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Wow. I am extremely happy with this. I purchased the Hardcover/PDF combo and feel that the product is well worth the price that I paid.
Back in the D20 days I purchased the Nyambe: African adventures game, and enjoyed reading it. It was a labor of love for the author and really felt like a African inspired place - but I never ran/played in it. i could never figure out what to DO with it to make it exciting. Great setting, but missing something - maybe it was the hook, or the advice I needed to come up with awesome adventures.
Lately I have been purchasing OSR materials - life is to busy, and rules are simple and easy (which works great with kids). After great reviews, I decided to take a $40 risk on Spears of Dawn. Man am I glad I did, as it is everything I had hoped it would be.
It is an african-themed rpg, complete with rules for play, that is oozing with flavor and potential. It is a 178 page tome, that is packed with everything you need to play. While I was initially concerned about the number of pages - I needn't have been. it has everything you need - rarely have I seen so much value packed into a smaller book.
The system is apparently based on the company's "Stars without Number" system (which I am now seriously contemplating purchasing!) ruleset - simple OSR type game with classes that fit the setting, simple skill system, and a magic system tailored to the setting. If you have played other OSR games, then it is all very familiar - plus a page on easy conversion to your favorite OSR setting if you prefer to use S&W, OSRIC, AKCS, or LL. Nice. This takes up over a 1/3 of the book.
The next third of the book is devoted to setting. This section is really awesome. The setting gives you multiple cultures, and a very cool reason to be out adventuring. It describes itself as a sandbox setting, but I did not feel limited to that at all - you could run a grand african inspired campaign (ala War of the Lance) - it is all there laid out and ready for you. brimming with story hooks - ideas were pounding in my head as I read.
The final third of the book is really the GM section. It has good notes on adventures in these lands, a bestiary (with rules for creating new creatures), and tons of charts and sections on everything from locations, encounters, NPCs (with quick generation), magic items, names, cults, etc.
Lastly it has a two page adventure that could easily fill up a 4 hour session. It is a simple "tomb crawl" that could be expanded into something more.
The art is typical of OSR type games - flavorful, yet simple. Some really good, some not as good, but all evocative of the setting.
I gave this five out of five, because I did not skim one page of this book - it is packed, useful, and I really want to run something on it. Do yourself the favor, take the risk, and check it out!
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A whole host of excellent artwork for any occasion... as long as it's in Africa. But seriously, this shows a very well thought out product with some fantastic artwork! Check it out! We will have to use some of it for our products!
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Very well written and a nice read. Not sure tht I woudl use it except to steal ideas :)
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Very nice. More great stuff for me to slowly add to my campaign as it expands.
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Great product, cool art work a very cool set of free art work
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Insanely great african art for public domain. You can not go wrong with this art pack!
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An amazing collection of high quality inked images with an African fantasy vibe. If you're a publisher looking to produce a follow up to Nyambe: African Adventures, you could use virtually every one of these excellent, free images. I'll be using tons of these images in my Endara campaign setting, which has a psuedo-African nation as one of the good guy factions.
CHRIS
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This collection of artwork is absolutely fabulous. The package contains a variety of ink drawings of various fantasy settings. These images are great to have and will enliven any game session.
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I have rarely come across as well thought out roleplaying settings as this, and I am definitely loving the chance to play more "Sandbox" styled games, giving the players an opportunity to affect the world on a larger scale than they might have imagined in some of the more traditional games. In Spears of Dawn there's a lot of adventure to be had and a great deal of promise.
What's more important is that the potential is not wasted, the setting delivers excitement, the options left in how the world is developing mean no two games are likely to be the same, and a campaign leaves even experienced gamemaster taking a player's seat unaware of what the other gamemaster might spring out on them with the richness of possibilities inherent in the book.
I purchased my copies of Stars Without Number before and I had a friend recomment Spears of Dawn to me, and I was happy to purchase it as soon as it came to my knowledge the book was out. My friend apparently acquired a beta copy of the book and spread his excitement to me too before the final version was out.
Sine Nomine is creating fantastic games. Personally, I've invested in Spears of Dawn, Other Dust, and Stars without Number. I'm looking forward to seeing what else they can bring, and I am excited for the possibilities in the system they use.
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A Simple, smooth and versatile adaptation of the Old School rules. The setting is simple, yet well thoughtout to cover a variety of play styles. This is a game that can easily cover a Star Wars, Babylon 5, or Star Trek style game, or just as easily do Firefly, Alien or Outland. Though it is a class based system (Expert, Psychic and Warrior) the classes are well balanced and quite flexible. Backgrounds and Training packages allow for a wide diversity within a class, while keeping things manageable for the GM. Only two alien species are provided, but guidelines for developing more are included. The free version does not include the rules for AI PCs or Mechs. I was so impressed with the free version that I had to order the POD of the pay version and I was not disappointed. Great game!
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This is fantastic. The campaign setting is a refreshing step away from Eurocentric fantasy without being so unfamiliar that players will not understand where they are and what is going on. Every bit of the setting information drips with hooks and ideas; just flipping through it, I was inspired for adventure upon adventure to write. My sole quibbles were stylistic with some of the ideas all the way in the Secrets of the Mist chapter, giving some DM's background information; but that is maybe 5 pages out of 173, and none of it is necessary and all of it can be ignored safely; it's not even worth knocking the rating down from five stars for that.
Even beyond that, the book is equipped with some awesome tools to generate an entire setting to play in. It really gives you the confidence to set down, build a region, and cut loose; and while the tools are built initially around the setting, it's looks to be fairly easy to repurpose them to any other fantasy setting. I cannot recommend this more highly both to referees of sandbox-style games and those just looking for an excellent setting to play in.
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What a great free book. I got this from a link from a guy on my local gaming guilds' meetup post. This was awesome. Great character creation tools, great planet, races and scenario creation system. I love sci-fi and with a few throws of the die in preparation you could be off exploring your newly created sandboxed universe with your friends in no time at all. I love this book. There's also an african tribal add-on that just came out recently that I downloaded as well. I'm no GM but I can't wait to find a group to GM this, hell I would play EVERY week if they had this.
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i love the heart that went into this. Great for a sandbox campaign, gives great ideas
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An absolutely excellent "spinoff" in the Old School genre that, above all, provides a thorough and great guide for creating your own Wasteland. For anyone contemplating a Fallout-inspired apocalyptic campaign, this is a must read - if not for use as your primary system, then simply as an inspiration.
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This is a simple but intuitive take on sandbox gaming, with an intriguing setting and well-crafted rules. That this is available for free is nothing short of amazing.
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