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Shadowfall
by Eric F. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/24/2021 22:23:32

"The cultists had it all wrong. What if the stars came right and no-one even noticed? Shadowfall takes you to a 1984 where the governments of the world reached an accomodation with some of the universe's horrors and set a watch for the rest, at the cost of giving up what was once best about humanity. Freedom, pity, tolerance -- they've all been traded for security and paranoia, and the powers-that-be admire and even emulate their amoral allies. Intelligence and military ops run amuck and it is not at all a good time to stand out,"

Baggage Books is one of those outfits that recently came to our attention through being in the middle of the Cepheus Engine Rpg community. So what is Shadowfall? Its basically the meet point between Cepheus Engine & H.P. Lovecraft's mythos in a modern dark alley of club X Files. The Cthlhu mythos have not been quiet in the modern world of 2021. Instead they've been very busy putting themselves into the modern world. Your PC's are the agents, fighters, supernatural surivors trying to deal with the modern problems of the Lovecraftian races, gods, etc. on Earth. The cults of these horrors have not been idle folks. They've been on the move full force & Shadowfall feels like a mounting war campaign setting for the Cepheus Engine rpg. Clocking in at 92 pages there's more then enough here to kick off such a campaign. The advantage here is the added benefit of Cepheus Engine rpg extensive system background. The layout & page design is standard Cepheus Engine rpg supplemental book stuff. The font is servicable, the layout solidly done for Shadowfall. This is both an investigative or straight to the point Lovecraftian Mythos horror campagin setting in the making.

Shadowfall as a straight up Lovecraftian Mythos horror campagin setting is dark & brutal. The shadowy masters are there but they have their own hidden agendas. The Lovecraftian material is well done, hits the high notes, and brings home some its own feel within Shadowfall. Carrer paths are solidly done. Shadowfall could easily stand completely & utterly on its own as a Cepheus Engine rpg horror setting with its own Lovecraftian spin.

Shadowfall has its own internal take on the mythos, its histories, the conspiracy theory like shadowy Lovecraftian alien races,cults, etc. slightly different then say the venerable Call of Cthlhu rpg.Shadowfall is a modern game setting with some highly dangerous forces just waiting to snuff out PC's. And what's really enjoyable is that its a self contained alternative Nineteen Eighty Four campaign setting. And yes there's mention of Ronald Ragan, Margret Thatcher, all of the usual suspects. But here the Mythos looms large in the background colouring everything with its Lovecraftian taint. Shadowfall is a queer beast because it fills a niche within the Cepheus Engine rpg genre that being cosmic horror with its own spin the usual Lovecraftian stories, & material. That's really nicely done making Shadowfall valuable for that reason alone. Now add in the interstellar expansiveness of the Cepheus Engine rpg or original Traveller rpg. Suddenly the interstellar scene becomes very interesting indeed.

Shadowfall in point of fact could be used with other Cepheus Engine products such as Micheal Brown's Dossier series of adventures, careers,etc. and whole new campaign vistas open up for the DM to exploit.

Shadowfall has lots of adventure generation potential for the Cepheus Engine rpg. Paul Drye does an excllent job with his writing bring out the best in some of his adventure seeds, giving possible campaign hooks, and bring the Eighties awesomeness into focus in Shadowfall. For a fiver I think Shadowfall is a real bargain with lots of potential. Side note Shadowfall makes an excellent Dark Conspiracy rpg addition book as a supplement to add in the Lovecraftian mythos to the DC game universe with no problem at all. Five outta of five for a solid campaign setting book. Eric Fabiaschi Swords & Stitchery Blog Want More OSR action?! Subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Shadowfall
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Outcast
by Ryan F. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/15/2020 12:18:29

This setting answers a questions I never thought to ask. What if Humaniti were a minor race in the Imperium? What if instead of spaceships everyone not a major race was forced to use sometimes dangerous portals between worlds aand galaxies? What if a major race decided we weren't worthy of our own planet, took over, and put us on a reservation? And it answers those questions really well, with just enough information to undertsand the setting and then take it and go on with my own ideas.

