TL;DR If you want to roleplay instead of a kind of tolkein inspired spreadsheet session then this is for you.

Everything you need to roleplay, have fun, slay dragons etc.

Honestly all the different versions get quite confusing ,not least because they all seem to be free except the original :)

That said, it doesnt matter which version you get the basics are the same, its fast playing, easy to learn, focused on the play and not the statistics.

" Bearded Bastards of the realm"... Enjoying reading this ! Purchased the Adventure you wrote for this version as well. and looking forward to the release of the next edition ! Not having a regular group to play with as my job makes me travel alot and some of the places I go to dont allow a whole lot of gaming possibilities , im always looking for game systems that allow simple yet deep fun ... that I can use with RPGSolo. Very fresh approach and the writing style actually motivates me ! Thank You !

A neuronphaser.com review.

Content 4/5

Crimson Dragon Slayer version 1.11 is a step towards simplifying Crimson Dragon Slayer (thus the One Hour Game tagline) and re-presenting it such that newer players and gamemasters (Dragon Masters, in this game) can jump right in. Not only that, it’s a stepping stone — a FREE one, at that! — towards development of a 2nd edition of the full Crimson Dragon Slayer RPG. In a lot of ways, it shows how living documents work towards becoming a full-release version of a new RPG, which Venger has announced is coming in 2018.

The Mechanics

Crimson Dragon Slayer 1.11: One Hour Game runs on the VSd6 system, a system that exclusively uses six-sided dice. Basically, a player rolls a number of d6s based on their character’s capabilities and the situational modifiers that come into play, looks for the highest number on those dice, and uses that as their result.

1. A critical failure.

2. A failure.

3. Mostly/partial failure.

4. Mostly/partial success.

5. Success

6. Critical success.

When rolling multiple dice, rolling more than one 6 usually counts for some extra, added benefit, such as inflicting more damage.

Deciding how many dice to roll, as mentioned above, is a matter of taking into account several factors, but they are pretty clearly explained. It operates on a graduated scale like so:

• Roll 0d6 when you’re doing some extremely difficult and/or are hopelessly unskilled at the task. Rolling “zero d6” means rolling two 6-sided dice and taking the LOWER number as the result, rather than the higher number like you normally do.
• Roll 1d6 when there’s great difficulty or if you’re unskilled.
• Roll 2d6 for most actions.
• 3d6 and 4d6 are reserved for highly skilled people, incredibly easy tasks, or tasks in which you benefit from some kind of magical or divine assistance.

A special dice roll, called a saving throw, is a roll of 1d6 (2d6 for characters of the dwarf race) that determines if you avoid the effects of special attacks, or if you succumb to death once your Health is depleted.

The only time you don’t roll dice like the above is when you’re rolling initiative to determine combat order and inflicting damage.

To establish who acts when during an encounter, everyone rolls 1d6, and you go in ascending order: 1s go first, 2s go next, 3s go after that, and so on. Rinse and repeat each round. Notably, thieves (one of the classes we’ll talk about in a second) get to halve their initiative roll, which is effectively like rolling 1d3 for initiative.

In the case of damage, you roll a number of d6s based on how well you succeeded, and you add the dice together to get the amount of damage inflicted, which is then subtracted from your opponent’s Health. Notably, rolling a “6” on one of your damage dice means it “explodes”: you add that 6 into the damage total, then roll again and add whatever that new number is to the damage total. As long as you keep rolling 6s on a die, you keep rolling and adding. Armor has a rating, and that rating is simply subtracted from the damage total dealt to you.

Characters

Creating a character is dead simple: pick a race, pick a class, pick a disposition.

There are three races, and each gives you a base Health score (your hit points, under most old school game systems), a single special ability, and a general physical and personality description. Humans get to re-roll a single bad roll in a game session, elves are resistant (but not immune) to magic, and dwarves are adept at making saving throws. Beyond those basics, you’re pretty much assumed to just know what an elf or dwarf are, which if you don’t and you’re reading this game (or even this review) you know maybe you should just crack open like any other roleplaying game or fantasy book or comic book or war game or anything else ever and try reading.

Your class tells you what sorts of things you are proficient at doing (meaning, which things you get more than 1d6 when rolling the dice), notes some ideas on starting gear, and tells you how many extra Health you get as you go up in levels. Not too surprisingly, the classes are:

• Warrior
• Wizard
• Thief
• Cleric

Disposition is simply a descriptive word (or words) that give you an idea of what your character’s personality and demeanor is like. There’s a list of 12 words as starters, but you can pretty much do whatever you want here.

