This is the worst product I bought for quite some time. I wish I could get a refund. Please, let me explain why.

Game Mechanics What mechanics? They copied the OGL and exchanged the word race traits for ancestral traits and cultural traits. Then “choose what you want” and “check for game balance”. That is, it. I mean there could have been a hybrid table for attributes and cultural influence like in High Adventure Roleplaying (HARP). Or it could be a point buy approach like Hero/Tristat/BESM/GURPS. It could even be an approach after geography or zones of the forgotten realms. Or in the fluff text, like in Wicked FATE. But just reprinting the PH information without modifying? This is the laziest approached that I have seen.

Philosophy The ‘Orcs are people, too’ debate is going on for nearly four decades and my first approach to it was in an adventure called ‘Under the misty mountain’ from the German RPG Midgard in 1983. In the early 90’ I gmed a RM yearlong campaign where the only difference between monster and not monster was the ability to dress correctly. In the group we got a Sphinx, a Uruk-Hai, a Xenomorph, a Skaven and other interesting monsters and only one human. I gmed Beast: the Primordial and several transhumanism games with uplifted species. As a team leader of an international helpdesk I help people from all over the world on a daily basis.

In this product we find a one-sided argumentation that plays to the sensibilities of the author(s). This is not the first time in the RPG scene that this kind of political correctness is asked for. Everyone has different sensibilities and if we all would censor our imagination because of it, then no horror novel, movie or game would ever be present. The same argument, that the RPG games hurt the sensibilities of a certain group and that D&D should be banned we heard a lot in the 80’ from Christian groups. Even the same reasoning that killing imaginary monsters would make us all to killers (or racists in this case) apply.

In the public opinion (as indicated by movie profits) is it worse to harm an animal than a human. Should we not stop to kill those poor animals in RPGs? Be careful the next time your groups encounter wolves or even worse, those sad looking gorillas.

Back to the ‘Orcs are people, too’. This wholly depends on the setting you are playing in. In a world where the gods create races, there are races, and some are better than other. You can read it clearly in Volos Guide where the Xvart described as inferior race as an offspring of a god. There is also this thing called alignment. In the early editions changing the alignment for a monster was not an option. If an Orc was chaotic evil, then every and all orcs were chaotic evil. And if you did not get mighty magic this would not be changed. Killing Orcs was the right thing to do, even Orc babies, because their alignment would not change, even if they tried. Or what about Warhammer, where Orcs are mind-hived fungi? Are those gamers then mycoistic? Then the quotation of NK Jemisin. Sure, that is one way to see things, but if it were so than we would never, ever have the Drow as player race or the Orcs. And was not a thing like ‘The Horde’ from WoW quite successful? Was this because of the racist stereotype everybody did see in the Orcs?

Let us assume in a setting this is not the case and ‘Orcs are people, too’ and this is just a cultural misunderstanding. Where do you draw a line? Does this include every humanoid? Every intelligent lifeform? Is a Mindflayer just another poorly understood alien with an alternative eating habit? Do we relocate the farmers, because the red dragon was the original native and it is his natural behavior to lay everything to waste around his lair?

And then the Tolkien and Gygax bashing. Ad hominin attacks against people who are dead. Do you have even proof of your claims? Painting miniatures is not really a proof. It was common in this time to reconfigure other miniatures because there were no other miniatures except the military troops from the cosim games. Any documents? Do you really have some correspondence or witnesses that shows that Tolkien saw in the Orcs an Asian aggressor or is it just speculation of Mr. Mendez? A lot of people interpreted the Lord of the Rings in a way that Tolkien never thought of and Tolkien even had to write a preface about it. Like that Sauron forces (including the Orcs) were not German Nazi soldiers and LotR was not all about WW2.

A lot of people, if not most of the player, do not play RPGs to be constantly reminded of the real-world problems. Sometimes an Orc is just an Orc and nothing else.

Maybe I understood it wrong, but this reads so fluffy and nice, that I asked myself if it is the same 9th world from the Corebook. Sure it is nice to have no gender discriminaton and all, but it does not fit in the logic of the gameworld. 1 or 2 child families are a luxury that you have if you got a pension plan, but everyone else has large families for support. And there be will lbe the question of inheritance. Whoever bears the children will physically pay the price and die young. People got married (or whatever ist maybe called) for support and status. That would be fitting for a game, where the main goal is the betterment of the world.

It is still Nobilis. You will love or hate it, there is no middleground. The art is...let's say unconventional for the theme of the book. Maybe it is a chinese thing, but it didn't help the product. But the rules are better organized and many things are clarified.