[Grimmstorm]

I bought the game because of this review. Unfortunately I bought it before I learned there is a hardcover available. Anyway...when flipping through the pages I was stunned by two things - the overwhelming excellent artwork (if you like Elmore, which I honestly do (and ofcourse the other artists are equally great!!!)) and the just a wee bit less than professional layout. I was totally relieved to find a meaty book with tons of information and no full color pages and all that unnecessary eye-cancer causing design stuff that is nowadays so popular. Don't get me wrong with this comment about the "wee bit less than pro..." layout - I really love it. It's such a heart-warming back to the roots that I emediately fell in love with the game. When I took a closer look I found all the Methwargs and the others and...loved them. I love the idea of story driven advancement. I love the Magic. I love the absence of miniatures (THAT is what I love almost most!!!). I love the bestiary! The only thing I miss a bit is the description of a short starting adventure and a small village or similar setting with maps for the first couple of adventures. And of course a full scale full color world map - just because I love maps.
As for the setting it did look quite derivative for me, too. But actually that is nothing that I really dislike. What I dislike on games is just the other way around: always pronouncing how cool and inovative they are. In the end they might be (or might not be just due to renaming and so) but their inovations are just crap (like all elves come from a planet sized apple and are in reality kick-arse vampire-ghoul fachists and wear pink camouflage suits). In the end what counts is who got the bigger gun, who knows more of the extra rules and who bought most of the books. I really hate those so-called inovative games. What I miss is a game that presents old school fantasy - plain and without too much disturbingly bad concepts. Back too the roots stuff - but well made with todays expectations for quality and todays knowledge about how to describe a vivid setting. Not fixed to a certain character setup the type of "all characters must ruch to levl 20 to become dragon slaying demigods who can't be killed by a guard anymore (for that I liked RM very much - you could still kill a group of unwary players with a single 0-lvl orc scout even when all characters already passed lvl 10 or more).
Just a few new names for old known stuff is pretty good for me. It's not the "what" that is inovation for me but the "how (it is presented/detailed)".
Actually I think druids don't need to be namend druids all the time - even if they are basically druids. The few name changes and new words that are used are nice for the atmosphere and you get accustomed to them quickly. Hopefully to the authors they can stand up to my expectations for any follow up material. I don't want to see another version of a game that sells only due to the fact that each new book contains tons of new skills, feats, classes and monsters - and only few information. I guess I'm just one of the old "left over" gamers from older days who where satisfied by a dozen classes at best for the rules part but loved to adventure in real and exciting settings that were lavishly described....please don't let me down!
One thing I would love to see next time is a map with realm borders for example, some city-maps, more pictures of ordinary places and people so that you get a feeling for the folk that lives around, their clothing, the architecture and stuff like that...and probably some good floor-plans (please don't use anything with grids on it - just make them more like artistry. Good floor plans are so rare these days. Most follow this awfull D20-computer generated miniature-battles style. No heart-no flavour).

CoR get's a big thumbs up from me. And yes - I know there are downsides on this game. But every game has them and I think CoR has them where I can live with them.

Ah...there is one downside that I don't like...what about the text passages writen in one of the CoR fonts...they are a bit hard to read, nevertheless a nice idea. Are there plain text versions available some where? As a GM I love to have things simple and obvious. For my players...it's different.

Please keep up the good work!

PS: I like the game so much that I already set up a separate forum for it on my website to make it more known in germany.