Gear

Weapons are mainly just icing on the cake: your damage is determined by how well you rolled to strike something, so it kinda doesn’t matter how or with what you do so. This extends to magic, too, so basically the idea is that every character is using the most appropriate measures they are skilled with.

As mentioned previously, armor simply has a rating (chainmail, for instance, has an armor rating of 4) and that’s how much damage is subtracted before applying it to your Health. So if a monster hits you for 6 points of damage, your chainmail soaks 4 of that damage, meaning you only subtract 2 points of damage from your Health.

Shields are interesting in that they give you 2 additional armor (i.e. subtract 2 from incoming damage), but they also reduce your ability to fight offensively, meaning you roll one less die to attack. Say you’re a skilled Warrior swinging your sword, so you’d normally roll 3d6 to attack some dumbass goblin stupid enough to charge into melee with you. Well, if you’ve got a shield, you’re rolling 2d6 instead.

Magic

Wizards and Clerics use magic in the same rules-mechanics way, but the effects are kinda different in that wizards attempt to change reality through force of will and clerics tend to call upon the grace of their gods to enact miracles. The game leaves this open to lots of interpretation, but there’s a couple unique things to note that makes this game stand out (sometimes slightly, sometimes majorly) from other OSR games:

Wizards can’t cast purely offensive magic without a device to do so (wand of lightning bolts, staff of fireballs, etc.). Otherwise, their reality-bending appears to be slightly less direct (climbing on walls like a spider, moving faster, teleporting, levitating things, reading minds), and they cannot heal things. Clerics can heal with their magic, and can do anything reasonably covered by a miracle (I imagine that means things like bless stuff, shield others, compel spirits, divine the future, etc.). Clerics can, once per day, “strike down demons, undead, or extra-dimensional abominations” which isn’t really described in any more depth than that, so you either succeed or fail based on your roll.

Most of those examples are my own, however, so I’m clearly reading into things with years of D&D spell lists coloring my interpretation. More guidance is necessary to truly make this document sing as a “new players and GMs can jump right in” primer.

So, how does magic work, mechanically? Well, first you decide how “big” an effect the magic has — how severely it warps reality or how impactful of a miracle it is — and that gives you a dice pool you roll to see how effective it is (just like any task). Plus, it gives you a cost in Health to enact it, so you gotta pay to play. It says that you can drain that Health from another person, but the cost is threefold and requires blood to be spilled, so you’re literally cutting open someone to provide a blood sacrifice. It doesn’t talk about willing vs. unwilling, so…keep a dagger handy if you’re a spellcaster!

Advancement

Characters gain a level — which is simply adding health based on the rate that their chosen class says — after every session of play. While simple and straightforward, this loses perhaps the greatest part of the original Crimson Dragon Slayer game, which was a chart going from level zero up to level 10 and required certain activities or achievements to be met in order to advance to a new level. Here’s hoping that makes a comeback in Crimson Dragon Slayer 2nd Edition!

(Check out my review of the original Crimson Dragon Slayer for more on that bad boy!)

Opponents and Stuff

The included adventure — “The Curse of Xakaar Abbey” — gives you an idea of the challenges characters might face on an adventure.

Monsters get a description that theoretically tells you how they attack, and provides their stats: Health points, Armor rating, and Attack dice pool. Some have special abilities that show you how to resolve different types of conflicts, like dominating characters to attack each other, or using an attack that on a critical success transforms a character into an allied monster. One thing that I feel is missing is that the attacks should list what the primary weapon/attack type is as well as the dice, because that can get lost in the descriptive text of the encounter location.

A locked door provides some interesting results for characters that attempt to pick the lock, showing how you can use the dice pool system to create a sort of “timer” that adds tension and suspense to a scene.

Traps, which generally just call for a saving throw or else you take some damage (or die on a critical failure). Some of the traps play with the number of dice you normally get for saving throws, so this shows how to modify the system a little to get different levels of challenges.

Magic items that provide armor rating, or have limited-use charges of magic that show you how wizards can gain access to offensive spells.

Worth mentioning: the abbey map is absolutely gorgeous, and is done on a grid with a 10-foot square scale, so you can easily use miniatures or tokens to represent marching order of the characters or relative positioning during combat.

