After having the chance to read through the majority of the Dredan- Realm of Metal and Myth campaign setting, I feel like there are two sides deserving of their own review.

The mechanics for PCs- races, classes, prestige classes- seem balanced but don't grab my attention. The races require some conversion to use as PCs. The first few chapters cover these and are the weaker side of Dredan. The equipment, skills, and feats sections fare much better, and a lot of it is useful for just about any science fiction setting.

Once you get past the first few chapter, though, you get into the setting itself. The setting is interesting and massive. We're talking about over 150 pages of worlds and locations. There is a lot of material here and a lot of places for campaigns to take place. I'd give this section 4 stars.

Overall I'd love to see the Dredan campaign setting be refined, maybe have the character options refined and spiced up. A solid first entry regardless.

I received my copy free to review.

My goal in using this product would be to mine it for my home campaign. I used ironborn and firearms and other tech so the description interested me.

You need Traveller D20 as well as Pathfinder. Since I’m mining ideas I’m okay with the need for another rulebook.

The good: Dredan is a sprawling, sci-fi Pathfinder world. There is no padding here; from the races to the spells to the star chart everything fits the theme of sci-fi Pathfinder powered by Jusay crystals. Very tight design focus and one I appreciate.

The challenge: The difficulty in merging two different systems means any GM will have some converting to do. For instance, races suffer multi-class penalties and have level adjustments, both of which Pathfinder does not use.

Details:
A planar map of Dredan shows the major planes are located alongside Dredan, which takes center place as the material plane. The negative and positive energy planes both affect Dredan and are included throughout the design in both flavor text and rules from races to tech crystals to spells.

The races are interesting and complex. Included are a robot like race, positive and negative energy races (one is a prestige race of sorts), the Traveller races, and Pathfinder races.

Jusay crystals are the tech power that makes the world of Dredan go. The table for positive crystals versus dark (negative energy) crystals is easy to understand. The crystals can be added as power to tech items or to give additional abilties to magic items.

Sytenetics are basically cybernetics designed specifically for Dredan and made using Jusay crystals. Even spell-like and supernatural effects can be manipulated using sytenetics.

Tech is next, with weapons and mech like walkers that use Jusay crystals.

Starships follow, again using Jusay crystals. They go FTL using jumps just like in Traveller and follow the design rules from D20 Traveller.

A star chart of Dredan follows, again using the rules of D20 Traveller. Maps of the planets in a system are a nice touch in addition to a star map of Dredan itself.

No creatures except the base races are included. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a follow up aliens product for Dredan.

If you want sci-fi Pathfinder and are willing to do some converting, this product is for you. If the conversions between Pathfinder and D20 Traveller had been done for the GM, the product would earn five stars.

This is a very difficult review for me to write. Conceptually, I love the idea of mixing sci-fi and fantasy material. I am a huge fan of Fantasy Flight’s Dragonstar setting and I regularly mix steampunk-styled tech into my own games. Unfortunately, the reality of this product makes it difficult to appreciate the material.

One of the first things I noticed when I opened this document was the total lack of bookmarks. At 235 pages, a lack of bookmarks seems unusual. This omission makes the book difficult to reference and peruse.

Artistically, the document is lacking. While the art sufficiently portrays the subject matter, it appears amateurish. Perhaps it might be better to say the art does the bare minimum job but has a serious problem moving into the realm of inspirational.

Ultimately, the layout is a bit clumsy but serviceable. The tables are adequately composed and easy to read. While the text is large and clear, there are some issues involving the separation of paragraphs. The indent is small and sometimes hard to miss.

Mechanically this document has issues. The constant references to T20 are annoying and confusing. The setting is not truly PFRPG compatible, as there are a number of artifacts from 3.0 and 3.5 still lingering in the text. There are some very odd rules and rules that seem overpowered/underpowered as well. While it would take far more room than I have to detail each mechanical error, I can say the bulk of the issues really lie in the lack of compatibility with the Pathfinder RPG.

I think it is important to note there are some issues related to the OGL within the text. Some chapters that contain mechanical material derived from the SRD have been declared closed content, which runs contrary to the terms of the OGL. There are also references to creatures that have been declared close content by WotC.

Honestly, the ideas behind Dredan are good. The setting could be very compelling. Unfortunately, this book lacks a great deal of the refinement and mechanical understanding you would expect from a publisher at this point in the history of open gaming. If this product saw a positive overhaul, I think it would be worthy of great attention. But in its current incarnation it would take too much work to make this material viable at the game table.

Promising a Pathfinder-compatible campaign setting, Dredan posits an epic struggle between Good (Positive Energy) and Bad (Negative Energy) on at least a Galactic scale, complete with starships and planet-hopping galore. The VOID are the bad guys, undead infused with an entropic agenda that the positive-energy-infused good guys are equally bent on stomping out.

However, what would have had me scrambling back for a refund is the undeclared requirement that you have to also have something called "T20". I can only presume that this refers to a d20-compatible edition of Traveller.

