Though full of embarassingly purple prose (with many cringe-inducing passages) as well as a troublesome number of spelling errors, After Winter's Dark is not as bad as one might imagine it to be at first glance. Most importantly, the product fills a niche that few campaign settings do in this day and age -- that of the Third-Party Vanilla Fantasy Setting. Bear with me. . .
I looked at dozens of other third-party fantasy setting products over the past three weeks and this is the ONLY one I could find that didn't attempt to introduce some new race, new magic system, or new take on demi-human races that ran contrary to the core rules of the Dungeons & Dragons. I can use this setting, as-is, with ANY edition of Dungeons & Dragons (for the record, I do not play Castles & Crusdaes, though this isn't an issue as Aihrde is refreshingly devoid of mechanics).
While the aforementioned purple prose can certainly make reading this product difficult at times, it is a good system-neutral setting that is 100% vanilla in nature. For those of us who just want basic, old school, High Fantasy without new 'twists' or otherwise intrusive details that run contrary to system assumptions made in D&D, Aihrde is a winner.
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |