I really enjoyed this. It took me back to when I first got into TTRPGs in the 80s, with Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder. Stripped of a lot of nonsense and fluff, the Basic Roleplaying system (as seen in Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, RuneQuest and more) is elegant, versitile, and intuitive. The Age of Shadows recaptures that very well. This is clearly written for a more grimdark, Lord of the Rings (as opposed to The Hobbit) type of Fantasy setting. Human-centric. Magic is rare and corrupting. Combat is deadly and best avoided. The world is dark and strange. But as with the old Basic Roleplaying, you can strip away the Fantasy stuff and just have a great system. Those few things that stray away from BRP are still pretty good. Personally, I think I'd house-rule that improvement points can only be spent on skills that your character has used (I might open that to "successfully or not"), unless said skill were being studied during a prolonged downtime. Otherwise, I really like it. And I like the way you can buy a 2D4 improvment or two 1D4 improvments. I also like that this allows skills to go over 100%, unlike in BRP, which opens the door for more wild and cinematic stuff, when your players are willing to incur penalties because their chances are still high. For the price, this is well worth it. I've been kicking around ideas on how I might run a Middle Earth game without dropping silly collector prices on MERP and without grabbing The One Ring, which I'm not sold on. This may very well be what I go with. It would also be great for something like The Black Company or A Song of Ice & Fire.

A very affordable RPG. A very good implentation of the Openquest system which BRP varient ie. D100 percentile system. Has a middle-earth feel to it and you could definitely run such a campaign using these rules. Recommended

This amazing gem of a game really doesn't get enough love.

This is FANTASTIC. Clean design and layout, tried and tested elegant rules and a nice framework setting to build a classic fantasy campaign with. The print version is excellent and for the price..a bargain! The other products for the game are good too with the world maps being particularly well done. Thanks for this, it's great.

An absolutely excellent use of the OpenQuest system, it creates a very adaptable set of mechanics which will allow me to dig out all my old Iron Crown and MERP products and rekindle my early days of gaming, but without the complexity of Rolemaster. The layout is lovely, clean and simple, immediately approachable and useable. If I had one gripe it would be the lack of pictorial art, but the use of maps, sketches, border and banners still makes this a rich product. And of course the price is amazing!

Well done Crooked Staff

A fantasy RPG based on OpenQuest, an open source version of the rules that powered RPGs in the Basic Roleplaying series (Call of Cthulhu, Elfquest, RuneQuest, et al). Anyone familiar with those classic games will easily adapt to this system.

For those who aren't - in brief, the system is percentile based - a whole set of standard polyhedral dice are required for damage rolls and other results, but skill and combat rolls are made with percentile dice. The combat system is deadly (as it has always been with BRP games), and adventurers in an Age of Shadow campaign may find themselves avoiding combat more frequently, which could open some possibilities for creative tactics and great roleplaying.

This book has a great section on campaign structure, but very little background or lore - for that, see the Age of Shadow Campaign Guide, which fleshes out the world nicely.

A character sheet and a beautiful full-color map round out the book. All in all, a great start. I'm interested to see where it goes from here.

(originally posted at TenkarsTavern.com)

The Age of Shadow, a fantasy RPG drawing upon the OpenQuest rules, which drew upon the Mongoose RuneQuest, has it's roots deeply in the previous versions of RuneQuest. Got that? Good.

So, it's OpenQuest with a few twists, like less modifiers but higher mods when you do have one. Oh, and its free, which is always nice when looking for new options for a current game engine.

Having played Runequest & CoC over the years, I was tempted to download this and give it a look. I wasn't disappointed.

Some nice artwork throughout the 70+ pages (not too many as to drain the ink). It was enjoyable reading through the PDF, so much so, that I bought the campaign guide as well.

I tried a quick scenario with 2 friends, who also enjoyed reading the PDF, and eagerly created some characters. The game worked quite well for them, and we've made plans to play some more at a later date. We're hoping to get a few more involved as the system and theme does seem enjoyable to the players.

