** Disclaimer I know the Publisher/ Author personally. This is for my honesty and integrity ** Disclaimer I am basing my review on both this sample and my reading of the hard cover book that I had bought. I find the sample well scanned. The sample is just a taste of the full book, and should wet your appetite for the book. I found that the setting was very well done and internally consistent, this is very important as you can get a well done setting that fails to be internally consistent. I read the full book before I got this sample so my look at the sample is colored by that, and I see the sample as lacking a few things but it tries to convey the feel and high points of the world. The parts that it shows are very much showing the color and flavor of the setting and world.

I had been following the Realms of Twilight campaign setting since I first heard about it from a fellow gamer. I was very excited when the sample came out. however I am writing this review for the book itself. I bought a hardcopy shortly after it was released.

I'll start with the overall feel of the book. The printing maintains a dark tone through out the book which tends to make some of the art work seem less impressive. I would have liked to see it in a color printing. I find the text to be just right and easily readable. However I have had a few instances where a bright glare gave me some trouble. I thought the page borders were a great touch and would also benefit greatly in a color printing.

The book starts off taking you through a brief history of the world and sets the mood for what is to come. The next bit of the book covers the continents, nations, and cities contained within Relistan. It also goes further to describe governments, politics, and important NPC's. The detail is just enough to give you the information you need without overloading you.

The book then moves on to character information. Now I'm kinda partial to this next part. The Combat Alchemist. My play group started a RoT campaign and one of our characters is a combat alchemist. He has saved us more than a few times. It's pretty interesting to get one of the potions he makes and discover the "joy" hidden inside. The prestige classes seem very interesting and I am hoping I get the chance to play one. The Elemental Fist for example if played by the right person, I think could cause a DM to get a headache. The new races are all very interesting and I enjoyed learning about them. I still haven't read through all the religions and deities, but I have made my way through enough of them to realize a lot of thought was put into their creation.

The stories, histories, and legends contained within the book were well written and kept my attention. I was interested to keep reading on and I feel they gave me pertinent information. They helped to further immerse me in this world of Relistan.

I particularly like the character sheet at the back of the book, but it does seem a bit busy.

Overall, I think the book did it's job. It relayed the information I need to have an interest in playing the campaign. when that interest grew it gave me the information to dig deeper, make a character, and start playing. Are there some negatives, yes, but I do not believe they out weigh the positives. In the future I hope to see some supplementals and a color version of the original material. I'm always asked would you recommend this product to someone else. Yes I would, and have in fact done so several times already.

I first heard of Realms of Twilight from a role-playing message board website both the author and I frequent. Almost as soon as the physical book became available I ordered it and have been quite pleased with Mr. Marshall’s work. So, in the interests of being more precise, I feel the need to point out my review is of the physical book rather than the PDF version. The game world, Relistan, exists in a perpetual dusk-like state of illumination. Ages ago an epic ritual blotted the True Sun from the sky and now the world is lit by reflected light from Relistan’s three moons. Over time both flora and fauna evolved to compensate for the darkness. In other message forums the author has given sound reasoning for his world’s idiosyncrasies and this makes Relistan seem much more unique than gimmicky. This is not, as some have suggested elsewhere, a Pathfinder/3.5 OGL rehash of Ravenloft. Realms of Twilight is as separate and self-contained as any campaign setting in print or otherwise.

The book spends many chapters on the history of its people and continents. All the major fantasy races have a place in RoT, plus the indigenous races of Nightlings and Umbrals. Nightlings, a semi-barbaric people distantly related to Halflings, remind me of the Talenta Halflings in Eberron. The Umbral people’s history surprised me since their ancestors were Undead. With the shattering of a mystic gem within their god’s chest the Umbral rose from undeath to true life. As such, other races aren’t very trusting of them and the Umbral return that mistrust. Players who prefer playing outcast types like Tieflings should look into this race. I don’t recall a similar story anywhere. There are demi-human variant races available for those who don’t wish to play a “vanilla” race. The world of Relistan contains five major continents with a chapter devoted to outlining the legends, geography, politics and peoples of each. The chapters provide enough detail for both players and GM’s to feel comfortable gaming in this world without railroading them with too much detail. I look forward to the first supplement to the Campaign Setting, which I hope is devoted to Kesuril, the first continent mentioned in the book. I also think a Player’s Guide to Relistan would be useful while not critical to have.

Beginning with Chapter 8, the Campaign Setting provides rules for Prestige Classes. The Acolyte of Twilight provides both Pathfinder and 3.5 adherents a more accessible version of the Dragon Disciple found in 3.5’s DMG, balanced by the deity prerequisite. Disciples of the Shadow remind me in a limited way of the Grey Guard of Heironeous, a secretive band of warrior-clergy within the larger church. Elemental Fists are Monks who gain benefits from harnessing the power of the elements. It sure is a flashy and attractive class with the abilities and resistances gained at higher levels. In the hands of even a mediocre player, this prestige class can put the screws to Game Masters. Speaking as a GM, I don’t like it--at all. The Fire Dancer, a Bard-centric prestige class, is interesting to me in that her command of fire gets so powerful that the flames at a certain character level can become a medium-sized fire elemental under her control. If I had anything bad to say about the class, the combat bonus progression seems too good for a class not intended for a front-line melee combatant. Hunter of the Wastes brings a touch of the Clerical to what is at first blush a Ranger-specific prestige class. Given that in Relistan’s lack of direct sunlight Undead have less to fear, this class will see a lot of gameplay. Lastly, the Shadow Speaker class will appeal to the sneaky players in groups, so long as they play Umbral characters. The combat bonuses for this class are more in line with what I would have expected for the Fire Dancer, but they work for the Shadow Speaker too.

