Based on a read-through only I had rated this 5 stars. Conceptually, it is brilliant! It looks easy enough to run and and play, thematic, and the articulation of how far narrative could you push a game like Dungeon World before you break it. Unfortunately, in play, I have found this game is pushing narrative moves so hard, it does break.

Both attempts I made to run or play lead to confusion and frustration immediately following the first move of particular playbooks. Unlike the best PbtA games where if you follow the genre conventions, you will find a move to use, Fellowship's move triggers are really awkward. The feedback loop can circle around over and over until you feel like you are playing a game of narrative Chess where the MC and the PC player sometimes stalemate by doing the same actions and getting the same results over and over. It made me wonder, does this game really follow the tenants of "failing forward" or not? I have asked other PbtA fans online about their experiences and everyone of them also mentioned that while they wanted to LOVE this game, it just lead to a similar experience to what I had. As my experience seemed to be fairly universal, I have updated my rating to fit what I have experienced.

I love everything about this game. The art is a big part of that, to be clear, but as my introduction to the PbtA genre of systems, it was really eye-opening. I love the dedication to including the expected fantasy races, and also doing so in such an open-ended and customizable fashion.

The structure of play is grand, too. The focus on the party as a unit, and why it has to be, and helping people along the way, and community being strength rather than individual power being the be-all end-all... So much in modern fantasy fiction and gaming pulls from the aesthetics of Tolkein, but this is the first game I read that cared to emulate the heart of the LotR story: a mismatched, diverse, caring, and dedicated crew setting out to face an apocalyptic force with the backing of eveyrone they help along the way.

As a note: the on-the-spot imagination required to play this is daunting, and not common in mainstream TTRPGs as an ask of the players, so it's worth knowing that going in.

A great game all around. Dragged down in some places by poor choices in book layout. Most of all. I would say the game has an issue with a total lack of an extended play example to show how some of the more esoteric moves are supposed to be handled.

Most of all. This is signified by the move Paying a price. It's a very important move. Used constantly troughout the book. But because it only has a short and rather unclear description of what it does. I have found myself using it completely the wrong way for several session. Normally. I would look for a play example as a guideline for how the game is supposed to go. But that was lacking here. What makes this all the more exasperating is that there are several much simpler moves that do have attached play examples.

If these issues were in some way adressed. I would happily bump up my rating to a 5/5

Edit: All 4 books are out now and I can confidently say this is my favourite system of all time.

I really, really want to like Fellowship. I love the pitch a whole lot: it's a high fantasy game for any kind of fantasy! Players have ultimate control over the world! The GM also has a character so they can get the serotonin hit of filling out a character sheet too! But I've played Fellowship a lot now. I've been in three games with false starts (one of them I GM'd) and one game that got past the first session that got to the end of gaining Fellowship with a community, and most of the time I enjoyed with those games, I wasn't engaging with its systems at all.

First of all: this is a game that, in all the times I've played it, is a resource management dungeon-crawling game, first and foremost. It has better capabilities for roleplaying and worldbuilding than a game like Dungeons & Dragons, but it still leaves a lot to be desired on that front. My main group is extremely into inter-character melodrama, and if there are any lulls in the action we will spend hours talking to each other in-character. Not a lot of systems explicitly support this, but Fellowship explicitly discourages this with its "rest" systems; taking any time to do scenes not directly related to dungeon-crawling makes the next encounters more difficult for really no reason. I wouldn't mind this so much if I was playing a very crunchy numbers game, but when I want to tell a character-driven story, Fellowship is more or less incapable of delivering an experience I want.

Another thing related to the game's inflexibility: the playbooks and worldbuilding associated with them. Fellowship's main selling point is that you get to decide what your fantasy culture looks like, with a lot of flexibility. In play, however, I found this flexibility was a lot less open than I would have liked. If you're playing the Elf, you're more or less locked into playing a holier-than-thou character who can commune with nature. If you have a different idea for an elf, you're going to be fighting the system a lot to put together the moves for your vision. Once, I tried to use the Orc playbook to make a character whose people were known for their ingenuity, even when that, in the past, meant giving up their humanity and bonding with parasitic fungus; after taking just my two starting moves, however, I ran out of playbook moves that fit my vision.

This is already getting long and I haven't touched on my frustrations with the moment-to-moment gameplay, or the frustrations the GMs of my groups have run into. Let me touch on the former (where it doesn't relate to the latter) briefly: advantage was not adequately explained in the original edition, and putting it entirely in an appendix for the revised edition is less than ideal; I already mentioned before that decompressing after long action sequences is basically impossible. The latter is a huge problem that bleeds over into the moment-to-moment gameplay, and most of it boils down to two things.