It’s An SRD

Notably, the introductory text of Crimson Dragon Slayer 1.11: One Hour Game says it acts as an SRD, meaning that if you want to write adventures or supplements for Crimson Dragon Slayer, you can just contact Venger and say, “Hey, I wanna write a thing!” and presumably he’ll be like, “Okay, here’s some deets on how to do so and legally say that you’re thing is made for use with Crimson Dragon Slayer” and then you write the thing and publish the thing and profit from the thing.

Know wud I’m sayin’?

My lawyer says that you probably shouldn’t write the thing without Venger’s permission. I mean, his name is Venger As’Nas Satanis, so if you wanna open that can of worms, enjoy your doom.

Form 4/5

This booklet is 11 pages, cleanly laid out in 2-column format with some cool, evocative artwork. It comes in two versions: one has a cool backdrop coloring like old parchment and the other is plain Jane black-and-white for those of looking to print all 11 glorious pages.

There’s no cover, so this thing is primed to be printed in full, without any printer-ink-saving options like “Print only pages 2 thru 9” necessary, which is really nice: this thing is literally just a bundle of awesome ready to be printed out and used on the go. I’ll reiterate that the included adventure has some monsters, traps, and treasure for your reference, but even better it has a drop-dead gorgeous map of a ruined abbey in it, so that can be useful whether you play this game or not.

The lack of a table of contents and a character sheet is a little bit of an annoyance, but let’s be clear here: 11 pages. Characters are made up of literally 3 choices. It’s not like you need to flip through a lot to find anything (and the layout is completely logical), and it’s not like you need more than 3 or 4 lines on a 3×5 index card to write down the pertinent details of your character, so I can’t really complain about these minor details all that much.

Read more reviews -- and get other useful RPG resources -- at neuronphaser.com

I read through a lot of rule systems...mainly because I am an admitted mechanics junkie. What I look for in a game is a rules system that streamlines play and emphasizes story-telling. So many times I flip through a system and toss it aside with a few take away items. BUT, CDS 1.11 absolutely captivated me....I was blown away with it's simplicity while really encompassing a captivating game system. The rules are very well written and you can literally get up and running in a few minutes (that includes the Dragon Master reading and prepping the sample adventure). The damage and magic systems fit my style of play perfectly.

Here's another very strong point about this game: the author is SUPER reposnive to questions and will bend over backwards to help clear things up. For example, I had a couple of questions about how healing via Divinity and in the blink of an eye Venger wrote me back with the folowing suggestion (You can also see this response on his site at http://www.draconicmagazine.com/articles/crimson-dragon-slayer-cleric-question ):

Thanks for the email, Jack. Glad you're enjoying Crimson Dragon Slayer!

How clerical abilities are handled probably depends on the game... here are some questions to ask. How much power do the Gods have and how much power is bestowed upon their servants? How frequently do the adventurers encounter demons, aberrations, undead, and otherwordly foes? Has the cleric been dutiful, faithful, corrupted, or susceptible to temptation? Are there multiple clerics in the party? What's the size and strength of the party? How tough do you want the game to be? And how heroic/dark is the world the PCs are living in?

Basically, the short answer is - it depends. Let the result of dice rolled guide you in moments of doubt. The following are specific mechanics I whipped up and should be considered "official." Since rolling dice for the amount of healing is already random, I'd recommend the cleric rolls 1d6 (exploding) every time he tries to heal someone. However, if he rolls a "1" for a certain character, then he can't heal that person again until after the cleric has taken a long rest, about 6 - 8 hours... yet, an intrepid show of true faith from the character who got 1'ed will also refresh the cleric's attempt to heal him.

I've been playing RPGs since 1981 and while I have my core go-to systems, Crimson Dragon Slayer has made it's way to the top of my list. I cannot recommend this game highly enough. I liked it so much that I bought the core game as well (the writting style of that game is funny as hell...you'll love it!)

I hope this helps!

Jack

An Endzeitgeist.com review of the revised edition

This one-hour game-version of Crimson Dragon Slayer clocks in at 11 pages -all content, no frills.

This review is based on the revised 1.6-version of the pdf.

So what is this? Intended for relative novices to the game, this is a stripped down version of the regular Crimson Dragon Slayer-rules, with a different focus - where the regular version features a goofy, over-the-top and awesome metal attitude, this one emphasizes dark science-fantasy as a default assumed genre. The pdf explains the basics of roleplaying and the system, which is ridiculously easy.

The basis for this is VSD6-system: A roll of 1 is a critical failure, a roll of 2 a failure, a roll of 3 mostly failure, 4 = mostly success, 5 = success and 6= critical success. Unless determining wounds or damage, only the highest number rolled is considered to be the effect: The easier a task is, the more d6 you roll: The default is 2d6 for a decent chance of success; very unlikely tasks can prompt 0d6 rolls, which means: "Roll 2d6, take the worse roll."

