Review: Level Up (Advanced 5th Edition)

There is a set of people out there for whom Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (hereafter, for simplicity, "LU") from EN Publishing is exactly what they have been waiting for--for several years now.  If you are a D&D 5e player that is starting to (or have been for some time) chaffing at the limitations and restrictions in the game system as presented (particularly in terms of character creation and mechanical support for non-combat activities), but you otherwise like playing 5e and are not really interested in checking out a whole new game and structure, then LU is an extremely compelling product.  And even if you are not (and I am not exactly in that particular space), it's impossible not to see and be impressed with the game design craft at work here.

The initial challenge in approaching LU is to understand exactly what it is, something that didn't really become clear to me until I got the PDF copies of the three core books in my hands [Note: as of this writing, it is only available to Kickstarter backers, of which I was one].  The simplest way to explain what is going on here is that LU takes D&D 5e, strips it down to the skeleton (dice mechanics, action economy--things like that), and then rebuilds it from scratch.  While nothing you will see is unrecognizable for people who have played d20 games, I was not expecting the scope of the changes LU makes to the 5e paradigm (I think, in part, because the EN Publishing people made a strategic choice to undersell how much work they were doing--more on that in a bit).  Not only is it a different, albeit recognizably so, game from 5e, it is very clearly designed to be used on its own, as a replacement to the 5e rulebooks as opposed to a supplement to them (and, like D&D, LU consists of three core books--the Adventurer's Guide, the GM-focused Trials & Treasure, and Monstrous Menagerie).  LU is not a set of house rules to 5e, nor is it an expansion in the mode of something like Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but instead its own game.  The best comparison of the relationship between 5e and LU is between Pathfinder 1st Edition and D&D 3.5, and even that might undersell it.

In fact, there are so many changes that summarizing all of them would be tedious and unproductive.  But I think the changes can be grouped into two major buckets, with a couple of other interesting single shot ideas that are worth talking about.  Major idea #1 of LU is to make good on the (IMO, wholly unfulfilled) promise of 3 pillars of play in D&D 5e--combat, exploration, and social/roleplay.  To that end, Trials & Treasure has a lengthy section providing mechanical support, with examples and random tables, for non-combat, environmental-based encounters.  There is also a robust set of journey rules, similar to those found in the now out-of-print Adventures in Middle Earth (in turn based on The One Ring rpg).  And while I love the AiME/The One Ring journey rules, I think LU's version is better in that it contemplates a wider variety of non-combat challenges.  There are puzzles and lore-based challenges and weather and a whole host of different ways for all PCs to engage with the exploration portion of the game, all of which is simply not present in 5e as written.  And no one can say that the exploration mechanics are a throw-away or something tacked-on, as Trials & Treasure devotes about 120 pages to these new mechanics.

The social pillar is less mechanically engaged, but there are some actual rules (including rules for awarding XP!) for social encounters along with advice on how to run them.  But LU approaches the social dimension in a slightly different way, bringing back the once ubiquitous but now somewhat out-of-fashion stronghold and domain management rules.  There is also a Prestige rating, measuring how well known a particular PC is, which provides concrete mechanical hooks for the standard "unknown wanderer to world-renowned hero" arc of most fantasy campaigns.  Critically, every PC has class-related abilities that interact with both the social dimension and the exploration piece, making them a central part of play as opposed to an afterthought or something only specialized characters interact with.  For example, the 1st level Cleric selects a "Sacred Call" ability which provides circumstantial social advantages, while at 3rd level the Cleric selects a "Sign of Faith" which is an ability that provides meaningful, if cabined, advantages while traveling.

This transitions into the second big-picture change in LU--all of the classes are rebuilt and redesigned.  Part of this redesign is adding class abilities tied to the exploration and social pillars, as mentioned above.  But it is more than that, and the changes can be seen most clearly in the martial classes.  Martial classes now have access to combat maneuvers, which are divided up into "combat traditions" (think different kinds of martial arts in the real world) that unlock progressively more powerful abilities along a fairly simple tree.  There are also a short list of maneuvers that are now available to all characters, fleshing out the combat turn.  Most of the discrete class abilities given to martial characters in 5e are wrapped up into the maneuver system, giving martial characters more options to choose from at each level.