First, giving the GM a playbook makes them rather precious over their Overlord and General characters and fosters a hostile relationship between the players and the GM. In my experience, since the GM knows their villains are finite, they scramble to find reasons why the PCs can't kill them right now, and often resort to underhanded tactics. All the GMs I've played with have said they felt incentivized to give threats secret stats that negated certain attacks, creating an atmosphere where players were too nervous about wasting any moves in case they activated the GM's trap cards. Second, though the second edition is a marginal improvement, there's a notable dearth of information on how to be a good Overlord. The newer GMs struggled to find a footing or guidance in the GM's sections at all, and more veteran GMs were frustrated by lack of guidance for creating tailor-made threats/setpieces for whatever unique world the players created.

If you're really desperate to play a PBTA version of D&D, I recommend Fellowship over Dungeon World as it's slightly more flexible. But, honestly, I'd give both a pass. It's a shame and I miss playing high-fantasy adventure games at my table, but Fellowship doesn't scratch the itch for me at all.

This game is pretty awesome for people like me, who want a straightforward but also very clever made fantasy-PbtA-game without having to stick to the DnD-isms of Dungeon World.

I've GM'd... overlorded? a couple of sessions of this so far and it's been just fantastic. I came from Dungeon World and I'm so glad I gave this try, because it takes the fantastic bits from that system, codifies some of it so I have a clearer idea about how to use it, and runs with it. Here's what I appreciate best:

• Quick start, like all PbtA games: we had a fun and memorable 3 hour session, including character creation and world building.
• Players liked the range of playbooks and unique, interesting, flavourful gear and move options.
• Asking players to be the authority on their people is a great way to get me asking and building on questions, and the book makes it clear that input from the table is encouraged.
• The book is pretty, compact, and the playbooks contain all you need to get going (I ended up buying the paperback and the PDF).
• Guided scene-setting: downtime, journeys, challenges and showdowns mean I never have that moment of "what do we do next?" while everyone mills around. A quick discussion of what the Fellowship's next goal is and we move onto another scene.
• The mechanics are very symmetric and play well when people think outside the box. The players can "finish" those pesky opponents in many different ways, only some of which have to involve swords.
• When the Overlord or their Generals show up, it's seriously awe-inducing. I worried that having the Overlord be "just a character sheet" - giving away their weakness and stats - would reduce the mystery around them, but if anything it does the opposite, making them a constant and terrifying presence in the game.
• Advantage, hope, and despair are great mechanics. Do something fictionally exciting? Advantage! Can't think of something? No worries, a companion, your Gear, or a buddy has your back. Help a buddy? Hope! And damage really starts to feel meaningful when the Harbinger has almost all their stats damaged and is in Despair from the magic they did and can hardly move to save themselves as the hunters close in...
• Damaging stats is way more fun than chipping away at hit points.
• Making an Overlord character makes me feel much more invested in and connected to the world and my evil minions, plus I get all the fun of throwing interesting random encounters at the party too.
• The Overlord moves are great, just great. Can't wait to use "Team Rocket". Really I'm impressed by how many of the moves are just license to do something that's fictionally interesting that I hadn't thought of yet.

Here's the things I think would make this game even better:

• I want a massive list of stats somewhere that I can browse through to slap onto challenges as appropriate. Or just expanded lists of challenges. The ones in the book are great and inventive, but I want more! Set Pieces are a great idea too and I look forward to seeing more of those.
• Still not sure on the distinction between some of the moves. Am I just talking sense to someone or am I Finishing Them? Is this even a Challenge? Those moments where you can't figure out which hole the scene or action falls into leave me a little uncertain - but the fact that we have wandered into that territory without noticing suggests the roleplaying is going just fine.
• I feel like the Overlord's master plans could have something more to them, but I'm not sure quite what it is. Maybe it's just that they're simplified compared to DW Fronts and I'm not yet used to them.

So basically I am a lazy GM and I love games that mean I do less work while still producing a fun story that challenges the players. This is one. It's great. Get it and you too can use your Orc's Varg-mounted trash cannon to blind pursuing enemies by launching clothing at them. Can't wait to see what other material comes out for this game - and of course it plays nicely with DW-esque stuff too, so I look forward to adapting beasties and items from there to further my nefarious schemes.

A wonderful system and a fabulous book. I particularly love how the GM gets a playbook, and I like how this system can easily go from a wacky/zany adventure to a heartrending and serious one. There's a lot of variety here. 5/5 stars.

Question, though: I would like to GM this game on a forum, but I am the only one who owns the core rulebook. In the rulebook, there is a link to a mediafire to download the playbooks. Is it acceptable for me to share this with a potential gaming group? (Just the playbooks, nothing else)