Humans start with 15 health and may reroll a dice pool once per session. Elves have a 2 in 6 chance to resist magic and get 10 starting health. Dwarves make saving throws with 2d6 instead of 1d6 and get 20 health. This system knows 4 classes. Warriors attack at 3d6 (also is used for warrior-style stuff) and get an armor value 4 chain mail and a weapon. Per level, they gain 1d6 health.

Wizards roll wizardly stuff at 3d6, but are at disadvantage stabbing things and doing the martial shtick, rolling only 1d6. They get an armor value-less robe and a wizard weapon (most likely staff or dagger) at first level. They gain 1 health at each additional level. Wizards cannot carry armor or shields while casting spells.

Thieves roll 3d6 for picking pockets, sneaking about, disarming traps...you get the idea. Armed combat is 2d6, fidgeting with magic scrolls and hocus-pocus like that is 1d6. They get leather armor (armor value 2) and a thieves' weapon. On a level up, they get 1d3 health.

Finally, clerics attack like thieves and may occasionally perform miracles and know the whole religion thing, obviously. They gain 1d3 health per level. The cleric has been amde clearer in his role in the update, so kudos.

The pdf suggests 12 general dispositions like "traitorous", "noble" or "mysterious" as a first roleplaying impulse.

Okay, initiative is handled as follows: Roll 1d6, lowest goes first. Thieves roll 1d3 (the text explains how this works for noobs - nice!). 0 health is unconscious, negative level+1 health = dead -a 4th level character would die at -5 health, for example. Health regenerates at 1 point per hour. The better the dice pool result, the more damage - attack and damage are rolled into one roll of the bones: 1-3 are misses; a hit at 4 causes 1d6 damage; triple 6s cause a whopping 5d6 damage. And yes, these add up. So a 3d6 attack dice pool providing one 6 (3d6) and 2 4s (1d6) would cause 5d6 damage. Furthermore, 6s are "exploding", i.e. they are rerolled and added to the total. Armor Value is treated as DR and subtracted from the damage. Shields increase attack value by 2, but decrease the attack dice pool by -1d6.

I mentioned saving throws. A character rolls 1d6. 1 = die horribly, can't be resurrected, 2= die, 3= die, but get one final action, 4 = alive, but unconscious, 5 =conscious at half total health, 6 = full health. Yes, that means you can actually potentially be healed by save-prompting effects.

The biggest revamp in the update and a very important one, would pertain spellcasting. Magic can be used in combat, but it cannot directly harm a living creature - unless blood sacrifice is involved. Casting magic also drains health from the caster, so that's something to bear in mind as well. Divine magic as wielded by clerics has not similarly been improved, and still does not mention how often and at what potency they can heal, which is odd, particularly considering that magic now drains health.

Characters level up after each session, gaining health. That's it. Aaaand...that's the rules.

The pdf also provides a short intro module...and since the following contains SPOILERS, I'd suggest potential players to move to the conclusion.

...

..

.

"The Curse of Xakaar Abbey" takes place in a fully and gorgeously mapped abbey b/w-cartography, and centers around the eponymous Xakaar, a dread sorceror trafficking with things from beyond, enspelling townsfolk to shamble to his abode. 6 basic rumors and copious read aloud text set the stage. The graveyard is an appropriate beginning, as demonic ghouls spewing green slime assault the PCs...who better make a dash if the GM has rolled double sixes (or similarly well) for their total number....but, alas, the lock must be picked...let's hope the thief doesn't botch his job. Inside, the PCs will have to get past a massive pit of spikes and then deal with spawn of the Outer Darkness (would be nice to have an inkling of what type of spawn they are, but oh well) that can render PCs into shadowy entities on critical successes. Okay, got that. What are the effects?

The PCs may also broker a deal with a trapped infernal elf and gain a magic sword (+1d6), a healing fountain, benevolent telepathic crystals and then duke it out with Xakaar - who likes enclosing foes in rings of fire and dominate the will of others...and when he dominates more than one, he lessens his attack pool. While the pdf still does not say by how many d6 the dice pool is lessened, I assume 1d6. Still, no idea.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, no complaints in that regard. Layout adheres to a 2-column b/w-standard; in one version, the background is parchment-style with subdued blood spatters here and there; the other one is even more printer-friendly. The parchment version is huge for a pdf of this size, though. Still, kudos! It should also be noted that the big version is layered and can thus be customized. The pdf has a gorgeous artwork in b/w and features one absolutely fantastic map of the ruined abbey. While I wished there was a version of the map sans key, this pdf is FREE and as such, I'm not complaining.

