Its a retro-clone. There are hundreds of them. This one, however, is awesome.

You get swords and sorcery as well as swords and planets in the same book. Twists on standard classes, as well as loads of new ones. There is a simple skill system and ... just tons of high quality content.

Production values are very high, and the art really conveys the feel of the rules well.

If you play any D20 style retro-clones buy this book, even if you don't play the game as written there is no end of ideas to borrow from it.

This book is a steal at this price.

The one thing I was disappointed with was the character sheet. The rest of the book is very pretty and then I got to the last page, blah. Functional, thats about it.

This product hits all the right notes: its simple to grasp, simple to run, infinitely inspiring, and endlessly enjoyable.

It is based around a 3 class system, Warrior, Rogue, and Mage a common enough system; what makes it shine, though, is its use of life-path style "playbooks" used to generate characters. These playbooks combine the classes in interesting ways while providing tidbits of background that help to create "real" histories as well as providing common bonds between the characters. It is possible to create characters without using the playbook but what fun is that?

While the players are creating characters the GM is busy monitoring the results of the players rolls in the playbook and making notes. At certain points in the character generation process players create places and NPC's that occupy the starting town. This is a neat mini-game that gets everyone involved in the game from the get-go. To me this seems to imply that new characters are created for each adventure yet the core rules contain XP charts that take characters all the way up to level 10 so I am not sure how the elements of scenario packs get filled in if the same characters are used adventure to adventure.

There is a simple skill system; having a skill provides a +2 bonus when making a check. While there is no official set list of skills, in play a characters could learn just about anything, the skills granted during character generation by the playbooks give a nice idea of how general/specific skills should be.

The magic system is a thing of beauty. It breaks magic up into 3 types:

1. Cantrips, which are simple acts of magic that can be cast multiple times a day using an attribute check, at the Mages whim,
2. Spells, which are more powerful acts of magic which can be cast at a moments notice. A Mage can cast a number of spells per day equal to his level,
3. and Rituals; the most powerful acts of magic with expensive components and long casting times.

Instead of adventures Beyond the Wall uses the idea of scenario packs; essentially the barebones of an adventure with some random elements and elements that tie into the participating characters backgrounds. It is a neat idea and I think it will work well but I have not had the chance to run a game yet.

The description doesn't state it but the zip file also includes a Bestiary that covers a wide range of creatures useful for many different types of adventures.

I have never read the works of Lloyd Alexander but I would say that Beyond the Wall definitely exudes the feeling of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea novels. For those that haven't read either of the mentioned authors I have a hard time putting a name to the type of fantasy this game is meant to represent, its not High Fantasy in the AD&D sense of Wizards throwing Fireballs around but it isn't Low Magic either; magic is a force to be reckoned with, but in a way that I might call "gentle".

The game falls on the low end of the rules complexity scale, but the upside to this is it easy to run and makes it very easy to house rule. I find the game is very inspiring making it much easier to prepare material as there are so many little nuggets built into the system.

Summary: If you are looking for a simple game that is easy to pick up and run, something modern and new yet still very much based on the old school, I highly recommend checking out Beyond the Wall.