What a monster of a first product. This is Outcast Silver Raiders (2023), the Kickstarter first edition that boasts a box 3.75 inches deep (the trade edition, from Exalted Funeral, is in a slipcase and lacks some of the ephemera and bits that are in this, which makes sense considering what the cost-per-unit of this thing must have been). It’s the deepest RPG box on my shelves [er, it was, until Land of Eem showed up]. And what depths!

Map, standees, dungeon flashcards. The Player’s Guide lays out the core rules. Three classes — rouge, sorcerer, warrior. They work mostly the way you expect, though there are surprises. Rogues get a pool of luck points, sorcerers have a set of blood magic abilities rather than traditional spells and warriors get special combat maneuvers. It feels a little Black Hack, a little OSE. The Referee’s Compendium contains advice on how to run the game and its world. One of the longest sections is on ritual magic which A. Presents horrible magical options for players to seek out and B. Roots the game setting to a kind of fantasy occultism that I find extremely appealing. Nearly every ritual is a devil’s bargain. There’s also a lengthy section with expanded character options that basically aligns with the OSE standard. They’re there for completion’s sake, but I agree with Isaac that the game feels better without them.

The real star is the third, and longest, book, The Mythic North, which present a grim world that kinda sorta aligns with medieval Scotland. There is a central church and feudal lords and no lack of corruption, both terrestrial and spiritual. The book is basically split between encounters for hex crawling and dungeons for exploring. Both have threads of narrative that players can pick up and then referees can expound upon. The variety here is pretty awe-inspiring. I particularly enjoy the hex encounters, every one of which offers a unique event, NPC or situation. There is a lot of creativity poured into this thing.

It’s all written by Isaac Vanduyn. All the illustrations are by Kim Diaz Holm, all the maps are by Lex Rocket. Everything adheres to a palette of white, black and red, giving the game a cohesive sense of danger and violence. If I weren’t running my own thing right now, I’d be running this.