Venger As'Nas Satanis' one hour-game version of Crimson Dragon Slayer is extremely easy to grasp, quick to explain and run. For quick, uncomplicated beer-and-pretzels/lunch-break fun, this does its job rather well. The map and artwork and all for free...no complaints there.

So, Vol. 1.6 of CDS's One-Hour-game rules is better than V.1.11. Let's get that out of the way. For one, the rules are slightly more precise; health drain for spells makes sense

On a formal level, clerics still require notes on how often and much they can actually heal; wizards now work better within the freeform assumed due to the lack of direct damage, though I am still weary of whether prolonged gaming does not devolve into competitive BSing with the GM - I'd strongly suggest samples of what a wizard can do as an easy, hard, etc. task at a given level to provide at least a modicum of guidance for GMs.

So yes, I still consider the magic rules in need of some finetuning for gaming that lasts longer than one session. I certainly hope that the themes that rendered CDS original and novel will continue to be emphasized in the final book. V.1.6 is an improvement over 1.11 - but not enough of an improvement to justify an upgrade from my final verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.

Endzeitgeist out.

Downloaded this and played over lunch with a couple of co-workers. Love the simplicity!

A while back I reviewed the Crimson Dragon Slayer game. I had some nitpicks with it but overall I liked it. This new Crimson Dragon Slayer, version 1.11, is a little different. IT is free, and if you bought the old one you can also get a combine version for the price of a click.

This "new" game streamlines CDS into a game that can be setup, taught and play begins in one hour.Not a small feat really. The new game distils everything that made the first CDS different and makes it work. The die system revolves around a d6 set of rolls, sometime 1d6, 2d6 or 3d6 (or even a 4d6) depending on the difficulty or even the new 0d6.

Everything is stipped down. Three basic races (human, elf, dwarf) and four classes (warrior, cleric, wizard, thief). Everything from combat to leveling up is designed to be simple. I see the same design philosophy here that I see in other stream-lined games. There is enough here to really attach some very interesting ideas to not counting the built in campaign view. There is even a simple 3-page adventure to get your characters from level 1 to level 2.

There is still some work that needs to be done before this is a full product but so far there is a lot of promise here. I am very interested in seeing where this goes and what sort of options are available for higher levels. Right now the game is very fast and open and has a lot of potential.

For the right crowd of gamers this would make for a great afternoon diversion and for others it would become their game of choice. For the price you really can't beat it.

I think there are somethings here (and the promise of others) that I could steal for my own OSR games.

Alright so you may have noticed a number of posts International Crimson Dragon Slayer's day on July 11th, and I've supporting it with a number of tables and what not. Well there is a reason for this Venger is offering a free PDF of a lean and much more meaner version of Crimson Dragon Slayer as a free PDF. According to a recent blog post;"Sometimes, it seems like we're re-inventing the wheel a thousand times over. Yet, I believe there's value in what Erik is doing with his Swords & Wizardry: Light. That's why I've been taking a little time off from Universal Exploits to create an even shorter, streamlined version of Crimson Dragon Slayer. It will be a free PDF with professional layout and cartography by +MonkeyBlood Design (Glynn Seal). This should be available by July 11th, which just so happens to be Crimson Dragon Slayer Day!" ‘The southern border has always felt... witch-haunted.’

