Review Rebirth roleplaying game. Michael Hansen, Illustrated by Ethan S. Brewerton.  No listed publisher.  

Cool Idea.  Poorly executed.  

That's it, boy reviews are easy.  

Ok, I'll give you a bit more. I'll start with the physical book.  It's a soft cover black and white ilistrated 138 page book.  Font's good, easy to read, it could do with a few more illustrations, but that might just be because the illistrations are so good.  I really like the art.  They remind me of some of the sketches from old D&D and Pladium books.  But good, they're all good,  It's a very stark black and white style which goes very well with the subject matter. There's a table of contents and a couple of indexes that make the book easy to use.  

Rebirth is a full roleplaying game including everything you need to play - if you can fill in monsters, setting and NPC's yourself.  Honestly, it's just a book for making characters.  There are 8 pages of setting, 4 pages of rules and 90 pages of characters. If that seems like way too much, it's because it is. 20 pages of gear and 3 monsters - I don't think that's the best way to introduce a new setting.  

The setting has a lot of potential, it's just not very well fleshed out. I am not one to complain about a lack of fluff (I was bored with the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms source book and it was all fluff) but this one needs something.  It is also choking on crunch.  Those 90 pages of making characters; there are 42 different character classes in there, which is just too much for a new system.  7 different realms, 2 professions per realm, for 14 base professions plus 2 advanced professions per base profession equals 28 advanced professions. Plus the 14 base makes 42 total.  That's absurb, for playing any way.  For theory crafting, and playing the mini games of generating characters and parties it's awesome.  I remember sitting down with my 3 and 3.5 D&D books and just building charctes and parties.  It was fun.  You could do that for days with Rebirth.  Just don't expect your players to want to do that.  42 options is too much.  

Back to the setting - it's the land of the dead.  7 wizards summoned a daemon and chopped it up, each taking a different part as a talisman, gaining supernatural strength.  They overthrew a High Prophet, who really had it coming, killed everybody, and divided the world (island) into 7.  Now everyone is dead, everyone has the mark of one of the 7 original wizards on their body, and everyone seems to be a right bastard.  Seriously, the currency seems to be bone shards from slain zombies (remember everyones a zombie, the people are dead.)

   Could  be pretty cool right?  This is the major missed opportunity.  There is nothing here.  The set up - you are the dead struggleing for survival in a broken land - is just full of potential.  I bet the writer and his team have a rich living (undead) world in their heads.  Unfortunately none of that is in the book.  You can do better in an evening.  Seriously, fluff wise this book sets a low bar and you can beat it.  
Step one: Remember Diablo the video game and think of the daemons and undead you spend the game slaughtering.  
Step two:  Think of their lives, their cultures, their struggles and power structures.  
Step three:  Put it in Japan for some reason. I don't know, but it feels, not Japanese but like it was written in a room with a painting of a samurai on the wall.  The name of the island "Kreyo" and the fact that it's an island has something to do with it.  It might just be me.  You don't have to put your setting it Japan.

There's a bit more stetting and fluff though out the book especially at the beginning of each base class but it just didn't grab me.  

Crunch wise there is a lot here.  But it's also missing a lot.  Or maybe it's just freeloading, letting other games carry the load. There is no "what is a roleplaying game" section. That's fair, I know what a roleplaying game is, you do too, you are on the internet reading reviews of roleplaying games. This is in your wheelhouse. We probably don't need to reread that section in yet another book.  The Rules section is 4 pages. Ok I can handle that too.  I can make this work.  But you can't get all the rules into 4 pages for someone who is new to playing.  

To be fair there are a lot of rules in the character building section. A few complicated formula that I don't want any part of.  But that's just taste, I would have been all over them when I was 20.
   Also in the character section are all the NPCs and monsters.  Which is to say, you have to build them yourself.  I really like the Idea that the threats are other people (Zombies). I often do similar things in D&D when I run a game.   As a DM running this I would want some monsters pre-made so I don't have to do all the work up front myself. The skeletal hord on the front cover seems pretty cool and some pre-generated charcters for them would be helpful.  A few pre-made bad guys would be great.  Since most bad guys don't last the night, having a ready supply of fodder would be really helpful.  I think there is more coming out in this line.  NPCs, monsters and setting details would really help this product line.  We'll see what they release next.  

As critical as I have been so far I am happy I have the book.  There is a lot here and while I won't ever play Rebirth as a game, I will be pouring over the charcter classes for ideas.  A lot of good thought went into this product, making it excellent for caniblization.  For example the Bard profession (which I just flipped to very easily by finding it in the profession index on the last page) has quite a few cool role playing ablities.  Things which generally slip through the cracks.  If the Bard takes the Renowned gift "the bard may use a perform check in order to acquire free room and board at any inn, at the cost of preforming that night."  Another ablity is called Hype Man, it lets the bard gather a crowd, another lets them spread a rumor.  Now these are things that we can already do in any system just through role playing.  And I am sympatectic to the school which holds that rules actully reduce freedom.  If there are written rules, then everything has to play out as the rules are written, where if there are no rules, then the DM will come up with something that makes sense in that situation.  However having read these, I can think of ways to use them.  It makes sense to me that a Bard can get lodging for free, it's in all the stories.  The ablity to gather a crowd is essencial for any street preformer. As much as these things makes sense, they are often missed in the moment.  I don't know how I am going to use those, and a fair number of others, but I am going to benift from the thought he has put into this book.  

All in all a good suplement for an experenced DM but not something I would want to run. The setting is far too sparse and there is not enough DM support. If they come out with a Monster Manual, and a dozen detailed maps, a book of rival gangs full pre made NPCs and a few adventure sketches, I think it could be a very fun game.   Still too crunchy for my tastes but tastes vary.