I really wanted to give a good rating. I'm a fan of the show, I liked the first edition of the RPG and buying the 2nd edition last year was compulsive .

I like the art, the PDF is gorgeous though too much orange but still gorgeous.

I like some of the new concepts like Focus, Concept, the very good looking experience system.

But Distinctions...well no.

So I'm suppose to determine with my players how the Distinction works, without guidance except a few examples which does not explain the rationale of how they work.

In the current state, this is a deal-breaker for me.

Rating 3/5 due to the lack of proofreading of the C7 products. The story and print quality is great.

very disappointing, Maps are pretty nice but the quality is too low for a good use. you barrely can't read text on the empire global map.

A role-playing game for adventures set in the Doctor Who universe. The basic assumption of DW: AITAS is that you'll be playing a Doctor and companions, but the rules aren't bound to that, and they do provide alternate models (such as games featuring UNIT or completely original characters).

The core mechanics of the game are very straightforward and interesting: roll two six-sided dice, add relevant bonuses, and compare the result to a difficulty... but then the degree of your success or failure suggests a range of possible results (including partial successes and not-quite failures). Characters also have a supply of "Story Points" that can be used to adjust the narrative in various ways. In addition, turn order is based on characters' intended actions, with "talkers", "movers", and "doers" all getting to go before "fighters". This last design choice is one of many in the book that shows just how much the designers understand Doctor Who and its tropes.

Going chapter by chapter:

• Chapter 1 is a general overview of the game... which gives us an example of play before providing a basic explanation of the core mechanics (odd choice).
• Chapter 2 goes through the process of character creation, and provides good advice along with a solid range of traits and skills. It's pretty plain that many traits were reverse-engineered from actual show characters, but that's not exactly a problem.
• Chapter 3 goes over the game's core rules, with highlights including the different types of conflict (physical, mental, and social) as well as ways to handle potential character death. The chapter also includes various sub-systems, such as chase rules (a particular standout) and rules for gadgets. Occasionally it feels like they should have streamlined some of these rules, but overall they're solid.
• Chapter 4 is an almost entirely lore chapter on time travel in the Doctor Who universe - well considered and very insightful, with good guidelines for play. This chapter is probably the most interesting to read.
• Chapter 5 provides stats for various foes of the Doctor, covering all the major players from various eras: Daleks, Cybermen, the Master, etc. It also provides guidance for building your own aliens and monsters, which is fine but seems slightly too loose; some advice on balance would have been nice.
• Chapter 6 provides gameplay and gamemastering advice. Most of this advice is decent but pretty generic, and likely stuff you know if you're an experienced roleplayer. However, it's better when focused specifically on Whovian tropes.
• Chapter 7 provides adventure design guidelines, which assume you will structure your campaigns like the TV show - good if you feel up to the task, but one wonders if that raises the bar too high. It ends with some sample scenarios (one per Doctor) which are mostly just OK, and often very derivative of existing stories (though a few stand out).
• The Appendix at the end of the book includes sample characters (including the Tenth, Eleventh, and War Doctors), some pre-built character templates, and a handy one-page rules reference.

Overall, this is a well-considered game with great core mechanics, made by folks who clearly understand the source material. There are some rough spots in the rules and their presentation, but none of them are deal-breakers. If you're a fan of Doctor Who and role-playing games, it's definitely worth picking this up, or one of the other versions of the core rules. (Originally posted on Goodreads)

The Game Master Screen is a welcome readdition of materials from the USNA lines with their stellar (save for the rules errors) GM screen.

Thankfully C7 followed up with a quite useful screen of their own and the GM booklet isn't as useless as some other GM attache we've seen in other lines.

First and foremost, the screen has no weapons on it, which makes it a 5/5 for me. At least it would be if it weren't for some misapplication of page references and some rule inconsistencies, that said it is quite possible that these rules inconsistencies are because of the coming errata changes to the core rulebook we've been told about...or they are just wrong.

And there's no warp weapon trait on the weapon trait list, which I found an odd exclusion even though there's space for one more, but this is what we have time for them to edit for at least.

It is a horizontal 3 panel screen, if some people care about it being horizontal vs vertical.

That's really all there is for the GM Screen, I will find it really useful...after they make the edits they need to make on it. Still I'm just pleased there's no weapons on it so really it's a standing 4/5.

The GM booklet is a series of adventures for tier 1-4.

Each adventure is for a different keyword group it includes Imperium, Astartes, Orks, and Eldar in some mix. Even an adventure where you could have Orks vs Astartes or vice versa. We'd seen a oneshot online previously of one of the GM booklet adventures here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYioHS20U6k

That said, with every other baseline faction being represented we still don't have a full Chaos keyword faction adventure, which is disappointing because it's not like C7 doesn't know we don't want Chaos stuff. They've even said that they will eventually make a Chaos book down the line, and we're getting the faction expanded soon with a bit of the psychic power expansions if I recall correctly from a recent "what is coming next" article. It's there, so I don't really see why we can't have had something directly in the GM booklet where you'd feasibly want to introduce the idea.