Indeed, choice is a consistent theme of all of the revised classes is LU. In many places where 5e simply assigns a particular ability at a particular level, LU provides options.  It's not nearly the breadth of options found in the feat system in Pathfinder 2nd edition; instead, there are usually three or four specific options for a particular level.  As a result, it sits in a middle place between 5e and Pathfinder 2e on the character creation complexity scale, a place that I think is going to be a sweet spot for many people who are looking to ratchet up the character creation mini-game.  My one comment here is that, given that there is increased choice at all levels, I wonder whether including the 5e sub-class system was the right choice.  I get that it helps establish a theme for PCs within the broader class concept, but much of that work is being taken up with the individualized abilities that classes get at most levels, so some of that work is duplicative and maybe a bit more complex than is necessary.  On the flip side, the design for the subclasses in LU is broader and more archetypical than especially the post-PHB 5e subclasses, which often goes in the direction of rather specific character concepts.  I like this better, and the subclasses are well-designed and easy to adapt to almost any possible setting one might be inclined to use. 

A couple of other quick notes on character building.   The game mechanical construct of "race" in 5e is replaced with Heritage (which might be called "species" in a sci-fi context) and Culture, allowing for greater character diversity and avoiding essentialism.  Along those lines, Background is now the character creation piece that provides ability score bonuses and penalties.  This is a small change, but an elegant one and one that makes perfect sense in world--if you were raised as a scholar, it stands to reason to get an Intelligence bonus.  I am less sold on renaming some of the core classes (Barbarian is now "Berserker," Monk is now "Adept," Paladin is now "Herald").  The thinking, I suspect, is to expand the conceptual space encompassed by those classes, but honestly I found it to be more confusing than helpful.  Those names are so ingrained in the collective consciousness of D&D players that re-wiring the brain takes some doing.  A small thing, ultimately, but something that I kept tripping over.     

One last point on character creation--and this is maybe my favorite addition in LU--every PC now has a Destiny, which provides a core character motivation, a way in which the PC gains Inspiration (as opposed to the unstructured and arbitrary "good roleplaying" from 5e, which I hate), a particular way the PC can spend Inspiration to do something thematic for the character, and a grand quest to fulfill the Destiny which provides a special character ability.  It's simple, easy to expand with new Destinies, provides a concrete roleplaying anchor for a new character, and gives them a reason to do things in the world and interact with it.  Love it, 10/10.

On the miscellaneous side, it's worth talking about the Fatigue and Strife system.  I've complained on a couple of occasions about the Short/Long Rest mechanics in 5e, and in order to maintain compatibility those rules are ported over to LU.  However, some of the dimensions I don't like are mitigated by the "Roughing It" sidebar on Page 425 of the Adventurer's Guide that specifically ties full heal-ups to being able to rest in favorable conditions--unless you have a bedroll, are not cold, are not in the rain, etc., you only get half the normal Hit Dice back after a night's sleep.  But the real punch is in the Fatigue (which replaces 5e Exhaustion) and Strife rules, which represent physical and mental strain, respectively.  Those conditions can only be recovered in a "haven," defined as a home or other ideal location for recovery.  And Fatigue and Strife are no joke--the last level of Fatigue means the PC will just die at a story-appropriate time as determined by the GM, and max level of Strife causes permanent mental conditions with concrete game mechanical effects.  This walks the line of creating real opportunities for attrition-based play, without completely gimping a PC's combat effectiveness.  You also gain a level of Fatigue the first time in an fight you fall unconscious, providing a real if perhaps modest penalty for going to 0 HP and avoiding the consequence-free rebounding from the brink of death to being fine that characterizes the 5e death and healing rules.

The problem with all of this, to the extent it is a problem, is that LU is really a package.  Because the pieces interact with each other and fit together pretty tightly, it's not optimized to be a tool-kit of ideas that you can drop into an existing 5e game.  For example, you might think to just add the journey rules to an existing 5e campaign.  You could do that, but the journey rules are designed around the PCs having all the exploration-oriented class abilities.  And if you add those elements, you might as well rebuild all the PCs around the LU class model, in which case you might as well just take on the whole package.  Likewise, because of the way LU redistributes the pieces of what 5e groups under "race," if you want to use the Heritage/Culture system you also have to use the LU Backgrounds, or at the very least re-work the existing 5e Backgrounds to provide ability score modifiers.  The changes that LU makes to the 5e system are pervasive and extensive (I haven't even mentioned that they have redesigned most of the core spells), pushing you at every turn toward adopting it wholesale.  Honestly, probably the most modular portion of the whole project is the redesigned monsters, all of which are both recognizably similar to the stock 5e versions and yet more interesting and dynamic in play.  

