This is one of the most elegant "we're bored in the car and are losing our minds" game I've ever seen. This is SO going with us on our travels.

This is one of the first cyberpunk RPG's where I've seen "gritty" without excessive levels of complexity. Characters are made quickly, but still are characterful. Skills are simple, but provide a LOT of flexibility in their use. And the setting is concise, but enough to start whole campaigns. Balancing all these things that would normally be mutually exclusive was a rather masterful act.

Neon City Overdrive is spectacular. It's resolution system can do in a small booklet what some systems can't manage with a weighty tome. And it is infinitely hackable.

The rules system is what you would get if FATE and Blades in the Dark had a brilliant love child. The basic mechanic is simple: roll a pool of six-siders called action dice, and take the highest die. When there is a challenge, you roll a number of "danger dice." Each danger die that matches an action die removes both, and then you look for the highest action die. It is elegant, yes, but it is just plain fun to roll a big handful of dice and look for matches.

The number of dice you can roll is based on a tag system, similar to FATE. The more relevant tags you have, the more dice you get. The more relevant tags the opposition has, the more danger dice you roll. Easy peasy.

Now, I must admit that some of the rules did not meet my preferences. This isn't a flaw in the game, this is just a matter of the game I want to run. NCO actually shines here. The rules have a simplicity that allowed them to be changed with little effort; my group LOVES my Shadowrun hack.

This is pure and simple a game you will love to play, no matter what kind of setting you can imagine.

I'll be honest: I bought this purely on the strength of the sales pitch, which I figured was worth at least a dollar.

I was quite pleasantly surprised, then, to discover that this list was quite well assembled. My main use for this will probably be a "they want me to run a game WHEN?" adventure generator, but that doesn't actually do justice to the ideas found here. They range from standard RPG tropes to the quirky and oddly imaginative, and rolls will often combine the two into a result that makes you start laughing and then grow quiet with contemplation as new ideas begin to bloom. I'm also considering using this in my classroom when I next teach my creative writing unit, just because the humor will be useful in overcoming the inevitable cases of writer's block.

And all this for a measly buck...that a helluva deal.