This game is bada$$! What a treat it is to live in a world where a rich and thriving scene yields so many cool niche products, and we'll never run out of weird new games to try out with our friends. This is a uniquely inspired setting where the art came first (Charles Ferguson Avery is MVP here) and birthed a somewhat novel idea in the RPG-sphere: What if soldiers during WWI encountered horrible monsters from beyond the veil? In addition to the real historical horrors of trench warfare, which is treated seriously and respectfully in this dark fantasy setting. Simple mechanics with regular playing cards and dice, easy to get into but also gives you a lot to expand on. The simple rules of play are pretty ingenious and it doesn't take long for players to get into the flow. At the same time, the specific rules of each Whisper (spell) and all of the extras in the combat section give you enough crunch to appreciate. And then there are all the expansions in the other books! They're terrific if you fall in love with the ideas in this core book but find yourself wanting more. Personally I'd say if you're going to buy any of these additional offerings from Wet Ink Games, the one that's probably the most bang for your buck is Once More Unto The Breach. It's chock full of complete adventures, giving the game master plenty to work with and a good sense of what's required to start coming up with your own scenarios. Honestly, the three missions included in the core book are kind of all over the place. I think the ones in this book are kind of a mismatch from the core rules, as each one introduces different add-ons to the rules and none of them give you the straightforward basic example of play. That's pretty much the only reason I rate this thing 4/5 stars. That and the writing, just needs another pass. As it is now, it's not difficult to read, but some of the choices in how it's presented are a bit weird. For example, it seems like character creation rules should be closer to the front of the book. Fix a few little typos here and there and maybe some re-working of the layout and this thing would be absolutely perfect. It's been a joy to absorb and get into the headspace of this game, and as a byproduct I've even learned a good deal more of the real history of The Great War (a joke at our table is "nobody calls it World War One - yet"). Getting ready to run a third session later today! Thank you Wet Ink Games.

What a great book. Tons of interesting ideas, striking art, inspiring tables, all wrapped up in a very functional format.

I haven't gotten around to using EVERYTHING in this little book of wonders (and I'm not sure I ever will), but the pieces I've pulled out already have made urban adventure in my DCC game MUCH more interesting. Definitely not going to work in every game, but it absolutely works in mine.

Is it better to try something unique and fail, or stick to the tried and true and succeed? These are the questions game designers grapple with. Sadly, in the case of Psychic Kids the former is the case.

I was so excited to play Psychic Kids. I was hyped as heck after backing the Kickstarter, and even went out of my way to create materials for it in case I was ever lucky enough to run. And my group was hyped! The book does an excellent job on selling you on the premise and giving you a lot to work with in regards to the psychic powers. The buy in is strong, helped by simple but effective art. Character creation is also basic but works well enough to help you get a strong grip on your character.

Finally, I had a chance to play, with one of my group looking to GM. They ran into an immediate issue. Outside of a few scant samples of play there's no guidance on setting the Target Number for difficulty. Our poor GM was left guessing, further hampered by an issue addressed later in this review. This is not the only time something happens like this in the book. When I wanted to create a NPC, I realized the book offers no guidance on this point. I had to email the developers for insight. The book is only 90 pages including the covers. It feels like it could have been five or so pages longer and touched on these topics.

My GM did set target numbers, but almost all of them seemed very low, leaving both the GM and the players unsure if they were accurate or not. The reason they were low is that it’s very hard to succeed on a roll. You have to roll a 5 or 6 on a six sided die. The game compensates for this in two ways. First, you can spend points from your attributes to roll extra dice, reroll dice, or add a plus one to a rolled die. But your attribute ranks are very limited, and also act as your health. You can restore them, but they only heal naturally at one rank per night’s rest, and a bit quicker with medical attention. This, by the by, means that a kid with healing as their psychic power is just the most valuable you can have in your group. Additionally, this has the effect of making people want to stay in their lanes and use only what they’re good at. This is already an issue almost any RPG faces, but it’s exacerbated by the design choices here.

Now, in addition to spending attribute ranks you can spend Energy Points. This is, on the face of it, a good idea, but it falls apart quickly. Energy Points are hard enough to come by, but they are also, critically, your experience points. And it costs a lot of Energy Points to rank up a skill, and you want to save them up to use your psychic powers better. This means you don’t want to spend them unless it’s absolutely vital, so you go back to spending attribute ranks. Also, you can spend them to heal the attribute ranks, meaning you have another thing you have to balance against gaining experience.

And finally, we come to the crux of the game, the psychic powers. You use them by guessing what card you’ll draw from a 54 card deck (52 standard cards plus jokers). The closer you are, the better the power works (e.g. just guessing the color correctly will result in a weak use, guessing the same suit it will work better, etc.). If you don’t get any of it right, the powers simply don’t work. So, we each used our psychic powers for the first time basically in a row to get a feel for them. Myself and another player failed outright, and one player got a partial hit. We laughed off myself and the other missing as bad luck and continued on. And then all three of us kept missing, and missing, and missing. By the end psychic powers were only used twice in an entire session, and both by the same person.

The issue comes from the card idea. It’s a cute idea. “You have to try and guess cards like you’re actually psychic!” The problem, of course, is real life players are not psychic. It’s a total shot in the dark to match the cards. Of course, as the game goes on and cards get drawn you can start to narrow it down. But you can still get massively unlucky. Because there are 54 cards, there’s a very good chance you will not draw what you predict. Even if you see a lot of black cards being drawn and start guessing red you could, if unfortunate enough, go through every single black card in the deck. It would have been better if instead of not working they malfunctioned, but that still leaves a problem of them constantly going wrong because the chances of drawing a card successfully are so low. Further, because this is the type of game where failure drives the story forward, our poor GM had to improvise so many twists due to the powers failing. While the kids not being good with their powers is a theme of the game, in a game called Psychic Kids, I want to use my psychic powers!

