It’s sad that my “light” reading these days while having a soak in the bath (yep had to return that image to your mind) are various RPG books.

I find them (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) a relaxing and inspiring read. After reading a few pages whether it’s about character creation, running combat or some campaign/world background, I can’t help but have ideas buzzing around in my head.

And if it’s a system I haven’t managed to play yet, yearn to get it to the table. You can tell when that happens because I will post a hopeful call for players to try the game on the clubs Facebook page. A day or two later that enthusiasm and excitement is turned into disappointment by the lack of responses.

My current reading has seen me diving in and out of the Genesys source books. With a lot of that time spent in the latest volume for the Genesys system the Expanded Players Guide (EPG).

I really, really like the EPG. It’s such a great addition.

Let’s look at what the EPG brings to the table and why I like it so much.

The EPG is broken into three parts. Those being New Settings, Expanded Rule Creation and Expanded Alternate Rules.

In the New Settings we get three new example settings, ‘Age of Myth’, ‘Monsterworld’ and ‘Post Apocalypse’.

Unlike the Core Rulebook settings these new settings are not mapped to FFG IP. Like the other settings though these are broad overviews and meant as a starting point for building your own game worlds.

The ‘Age of Myth’ is slightly different to traditional fantasy. You are looking at Greek and Norse mythology and how they viewed the world. If you want a good look at this setting watch this video by Dael Kingsmill on the subject. But be warned her focus is more for using the setting in D&D. However Dael does a great job of explaining the difference between a fantasy and myth setting. I also like the job the authors of the EPG did.

‘Monsterworld’ is the gothic horror, setting. So think Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

I think ‘Post Apocalypse’ speaks for itself. However reading and watching The Road by Cormac McCarthy would be a great piece to get inspiration from. Or playing the classic video game The Last of Us. Although if I was thinking of using this setting and it is covered by one of the four The End of the World books by FFG I’d be tempted to use one of them instead.

FFG also provide a handy table that maps skills and talents for the settings to those in the Core Rulebook.

Add these example settings to those in the Core Rulebook and I think FFG have now covered the majority of the genres that most people will ever want or need.

However if they have missed one, or you want to come up with your own based on one of the provided examples or some other source material, FFG have provided a whole chapter of Expanded rules for creating a setting.

For me this is an amazing chapter that is system agnostic. It has some great tables to roll against for the generation of ideas or you can just pick one of the entries. These tables cover common tropes, technology level, world structure, etc. There is an Expanded Setting Creation Sheet you can download off the FFG website to record things on.

In the second part of the EPG we get rules for creating our own vehicles. Additionally there are some stats for common vehicles for land, air and water. I’ve not gone through the creation part yet. But the new vehicle stats are useful, and can go straight into a lot of settings.

We also get rules for creating quick adversaries plus a new challenge level system in this section. I really like the quick adversaries creation. It was fun creating those dinosaurs in previous posts using these rules. The new challenge level system is a welcome addition for judging how balanced an encounter is.

There is also rules here for creating specialization trees aka skill trees using talents. I really like this and currently creating a specialization tree for a runner in the Android setting. This is very video game RPG like.

In the third and final section there are “…new talents and spells designed to work with our magic rules“. It also has “…some alternate rules for character advancement and social encounters, and new tones.”

I’ve not spent any time in this section apart from briefly skimming the new tones, Heist and Noir. Apart from the new rules they introduce for each tone. I think these are pretty applicable to any system, and also another great source of inspiration.

If you play using Genesys system then this book is a must have. It certainly ticks all the boxes for me.