Which leads to what I think is ultimately the big question with LU.  This is a project targeted at existing 5e players and DMs, and one of the core marketing pitches for LU is that everything is compatible with existing 5e materials like adventure paths and supplemental material.  And that is true, in the sense that the stats that you will find for opponents in existing published material mean the same things in LU, so there is no direct conversion needed.  But that presentation undersells, I think deliberately, what LU is and what it is trying to do.  Which, ultimately, is to be its own game, albeit one that is backwards compatible with 5e.  As someone who has gotten burned out and frustrated with 5e, and especially with the apparent unwillingness of Wizards of the Coast to do anything interesting or creative with the game for many years running now, this is not a problem for me.  I have no problem moving on from 5e with only casual picking over the carcass for bits and pieces to integrate.  But I wonder whether LU will be a bridge too far for many people in its target audience.  Yes it is compatible and yes many of the core elements are the same, but LU is otherwise very different from 5e.  Given the "stickiness" of the 5e fanbase to changing games, I wonder if this will find its audience.  There are vague hints of a revised set of the 5e core rulebooks in 2024 for the 50th anniversary of D&D, but whatever that looks like I doubt it will be as well done, thoughtful, or as expansive as LU.  It would be a shame if this product doesn't find a home because it looks like too big a change.

There are also some minor quibbles.  I mentioned the changing the class names thing previously.  There are places where they went a little too hard in the direction of edge-case, fiddly rules for my tastes--for example, the Fatigue rule I quoted above is slightly wrong, as you can recover the Level 1 Fatigued condition without resting in a haven, but not any higher levels of Fatigued.  Right now, the PDFs are in a Beta version, and are in need of some smoothing over.  

But, at the end of the day, LU is an outstanding product that is worth putting in the work.  It keeps most if not all of the things about 5e that work well, and it improves the rest of it in basically every way.  While I liked what I saw from Pathfinder 2nd Edition, I think LU also has many of the advantages of that game with less fiddly-ness and complexity.  If given a choice between starting a campaign in 5e, Pathfinder 2e, or LU, I would choose LU.  If I have time over the holidays, I think I'm going to dust off the materials for my old campaign world and convert it over to LU, which would fit it perfectly.  If you were not a Kickstarter backer, and this package is remotely appealing to you, I would strongly recommend keeping an eye out for its general release.  It's a really, really impressive piece of work.

Review of The Living Land, Nile Empire and Aysle for Torg: Eternity

A while back, I wrote a review of Torg: Eternity, the ambitious and (IME) successful re-imagining and reboot of the early 90s classic Torg.  In my review, I mentioned that there were plans for rounds of expansions for each of of the settings, or "Cosms" in Torg-speak.  Thus far, two of the seven Cosms--the Living Land, and the Nile Empire--has been released to the public, while the third--Aysle--has completed its Kickstarter and sent out the drafts of the core products to backers (of which I am one).  So, I figured now was a good time to check in and see where the game is and what we can look forward to in the future.  Because I am going to review three waves of products, I figured it would make sense to make some general comments and then get into each product.

The Kickstarters and the Kickstarter Model:  The base Torg: Eternity game was Kickstarted back in 2017, and was built around a package that the Ulisses Spiele folks called "the Cargo Box."  The Cargo Box for the original Torg: Eternity Kickstarter was a massive 12" x 9" x 8" box made of high-quality cardboard that weighed about 12 pounds fully loaded.  In addition to the hardcover Core Rulebook, the Cargo Box contained two hardcover adventure books, a GM screen, the Drama Deck of cards necessary to play the game, a commissioned soundtrack, and a wide assortment of chips, tokens, and other games aids.  The Cargo Box was and is an extremely impressive physical product, made with high quality materials and a ton of useful features.

