Close
Close
Advanced Search

World of NearClick to magnify

World of Near

ADD TO WISHLIST >
Suggested Price $10.00

300 years ago the old world was destroyed, only to be reborn as a vivacious pulp fantasy milieu full of cruel wickedness and exotic perils – but also love and hope. The Shadow of Yesterday is a classic indie fantasy drama game, armed with a Creative Commons license and a fresh west coast take on fantasy roleplaying. Stylistically it most resembles a Ralph Bakshi fantasy movie, if I had to sum it up in one sentence. It's structurally close enough to your typical fantasy adventure game to relate to, but with all the bells and whistles you'd expect of a proge drama game, too, making it one of the first and most prominent hybrid designs of the story game era. A must read for anybody who's into fantasy adventure games, as a provocative challenge if nothing else.

The Shadow of Yesterday was originally self-published (in two separate editions) by its creator Clinton R. Nixon in the mid-'00s. This is a third standalone edition of the game, put together by yours truly in 2009. Due to the Creative Commons nature of the game anybody can pretty much join in the fun whenever with their own takes, but for now this stands as the most current and comprehensive treatment available on the subject.

As a dedicated setting sourcebook the World of Near is a fundamental starting point into the game. Alongside its sibling rulebook Solar System, the two books include everything you need to play The Shadow of Yesterday. It's a big book dedicated to dramatically inspiring character and scenario ideas, with ten major cultures, eight major magical cosmologies, hundreds of character build options and so on, what you'd generally expect of a major fantasy rpg. More neat setting stuff than you can really hope to use in play, really.

The PDF version of the book is available at your chosen price point, and I encourage everybody to download and take a look. I feel that the world of Near is an unique fantasy setting that has the potential to delight fantasy hobbyists the world over; it has a certain energy that so often lacks in paint-by-numbers schlock fantasy, so much so that it inspired me to try to capture the storm inside the flimsy covers of a book.

pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif
 
 Customers Who Bought this Title also Purchased
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif
Reviews (0)
Discussions (1)
Customer avatar
Claudio F May 04, 2020 9:59 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Eero, thank you so much for publishing this gem of a book again! I've been looking for a legitimate copy everywhere!
Reply
Customer avatar
Eero T May 05, 2020 8:53 am UTC
PUBLISHER
You're welcome! I probably should have put created a pdf version years ago, but the slow sales of the paper version at the time discouraged me, and then other projects took precedence, so it was left by the wayside. For a long time I figured that the various HTML versions would be good enough, but they've been dropping off the net over the last few years, so clearly it was time to do something.
Narrow Results
$ to $
 Follow Your Favorites!
NotificationsSign in to get custom notifications of new products!
 Recent History















Product Information
Author(s)
Artist(s)
Rule System(s)
Pages
198
ISBN
978-952-99414-7-6
Publisher Stock #
ARK207
File Size:
29.51 MB
Format
Original electronic Click for more information
Scanned image
These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.
pixel_trans.gif
Original electronic format
These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.
File Information
Watermarked PDF Click for more information
Watermarked PDF

These PDF files are digitally watermarked to signify that you are the owner. A small message is added to the bottom of each page of the PDF containing your name and the order number of your purchase.

Warning: If any files bearing your information are found being distributed illegally, then your account will be suspended and legal action may be taken against you.

Here is a sample of a page from a watermarked title:

File Last Updated:
May 01, 2020
This title was added to our catalog on May 04, 2020.