I picked this up a while ago, and hadn’t had a chance to look at it until now. I really wish I had.

I’m not even done reading it yet, and it’s already the coolest game I’ve read in a while. It does the three things I find most RPG’s I read (and that’s a bit more than many) don’t do!

1) It’s a new idea that hasn’t been done before. 2) It’s well written and tailored to its idea without being “twee” about it*. 3) It makes you want to play it immediately because the things you do in it seem like fun!

“1366: A Medieval Oddity” by Graham Rose is a simple idea. You play medieval peasants in a pretty straight forward medieval world. Earth. Just peasants. Just ‘normal joes’. Of course, you’re a little bit more special than most peasants and you have an extremely interesting list of talents and oddity’s to choose from.

What stands out immediately is how professionally done it is. Not necessarily in graphic design, but in a good table of contents, very readable layout, minimal misspelling and editing mistakes and when I say minimal, I don’t mean like most PDF RPGs, “I per page” - I mean I don’t remember any.

A perfect progression between the basic history of Medieval England to how to use dice, then create characters, and their personality. All wonderfully influenced by the period itself. Using “humors” to give basic personality types, an appropriate list of period names, and appearances. Everything you need to immediately explain the game and get to it quickly, without getting bogged down in the completely unnecessary fan fiction most RPGs indulge in.

And the rest of it is filled with the kind of touches that in seem like ’extras’ nowadays but make the game instantly playable and greatly useful to GM. Four pages of period-appropriate equipment. Procedures for finding special herbs, creating diseases and the amount of detail on the Bubonic Plague that screams fun adventure! Two beginning adventures and a great list of colorful NPCs and a listing of animals and their stats. Even a ‘bad luck’ table because peasants just can’t get a break!

An example NPCs should give you an idea:

Goblyn of Deddelye, X3, Quidnunc, Motley and Bodkin talents, Brimstone oddity.

If you don’t want to play a game with that guy in it I don’t know what you’re doing in this hobby.

Top it off with a background setting. Though unfortunately with a map.

Thanks for a great game! I can’t wait for the Kickstarter!

• The best way I have of explaining this is all the prehistoric/caveman games that try to use rocks or hand gestures as a substitute for dice because ‘its a caveman game and that’s the way they would play an RPG!’. Except that’s pretty stupid because if cavemen played RPGs they could just as easily use dice!

A hidden gem of a game, Paleomythic is bound to provide you with quality entertainment; the rules are concise and simple, matching the overall Stone Age tone that is the game's real advantage: its original setting, which is allowed to shine, freed from unnecessary heaps of rules-mongering. With the current rise of survival games, it's great to see a system that allows the GM to take it with equal ease in a multitude of directions: from pure, no-magic exploration and day-to-day survival to a high-magic, supernatural-riddled campaign. Don't expect fancy artwork or perfect proofreading: the rulebook sets the game's tone from page 1 and does it in a spartan, yet extremely fulfilling way. Supplemented by the excellent (and highly unexploited) pool that is its setting, I believe that all Hyperborea and prehistory fans will find their heart's desire in this game and much more.

Vividly recommended and real value for money: at 1 USD, it's a steal and going back to the very roots of Humanity never felt so good.

Pros: includes a pretty good guide to how to run the world, with enough information that you wouldn't have to do any more looking into history to come up with settings if you didn't want to.

Plenty of reasonably inventive and amusing ideas, quite creative while still being very true to the setting at the time.

Some genuinely interesting ideas for games.

Interesting and fun sample characters.

Really fun example story, I've yet to play it but it looks great.

Excellent price for what it is.

Cons: Some of the rules feel overly complicated (especially the way traps work).

Combat and leveling is both too complicated and too simplistic at the same time.

Rules are just mediocre in general, really.

Overall, I would definitely recomend purchasing this. While the rules are not particularly well done, they're still playable and there are a lot of nifty ideas that could be brought into other games. The example story alone is worth the price, it looks amusing enough to make up for the poor rules and you could very easily port it over to any fantasy/historical game if you couldn't handle the bad rule system.