The Dreden-specific races include androids (BLUs - Basic Life Units) that are able to load up on cybernetics swag, shapeshifting positive energy critters, a variant human race that is not a real improvement over the Core Rules human and the BBEG race (VOID).

The races are not PFPRG-compatible in execution, with restricted favored class selections - a Beta holdover perhaps? - and level adjustments. I give Dredan a "good thing" nod in attempting to make the VOID race playable. The flavor text accompanying them is fairly good - and makes it clear that they are an unpleasant prospect to actually play at the table.

Without the heavy use of magic or XPH psionics, the VOID are doomed to being overt bad guys. And in order to become one, the required prestige class hamstrings the casting level - and, by extension manifesting level although this is not explicitly addressed despite Dredan's premise of parity between magical, psionic and technological as a 'Rule of Three'. At 11th level (at best), a VOID PC has a caster level of 6th. I am unsure if this is intentional or not.

The Dredan-specific items section more often than not seems out of balance on produced magic item costs vs. cost-to-manufacture. Holy Water made 'at cost' by the Good Guys is one thing - but a near-artifact-priced item is hard to accept "at cost".

The 'mana engine' vehicular power plants are not clear in the benefit provided besides the energy that the regular reactor would produce. For an addition to Traveller, these things had best be staggeringly impressive - and did not deliver. These power plants should have been able to power everything the normal reactor does plus the jump drive since normal Traveller starships consume substantial quantities of liquid hydrogen to power interstellar travel plus a meson cannon strapped to the roof for the volume and cost multipliers involved.

The artwork within the book is of mixed quality, some showing much greater proficiency and skill than others. The layout / placement of the artwork is well done, clearly denoting or accompanying a relevant section of the text.

Mechanically the single biggest quibble is with the "drain rate" of temporary hit points gained from positive energy. Consistently referenced as "temporary hit points drain from a living creature of 1d20 minutes" is ... confusing. How many temporary hit points drain how fast? Do they all go away in 20 minutes or less? Why does the setting have such randomness associated with positive energy as compared to the rules for this in existing 3.5 Open Licensed material?

The walkers are strange, depicted as what I can only call the inbred love child of an AT-ST, a Destroid or Mecha and the Mechanoids. Combined with the (realistic) expense and that it requires a prestige class to use the things keeps them planted firmly on that strange spot.

The depicted fighter craft bears a suspicious resemblance to the Gallente Shuttle from EVE Online.

There are some written IP references (beholders are the first I saw, in the descriptive text of a staff) as well that are begging for some trouble from the legal eagles.

The "world setting" section is not bad, comprising an area of detail that, in Traveller, would be represented by a single sector. Not a bad starting point for a new campaign involving substantial space travel.

This really needed more polish to make it mechanically compatable with PFRPG.

I actually purchased this product just before finding that it was being given away for free. This is a very good marketing idea to get some name recognition for a new company. That being said, here is my review of Dredan.

First off, the production seems a little amateurish. This is not necessarily a bad thing for a part time company, unless it becomes distracting. Here I can say that it is not that distracting. One thing that is distracting and I don’t know if this is because of the rules blending with T20, but they misuse the PFRPG version of Favored Classes. This is in the BLU Race. Also there is still the use of Level Adjustments, which is not core with PFRPG. Most of the races follow some non-standard features, as far as PFRPG is concerned. The VOID seem to be a neat race, as a BBEG. I would rather see them as a monster, rather than as a racial option.

I find the Legacy Synbiot PrC very confusing. It seems to be a PrC you take while still advancing partially in your original class. The main thing, this seems to be a collection of PrCs mainly for the villans. I don’t find this appropriate. There should be more heroic options for the players.

The skills draw heavily from the T20 game. Understandable, but I think it ignores some of the Pathfinder conventions. It is very confusing not to have skill descriptions included.

There are some rules covering the main power source, a type of magical dilithium crystal. I didn’t really care for this, but it is a setting thing. Not to my tastes, but could be just fine for somebody else.

Allot of this book is heavy into T20 conventions, more than into PFRPG. I actually am disappointed with it, maily because I was looking for more. Base classes and maybe starship rules. I didn’t care for the T20 system when it first came out, so I don’t own the book. This is NOT a complete rules set. You will need to own Traveller20, as well as the Pathfinder RPG. I really don’t see much in this that really is all that compatible with PFRPG. It reads more like an alternate setting for T20, with a FEW Pathfinder rules tacked on. That being said. This product may fit your needs, just not mine.

(Note: I was provided a free reviewers copy. I like to think I'm unbiased, but YMMV)

The system ate my earlier, lengthy review so I'll keep it simple here: this is the best attempt at yoking magic and science fiction together to create a fascinating science fantasy I've ever seen. Every element of the setting from the races on builds on that concept, creating a product much more than the sum of its parts. Good, good stuff, even if the callbacks to the T20 rules were completely lost on me. Glad to have had the opportunity to read this!