Seems that I'm the first person to give this product only 3 stars. So let me explain...

I have not heard about O&O before this second (SWADE) edition. But what I heard sounded like a sword&sorcery fantasy world with cool new ideas and without the usual clichés of elves, dwarves, orcs, knights and princesses. The kickstarter products (rulebook and "bizarre kingdoms") also sounded like a restart of the project that would be a suitable starting point for new entrants.

Turns out that this is not the case. The world description in the rulebook is very superficial. The kingdoms that are discussed here are on 1/2 - 1 page each; general information about what is and isn't possible in this world is largely missing. Lots of terms refer to maps that are not present in the book (and no, they're not present in the pay-what-you-want map that you can buy separately, either). Btw, the descriptions of the major kingdoms are not in the "Bizarre Kingdoms" book either, where only some more exotic locations are discussed. Instead, customers are asked to buy the first edition gazetteer, which seems to be a collection of disparate essays without a real world introduction.

What seems to be missing here is the book "between" the rulebook and the "Bizarre Kingdoms" - a real, proper introduction to the world, its workings and its most important realms.

Don't get me wrong - I do like what I see about those realms, it's just far to sketchy to give me a real mental image of the lands. For example, I have abolutely no idea about the tech levels available here. Some illustrations hint at "sword and sorcery" / iron age fantasy, while others are much more modern (just look at the latex-and-leather abyss-kissed dominatrix on the cover). So is the O&O world in reality yet another "everything goes" fantasy setting? From what I read here, I couldn't even tell...

In a sense, the same holds for the rules. Yes, the "Ancestries" and "Domains" sections are nice, as they restrict the choices and give the world a unique touch. But then, after discussing the main ancestries, almost all Fantasy Companion ancestries (including elves and dwarves...) are declared as "rare, but existant" - so everything's possible again? Well, the reply to the "which magical backgrounds to use?" question here in DTRPG seems to point in this direction: "all of them are fine". Okay, if this is true, then I came to the wrong place.

Overall, the second edition feels incomplete to me. And my gut feeling is that this is a shame, as the setting looks promising and the material itself seems to be there (after all, first edition has quite a publication history). It's just not well presented in this introductory book to the new edition.

tl;dr: I'm not sure whether O&O 2nd edition knows what it wants to be. Is it a special setting with a unique flavour? In this case, a lot of material is missing to provide the reader with a clear picture, and it would be helpful to also restrict some options to give it a more coherent, unique feel. Or is it just another D&D-inspired kitchen sink fantasy setting just like hundreds of others? In this case, I don't see the USP compared to the much better endowed (in terms of number of pages, illustrations, product output, players etc.) competitors...

One of my favourite Urban Fantasy adventures. If this is the last release of Contagion Second Edition (Geek is more like an Epilogue) then it is a very fun ending.

Great black and white images. Good detail. Evocative. One or two fewer monster chests in favor of other Things would've been nice.

While a few of the Kin in the book were covered later in the Dragonbane Beastiary, Catkin, Orcs and Goblins, everything else is still very useful and worth the 2$ asking price. Although looking at the random Kin chart in the beggining Gnome is listen when no such kin is listed in the book. And in fact "gnome" is used as a name for earth elementals in the main book. Doesnt take away from the overall product however.

I like this product and recommend it. Note that both the Core Savage Worlds rules and the Fantasy Companion are needed to use this product (standard assumptions for this system).

The good: Art is very well-done and provides inspiration for the setting. The base ideas for the various races are novel. Significant effort was made to port over many magic items from the d20 source material along with many new Powers. There is one new Arcane Background. The Bestiary is extensive. There is an introductory adventure included.

The bad: No map of the described world area is provided. There is no guidance for recommended Arcane Backgrounds, Setting Rules, arms, armor, equipment, or general technology level. The amount of description for the local civilizations is minimal. There is no discussion of how the new Arcane Background fits in with the races/cultures/nations.

All in all, I think that this is worth your money but hope that the author makes some updates so that I can edit this review to 5 stars.

We had a bunch of demons in our Advanved Kit so we needed some demon art which is hard to get without crossing into Wizard's IP.