It's worth going to the forum & blog site for extra resources, etc.

Worth downloading (IT'S FREE!!!). Get the campaign guide as well to round the collection off.

I hope there's more.

Being a fan of Open Quest and the d100 system it is based on it was with great interest that I took a look at Age of Shadows in order to see just what they had done with it. The answer, in all honesty, is not a lot as far as the rules themselves go. Apart from a few cosmetic changes here and there you could be playing open quest.

The layout is quite pleasing and oddly eye catching. In an industry where overly fussy layouts and pages with backgrounds and fanciful borders are becoming more and more common, the clean lines and crisp layout of AoS is actually a joy to read. There is nothing to distract you from the joy of the system (and it is a joy), and even the filler art is crisp and appealing to look at. Simple but very good. More companies should take a leaf out of Crooked Staff Publishing.

I'll start by talking about the modifications to the game engine. Divine magic has been trimmed out and battle magic has been tweeked a little bit to become innate magic available only to those with Elven linage. Sorcery is in there, and the hints that it has a tendency to tinge the user with darkness are a nice touch that works well in the setting. I also rather like the rules for manipulating sorcery to increase magnitude, duration, range and so on. This certainly makes magic seem more magical and differentiates powerful magicians from less powerful ones better than a “number of spells or amount of magic points” only system ever could.

Character generation has gone with the Random statistic generation option, which I find mildly at odds with the stated aim of a game that is flexible and allows you to develop the character you want to play with a minimum of restrictions. Still it has an old school charm to it. I would have liked to have seen more effort put into the languages, rather than a few common racial tongues but to be honest that is such a minor quibble and one so many people will disagree with anyway that it's scarcely worth worrying about.

Not wanting to nit pick twice in one review but being unable to resist it, I do feel it's a shame they have abandoned OQs use of “Saga” to fall back on the industry standard of “Campaign” but again, if this is going to have a bearing on your choosing to pick the game up or not you may be a bit on the overly picky side.

Creatures is where the author is able to cut loose and really show us a glimpse of his vision for AoS. Now before anyone points out that it's largely some fantasy staples and that even the Beastlings are realy just the beast men that have appeared in almost every d100 derived game since Rune Quest, yes, that's true to a point. However, it's what Richards does with them and how he presents them that give you a glimpse into his world and what is to come. On the whole I dislike the good/evil dichotomy of most fantasy as I find it overly simplistic and rather dull, but something about how it is done here evokes classics of the genre like The Lord of The Rings far better than most games. There is just something about it that makes me want to play this game and revel in the very simplistic good vs evil idea I usually avoid like the plague. The flavour text throughout helps. It is surprisingly evocative and far less derivative than I'd expect. The references to “The Enemy” whilst clearly LotR inspired and something of a fantasy cliché now none the less are oddly tantalising, and the writing style actually makes this not only work, but conjure up a world in a desperate struggle for it's life. Oddly, despite my usual aversion to morally black and white settings and my preference for harsher, grittier ones I find myself really wanting to take this one for a spin. This is the result of the author having “got it right”, having taken ingredients that are so often used by others and with just the right pinch of seasoning here and there having produce a far superior cake to most the others, to use a food based metaphor (presumably because it's lunch time and I'm hungry). I heartily recommend this game to you. Give it a try and see what you think, I predict that half of you will go on to buy more products in the range.

The Age of Shadow proves that simplicity is elegance.

Using a d100 based system, AoS has a nice mixture of balance with heroes in a dark fantasy setting fighting in a gritty and realistic style. There's a lot of ways to die quickly in combat, and there's a magic system that can be just as lethal as not.

Admittedly, The Age of Shadow as a core rulebook doesn't contain a ton of setting background, but it has enough to get the general feel of the game, and let you know if the $3 extension is right for you.

If I were to play a game of grittier, dark, quick and lethal fantasy, The Age of Shadow would be right up at the top of the list of options.