I wanted to like Psychic Kids so badly. I’ve played worse RPGs, but it’s hard to think of one I’ve played that was more of a heartbreaker. In the end it’s left as something that gives you some cool campaign and setting ideas to use in a different, better designed RPG. And that’s just a darn shame.

Worth every penny! Great ideas for encounters and running a wilderness as a dungeon.

Fun, system neutral book. The art is great, the content is great. Really love the flavour.

This character sheet is so stinking cute!!! It's been a big hit with my players of all ages!!

A great game. I deeply enjoyed it.

I already did 4 playthrough.

Each session is very unique. Replayability is high. The solo rules are well done. The only modification that I do is put more Midnight Card and Outside Card. One isn't enough for flavour. Currently I do 4 Midnight Card, 3 Outside and I generally slip another Midnight in the Witching Hour (but only if I feel like the story isn't ready to go into wrap-up phase) to keep the flavour of the Haunting Tale.

I hope they release more Haunting Tale soon.

I recommand this game to everyone who likes narrative game with prompts. Do not sleep on this one.

A great game! I really enjoyed it. I'm on my third playthrough.

The first I played Bite of Nature with the Ardent Believer. The second was House Party with the Expectant Heir. The third was Darkening Horizon with the Corrupted Soldier.

The solo mode is. well made. The only thing that I would change would be to pull more than 1 Midnight and Outside card when you do the Night Deck to get more flavour from the Haunting Tale that you chose.

The game was quick. I tried to play another narrative exploration game with friends and it lasted for 3 to 4 hours. Not this one. I feel like Home could easily be made longer or shorter when you build the Night Deck. On my third playthrough, I actually put a lot more cards into it because I really wanted to get ''in'' the story.

The game is very flexible and could be reuse for anytype of ''Explore this weird place''. Actually, on my third playthrough, we were exploring an old laboratory now inhabited by A... wait I'm not gonna say it! It's only a rumour anyway. Right?!

I had a lot of fun and I will play again. I definitly recommand it if you like narrative games that are not complicated, allows you to let your imagination runs wild and just have fun. There is no combat.

The game is very portable too. Yesterday I played on my bed with my dogs sleeping around me with just the Night deck and a notepad.

Replayability is high since you have a lot of Dusk Witching Hour and False Dawn Card. And many Haunting Tales to explore from. The Morning deck is the only one that is a little bit small.

I hope they release more Haunting Tales. This game is great!

I am so impressed with this playbook. Not only is the art GORGEOUS, but the system is very thorough, yet easy to understand. The premise is interesting; it has Stranger Things vibes, but is also very much its own. Honestly probably the best playbook I've bought on here so far! Really hoping I can organize a game of it soon. The card system is a nice unique touch. I also like the variety of threats, and the suggested campaign idea at the end is fantastic.

WW1 with magic, monsters, and insanity is an awesome theme for an RPG, and the rules for this game service that theme really well. Never Going Home uses a mixture of D6's and playing cards in a way that is really brutally elegant.

Unfortunately, I really do not like this game's rulebook. It's not very well formatted and it doesn't do a great job of explaining some of the game's mechanics.

I absolutely love this book! It's one of the most evocative, beautiful, interesting to read RPG books that I've ever owned. Every page is jammed with so many interesting ideas, it's difficult to pick where to start using it. You can nearly pick any page, and nearly any paragraph and have something unique to center an entire game session.

It's worth noting that there tends to be a macabre cartoonish flavor to many of the pages/monsters/traps/diseases/locations, so this won't be a fit for every campaign. But what it does well is provide ton's of flavor, an amazing sense of danger and great exotic locales.

If you feel like your game needs something unique, fun and dangerous this is definitely worth a read.

Setting: A darker version of World War I with monsters and magic. Some background information is given in the form of soldier’s letters. Rules: Very simple character creation. Combat is fast and deadly. An interesting use of standard playing cards along with dice. Art style: Nice, but the artist may not like to draw people’s faces, so literally everyone here wears gas masks. Verdict: Nice simple game, grim and deadly, where you can create a character in 5 minute and then die in 10.

The variety of monster designs was fun to read through. The artwork also fit very well and was fun to look at. Even if you don't plan on running this system, I still think this book is worth it for the various monsters within.

I love this game. It's a wonderfully straightforward system that works well to capture the desperate feel of a war of attrition, let alone the horror elements that add a novel twist on the idea of WW1. It's also great because the lightweight nature makes it easy to run in just about any context, while also giving you as the GM a fair bit of room for potential homebrewing. For instance, I've made tweaks to add tactical map combat, cover, additional weapons, and a house rule for 6s to give two successes instead of one, to change the game up to fit a slightly different style of play. It's a wonderful game that's definitely worth the very reasonable pricetag.

This is one of the single best RPG products I have ever seen in my life, and I have been gaming for over 20 years.

Obviously having a single artist do almost all of the artwork lends the work a fantastic feel of consistency, and this is a very visually-striking product, but the quality of the written content is the real source of value here. Into the Wyrd and Wild gives you everything you need to run hostile woods. And I do mean everything. Monster, sure, but survival rules, interesting plants, factions, magic items, pre-made location descriptions for a hex crawl, diseases, hazards — everything.

This isn't to say that it can't be combines with other resources. It absolutely can be, and you will need a full-fledged system of some sort, though basically any d20-based fantasy system will do. Any edition of D&D, and OSR game, Pathfinder, Level Up, probably even 13th age would work. The material in here is system-neutral and presented in such a manner that it's relatively easy to adjust for other systems. It's also extremely readable, and just opening this up and reading chunks of it will give you tons of campaign ideas.

Cannot recommend it enough.