it is refreshing to see a "post apocalyptic" world that wasn't caused by disease or nuclear bombs. The intricately designed factions and the unique, life-like world make Ashland a must-play rpg!

Hands down one of the best free RPG products I have ever read. You don't get the usual 2-3h sample "adventure", but a fully fledged module with approx. 100 pages that will last you about 3 full sessions depending on your playing style.

There are still some typos in this early release and I expect the authors to fix those once they have gone through the current kickstarter of the whole game line.

Sample characters are included, but you will need the also free "Blood & Doom Primer" which includes the rulebook in a very usable work in process status.

Strongly recommend both the Blood & Doom system as well as this first playtest module.

From reading through the primer content the system appears to be in a good spot - not too crunchy but not too light either, much like World of Darkness, which I guess was an inspiration for this d10 dicepool system.

The primer on the cults is detailed and really well written from a GM standpoint, as the content seems easy to bring into play.

The most disappointing aspect was the lore of the The Ayaari - I'd much prefer evil sorceries over aliens in my sword & sorcery setting any day.

A very mediocre supplement. It tries to cover many topics, but it does it in a very superficial way. For example, the section about different eras is quite small and provides little information on how to play in them. Arrakis itself looks rather dull and empty, where there are only two cities and endless desert, where there is almost nothing interesting. Yes, the planet was like that in Herbert’s books, but the authors of supplement did a minimum of work to fill it with life and details. (For example, we have fremen-betrayers jacurutu, a potentially very interesting theme… but this supplement only gives you a brief description and one trait as a game mechanic…). The artwork is pretty good, but half of the NPC examples don’t have images. Therefore, in my opinion, this book isn’t absolutely necessary to play «Dune». At first glance, it gives you a lot of new stuff, but upon closer inspection there is nothing enough interesting or special about it.

Great game here. It hits my taste at medium crunch, giving intereting options bithbin building your character as well as during the game. Inlove thatbit combines theater of mind with solid tactical choices in combat. While most elements of the game engine have been around for sime time, the way they are stxked together is very neat.

I've read through the primer and it looks good to me, some random comments :

• I had trouble choosing from the list of the weapons, usually a sign of good balance
• I like that even though we have classes everyone kind of works the same way, both from a level of stats + skills to do actions and with the powers activated by blood points, having the same structure for casters and non-casters helps with keeping their potential close.
• Even considering the above i mildly dislike that the specializations are so encompassing for the class, for warriors and experts i would like to see some shared traits and powers for when you don't feel like picking something exotic, like for instance the triple shot ability of the viper seems pretty generic, why wouldn't the ninja be able to do that as well ?
• I like the resource management of wounds and equipment through time coupled with clear ways to handle them
• You have a skill to research through heap of books ;) it's a thing i tend to do often and our gm is always annoyed when the skill is not included

A well thought out TTRPG with great potential in this free primer. I cannot wait until the kickstarter to see all the options and meet the rest of the world!

This looks like a well-thought out game that (being free) already includes more content than many paid games out there. It seems easy enough to get into but actually has a decent amount of crunch as well. The bundle even comes with music included, and a gorgeous map. It runs on a d10 dice pool mechanic, but does a lot of cool things with it (setbacks, weapon attributes, momentum). There's too much to cover here in short but being free it's definitely worth taking a closer look for anyone.

Also, the artwork is all top-notch and has a distinct, paintery style that's both colorful yet feels dreamlike and otherworldly at the same time, giving 'Athyr' a very unique atmosphere. The addition of two books to compliment the rulebook, one offering a wealth of setting information, the other the most expansive lore on cults I have yet seen in a tabletop RPG, makes this something I can recommend to everyone. Can't wait for the Kickstarter.

I've played a decent number of TTRPG systems in the past, each which had their upsides and downsides. Blood And Doom for me strikes a great balance between the crunch I appreciate in some systems, whilst still keeping it all very neat and organized. I also greatly enjoy the various tips and tools for GMs, something even after over half a decade of GMing I still find use in.

Still very happily surprised by how expansive yet easy to read all the cults and lore are. Normally I tend to lean towards either my own homebrew setting or the real world depending on what game system I'm using, but with Blood And Doom I'm actually thinking of giving this one a serious shot! As for the cults, I love how much detail is shown about what their goals are and how they seek to reach them. Too often do I find systems where this part is either left behind during writing, or becomes so hard to follow that I only end up using some monsters and writing the cult myself.

All in all, really looking forward to run this system myself and excited to see the full product take form!