The Adventures themselves are solid enough they'll take one or two session each with a little work on your part fleshing out the described scenes. Each give a good idea of how the influence of each faction can change as a result and you'll even get some deeper hinting at Necrons coming back online in the Gilead System that we've been told will appear in the Bestiary.

Additonally there are a few npcs to use in your games, or at least as inspriation for your games, most of the human factions and an aeldar, but no Ork which I found odd and no Chaos follower which I wasn't surprised at but would have liked. No Astartes come to think of it either.

Overall together a solid 4/5 set, if they quickly address the minor errors it'll at least hit the GM screen itself to a solid 5/5, but the booklet without an addition of an adventure and a couple more npcs kinds sticks around 4/5 (good material but missing some things that would take some serious work to add).

Very creative and descriptive. the lore is good, the spells are original, and it gives rules on how to summon ddemons. A must have if you're wanting to play a witch or hedgewitch.

im angry blizzard exploded, so i cannot push this hard on irvine campus. id need 3 hung, low end dock pulled junkies, enough to lose and itd melt to government oversight, overnight if they knew it were me that enthused.

splendid writing, as if lived. -- currently a delinquent tax collector raconteurpornographer, ratchatcher and sorrow of pirates. so pay taxes! like tithe ok

Very good book. I really enjoy the neater, less gray, cleaner lay out and aspect of the book and text. I would think it makes for more comfortable reading. I hope we get another one with expeditions from different places.

I'm glad that C7 modified their store to let me purchase there and review here.

Anyways, Church of Steel has been a highly awaited release for a couple reasons. Largley we were interested in vehicles coming back to the system, having gotten removed from the Ulisses version of the game, and secondly because this is the first major release since C7 hired more editors and proof readers.

Some were hoping for voidships, or at least travel, rules here as noted in a couple of newsletters about the release, it was later clarified that these were mistakes or changes after the initial design work began and Voidships and Superheavies (like baneblades or such) will get their own book to more fully flesh out the massive scale required for them.

Regardless, what we find here is a book nearly entirely, as it says on the tin, about vehicles, and travel on planets.

Mechanically we see:

• An overview of major Factions and their attitudes toward their vehicles This gives us origin tables for vehicles that give more context to what the machines had been through in the past and what they'd managed to accomplish or how they had changed physically over time. Some even give adventure seeds for later work of your own if you as a GM wish to run with it.

• Looks at how Factions within the Imperium and some xenos Species think about their machines This also gives mechanical benefites to certain Factions interacting with vehicles of their own.

• Guidance for turning journeys into engaging adventures These are the more robust things that players may interact with save directly with vehicle rules themselves. They can feasibly be done in a vehicle or on foot and gives us rules for traveling through an urban setting, a wasteland, and a battlefield. Each entry has multiple events and possible combats or adventure seeds of their own. -- There are notes of also possibly including Endeavours from Forsaken System Player's Guide if you own that supplement as well.

• How to obtain, drive, crew, destroy, and repair vehicles The basic rules of using vehicles to whatever ends you want to use them for. -- This does include inter-species vehicle use if your players decide hijacking a Dark Eldar vehicle is a good idea. -- And an optional rule for the comical "Astartes takes up 2 seats for a human vehicle" situation -- Two optional rules also exist for making combat a lot less or a lot more deadly depending on your preference.

• The Workshop contains rules for customising a vehicle How to change the vehicles you acquire or getting a vehicle at all.

• Vehicle profiles for the Imperium, Aeldari, Drukhari, Necrons, and Orks Yes, Necron vehicles are here, and it's been noted that they will likely (possibly) appear as enemies with the Gilead as well. Which is quickly turning into a Dawn of War: Soulstorm situation it seems with a system of planets under siege by a lot of factions vying for their own interests.

• Weapons and Wargear used as part of the vehicles included in this book, including traits and profiles Explanations of all the weapons, traits, and wargear that the vehicle profiles noted earlier can have.

Honestly? I had no really big issues with the book. I expected vehicles (hoped for voidships, but you can't have everything) and I got exactly what I expected. There are a few (note much less than what we've seen previously from C7) issues in terms of editing, and a couple of terms that do legitimately seem to be missing unfortunately. That immediately knocks off a point, if it's a mechanical term and it's missing it's a problem that needs addressed.

That said, there's little here if you're a player who doesn't care about vehicles, for GMs even if you don't care about vehicles the Travel Rules are useful and there are a couple of templates that may be of interest to you like a 'Squg' bestiary profile and a 'Squig' mine. A few traits from the other species would be useful to grab to expand their wargear sections like the 'Lance' trait for dark eldar weaponry.

I think if you're after the reintroduction of vehicles to Wrath & Glory you've got a solid 4/5 book, if they quickly address the blatantly missing things then it'd honestly be a solid 5/5 even if you disagree with some of the weapon templates they'd all at least be there and intact.

Many fans of the Old World will love this book.

Not just for the monsters, though it does have a good selection, mostly at the beefier end to challenge more experienced partys. Some are updates of material from other sources like the Drakwald Mancatcher spider (from Cluster Eye Tribe) and Stirpike/Amoeba (from Death on Reik Companion) but most are new to 4th Edition. A couple are even revisits to creatures from the core rulebook in more detail such as Griffon and Wyvern.