This model has been replicated for each of the Cosms--a dedicated Kickstarter, centered around a Cargo Box consisting of a sourcebook for the Cosm, one long, 7-10 session adventure set in the Cosm and one compilation of short adventures (though Aysle has two long adventures), a GM screen, a soundtrack, more Drama Deck cards, and a bunch of accessories.  While I bought the Cargo Box for the first Kickstarter, I have gone for a lesser tier for the Cosm Kickstarters, in the form of the sourcebook in hardcover, pick-and-choose the accessories, and the rest in PDF.  This is in part for budgetary reasons (the Cargo Box was a $175 pledge for the first three, up to 175 Euros for the Aysle round due to the extra hardcover book), but more out of despair for finding storage space for a series of massive boxes of stuff.  Having seen the Cargo Boxes for the Living Land and the Nile Empire "in the wild," they appear to be every bit as impressive physical products as the original, and I am really tempted to go in for a Cargo Box on the next round.

The multiple sequential rounds of Kickstarters and the need to produce a massive product like a Cargo Box has made the release schedule slower than many fans were hoping for.  To be fair, these Torg: Eternity Kickstarters have had very fast turn around times--5 1/2 months between end of the Kickstarter and product shipping for Living Land, about 6 for Nile Empire.  Going forward beginning with Cyberpapacy, they are promised even shorter 4 month intervals between Kickstarters, which is crazy-fast (to put this is perspective, and I hate to drag Heinsoo and Tweet, but it was three years and nine months between the close of the 13th Age in Glorantha Kickstarter and my receipt of the physical product).  A big part of how the Ulisses folks pull this off is that the text of the sourcebook and the other big written products are done prior to the start of the Kickstarter--which is why the draft Aysle sourcebook arrived in my inbox a couple of hours after the close of the Kickstarter on Monday.  That kind of instant feedback is great, and avoids the feeling that you have thrown your money into the void.


Cosm Sourcebooks in General:  While the original Torg boxed set was certainly playable by itself, the original game in many respects wasn't complete until the six Cosm sourcebooks were released (six, because in the original Torg timeline the seventh invading Cosm, Tharkold, was initially defeated, and doesn't reappear until two years into the war).  This is, in part, because Torg is such a big, sprawling thing that you simply need more page count to flesh out each of the Cosms.  But in the first incarnation, it was also clear that the writers of the Cosm books were "making it up as they went along," building out each of these Cosms as the books came out.  As a result, the Cosm books were literally necessary, as they contained critical rules needed to play and make characters in the Cosm.  This also had the effect of retroactively making some of the material in the box set obsolete--famously, the final encounter in the introductory adventure in the boxed set is essentially unplayable if you use the Power of Fear rules from the Orrorsh Sourcebook.

The Cosm sourcebooks for the original game also varied in quality.  From my perspective, Nile Empire (except for the gadget rules) and the Cyberpapacy were excellent, Orrorsh had great lore but poor, complicated rules, the later Tharkold book also had great lore but was completely OP, Aysle and Nippon Tech (now "Pan Pacifica") was hit-or-miss, and the Living Land was poor.

With all of this in mind, the Cosm books for Torg: Eternity follow the trajectory set out by their predecessors for original Torg.  Most importantly, the Cosm sourcebooks provide 144 pages of additional page count to fill in the blanks for their respective Cosms.  I'll get into more detail with each of the respective books, but as a whole they do a great job of being very focused on what is going on in the invasion zones, and thus on the material that is immediately "game-able" as opposed to background lore.

They also provide more game mechanical material.  Unlike in the first go around, however, there are no instances of "remove and replace" that invalidate material in the Corebook.  Instead, everything is tacked on to the existing framework laid out the Corebook.  It's here we see the effects of one of the smartest changes introduced in Torg: Eternity, the unified Perk system.  Every character ability that is not a Skill or Attribute is expressed in a Perk--magic, miracles, cyberware, and a whole host of Cosm-specific abilities and doo-dads.  Because each Perk is a discrete, modular bit of game mechanics, the Cosm sourcebooks can add a bunch of new options without invalidating the previous material by trotting out new Perks, which is in fact a big part of all three Cosm sourcebooks.