Further chapters provide new deities (complete with regional prevalence and interfaith relationships) spells, feats, equipment and monsters specifically tailored to the unique setting of Relistan. Also, a list of alchemical mixtures tiered and organized much like spells supports the new base class Combat Alchemist.

In the format of the book itself, Realms of Twilight Campaign Setting follows the standard put forth by similar works before it. Almost by instinct the reader can gauge where information he seeks is and open the book close to his mark if he is in a hurry. There are few surprises in this aspect and the presentation is clean and concise. The author uses a writing style even less complicated than what you are reading here in the bulk of the book, and an even more florid and descriptive one than here when providing the world’s backstory. As to the art and illustrations--about 90% of it is simply terrific. Striking and evocative images show many geographic features, battles of renown, and personages of repute. Of that, about a third seem a little TOO dark and could benefit from some lightening up in a second printing, which if all goes well should be in the works in the near future. For examples I submit pages 87, 91, and 118. The other 10% aren’t necessarily bad or of poor quality, but the style is a much more iconic and utilitarian one. Yes, these would be found in the chapter on core classes and prestige classes, most notably the Elemental Fist and the Sai-Heth in the monsters section for examples. Putting my best foot forward, I would say they remind me fondly of first edition D&D artwork. In the instances of cartography, one of my favorite things about any campaign setting, the general darkness of the illustrations seems to intensify in the maps, which may have been altered for the PDF version. The maps themselves are well done and not too detailed to allow breathing room for GM alteration in their game. As this book was printed independently, I don’t take off points for the use of greyscale to save printing costs, but I have to say the dimness of these images needs fixing, as I have been assured they will. The character sheet in the back was a great touch, although I do take issue with the font type in the stat/information block headings.

So in summation, is this worth your almost $20 and the space on your hard drive? It was worth more money to me, sight unseen, to get the hardback book. Daniel Marshall’s work does not disappoint in toto despite my few complaints. Realms of Twilight provides a rich game world for players and Game Masters equally and I eagerly anticipate further works based on the Campaign Setting.

This is a (literally and figuratively) dark campaign setting alternative to the default Pathfinder Golarion campaign setting. The premise of this campaign setting is that direct sunlight has been blocked by a celestial object, leaving the earth in an underdark-like twilight. As a result, virtually all great civilizations have collapsed, ecological niches have disappeared, and creepy violent monsters and races have moved in to pick up the slack. This volume boasts almost 250 pages of material. Roughly half the book covers the geopolitical regions of this world; and the other half provides the new races, classes, monsters, equipment, and religions that you would expect from an optional campaign setting. You might expect some kind of grungy, distressed calligraphic typography to help convey the "dark ages" mood of this setting, but instead it seems to be laid out in Times New Roman, with headers also monotonously laid out in Times New Roman. Chapter headers and some image captions are laid out in Brush Script, which is almost the antithesis of spooky. It is very legible, but I hope that the final product uses different type, especially because the pages have "crinkled, distressed parchment" or "richly illuminated manuscript" watermarks which do not fit with Times New Roman. Except for the cover, the entire work is in black & white. For a PDF, there are no color print costs; it might be nice to see the images, maps, and textured paper in color. This might also help the text "pop out", whereas the dark uncolored paper texture presents a gray background which mires the text. Some PDF publishers provide a "print friendly" watermark-free monochrome version along with the "full" color version. Another option is to use PDF layers, with which one document can contain both lush and spartan views of the same material. I hope the final product will provide one or both of these options. The preview has 12 pages: color cover, credits, table of contents, 2 pages of intro, 3 pages of fluff about a region, 2 pages about a race, 1 page of fluff about a monster, and a 1-page ad for an unrelated product; by the numbers, there are only 6 pages of actual content in this preview, but it winds up being a little less than 6 pages of usable material, because the race is barely described in the 2 pages provided, and the monster page doesn't cover any of the crunch. Granted, this is just a preview, not a playtest; the publishers just want you to get a taste of the actual book. The introduction uses the passive voice too much, which mutes any excitement you might feel about it; accordingly its "Inside This Book" section almost makes you NOT want to read it. The other pages use a significant amount of passive voice in an effort to sound poetic or spooky, but it hinders one's retention of the material. Confusingly, there is little distinction between monster and player race in terms of tone or motivation; perhaps this parallels the presumption that in a world of only twilight, there is neither light nor dark, only dim shades of gray. Also, there are noticeable and disappointing typos, many of which would be caught by any automated spell checker. The art is decent, but the monochrome presentation mutes most images into muddy gray. The map provided has grid lines, but no legend to tie those grid lines to any scale. The most vibrant image is a line drawing of a character race which provides some nice contrast between white and black regions. You SHOULD get this book if you're tired of your players treating trips to the Underdark like a visit to an amusement park they can simply leave when they are inconvenienced or bored: Realms of Twilight presents a world with no place to hide from the dark--the entire world is effectively Underdark. Also, you would need to like a lot of fluff and texture in a gaming book; and you would need a lot of time to reread the clunky writing. You SHOULD NOT get this book if you consider endless Underdark to be hopelessly unappealing gaming monotony akin to Seasonal Affective Disorder; if you really like your gaming books to be as rich and beautiful as the Pathfinder RPG books; if you like clear distinctions between good and evil; if you demand a lot of crunch (granted, campaign settings typically contain little crunch); or if you have little tolerance for poor writing.

Download is working now, you only get a few pages of the book with this though. Only real content is one race.

The file, she is kaput! There is nothing in it and it wont open.

Unfortunately I had to click a star rating enable to enter text. I suggest that it would be better if one could enter a text without having to rate the product as I fear such mistakes will damage the over all rating of the product. Hope this gets fixed soon and am looking forward to the preview.