The core book has so many options, and it is streamlined far better then Shadow of the Demon Lord. I am so stoked for Secrets of the Weird Wizard

I normally don't review, but I felt the need to do so.

This is really solid stuff. I had honestly no hope for this when this first appeared on my radar when Games Workshop robbed Fanatasy Flight of the license, gave it to Everybody else, but took Horus Heresy away from Steam, and uploaded a Talisman Adventure file for sale that was nothing but a few kilobytes photo. I thought this was going to be lazy and thoughtless, and like another reviewer said, just be an OSR clone of DND

My mind was blown. Talisman is a very aggressive PvP game, so I didn't expect to mesh well with playing nice with others, but wow. They took some peoples least favorite characters and made them into compelling classes and ancestries. The Rolling system as some have said feels like Powered by the Apocalypse, with the GM rolling no dice at all, and but you’re going for a target number with 3d6 dice with degrees of success shown by getting past the number alone, or getting doubles or triples as you pass, rather then a range of numbers. One of the Dice is a Kismet Dice, you get light fate if you roll a six and the GM gets a dark one if you roll a 1. Magic is really solid, a nice hybrid of Vancian magic and spell points, that allows you to recast magic if you have spell points, but allows you to burn your memory for increased effect, or sometimes if you stumble you lose the spell. You can rememorize spells but that takes a lot of time, a nice balancing act take on the random card spell system of the board game

Your Ancestry and Class work nicely too. Ancestries avoid the worst of the dnd “plus/minus” system, while being flavorful and clever. Your stats are your class, and you get to chose points in substats based on your stats and your ancestry so it’s not a random nightmare, and while some ancestries have limits at game start, nothing limits a troll from being a good wizard.

The setting is nothing truly new if you follow the boardgame videogame adaptations, but some takes are neat. Love the wasteland theme, it is some what kind of like a greener, more life substanting post-apocalyptic world, or a very cramped “Points of Light” setting from DND 4. I like the balanced take on cosmology, and good and evil. The roleplaying hints for playing an evil person, and in a mixed party, are very nice and useful, Pathfinder and DND would expect you to buy whole books on “good” and “evil” for such advice.

Only downside are some typos and missing things, The Prophet class lacks a unique spell book, unlike all the others even if the description says it’s unique to them, and the Dwarf lacks a Gnome Follower, but these are things that can be fixed with FAQs and updates.

I rate it 5/5. It’s not doing anything truly new or revolutionary, but it is a solid blend of narrative and old school dungeon crawling, and I cheerfully await content with more classes and ancestries. Djinn and Necromancers, anyone?

As an ending note, I think this a perfect rpg for older children or teens who might be put off by some of the games made just for them, or for anybody new to the hobby. It’s a readable system that is not holding anything back, but is easy enough to pick up, with a setting that is not overly grim or adult, but is living and fanciful

This is the class based superhero game I have always wanted in my life. This took everything cool about the vigilante hack and made it come to life with super powers. This along with Dark Places and Demogorgons is THE best OSR content I have seen. I cannot wait for the next two books!

All I can ask for is that I hope you come back and have a "Divine origin/Supernatural creature" set of classes and perhaps add even more variety to the mystic Class. Perhaps divine options? Magic systems from the world?

Nice, flexable system; it is abstract where it needs to be, but some of the more challanging heroes from the card game have unqiue set ups to show the real flavor of the mechanics they had. You get more abilitys the more dangerious things get, and everything comes together nicely, showing off the character of the setting well! I was a little spooked about the early pre-drafts I saw, but the danger-ranking system is intuitive.

Well worth the price as you wait for the full gamee!

Surpised nobody has written a review for this yet.

A nice, solid update to the Ironclaw system. Combat feels much more lethal then in Ironclaw, given the subject matter I like the trait system, reminds me of the adjective system from Numenera/The Strange/Cypher System, and I think it adds a lot. Skill bloat seems tamed, what you did with SOAK was amazing, effectively adding conditional Deus ex machinas to explain why the shotgun didn't leave you a ragged mess. You need it. The surgery rules where a nice added touch on how deadly the world is, with the surgeons fighting the DM on who finished up the "Life/Death" bar first.

Kind of biting at the bit for the Occult/Lovecraft sourcebook, urban fantasy is my thing, and with the Sci-FI and Horror ones coming up after, this is a system that can only grow!