I must say, this is one amazing book! It rivals big publishers in production value, and IMHO offer more for you $$$. This is a quickstart adventure, meaning you need nothing more than this book to sit your friends around a table and have some great gaming!
The book is broken down into 3 major sections. The first section (which is breathtakingly illustrated) delves into the the dark Viking world of Ragnarok. It does a great job at setting the tone for the adventure and depicts the world as cold and desperate after the sun and moon have been devoured by two celestial wolves. The second section explains the RGS Light (Runic Game System Light) with its simplified rules set. As you may have guessed, Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok uses runes instead of dice, and boy do they work well and make you forget you ever wanted to play with dice! The last section is the saga which includes 5 pre-generated dwellers (characters). The dwellers have 3 specializations each, and you must pick which you will take before starting the adventure. This effectively gives you 15 pre-gens to choose from.
The saga is built in a way that gives the Norn (GM) the option to create a few side quests, or they could simply have the players follow through with the main mission. The main mission plays out differently based on how the Norn preps it (there are some dynamic elements that keep the game fresh for players that have flipped through the book) and depending on whom they choose to work for. A group rushing through this saga can probably finish it in 3-4 hours, but those who take their time can get a few 6 hour play session out of it.
All in all our gaming table enjoyed this product immensely. We played through it twice, with 2 different GMs and both play-throughs felt very very different. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a cool RPG with fresh polished game mechanics!
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