Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game - PDF

Bottom line is this game is a ton of fun. To be exact, I have ran this system with my two regular RPG groups, one online and one in person. None of my players were familiar with the Rivers of London books. This includes both running the prewritten adventure and writing two more of my own. Pros: - Explaining the rules to someone who has played some DnD or other RPGs is dead easy. - Using the books as a basis for the setting is wonderful because there is so much background you can use to add color beyond what is in the handbook. - Rules are clearly written and straight forward to run. - Basically premise of cops hunting ghosts, negotiating with gods, and solving crimes is inherently fun. We had people stitched up in laughter across our games and people want to play again. Cons: - The core rules mostly contain content from the books summarized. Ex. the spell list is limited enough that having more than a few magical characters will mean heavily overlapping spell choice. Adding more spells and new NPCs/creatures would of been nice. - Lack of pre-written first or third party casefiles. I'm enjoying writing my own but it would be very nice (and I would pay for) some additional well written casefiles I could easily run. Overall a very fun system that could use some additional supplemental content to ensure longevity and support new GMs.

I had a great time with my family running The Bookshop included scenario. The group was not that familiar with roleplaying games but picked up the system immediately. One player who had read the books said the game did a great job using the setting. It made for a fun afternoon. I am glad I bought this and I recommend it.

As someone with no previous experience of CoC I was unsure how quickly I would adapt to this game. However, the solo tutorial adventure takes you through step by step and by the end you have quickly learnt the basics of both character creation and gameplay - with replay value due to the "choose your own adventure" style of the tutorial. As a long time RoL fan this is packed with lore fans will recognise, but also works as a standalone introduction to the universe. RoL is a series about magical police, but grounded in the mundane of investigating it like any other mystery - just with exceptional means. Action is short and sharp - guns are rare in this setting and even minor fist fights hold tension brilliantly. No DnD style slog fests that I'm used to. The system also allows for fights to end "badly" without ever being deadly, your character being "down" may just mean not able to continue fighting whilst the baddies run away. The London setting has plenty of information, though as I am now living in Germany I look forward to attempting to use the rules for creating new settings to attempt to create a game based in my now local Lower Saxony. The game could use slightly more information on supernatural opponents to create - particularly ghosts - though it is generally Fae and human magical or semi-magical situations you will likely create adventures around. The game does offer plenty of prompts for cases you can create, and the investigation aspect is the key - and combat is generally not the ideal resolution.

Phew! rushed over and bought the PDF, and have dipped in to key sections. Overall - I like it! Very like recent CoC, but further simplified - so you end up starting with 0, 30% or 60% in skills - untrained, not-incompetent, or competent. Nice! Keeps Luck, but reduces refresh ... OK De-emphasises firearms - it's based in the UK, so only specialists ever use guns. Combat is dangerous. You have what amounts to 4 HP. Weapons do 1 or 2 typically, unless dangerous, or special roll - 3 is bad, 4 is deadly, 5 is gone (unless you have Luck to burn). Umm - don't get hit kiddies! OTOH most combat is non-lethal - all parties may be "taken out" of the fight, but recover after end of combat. If the Law wins, the bad guys get arrested at that point. If the heroes lose, they get dumped, robbed, or taken away (to be rescued later!). Magic - I'm not sure about. It's very easy & playable, but loses the flavour of RoL books. Coming in as an Ars Magica fan, Aaronovitch's novels are *very* like Ars Magica (Latin, Formae,...)... but this is D100, and a simplified, playable variant even of that. Single "Magic" skill, starting at 60% for trained practitioners, and you can Master spells to grant an automatic Bonus Die when casting. Hefty emphasis on investigation. Sense Vestigia is a Common skill (base 30% for everyone) - hmm - I thought you really needed to have Vestigia pointed out to you before you stopped ignoring them. Improvement/Development does away with the faff of ticking skill uses for experience, throws out improvement rolls, and adds Development Points - typically 1/session, +1 or 2 at "end of chapter" which is when you spend them on 5/10% boosts, on new skills, or accumulate to buy Talents. Much better! You can also use DP to learn or master spells.