Gone is the jokey & tongue an cheek gonzo weirdness of Crimson Dragon Slayer instead we get a combination of dark & slightly sinister Eighties with touch of the stranger horror romp movies meets sword & sorcery. This is a stripped back Crimson Dragon Slayer with only Human, Elf, and Dwarf as racial types. Warrior, thief, cleric, and wizard as the character classes and VS6 system. So what is the VS6 system? Well its a task resolutation system that is simple, easy and flexible plus it works quite nicely with OSR style games;"VSD6 This system uses six-sided dice exclusively. When 1d6 is mentioned, it means roll one six-sided die. When 2d6 is mentioned, it means roll two six-sided dice. When 3d6 is mentioned, it means roll three six-sided dice, and so on. Occasionally, one may be asked to roll 0d6. In such instances, a player will roll 2d6 and take only the lower of the two results. Roll 0d6 when there's tremendous difficulty in achieving some action, such as picking up a small horse and throwing it a short distance. Similarly, if the village idiot tries to read a wizard's cryptic notes, he would be asked to roll a dice pool of 0d6, as he would be ill-prepared for the task. Roll 1d6 when there's great difficulty in achieving some action, such as convincing a guard to shut his eyes for a few minutes without a bribe of gold or something of similar valuable. If a sorceress tried to pick up a sword and slay a foul creature from the Outer Darkness, she would be asked to roll a dice pool of 1d6, due to her specialization of magic rather than conventional arms. Roll 2d6 when there's reasonable difficulty in achieving some action, such as sailing the high seas in a pirate's ship during a storm. Similarly, if an able bodied character tried to climb up 30' of rope wearing chain mail armor, he would probably be asked to roll a dice pool of 2d6.Roll 3d6 when there's not much difficulty in achieving some action, such as sneaking around in the dark if it's a moonless night and the sounds of nature are all around. Similarly, if a wizard attempted to cast a trivial spell, such as igniting a torch, he would be required to roll a dice pool of 3d6." The magic system is handled in the same sort of free form system, this game doesn't use the Vancian fire and forget method of spell memorization. Instead we get a dice pool system that suits the role of wizards from a dark Thundarr style world; "Wizards must force their will upon the universe, changing reality as best they can. Their sorcery is freeform, there are no spells to memorize or prepare. Though magic can be used in combat, it cannot destroy or even directly harm a living creature,without calling upon the energy of a blood sacrifice, though indirect harm or destruction is acceptable. For instance, if the adventuring party is facing several fire elementals, the wizard may attempt to flood thechamber with water. Neither can wizards heal mortal wounds. Healing powers are granted by the divine. Only clerics may restore a character's Health. Clerics can usually be found in the great cities, but only occasionally in towns and villages. The more ambitious the spell, the lower a wizard's dice pool. That means a spell merely trying to nudge reality a little bit here or there would probably qualify for a dice pool of 3d6. Medium sized spells that affect small areas and/or are far more than mere coincidence probably qualify for a dice pool of 2d6. Spells that attempt to greatly change reality would get 1d6." Like I said this is a lean and mean approach to the Crimson Dragon Slayer game and its in line with the vision of the author at this point. In case I haven't explained this is a one hour from the ground up game that Venger is going to be running. The heart and soul of the International Crimson Dragon Slayer give away is the adventure called The Curse of Xakaar Abbey;"The southern border has always felt… "witch-haunted", for lack of a better word. For centuries, that part of the land was stained - tainted by an unnatural corruption. At the obscene heart of this malevolence is none other than the half-demon sorcerer Xakaar. Ensconced in his ruined abbey directly south of your village, Xakaar traffics with forces from Outside. For the last few decades, the half-demon demanded an annual sacrifice. Apparently, that is no longer sufficient. The sorcerer grows impatient for more victims! Several of the villagers - people you know well and see every day - have fallen into some trance. Mindless, they shamble to Xakaar Abbey, and are never seen again.Last night, someone close to you was taken by that devil Xakaar! That made up your mind. Someone has to stand up and fight… even if it means your death. Yes, it's time to take up the blade and spellbook, to use cunning, imagination, and courage to slay the evil one in his ruined church." Basically in eleven pages Venger manages to get all of his essentials down into an actually decent workable sword & sorcery game. The adventure locations and descriptions read like something that came off of every Eighties metal band album cover but in this case that's a good thing. A special mention for the great artwork and cartography. Layout and Cartography by Glynn Seal of Monkey- Blood Design & the artwork by Craig Brasco is definitely up the quite of efforts that we've seen from these artists before. It really suits the themes and ideas of Crimson Dragon Slayer's new direction. This is the sort of direction I was exspecting Crimson Dragon Slayer to take when it first came out. This new sword and sorcery Eighties metal twist is going to be a lot easier to hook up with the Alpha Blue rpg system as well. Thule is a very dangerous and menacing setting if you read between the lines of the game. This direction cements that deviant direction from CDS's past incarnation. But it really comes across as a playable game system and I do approve of the new direction. The whole idea is to bring new players and blood to the table and in this I do think that this latest incarnation of Crimson Dragon Slayers might succeed. Five out of five for a new incarnation of Crimson Dragon Slayer rpg system and its place in the Kort'thalis Publishing line.

Eric Fabiaschi Sword & Stitchery Blog Want to see more reviews like this one & original content that supports OSR products as well as campaigns? Besure to subscribe to http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com