These come with some new Traits to help the creatures hold their own - such as some being harder to outnumber, and introducing Grim - a mechanic to at least cap Advantage (finally for all those fellow GMs). And several entries come with standard version, and a "named monster" version with enhanced abilties and lore; such as Ol´Gribbleback an outsided version of the Razorgor (giant boar).

Plus there is an appendix section supporting the valuable trade in monster parts, and some of the Alchemical uses there of; plus mundane and magical items (adding to Achives of the Empire II). And if the map is not available in poster size to do it justice it should be (my purchase was pdf).

On top of the mechanics elements are the narrative and lore - the book is framed as a series of accounts of various expeditions from an adventuring party (a half dozen experienced pre-gens are included for use as quick starts or NPC introductions); which could fairly easily be reverse engineered into what sounds like a fun campaign. In addition to being full of flavour about the creatures themselves, this book is a chance to stretch out beyond the Reikland/Imperial comfort zone and peek over the borders to the possiblilties beyond.

To me at least well worth a look.

As a Bestiary it's fine, but the whole book is so surprisingly story driven and gives so much background information on the Empire and it's neighbors that it's actually better as an inspiration to create your own zoological expedition campaign.

The Cluster-Eye Tribe is a good book that is actually interesting, immediately useful, GM friendly, and thorough. You get enough lore, hooks and interesting NPCs in a quick, straight to the point read. In addition, you get help in creating various NPCs from the Bestiary with stats and explanations. And they tell you how the tribe behaves and would go about a patrol and attack, with various possible encounters. All this in roughly 20 pages. Great read, great book for GMs. Totally worth it. Good job Cubicle7. Please do more of them. I'd buy them all (for all the enemies we could get).

The book itself is quite good! Full of solid content though a few archetypes would have been appreciated. The issue is more the state of the game itself. I want to like WaG, but a science fantasy system that lacks Voidship rules and support for most of the factions in the setting is a little absurd, especially this long after launch. These PDFs are pricey compared to other games with a similar level of crunch. That is actually fine (game designers gotta make dough too!), the prices aren't unreasonable per se, but this system soreley needs more support for Orks, Eldar of all stripes, Tau (and allies), and if they really want to spoil us, Chaos and Genestealer Cults. Additonally, the absence of at least basic Voidship rules in a setting like this at launch was egreigious. I hope the book for them releases soon, but the pace of non-adventure content release is a bit slow. Hell, no book of enemies yet. It's 40k, we only have 1 greater daemon stat block, and it's in an adventure. Thankfully we have Abundance of Apocrypha to tide us over and supplimment the barebones.

That said, this book specifically is pretty solid. We even got some Necron and Dark Eldar stuff. Good work C7.

So, in my year or so of own the book, I managed to run one adventure, I'll get to why by the end. The adventure in question is the ever classic "A Rough Night at the Three Feathers". So, I'll be focusing on that adventure for the review.

The adventure has the group, world-weary and travel-weary, staying the night at the inconspicious Three Feathers. However, this might be the most disruptive night a fantasy pub may ever see. It has multiple conspiracies brewing that go off at specific times in the night, and it's up to the adventuring group if, well, if they even want to engage with it. This serves as one of the main hurdles of the adventure: The plot just happens at the adventurers and around them, and it is demanding the players to want to engage with it in some way. If they don't, if they want to mind their own business, the adventure makes a last-ditch attempt to rope the group in by framing one of the characters for murder, with the rest of the group as potential accomplicies, thus turning a plot that don't want to ask the adventurers to take part into a railroad off a cliff. It's as though the plot is aware they are struggling to involve the group, so they just force the group in.

These series of events happening around the players is delivered via a time-specific plot sheet where you tick the clock along by 15 minute increments and deliver and update to the pub. If anything, it actually bogs the game down and requires the GM to be very sharp and natural at delivering a plot that is, again, happening around the adventurers but never involving them until the last moment. It is a very demanding style, and honestly the most ardious example I've found of a timeline of events that happen as a group goes through-out an adventure depending how long they take and the like.

These flaws serve as a crippling shame because the presentation style is top-notch with a lot of artwork, and the NPCs that litter the adventure are a colourful cast varying wildly and able to draw any style of player into a variety of nonsense. It's also a deeper shame as I do really like the Warhammer Fantasy 4th ed rules and wanted to run it more, but this adventure actually put my group off wanting to play the game at all. They just found it immensely boring to wade through, and I'm genuinely not sure if any part of my GM style or delivery had much to do with it (as my players usually can tell if it's me or the adventure, and they definitely attacked the adventure ruthlessly). It made visiting the other possible adventures in the book impossible sadly, but I can comment based on a glance they all look supurbly presented.

Overall, I really really really wanted to like Rough Nights & Hard Days, especially as a fan of the core rule book, but, A Rough Night at the Three Feathers was personally a stodgy and awkward enough adventure to put my group off. I gave it a 3/5, with the assumption that my GMing style and ability (despite 10 years under my belt) might have had a hand in proceedings, but with the warning of my generally negative experience.