Briefly: As a very picky GM I've fought past my prejudices and found a rules system that wasn't just great, it blew my mind. While the system initially seemed like a big turn-off, putting it in the right context made it crystal clear: Why aren’t all roleplaying games made like this? Well, D&D and many other games have their own place, but IMHO this is how pure roleplaying games should be done. Fiction and story first, and it's actions of player characters that really matter.

There's a few words I'd like to share with you about using 3d-terrain and/or maps/tiles - what to use and why, and share my experiences about some maps and tiles I've used. And while I love modelling and creating cool terrain setups in my games, I've been moving towards using map tiles in my games instead of 3d props, and there's several reasons for that, which I'm going to tell you more about below. I've also added a few review-ish about tiles/terrains on this post.

I've been very busy lately, and even now I haven't been able to read Beasts of the Dominions completely, even if I got it... at least three months ago I believe? But I've read most of it and thought of giving a reviewish of it. To be honest, when reading the book's description when it kicked off at IndieGoGo I wasn't fully convinced if it would have enough substance to the cost. But I've learned to trust the quality of stuff written by Umberto Pignatelli and jumped in, and I'm happy I did so. 

I've now been able to play 2 games of Eclipse, and I can tell it definitely feels like Master of Orion! This game, which is currently #12 on lists of boardgamegeek, is not a board game for everyone, but for those who like it it's really excellent! It may be a bit too heavy to be casual fun game, especially because of it's setup time - but it's still really lightweight to be a game it represents. There are plentys of reviews of the game if you google for such, so I'll mention about the game basics only briefly.

A while ago I got my hands of Beasts & Barbarians and realized it was a perfect setting for the Sword & Sorcery campaign I was planning. I've had plans to run only small sandbox -using adventures with little or no preparation, so I wasn't first planning to buy this adventure even if GRAmel had became my favourite publisher. But I was curious to see what the Gazetteer -part of the adventure had so soon I realized having bought the pdf and wanted to use the adventures in my game.