To the extent there is brand new material, it is layered on top of existing material and enhances ideas and themes that are already there.  One of my favorite things are the new Drama Decks that come with each Cosm.  The Drama Deck is the lynchpin of what makes Torg unique and great--instead of rolling initiative or similar mechanics, for each round of combat or other dramatic scene, the GM flips over a card that controls initiative, provides bonuses and penalties to the Heroes and/or Villains, and regulates other elements of the round.  The Drama Deck makes each round of combat unique and unpredictable, avoiding the often tedious slog that combat in tabletop RPGs can become.

The Cosm-specific Drama Decks are card-for-card replacements for the existing Drama Deck that add, on top of all the existing Drama Deck elements, a Cosm-specific condition that affects both the Heroes and Villains during the round.  So, Card #1 in the Nile Empire deck makes every Air Vehicles test Favored (in D&D terms, rolling with Advantage), but all planes must make a Check to avoid colliding with another plane or the ground.  Because the new deck is just like the old deck plus the condition (and new art), you can use or not use the Cosm deck without changing the fundamental game flow.  The diversity of Cosms is the heart of what makes Torg great, and anything that makes playing in each Cosm feel distinctive and unique makes the game better.  The designers get that, which is good to see.

The Living Land:  I pretty confident I am not alone in rating the Living Land sourcebook as the weakest of the original Torg books. It's clear they had an initial idea--a Lost World of jungles and dinosaurs--but then didn't really know what to do with that basic concept.  Perhaps more to the point, the original Living Land was just not a fun place to set games in.  In addition to very low levels of technology, social organization (which, if you are a real stickler, makes it hard to organize things--like adventures), and magic, there were World Laws that basically were just vehicles for the GM to troll the players.  The Law of Decay caused items to randomly be lost from the PC's inventories and food to spoil, while the Deep Mist made it hard to get from place to place and easy to get lost.  It just wasn't fun or interesting, and the writers in the original continuity seemed to recognize this by making the Living Land the perennial whipping boy, turning the whole thing into something of a joke.

So, the Torg: Eternity crew had a lot of work to do with the Living Land.  Much of the rebuild can be seen in the Corebook, where the World Laws were revised to make them more playable and fun, and the dominant religion was tweaked to be a little more "user friendly."  The Living Land Sourcebook extends this project, in a couple of ways.  First, it goes into pretty significant detail about the various tribes of Edeinos (the lizard folks that are the dominant inhabitants of the Living Land Cosm), and does a good job of making each one feel different and interesting in ways that can be used in play.  The one topic I would have liked to have seen more development was the role of transformed humans in and among those tribes--I seem to remember the original version having a human-only tribe, but there's no indication of one here.  The other element that this version of the Living Land really dials up, to good effect, is the idea of savagery and kinetic action.  The World Laws of the Living Land make healing easier, and the social Axiom makes large-scale coordination unlikely, so the best course of action is usually to charge in and go all-out.  Torg in general works when each of the Cosms has a distinct feel, and I think the "new" Living Land has that in a way the old one did not.

The big adventure for the Living Land, The God Box, is . . . OK.  In many ways it is a published Torg adventure in the classical style, in the sense that it is very linear (some might say "railroad-y") and it has the feel of a theme-park ride, whisking you from place to place and showing you the highlights of the Torg world.  The God Box brings back the sub-reality of the Land Below, which I know was a crowd favorite but I never really saw the attraction to or purpose of, and here it feels like a weird detour in an adventure that is supposed to highlight the Living Land.  There was also an Act that felt especially like a theme-park ride, where the PCs are whisked to Chicago to show off the death-worshiping Edeinos tribe, and then whisked away for the conclusion of the story.  Still, despite the problems I had with the middle of the adventure, I liked Act One in Washington, D.C. and I especially liked the last two Acts, set in the jungles of the Yucatan in Mexico.  If I were to run it, I think I would just cut out the Land Below and Chicago stuff in the middle and run the beginning and the end as a shorter scenario.

Overall, the Torg: Eternity incarnation of the Living Land is much, much better than the original.  It's still not my favorite Cosm by a significant measure, but it is a place I would run stories in, as opposed to being a place to be avoided as in the original.  The Edeinos are now interesting and scary, and the place has a distinct feel.  Again, not my favorite, but much better, and that "much better" can be seen in the Living Land materials.

