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shane_tiernan's review
1.0
I hate to give independents 1-star reviews, but this book is the worst. To be honest I forced myself to read up to page 200 and then skimmed it from there (about another 150 pages).
Let's start with the good stuff. It's ambitious. There are a couple neat ideas. There's some really nice art.
I believe the copy I have is a "new combined" edition, a really nice-looking hardcover. But the interior layout is a disaster. There's basically no page layout. It's as if a text file was just loaded in. There will be a title for a paragraph or section at the bottom of a page and then the body text on the next page. There are charts that are cut in half with one line on one page and the rest on another page. There's so much white space that the book could have been half the number of pages that it is. There are grammatical errors and cut and paste errors, the maps are extremely basic and ugly.
On to the actual story. The world doesn't seem to be Earth, but then then Catholicism seems to be referenced a lot as well as ancient languages from Earth. Those anachronistic elements distracted me constantly as I wondered what world it was and how these things fit together. Then there was all the sex stuff, which just seemed like it was edgy for the sake of edginess. The adventure seemed to be setup to railroad characters through a story and many of the encounters seemed like pointless grinding, though some were pretty original.
So yeah, this definitely didn't work for me.
Let's start with the good stuff. It's ambitious. There are a couple neat ideas. There's some really nice art.
I believe the copy I have is a "new combined" edition, a really nice-looking hardcover. But the interior layout is a disaster. There's basically no page layout. It's as if a text file was just loaded in. There will be a title for a paragraph or section at the bottom of a page and then the body text on the next page. There are charts that are cut in half with one line on one page and the rest on another page. There's so much white space that the book could have been half the number of pages that it is. There are grammatical errors and cut and paste errors, the maps are extremely basic and ugly.
On to the actual story. The world doesn't seem to be Earth, but then then Catholicism seems to be referenced a lot as well as ancient languages from Earth. Those anachronistic elements distracted me constantly as I wondered what world it was and how these things fit together. Then there was all the sex stuff, which just seemed like it was edgy for the sake of edginess. The adventure seemed to be setup to railroad characters through a story and many of the encounters seemed like pointless grinding, though some were pretty original.
So yeah, this definitely didn't work for me.
williamc's review
5.0
If you're reading this system-agnostic role-playing adventure in hopes of piping it in to your usual group, be warned that the content is, as described, exceptionally adult, and may make more socially conservative players uncomfortable with its themes and requests. If you have a willing group, however, this might be the most memorable, most genuinely creepy, most pleasantly disturbing adventure that group undertakes. The Inverted world is unsettling but the characters are human to a fault -- and those human flaws fuel the meat of what makes Beneath so darkly disturbing. Anything needed to plug the adventure into your [b:D&D|22219679|Dungeon Master's Guide (Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition)|Wizards RPG Team|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403177184s/22219679.jpg|49475329], [b:Shadow of the Demon Lord|28413680|Shadow of the Demon Lord (SDL1000)|Robert J. Schwalb|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451577862s/28413680.jpg|46149118], or [b:Dungeon World|17336078|Dungeon World|Sage LaTorra|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1360104759s/17336078.jpg|24068534] game is here, thankfully without bogging players in needless rules that might pull them out of an intense scenario. If you can't tell, I loved Beneath, and hope there is much more to come.
Thanks to Brendan Carrion at Full Metal RPG for writing about Beneath's original Kickstarter. He knows what to recommend, and you should trust that guy for everything.
Thanks to Brendan Carrion at Full Metal RPG for writing about Beneath's original Kickstarter. He knows what to recommend, and you should trust that guy for everything.
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