You get a zip file containing a license and five PDF documents: Assets (a list of qualities that you can buy for Companies to give them situational modifiers to rolls), Black Thirst (a new martial path for Dark Plains berserkers who really like to kill things a lot), One Roll Companies (a one-roll system like the one roll character generation concept except for Companies of arbitrary size), One Roll Imperials (a one-roll table for Imperial citizens that can replace the one-roll character generation tables in Reign if you want to be from the Empire), and Shadowbinder (a magical school called The Darkened Path that specialises in terror and darkness and generally black topics). These PDF files are reasonably sized and well composed for printing. There's some colour elegantly deployed that makes the result a treat if you have good high resolution colour printing available, and they happen to look great in black and white too. If you have to choose, pick resolution.
The typography in these PDFs is fit and lively using a nice classic Palatino for the main text and the same decorative font from the Reign core book for quotations and titles. Game mechanical details and examples are in a relatively ugly sans serif font that has far too little lines spacing that reads well enough on screen but is out of place next to the elegance of the rest of the material. This use of sans serif is also inconsistent which is occasionally jarring.
Overall the layout is short on marginal white space though that's got an upside for a document that most recipients are going to want to print. If it was a book I'd be a little disappointed but as a PDF it manages to juggle divergent purposes effectively. The artwork is distinctive, well executed and placed, and does not overshadow the textual material. It prints very well. The results of my own home print job are in many respects superior to the core book that was printed professionally.
The material itself is not enormous but it is fairly dense — we're not bombarded with storytelling or vague descriptions but rather the author gets right down to nuts and bolts. The topics covered are not heavily invested in the default setting and can be readily transplanted to practically any setting you're using Reign for with little or not modification. Where an underlying rule is used by the designer to generate or limit material, that rule is made explicit so that you can extend the ideas yourself — something I wish more game designers would do: a healthy design notes section would benefit practically every game.
The Assets package starts with a little design information about just exactly what, mechanically, the assets do and how you can make your own. It then presents a list of assets that all obey this design rule, organised by the Company stat that is affected: four to six assets are presented for each of Influence, Might,, Sovereignty, Territory, and Treasure. Assets are all essentially modifiers of 2 or 3 dice to a particular kind of roll under specific circumstances or, sometimes, a 1 die reduction in difficulty. There is also a brief discussion of how modifiers provided by assets can be used — that is, there are two possible ways to interpret the addition of dice to a pool roll and each is explored with its ramifications discussed. Which interpretation is appropriate is left to the user — again the design is exposed magnifying the product's value as a tool.
The Black Thirst package dives right into the mechanics in exact parallel with the path sections in the Reign core rule book. It's only a page long and it only needs to be a page long — I like that the author is not shy about giving the material its natural length. It consists of a brief description of what kind of people follow the Black Thirst path and then gives a 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 point path special ability. Each is pretty cool and essentially revolves around doing more harm in exchange for taking a little more harm though there are two exceptions: Strength of Madness lets you knock two dice out of your opponent's pool when you hit instead of the usual one (which sounds frankly devastating even though it doesn't work against Unworthy Opponents) and Dying to Kill lets you add a wicked Morale attack on top of a big damage bonus, which sounds like a good way to clear out hordes of enemy sword fodder in short order. Spear fans will note that the Black Thirst only works for polearm wielders (spears included of course!), mechanically awesomizing that naginata centered character we've all been brewing.
One Roll Companies gives a treatment of random company generation that exactly parallels one roll character generation. This is a bit of a trick because there are fewer traits and a wider power range for companies than for characters, but the authors rise admirably to the challenge. To handle the power scale, they provide a table matching number of dice to roll against the power level (in appropriately fuzzy terms) of the intended Company. Want to randomise a tiny nation? 10-12 dice will do. An empire? 20+ dice. A rag tag group of bumbling local combat enthusiasts? 3-4 dice will suffice. Sets are broken out of the roll exactly as with character generation but the categories for each height are rather different — we instead have Spies, Gossips, and Rumormongers; Courtiers, Courtesans, and Diplomats; Ore-Laden? Mountains; Lush Woodlands; Warrior Class and Martial Culture; Tactical Knowledge and Experience; Generous Farmland; Artisans and Governors; Religion; and Traditional Cultural Identity. Each has five cumulative stages (selected by width of set) and each has a patron stat (Religion, for example, primaliy affects Sovereignty). Waste dice go to a list of special events granting an asset. Only one list is provided in this case unlike the character generation's three lists. Resulting companies are surprisingly rich and developing a narrative that explains the rolls is good fun well in keeping with toolbox systems everywhere (Classic Traveller I'm looking at you).
One Roll Imperials is an alternative to the standard character generation tables and is very succinct, consisting of the height by width tables, a single events table, and an example. The example occupies almost as much space as the tables themselves but provides a great example of how to pull a story out of the touchstones provided by the generation scheme. The contents are functional and create cool characters but function most usefully as an example of how to create your own generation tables — having the single example in the core book is not quite sufficient to get a feel for the underlying rules, really, but having a solid second set of tables makes it quite clear. This is probably the most setting specific material in the supplement and yet still abley stands in practically any setting you're committed to using Reign for with only minor edits.
Finally we have the Darkened Path, a magical school that focuses on darkness and spirits that reside therein. It's suitably bleak and the effects are pretty much as expected: hiding in the dark, seeing in the dark, and terrifying people. There's also a little necromancy thrown in and each effect has various different power levels under different names. Reign's core spell list is a little limited and this goes some way to improving that, fulfilling a necessary niche and providing a spell school that originates somewhere other than Uldholm. Attunement is less extreme than some schools, resulting in black eyes and a naturally ability to hide in the dark when it goes right and black eyes and an extreme reaction to light when it goes bad. Oh and a tricksy spirit stuck in your head. This is a school of magic that will get plenty of play in many games — it makes great villains from single encounters to battlefields and it's a tempting path for anyone with appetites that are best sated after dark — the capabilities of a magically attuned assassin are well modelled here and with far less effort than many games.
This supplement is obviously a stellar bargain — it's free to almost everyone thanks to the offerings of a few dedicated fans. Having seen it I will certainly consider pledging on the next supplement if only to see it sooner. In particular this supplement lacks the features of most supplements that make me disinterested in supporting them: this is not setting canon, this is not munchkin fodder, and this is not mechanically divergent. This is consistent, nearly generalised, toolbox material with specific and immediate application. This is the kind of thing I like spending money on. I'm vaguely ashamed that I didn't.
