World of Near
300 years ago the old world was destroyed¸ only to be reborn as a vivacious pulp fantasy milieu full of cruel wickedness and exotic perils ‐ but also love and hope. The Shadow of Yesterday is a classic indie fantasy drama game¸ armed with a Creative Commons license and a fresh west coast take on fantasy roleplaying. Stylistically it most resembles a Ralph Bakshi fantasy movie¸ if I had to sum it up in one sentence. It's structurally close enough to your typical fantasy adventure game to relate to¸ but with all the bells and whistles you'd expect of a proge drama game¸ too¸ making it one of the first and most prominent hybrid designs of the story game era. A must read for anybody who's into fantasy adventure games¸ as a provocative challenge if nothing else. The Shadow of Yesterday was originally self-published (in two separate editions) by its creator Clinton R. Nixon in the mid-'00s. This is a third standalone edition of the game¸ put together by yours truly in 2009. Due to the Creative Commons nature of the game anybody can pretty much join in the fun whenever with their own takes¸ but for now this stands as the most current and comprehensive treatment available on the subject. As a dedicated setting sourcebook the World of Near is a fundamental starting point into the game. Alongside its sibling rulebook Solar System ¸ the two books include everything you need to play The Shadow of Yesterday. It's a big book dedicated to dramatically inspiring character and scenario ideas¸ with ten major cultures¸ eight major magical cosmologies¸ hundreds of character build options and so on¸ what you'd generally expect of a major fantasy rpg. More neat setting stuff than you can really hope to use in play¸ really. The PDF version of the book is available at your chosen price point¸ and I encourage everybody to download and take a look. I feel that the world of Near is an unique fantasy setting that has the potential to delight fantasy hobbyists the world over; it has a certain energy that so often lacks in paint-by-numbers schlock fantasy¸ so much so that it inspired me to try to capture the storm inside the flimsy covers of a book.