I have no idea why I decided to pick this up, I wasn't looking for a new setting, but I love Traveller/TCE and I decided to take a chance on it. It was well worth it. I highly recommend this to anyone who is into Traveller, but either doesn't care about the Imperium or who is just looking for a new setting. It's fairly short, but very to the point and I felt it hit that sweet spot of enough to build off of without feeling I was going to need to change much if I decided something needed changing.

Overall, highly recommended.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Outcast
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Local Heroes
by Christopher T. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/02/2019 12:03:07

I've yet to run this, but this is an unexpected FASERIP release with very local, very street level events and adventures mostly for a GM and a single super, which slowly can expand into team scenarios and a larger meta plot of the GM's devising. The closest thing in the old Marvel game in terms of power level would be the Night Life / Night Moves "Gang Wars Trilogy."

First the module has a bunch of hero and villan write ups (looks like they were built with a campaign level Decent rather thant the standard World Class) for FASERIP which alone are worth the 4$.

Next is a gazetter of NYC (Brooklyn mostly) with NPC Organizations, NPC's, allies, aliens, etc. All well written and most importantly, concise.

Last are a set of adventures, some as simple as helping out a car accident and going more complex from there.

Layout is fine and functional, art is mostly stock art that we've seen before in other products (same with FASERIP itself).

Overall, very much worth the price, solid writing and good content. Would love to see more FASERIP stuff by these guys in the future!



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Local Heroes
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Outcast
by Anders B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/23/2018 07:18:20

Outcast has a very original setting, with humanity having been evicted from Earth by superhitech aliens. Our descendants are forced to eke out their lives on marginal worlds that are interconnected by stargates. Unfortunately, the book is too thin to be a useful foundation when building a campaign. The authors don't provide sufficiently fleshed-out worlds. My advice is straightforward: revise and expand. Outcast should contain at least twice as much text to be attractive to me. This is a pity, because I like Outcast's underlying concept a lot.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
Outcast
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Outcast
by Xiuju B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/05/2018 00:47:31

For once a truly original concept in RPGs! And even better, humans aren't the dominant or "special" race (a la Traveller, Babylon 5, Star Trek, most sci fi books ever...) Apart from a few typos, it's well produced. I'd like to see adventures published for it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Outcast
by Todd S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/17/2018 18:15:57

A sandbox setting that combines several underused sci-fi tropes (underused in RPG's anyway). Earth was conquered by a hyper advanced alien race and humanity has been exiled to a distant, harsh “reservation” world where they have managed to eke out a meager existence over the course of many centuries. But fear not, this world is connected to a galaxy-spanning (or perhaps even universe-spanning) network of portals similar to stargates. Some gates connect to worlds of other races (themselves exiles), some gates connect to unexplored worlds, some to horrible death. Only a minuscule fraction of these have been explored and charted so the setting is perfect for an exploration campaign. Other possible campaign ideas center around resource exploitation and trade with the other “outcast” races. Most humans no longer entertain thoughts of retaking Earth (really not even possible at this point), but I suppose you could make that the focus of a military themed campaign if you really wanted. While I was reading it I kept getting the feeling that this game is what Stargate SG-1 would have been if the Tok’ra had defeated the Goa’uld and gone on to conquer the galaxy themselves instead. Yeah, after typing that out I still feel that way.

This setting offers several elements that you don’t often find in sci-fi, but that I often want in sci-fi. The first is a distinct lack of space ships. I know most people probably play SF games for the space ships. I do not. I find designing ships and conducting ship combat boring. If that’s what you’re looking for, I’ll recommend you look elsewhere. The second element is a lower, mixed tech level, one where you are more likely to get in a knife fight than a blaster fight. But guns exist. Even laser guns exist, they’re just extremely rare (and illegal for a human to own). And it's entirely possible that one of those portals might lead to an astonishing cache of some kind of "precursor" tech. It's up to you, really. My gripes would be typos/editing issues and a lack of bookmarks. The pdf is hyperlinked to chapter headings, however.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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