First of all I'd like to state I'm very happy with the current discount of the PDF. I am planning on buying the hardcopy version in 2-3 weeks as well so would not have bought the PDF at full price. And I do not like waiting. At all.

So about 3 weeks ago I had a chat with 2 of my friends, one a massive Witcher fan, with a massive concern about this RPG. Everybody will want to be a bloody Witcher won't they? And that won't work since witchers aren't much liked (understatement) in most parts of the continent. "I hope they make the other classes interesting enough".

3 weeks later I am refreshing the hell out of drivethru and R. Talsorian's Facebook page and suddenly my 'witcher' search comes up with a hit. Oh god I hope it isn't Witcher: The Witchering and the 7 Witchers playing Witchers. And it wasn't....

Besides publishing 9 professions (classes) of which the witcher is 1, I feel they made every class fun to play and fun to play WITH: Has your merry band of travelers just arrived at the small town of [insert random name that is typically used for small towns, something without -grad .... I don't know ... Glenfield!] yes the small town of Glenfield! Ah, let us settle down for some ale and food. What is this you say? No coin? But we have a witcher in the group (there will often be 1 witcher in a group of +-4 people, seeing as theyre just too good when dealing with monsters, but hey if your campaign does not involve fighting monsters, why have a monster ahum mutant in your party?), he is sure to have some coinage from his last monster hunt? He slayed that Grave hag for 800 crowns! ...he spent how much on buying that sword? Eighthun.......son of a whOkay who has crowns? "Give me an hour" Says your bard, as he walks out into the town square of Glenfield (yes I know it's a small town but it has a square okay, just go along with it) he raises a crowd and captivates a group of 20 commoners and merchants, who seem to be able to do nothing but watch him perform a sad song about friendships lost and lack of coin to drown his sorrows. Half weeping the crowd puts crowns in his hat as he bows and thanks them. Or perhaps the bard has a raspy voice that day, or mocked the town patron saint, after which you are very much NOT welcome anymore in any establishment and it's best to keep travelling. Really though who has a patron saint called Dingus?

Now that you have all this coin, where do you spend it? Maybe the merchant of your group is well connected in this area and knows a craftsman who is willing to give him gear with a promise to pay the rest of the fee later! Maybe you have a craftsman with a knack for master crafting! Or you could donate it all to the priest as tithe so you can AHAHAHAHA NO, WE'RE NOT DOING THAT AHAHAHA

I could go on and on but in short: all classes add a nice roleplay element to the story. Of course it is up to the DM/players to actively use this but heyho that's in most games.

The harshness of the environments from the witcher books/games is portrayed accurately as well, it reminded me a bit of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, or Call of Cthulhu RPG, where death comes easy and things 'suck' a lot. No hot water, no food, no rest, no safety, let's go! See a group of bandits? Run. See 2 vampires skulking? Get out. If you get into combat, be SMART about it, don't just run in and spin-to-win around the battlefield, or you're losing that left arm. Lost a left arm? Have I told you about that Doctor profession that can operate on you and.... okay okay I'll stop selling the professions.

Are there things I dislike about the book? Definitely. The layout is indeed a bit basic, there are some font differences with center-page text and text on the side of the pages (center looks good, side font is a no). The colours used in the layout are bit run-of-the-mill and I feel the page numbers should have been stylised/painted. Yes there are some typos, yes the bookmarks are missing (I added them myself manually via Acrobat, since I could wait for them to do it and upload the new version, which they will, but as my first sentence says: I do not like waiting)but all of those things can be fixed, as long as the game rests on a strong heart. The art, however, is bloody gorgeous! No critique there at all, it's a wonderful job, and exactly what I was hoping it would be. The non-art aesthetics need a bit of a brush up methinks. Oh and about 90% of Rodolf's "heh"s need to be removed, it's tiring and annoying.

A lot of info has been included on gear, items, the intricacies of spells, witcher signs, alchemy, crafting, you name it. This combined with the information on what place magic holds in this world and the chapters on the continent/nations/inhabitants/creatures really makes this an interesting book for me. I was NOT looking forward to Witcher: The Witchering. We heard you liked the Witcher, so we put Witchers in your Witcher RPG so you could Witcher while your friends Witcher even harder! Brought to you by Witcher. No. This book sets us up for roleplaying in the world of the books/games that I love so much, and I am very happy that they did. The system works well with it too, it's a new system for me but I found no issues/hardships so far. I like the idea of a skill tree (long time mmorpg player, skill trees are my secret love) and I appreciate the character creation possibilities concerning where you were born, family situation etc. You could also skip some of this if you're not interested in stats as much, but they're good bases for backstories or applications of lore within the sessions.

So all in all: I am very very happy this book is finally here. Looking forward to seeing how they deal with community tips/ideas/further books with adventures (this book also contains one, good move!) and or expansions on the world. Now I am off to roll a Witcher cuz OMG DID YOU HEAR YOU CAN PLAY A WITCHER IN THIS ONE OMG I CAN BE A WITCHER!!!!!