[Transparency] I am a kickstarter backer. [/Transparency]

A very strong contender for the best game released this year.

Caleb Stokes is one of the best horror RPG scenario writers of the last decade, and in this his first RPG, he has proven himself to be one of the best RPG designers of that same period. Redmarkets is a game about poverty and its effects on us, shown through the lense of Zombies. In it you play Takers, a class of heroes who put the hobo into murder hobo. Whats more, every system of the game makes it abundantly clear that no well adjusted, healthy person would choose to be a taker, save that it offers the slim chance that the work may oneday let you and your loved ones escape abject poverty in a zombie haunted wastland. Victory for your taker, is retirement to the safe zone. In red markets, every decision has economic consequences, and ever mistake bitter consequences.

All this is wrapped up in a neat and well-designed system that drives homes the games themes, while offering players all the freedom of a traditional skill based RPG system.

I strongly advise you to check it out!

There was a time when I felt terribly constrained as the guy running a game. Sure I had an ungodly number of games to choose from, but I didn't much like running most of them. They either had settings I loved, and settings I hated, or systems I liked, and with dull setting that the system was married too. The universal systems, were the least inspiring of the lot.

It had gotten to the point where Call of Cthulhu was about all I ever wanted to run. Now I love Lovecraftian horror more than is considered healthy by most, but there is more to me than that. I love Wuxia too, transhumanist science fiction, spaghetti western, sword and sorcery, pulpie steampunk, and cypherpunks raging against the dying of the light of freedom, and so much more besides.

Then Fate Core dropped into my hands.

Now, when it gets time for me to run something new, I don't just go to the bookshelf and look at which purist scenario my players will suffer through next, or even write a new one myself. No, I get to tell stories of swashbuckling airpirates, or near future eco-terrorist.

Fate, is unique, in that it manages to be rather good at simultaneously being fun, and close to a universal system.

Quick (yet remarkably detailed), setting neutral (yet characterful). Fate manages to be all things to all people (so long as your okay with a storytelling game elements).

Where GURPS fails because it is clunky beyond belief (and the fact that I am beginning to suspect that the rumors that some people actually play it, may actually be a collective delusion of the RPG community), Fate manages to offer fast paced game play, with a rich narrative to combats, debates and other challenges.

Where OGL fails, because lets face it, even when your playing a modern day game with it, your really just playing DnD, fate manages to be very nearly truly setting neutral. This is thanks to its minimalist rules design and its very hackable.

It isn't perfect. It's fundamental setup is not a good horror.

But for everything else, there is fate core.

As ever, this “quarters” unspeakable oath is an excellent addition to the world of Mythos gaming. It has a range of articles for different Mythos gaming systems, is well layed out(didn't give me a head ache being my metric for this), art is of good quality and seems to have little in the way of errors on a first read.

The content is A grade however, all the standard sections are present and correct from the reviews section though to directives from A-Cell. The other articles seem pretty strong, though I have yet to get my teeth into the scenarios in depth.

The real stand out is Engines Underground, a mysterious manuscript article describing an odd book, which seems to have differing sub-plots for every reader. It is my favourite additions to the Hastur Mythos in some years, and was for me, worth the whole purchase price of Oath 21, on its own.