[Gavken]

CW when I wrote the comment this morning I said that I had only skim read the game and the comment on the year is not fully correct as a result. I found that stuff much later, mainly through the lack of a decent index.

My beef with the game as I see it at present is that if I just wanted to do a swashbuckling fun game I could do that in Fate 3.0 or any other number of systems. I already knew that PDQ# system that this is based on is freely available so I could run the game using that if I wanted.

What makes this game special for me is the unique ideas in the setting. This is what I was hoping to get for my money and I guess where I was most dissappointed. I still haven't read it all but for me the history of the cultures involved in the setting is very important to how the people of that country react. If you think about the real world you will know of long standing rivalries and issues that have been caused by historical events. The three lines on the history of one culture is just a joke in my eyes.

There are good RPGs out there that include good bestiaries in a small amount of space - look a RQ2 for a good example showing you what most of the major races are like.

Yet instead we have 6 pages of bibliography in the back of the book followed by 4 pages of adverts. That's a whole 10 pages that could have been devoted to something good detailing the history of the world.

Don't get me started about currency either. There's nothing about it in the individual cultures, nothing in the section on International trade. I eventually found on P178 in a random section entitled Temporary Gear and Temporary Wealth that the Barathi use ducats as a currency. It never says what all the nations use of course or what you can expect to buy with your ducats.

I've also just noticed a couple more completely pointless sections. "How Piracy is done" and "What do you do with the Booty". The answers of course are attack vessels from a position of concealment and divide up the booty. Now anyone who's ever seen a pirate film will know how this works.

Iago - I will try and post a proper review if I get a chance. I am just pointing out the negative things I noticed. There are alot of very good things about the game which once I've fully read it I will try and talk about. The Skyship combat system does look very good.

I think Evil Hat have done very well with Spirit of the Centuary and am planning to use that for my next campaign, but this product I feel needs alot more work. I hope that the Dresden Files comes out much better than this when it eventually comes out.

I cannot see how CW can post a review though that gives this 5/5 when he freely admits there are problems with the product. Merely saying that we had a lot of fun doing swashbuckling I don't believe justifies it. I could equally say about any game tailored to that market such as 7th Sea.