Quote from: Necrozius;859305It's totally rules-agnostic (other than the appendices that talk about the Pundit's house rules for OSR and the part about Fantastic Heroes and Witchery).

I can't see how you couldn't use this as a setting book for any game system, really. I plan to use it with 5e or Beyond the Wall (but my GM style echoes Dungeon World a hell of a lot in terms of collaborative world building and fail forward).

EDIT: in regards to the critical post above: I suppose that my own ignorance of the historical period (of England or of Europe in general) allowed me to become impressed more easily. I too, would like to see other countries more fleshed out, perhaps in future supplements? To be fair, even WFRP only REALLY focused on not-Germany. The rest of the Old World was rather simplified and stereotyped.

In WFRP, France was a grail-quest legend, Scandinavia was a chaos wasteland, and England a savage island full of celt barbarians.  
In contrast, there's pretty much no place in my book which is less historically accurate than its WFRP-equivalent. I've made Scots' Land and the Northlands more backward than Scotland and Scandinavia really were in the 15th century, but they're still identifiably those countries, and still have the organizations, historical figures, and events from the 15th century.

In fact, if there's one place that I could REALLY be accused of having very badly neglected and that would definitely deserve a source book, it's Eire Land.  It's right there next to Albion and I give it next to nothing.  If you want to criticize some part of my book, criticize that!

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;859306What about the magic? Spells tend to be pretty system specific.

There's a suggested list of spells by level, but this is more like to give you an idea of how you could tailor your own spell lists, and most importantly to notice what to leave out.

The suggested list was drawn from the list of spells in OSRIC (i.e. AD&D 1e).

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;859314Here's another question: how much better is the hardback in terms of quality than the softcover?

I want to order the hardback but I don't want to wait... Amazon can do the softcover much faster... curse my adapting to Prime's standards.

Well, I'm the author, but I earn money for both of them. So, I would say this: the softcover is a lot nicer than I expected it to be, but the hardcover is FREAKING AWESOME.   If I was deciding which to buy, it would be the hardcover (and for example, I'm giving away my softcover author copies but keeping the Hardcover and Variant Hardcover for myself).

Quote from: Turanil;859354So, yes, Gilles de Rai would be must-have NPC in pseudo-France / Frogland, but is not mentioned since this book is not about "Dark Frogland".

And, you know, because he'd been dead for 15 years by the time the setting starts.  But he definitely existed.

Quote from: Beagle;859376These aren't some unachievable ideal standards - the average World of Darkness Dark Ages sourcebook by White Wolf is, does a vastly better job in this regard than Dark Albion.

Ok, now I KNOW you're being patently absurd.

QuoteA nice attempt at justification. It would even mean something if the writing on Scotland or Ireland were any better.

Scot's Land is awesome, and has awesome writing.  Eire Land, on the other hand, doesn't even get its own section.  If you had chosen to criticize me on a lack of material for Eire Land, I would have conceded the point. Instead you are blathering on about how I don't talk about things I actually do talk about, don't seem to know that there were no Jews in England in from the late 13th to the late 17th centuries, and crucifying the book for not having dedicated 20 pages to Milanese Folk Dancing.

QuoteAlso, did anyone think that you forgot the Catholic Church or Jewish communities by accident?

Still weren't any Jews in England in 1454. And the Church of the Unconquered Sun is extremely similar to the Catholic Church yes. So what is your complaint: that I left out the Catholic Church or that I kept it in?! I'm confused...
Because in all the areas where there have been changes from the Catholic standard, they provide MORE opportunities for adventuring, and not less. Like, you know, Clerics who have fucking superpowers.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Turanil;859406This setting is not to your expectation, that I can hear it very well. I guess it's very difficult to please everybody, so it was inevitable some people would not like it. But I nonetheless have the vague suspicion that you also have an agenda regarding this book. So White Wolf Publishing did a much better job with its book on a similar subject? If I remember well, RPGPundit (the author of Dark Albion) has not been kind regarding W.W., describing many of those who like its products as "swine pseudo-activists". So this post might be more than just a simple dislike/disappointment of D.A. In this case, this should better be my last comment (it would be useless to argue).

I don't know, he may be, but what seems more likely is that he's a guy with some moderate level of history education (let me guess, B.A. Arts in History? Maybe? or never finished? No masters though, right?), whose also a German guy with anti-English (in another thread he suggested that if France has Frogmen in albion, England should have Baboons because that's what the English are like) and anti-Polish prejudice.

Which would be fine (I have some anti-german and anti-French prejudices, though note that the latter doesn't stop me from being a friend and co-worker with Dominique Crouzet, who can take a joke), except if it leads someone to misrepresent a product; either intentionally or out of blind prejudice.