Five Torches Deep as a baseline game is amazing both in play and conceptually. If you have enjoyed the base system, this book will be a more than welcome addition to this amazing game for both DMs/GMs and Players alike. The fact that this is less than $5 dollars is practically a steal for the value it provides you. Below I will review each provided system within this book.
1) Ancestries:
The Lineage system is a wonderful tool for player's and DMs alike. Just a glance at the 12 provided fills my mind with ideas for characters, NPCs, Villians, and so much more. This single piece of the book, as an expansion to the base FTD rules alone would be worth the asking price in my opinion. By far, conceptually my favorites are the Corpse Flea and the Eternal(Spooky Scary Skeletons), a Corpse Flea is a body snatching psychic entity that needs a steady supply of bodies(Dead) to sustain it's existence with malleable physical stats, and the eternal is a Skeleton that can survive so long as it's skull is intact and I cannot get the image of a skull bouncing down a hallway to stab someone with a dagger held in it's mouth out of my head.
2) Life Paths:
This system serves several purposes, both explicitly and implicitly. Explicitly this serves as a Stat generator and a basic backstory generator. It has risk associated for those willing to keep rolling, but rewards as much as it takes away in many cases. Implicitly this system allows those who enjoy fleshing out backstories a variety of options and flavors to add and allows you to take the seeds planted within this system and grow them forth into an extremely well fleshed out story to establish your character from. For those willing, I would absolutely reccomend you roll beyond the 3 safe rolls as the roleplay potential is more than worth the mechanical disadvantages that occur.
3) Lineages:
I cannot state how absolutely amazing this syetem is. Acting as a guide rail that, as a GM myself, you should definately feel comfortable mixing and matching up to build an endless variety of characters. At base, this system allows both GMs and players alike a seemingly(and conceptually) endless combination for species and cultures with which to populate the worlds they play within. If your group loves Roleplaying unique characters this will absolutely be your bread, butter, and 5 course meal. The culture section of the lineage system can be as shallow or deep as you desire, but it provides no shortage of tools to players to use in the world of the GM incorperates it at all, which even in the most basic stock fantasy settings should come up at least once every 10 or so sessions.
4) Paragons:
These, to me, are perfectly suited to the tropes that many are well aware of and have fun with in their explorations of these tropes. Flavorful, Fun, with unique abilities that provide utility. I especially find the halfling thrower to be entertaining as you could have an entire recreation of david and goliath with it or throw everything in the room at enemies dealing no small amount of damage. I can clearly see the use of carrots as lethal projectiles as a wonderful moment that I as a PC would seek out at every opportunity to only one up the absurdity of the item I finished off the last enemy with.
5) Bioessentiallism, Racism, and Colonialism:
I will state this to start out, it is very much so a strong stement to have included this in the book and I believe it reflects well on Sigil Stone as a whole. I must commed you for this acknowledgement of the harms of our world that this content could dredge up, especially so now as of the time of writing this and the backlash that Wizards of the Coast recieved from a notable chunk of the 5e DnD community. As someone in pursuit of multiple social science degrees who is nearing graduation, I see here not a "cop out", as you put it, per say but rather a healthy acknowledgement that we in the Tabletop RPG community should look to far more than we do and should hold up as the new standard as more and more people enter into our ranks. Your acknowledgement speaks loudly and justifiably that your values are as much a part of your system and considerations placed within it as the hard work and thought that goes into the writing and mechanics you've made.
To those who are offended by this page, I present this question to you: Why does an acknowledgement of history and it's effects on people in the real world offend you so much? Perhaps you learned the Mythologized version of history that swept many of the atrocities that have occured sue to these very issues, and still to this day are issues we grapple with globally, under the rug? Perhaps you have been lucky enough to not see or feel the horrific effects, the damages, the evils that still permeate every part of our lives. Maybe you simply do not care, in which case you could simply ignore the page entirely if you really wanted to, but those of you who had an emotional reaction to this page I again ask: Why does THIS elicit your ire? Your annoyance? Perhaps you are simply a reactionary, or maybe you have some deeper seated issues or insecurities that you need to resolve. Regardless, you should seek a proper answer to that question even if it makes you uncomfortable for the sake of your own personal growth.
Of course, if you're simply a Triggered Social Injustice Warrior who can't handle your ideas being challenged, you've probably stopped reading long before this, but if you are not I suggest you to ask yourself why you took issue with this.
Thank you Sigil Stone for making yet another beautiful product!
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