Liminal Quickstart Reviewed

I've just downloaded a bunch of quickstarts, and it seems like these could do with reviewing.  The criteria are going to be different to reviewing a full game.  I'll start with Liminal, since I know this one pretty damn well by now.

Content

At 51 pages split into five chapters, this is a pretty substantial quickstart.

Chapter 1 is an introduction to the game.  We start out with an explanation of what kind of game this is, and an introduction to the setting with some of the key factions briefly described.  This is followed by a brief explanation of how characters work.  By this point you can probably tell if this is a game that's going to interest you.

Chapter 2 is a set of sample characters.  They cover a wide range of skills and special abilities, despite being almost entirely mortals, which goes some way to emphasise that playing regular humans in this game can be just as interesting as the more supernatural options.  They come with a bit of flavour text and a description of what their special traits do, so have all the information you need to play with them straight off the page.  They're also ethnically diverse, and three out of four are women, which is nice to see.  This is clearly not just a game about white men.

Chapter 3 is game rules.  In a few short pages, all the key game rules are covered - core mechanic, combat, damage, healing, and a few specialist bits and pieces.  There's enough here to run a game.

Chapter 4 is setting information.  It focusses entirely on London, which makes sense.  Given that the game's primary inspiration is the Rivers of London series, you're going to want to have enough information to play a game in London.  It details how the hidden world and the mundane world interact and influence each other, piling up plot hooks as it goes.

Chapter 5 (which is mis-labelled as chapter 4) is a sample adventure.  The expansion of the HS2 terminal at Euston Station provides the hook here.  It's a pretty simple monster hunt in two parts, but manages to introduce a significant number of the setting's major players in a short space of time while giving the players plenty of room for roleplay.

Presentation

This quickstart is liberally ornamented with Jason Behnke's art, with both full page plates and half page chapter headings, making for a visually stunning document.  Worth taking a look just for this.

It's laid out in single column format, convenient for screen reading, and the PDF is fully bookmarked.  The only obvious flaw I've found is the mis-numbering of chapters.  With the exception of the art, it's also pretty printer-friendly.  I chose to print out the sample adventure for ease of running at the table, and was able to avoid printing any of the art.

The chapter ordering strikes me as odd.  I would have liked to swap the order of chapters 2 and 4, with chapter 4 immediately following the introduction to expand on the setting and the sample characters preceeding the sample adventure.  This would also put them straight after the explanation of what P-Division is, and since the sample characters work for P-Division, having that explanation first would make sense.

What can I do with it?

You can run a game.  Specifically you can run the sample adventure, and I've run it five times now.  While you might want to expand on it a bit by nailing down some of the details, it's got enough to run it straight off the document.

You can decide whether you want the buy the game.  The included setting information is enough to inspire a lot more adventures, and by the time you get to the end you should know whether you want more.

Conclusion

In short, this quickstart does exactly what a quickstart should do, introducing the game in an easily accessible fashion, and it's the standard against which I'll be comparing other quickstarts.