DARK AEONS: THE ATLANTEAN CHRONICLES by Brian-Joseph Baker, Joshua D. Brice, Dillon Langlands & John Bromley, Stardust Publications PDF – $15.00

Reviewed by Steve Dean

Take work by H.P. Lovecraft, now in the public domain, add in some references to Atlantis, Lemuria, Nephilim and other fantasy tropes and memes, such as werewolves, mix in some Greek mythology and this product is what you might come up with. The setting itself then is mostly unoriginal research rather than new material.

As well as the setting, this 410 page monster contains everything you need to run a campaign in this world, from the obligatory character sheets and the making of characters, to an over-detailed price list of things they might want to buy. For instance, I think most GMs are capable of making up a price for a laptop, and don’t actually need three different ones for different qualities.

The system itself uses cards to resolve actions, although there is a, rather pointless, direct conversion to dice, if you prefer to roll rather than deal.

The art work is appalling, the very worst I have ever seen. How anyone could have allowed it to mar their work is beyond me. Much of it is so simple it looks like a child has drawn it, and that’s the best of it. The worst is unrecognisable black blobs on a white background. That was really the best they could find?

Does the table top games market need a new setting? Maybe. Does it need a new system? probably not, and this isn’t it if it did.

Overall then, I found nothing new here. I suppose it comes down to whether you are prepared to pay for someone else to trawl the internet, or to just do it yourself.

The games market is saturated with downloadable material at the moment, and this product would need to be a whole lot better to even start to compete.