everyone dies” event the players can’t do anything agains.

The 2D20 rules as used in Conan RPG by Modiphius suffer from a similar issue if players and GM don’t use the system equivalents to keep the momentum (ha!) of the game going.

I think these mechanics should be more up to the discretion of the GM instead of purely mechanical, but there is a gem of an idea hidden that could help newbie GM’s as well as motivate players. (although if players really need motivation to stay in character and fit the theme then you’re already in deep doo doo … )