The Nile Empire:  In a way, the Nile Empire presented the opposite challenge for the Torg: Eternity team from the Living Land.  Wisely, the Torg: Eternity designers recognized that the Nile Empire as presented in the original game was fantastic, and thus changed very little of the substance.  It's still the pulp stories of the 30s, encompassing low and medium powered costumed super-heroes alongside adventure figures like Indiana Jones.  It still has all of the weird ancient Egyptian magic and mysticism.  It still has Dr. Mobius, the costumed super-villain/fascist dictator/re-born Egyptian Pharaoh.  It still dials up the action to 11, with heroes and villains dying and making their Inevitable Returns.

So, the challenge here is to give old-school Torg fans something new and make the material feel fresh.  To be honest, I am not sure they totally accomplished that goal.  Upon first reading of the Nile Empire Sourcebook, I thought "this is basically the same stuff in the original Nile Empire sourcebook," and I was a little disappointed.  But, on second read, I think that's unfair.  In part its unfair because the original stuff is so much fun, and not everyone remembers or has access to that goodness.  All of that fun goodness is here for the new incarnation as well, and the designers should be applauded for knowing a good thing when they see it. So, the Nile Empire Sourcebook gives you more pulp powers and Egyptian miracles and weird mathematics and engineering magic and piston-engine fighter planes and all of the good stuff from the original.  It holds on to everything that made the Nile Empire great.

Speaking of holding on to things, we need to talk about Wu Han.  Wu Han, in the original and in this version, is Dr. Mobius's right-hand lieutenant and frenemy, and he is very intentionally designed to be the embodiment of the "inscrutable Asian mastermind" trope.  Now, the use of this trope makes sense in the context of the Nile Empire, as it is a trope that has its origins in the pulp stories from which the Nile Empire draws.  And I should say that high school me who ran original Torg absolutely loved Wu Han, and used him all the time as a primary antagonist.  But, I mean, Wu Han as a character is racist, or at least is likely to be portrayed in an unflattering, racially-influenced way.  I get, in a meta-sense, that that's part of the point, but me of 2019 was way less enthused about the idea of  busting out Wu Han as a villain as the me of 1994.  Particularly in light of the way the Pan Pacifica Cosm steers away from some of the problematic early 90s Japanaphobia of the original Nippon Tech Cosm, I'm a little surprised to see Wu Han retained here.  Because of the meta-context, I get why he was retained, but, yeesh, I don't know.

As for the adventure, The Fires of Ra, here's the thing.  If you are going to play in the Nile Empire, you have to accept the genre in which you are operating (this really applies to Torg as a whole--embrace the genre tropes, don't fight them).  If you come to a Nile Empire scenario looking for deep character moments and subtle opportunities for role-playing, you are missing the point.  You come to a Nile Empire scenario for break-neck action and the piling of challenges one on top of the other ad infinitum.  And The Fires of Ra delivers that, in the form of set piece after set piece, alongside the all but audible voice of the authors shouting "Go Go Go!" at the players and the GM.  This is the sort of adventure where having your plane shot down, finding parachutes, and jumping out of the crashing plane is the set up to a first Scene of an Act.  It looks exhausting to run or play in, and I mean that in a good way.  You have to know what you are getting into, but within those parameters, The Fires of Ra reads as a really fun time.

So, while the Nile Empire set doesn't break any new ground, the underlying idea of The Shadow meets Indiana Jones meets ancient Egypt weirdness is so good and so much fun that it carries the products along with it.  And if you are new to Torg, and so don't have ready access to all of the old Nile Empire material, the Nile Empire Sourcebook is a must-buy if you are playing Torg: Eternity.  It's goofy, but it's goofy on purpose, and it is just so much fun.

