Wondering what the much-vaunted Mutant Chronicles 3rd Edition will be like? Never heard of Mutant Chronciles before? Pick this up and your questions will be answered and your appetite whetted for more.

Starting with an excellent thumb-nail sketch of what a 'dieselpunk techno-fantasy' game is in the first place, there is a whistle-stop tour of the overall concept - a dystopian future in which Earth is well-nigh abandoned, humanity has colonised most of the rest of the solar system and are slowly realising that squabbling amongst themselves is not a good idea when you've got the awful power of the Dark Symmetry breathing down your neck - the timelines that will be explored in the new game and a primer detailing the major factions, mostly corporate nation states and a few other organisations. Then there is the setting itself: the main location being Luna City, that sprawls over a good half of Earth's Moon, along with the inner and outer portions of the solar system.

Scene set, it's time to dive right into a summary of the ruleset sufficient to let you have a go at the scenario that forms the bulk of this document. Basically each character has eight attributes, used to provide a target to roll under to accomplish a task. If the character has an appropriate skill, the number of ranks in that skill are added to the relevant attribute to form the target number. The roll, by the way, is made on 2d20, but each die counts separately giving an indication of how well he has done at his attempt. A natural 20 introduces a complication, even if the character has managed to do whatever he was trying to do; but if the result is a failure including a natural 20, that failure becomes critical! There's a bit more to it, of course, but this is the gist of it.

Initiative, turn order, combat actions, damage, wounds and healing are all dealt with before we come to a section on Weapons, Equipment and Gear. Oh, and due to the nature of the threats characters face, there's a piece on Mental Strain and Madness. There is then some information for budding GMs on how this game works, and then we get to the adventure, Straffar Gatan 39, in which the characters are cast as detectives in the Luna City PD answering an emergency call. Four suitable pre-generated characters are provided, and the scenario links in to an adventure that is in the pipeline, as well as beeing well-seeded with potential threads you can explore in your own adventures.

This is a game in which dark foreboding, tension and paranoia form a backdrop against which characters fight dark forces and (hopefully) save the day.... at least, until the next time. If this sort of weirdness appeals, dark near futures with things crawling out of the woodwork, madness lurking around the corner and a mish-mash of technolgocial advances and ancient knowledge, come try this out... and start getting excited about the release of the game in August 2014.

It actually took until September 2015 to get the core rulebook out, but the wait was worth it!