4 out of 5 rating for Era: The Consortium
'Era: The Consortium' offers players and game masters a great, detailed setting, lots of story ideas, full campaign frameworks set in different eras and 4 pregenerated characters, with an easy-to-understand rules set which will feel very familiar to 'World of Darkness' afficionados. Despite a few quirky design decisions, the rules system works well and is going to be expanded on in future supplements, one of which, 'The Secret War', is currently being Kickstarted and allows players to take on the roles of espionage/undercover agents - which got us genuinely excited. Another great thing is that all of the Era games Shades of Vengeance is or will be publishing are using the same rules set (probably with minor tweaks), which will eventually allow for dimension-hopping or time travel campaigns. There's already a fantasy iteration ('Era: Lyres'), a superhero RPG ('Era: The Empowered') is in the works (the 'Primer' is already available) and Era: Survival is coming soon. Here's hoping for an 'Era: Horror', 'Era: Historical', 'Era: Modern', etc!