Aysle:  In a stream that the designers put on as part of the Kickstarter, Lead Designer Darrell Hayhurst hit on the core problem with the original Aysle Sourcebook.  That book spends pages and pages describing Aysle "back home"--the geography, the factions, the history, etc.  But none of that stuff is really all that relevant for play unless you decide to ditch Core Earth and the Possibility Wars and turn the game into a pure fantasy, D&D-style game--in which case, are you sure you want to play Torg?  But, more to the point, while Aysle is an interesting and well-done fantasy world, it is just another fantasy world, and so not really distinctive enough to bear the weight of being by itself.  Which, of course, was not the point--Aysle is designed to exist in the broader Torg context--but it points back to the question of whether all that home Cosm material makes sense or is helpful.

As you might expect based on Hayhurst's comments, almost all of that background lore is cut out, and there is a strong focus on what is going on in the Aysle realm on Earth.  This is a good decision, and it makes the product much tighter than its predecessor.  But the other thing the Aysle Sourcebook does is that it hones in more clearly on the type of setting it wants to be.  Yes, Aysle is a fantasy world, but there are a number of subtle variations in fantasy worlds.  The Aysle Sourcebook, in a way that doesn't come through as clearly in the original version, grounds itself in the conflict between Light and Dark, in a way that reminds me tonally of movies like Willow and Excalibur (the 80s version) and, especially, Return of the King.  It isn't consistently "grimdark" a la Warhammer, but it also is darker than most D&D-influenced fantasy settings, and it intentionally layers the grimmer and the more hopeful elements next to each other.  Light and Dark are almost tangible elements, and they are at war, and the Dark is winning (though, not overwhelmingly so).  This is in the original version in a game mechanical sense, but it feels like it is more reflected in the setting in this version.

I really like this.  It's just enough of a specific angle to make Aysle stand out from a truly generic fantasy world, without limiting access to all of the standard, generic fantasy tropes.  And, let's be honest, fantasy role-playing games are popular because those standard generic fantasy tropes are good and fun.  You want your fantasy setting to do all of the fantasy things, and Aysle does all of that.

Not surprisingly, much of the game mechanics stuff is associated with magic.  The Aysle Sourcebook really does a great job of threading the needle between providing a diversity of options for magic-focused characters, without ratcheting up the complexity level.  The fundamental choice now is between being a generalist mage who has access to all of the spells, or picking one of four schools of magic (plus necromancy which acts as a fifth school) and limiting your spells to a particular list in return for having more spells (especially in the beginning).  These schools were sketched out in lore form in the original Aysle book, and they have the advantage of being broader in scope than most "magic school" taxonomies, while still being distinct and making for interesting choices.  So, for example, the "Kindred" school lets you affect all kinds of living beings, while the "Principles" school includes light, darkness, magic, "living forces," and "inanimate forces."  It seems a little obscure on first read (especially if you don't remember these categories from the original Aysle book), but it is easy to apply in play.

Similarly, they add a cantrip system, giving all magic using characters access to a fairly robust set of utility spells automatically, but only usable within the Aysle Cosm (though, you can take a Perk to use them in other Cosms).  I love these kinds of systems, because they make magic using characters really feel like wizards and allow players to come up with creative uses for magic, without adding complex systems or allowing wizards to defeat every problem with magic.

Then there is the adventure, Revenge of the Carredon.  Revenge stands-out from the previous two tent-pole adventures in a couple of ways.  First, it incorporates more of the deep Aysle lore, bringing in the two big name good-aligned NPCs, Lady Pella Ardinay and Tolwyn of Tancred.  In doing so, the adventure feels like it has more weight and significance than the previous two.  Second, it has a more open structure, with an opening Act, a set of middle Acts that can be accomplished in any order, and then the finale.  This is not some radical innovation in RPG adventure design, but as I mentioned Torg adventures historically tended to be very linear, so I found this to be a refreshing change.  Likewise, while the quest is get the five Things you need to defeat evil, so pretty standard, I found it to be an interesting and engaging version of that pretty standard outline.  Revenge of the Carredon is a strong offering, and the best adventure I've seen out of Torg: Eternity so far.

The bottom line is that I think the Aysle product wave is very strong, the best of the three so far, and it makes be very optimistic for and excited about the forthcoming Cyberpapacy and Tharkold waves (which are the two Cosms I was most excited about going in).  It makes Aysle distinct without being narrow, and it provides a wealth of interesting play options for Aysle characters.  If you weren't part of the Kickstarter, keep an eye for when it comes to general release at the end of the year.