While there are the core idea of some interesting characters here they are not fully fleshed out. They could use more background, some adventure seeds, maybe some normal people they are tied to. And, since you have all of these characters in one product, why would you not suggest some ties and confliects between them to spur ideas for the GM?

The character sheets are bare bones and could also use some additional details to make them easier to use.

But if character descriptions appeal to you and you are willing to put in some extra work to flesh these characters out, and fit them into your game world, it may be worthwhile picking up as it is not too expensive.

Excellent product. It bears a clean design, and the grid is both simply and effective. We need more large-scale, moddiable maps like this!

The creator was highly helpful with my specific needs for this product. I highly recommend, especially for the price!

A great supplement for the Plane of Shadows in 5E, with cool player options, cool monsters, and even a ready-made delve so that you can jump right in the action!

The art is good but the 12 images are in a single file (pdf/ tiff). This means that users must seperate the images, e.g. by screen print or cropping to use a single image. Not sure why the creator chose this format but it's not convenient for buyers. Hoping the artist can fix this issue because the art is good and the product could be 5 stars.

I bought the softcover and PDF. It's a nice looking book, it's a shame that so much of it is filled up with useless, non-gameable material.

There are 10 adventures. Each one has a full page of credits, in massive font - as if what follows was a triple-A movie release, or the best module ever, instead of another six-room dungeon.

Each adventure also takes two pages to repeat the OGL terms, at the end of every adventure.

And every adventure starts with exactly the same "Odysseys & Overlords" introduction - another half page per adventure, wasted.

Hey, how about, I don't know, maybe only printing this identical information ONCE, instead of TEN TIMES?

Maybe, in a 109-PAGE BOOK, it would be good if 32 PAGES weren't filled up with completely useless, non-gameable material? That's 29%! Nearly one page in three! It's not exactly a pleasure to flip through.

(Yet another 10 pages are taken up with reprinting the covers of the individual modules - fair enough - but it really starts to feel like the actual module content in this book is on the light side, to say the least.)

I picked up Citizens Divided in search of a fast, streamlined cyberpunk setting for SWADE.

I like the idea of the setting, which is over the top near-future cyberpunk that doesn't come with reawakened magic, elves or other stuff that I think would make it feel overloaded. What I especially appreciate is that cyberware isn't the norm for everyone just because it's cyberpunk. The setting isn't described in deep detail, but I think it mostly just gets right to the point and lets the players fill out the rest. In some places, it's a bit too sparse for my taste. I would've appreciated a few more factions, ongoing conflicts, interesting areas or other adventure hooks to get the game started or connect the players to the world.

The graphic design of the product is good – the style of the artwork might not fit everyone's taste, but it uses evocative artwork and looks cool. It's also nice to read, both from the looks and from the structure.

Where I think the product could be much better is the mechanics. There are a few leftovers from SWD, especially in the amount of bonuses granted by Edges and equipment. This isn't solely the author's fault, of course, since the product relies on the Science Fiction Companion which isn't out for SWADE yet. The new mandatory professional Edges feel a bit like classes and seem to be wildly unbalanced. The worst thing to me was the Sheen setting rule in which a new meta-currency is introduced. Sheen points are limited, can't be renewed, require a certain GM-style (you can't know the penalties / bonuses of your roll when you spend a Sheen point) but aren't really exciting in their usage compared to Bennies. I didn't understand their point at all.

All things considered, Citizens Divded isn't for me. As a GM, it doesn't add anything to a game that I'd like and isn't already in the core book or the Sci-Fi Companion (which you still need to play this). As a player, the setting is too vague to excite me.

I'm looking forward to read an updated setting book once the SWADE-SFC is out and I hope the setting will get a bit more detailed with supplements and the like!

hiYeahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I can't wait to play this adventure. I love the logic puzzle aspect of getting the variously sized woman free. The changing conditions depending on player's approach are well described and the NPCs have such agency and personality!

You know those classic choose-your-adventure books? It's great for those. Really made me think of those old Steve Jackson books. I love those books.