Excellent game with one of the best settings I've ever seen! I don't usually like Level-based system, but Blood and Doom only uses them for advancement purposes, there are no explosive Hit Points and almost no fixed abilities you get - you can pick yourself what you want to learn or become better at. The game really shines in its setting, though. The regions described in the Doomsayer's Codex are evocative and I absolutely can't stress enough how many adventure ideas, cool locations, NPCs, etc. are in there. But the absolute gem is the Doomsayer's Codex: The Twelve Pillars of Doom. THIS IS WHAT FANTASY CULTS SHOULD BE LIKE in a game that includes horror elements! It's amazingly cool and so many details are included that you can build entire campaigns on just one of these cults.

Some of the texts are written in a style that goes well beyond what we've come to expect from more pedestrian-written TTRPGs. The writing is, often, impressively imaginative. It's as if Jack Vance's and Fritz Leiber's brain child had written some of this. Even if you're not going to use the D10 dicepool system (cool system, by the way), you NEED to get this, honestly. Looking forward to the Kickstarter launch!

It's a must have if you're new and overwhelmed by the idea of solo play. It's great if you don't know where to start or if you found gm emulators/oracles to not work for you. It's much more theoretical than mechanical but does have enough actioanble steps to get you playing.

gettig better all the time.so nice ezy to comprehend.format getting better

I'm not particulary fond of D&D related product, in particulary when something so mithologically and epic is converted in another and repetive kind of Fantasy. But the product is well done and have a good graphic

I'm just about positive there's a terrific game buried in here under all the ... stuff ... but I'm not used to having to put this much effort into finding it. Every part of this game is a confused mess.

I've been gaming for decades and at this point I can pick up a new action resolution system in a couple of minutes. Not this time. I kept finding myself having to flip back and forth across the same handful of pages, mentally juggling the game's different metacurrencies, constantly running into terms that were crucial to understanding what I was reading but which wouldn't be discussed at all until pages later. I had to search around to find tutorials, and then COMPARE those tutorials to each other, just to get a grasp of the basic system.

It's probably very easy to learn if someone teaches it to you instead of you having to learn it for yourself. The system doesn't actually seem that complicated! The problem here starts and ends with BAD WRITING: a jumble of concepts presented in the wrong order. I felt like I wasn't reading a published game system, but the scattered notes and post-its of a gamemaster's homebrew system, typed up in random order. Where was the editor!?

This isn't even getting into how much fluff there is. Now, under most circumstances fluff is a good thing, particularly when a game is designed for narrative play (which a competent Star Trek game would need to be). In-universe quotes and documents are also a good thing, and make fantastic sidebars. But the book goes way overboard here; entire chapters are devoted to nothing but those sidebars! No actual text! Even the chapter on the UFP is written from an in-universe perspective, and assumes that you're already familiar enough with the setting that you only need an orientation on where in the established timeline the game is set.

If you could actually learn about the Star Trek universe from these sidebars, then maybe it could be salvageable. Paranoia XP pulled it off. But I read these things, and they're largely incomprehensible unless you not only know Star Trek but recognize the specific episodes they're referring to. This is not a world background chapter. This is trivia night. If you're not already familiar with the universe -- and yes, that's entirely possible, I know a few people who'd be happy to play an RPG of interstellar diplomacy and scientific discovery but who've never seen a single hour of Star Trek -- it's absolutely no help.

On top of everything else, the only way to get an actually readable copy of this book is to buy it on DriveThruRPG as a print-on-demand. The generally available book is printed in white text on black because that "looks more like an LCARS screen." Puts me in mind of an RPG called ... was it Secrets of Zir'an? ... where the game was perfectly fine but they chose to use a page background of glyphic text. Printing text on top of text. It was flavorful, sure, but it made the book unreadable and the game unplayable. The retail Star Trek Adventures books aren't that bad, but there have been so many reports of eyestrain that it's very clear the publisher put form over function.

Finally, there's the elephant in the room. I don't care about the drama. What I care about is that the fandom insisted that a certain person not be involved in the book, and Modiphius not only still got that person involved but actively lied to its fans, listing that person under a pseudonym, and the person responsible showed absolutely no remorse. That's a level of contempt for your customers that's pretty much unforgivable, especially these days when there are people way worse than that guy still getting plenty of work in the RPG industry.

For all of these readability and usability issues, I'm awarding this book two stars. I want to be clear I'm not writing a negative review of the GAME SYSTEM. If you can find someone to teach it to you, so you only need to use the book for reference and browsing, you'll probably have a ball with it. But this book needs a new edition, pronto, with a new graphic designer, a new writer, and a new editor.

Personally didn't find whole lot here to add to my existing campaign. The intro campaing might be useful for someone just getting into it, but someone already familiar with the mechanics, you can just skip past this. The variable difficulty is nice, but never found that to be a problem with the core game (at least as far as I've played my campaigns). Co-op and PVP won't be something I'll use. Name generation tables are nice, but I usually just pull up ideas online. Enemy deployment variables, a great addition. So is the escalating battles. For someone just getting into 5P, this might be a good addition, or someone who's looking for extra challenge. Everyone else can possible just skip this.