First Impressions & OSR Review of The Sword of Cepheus Second Edition Rpg By Omer Golan-Joel, Josh Peters, & Richard Hazlewood From Stellagama Publishing

 "A sorcerer blasting his enemies with the power of his mind. A muscled barbarian wielding a flaming sword against the local tyrant’s thugs. A gladiator who freed himself from slavery wanders the land, righting wrongs and smashing villains. Big muscles, big swords, eldritch sorcery, powers of the mind, terrible beasts. From Burroughs to Howard to Moorcock to Italian Peplum films to those dreaming of outlandish post-apocalyptic worlds, heroes raise swords against corrupt nobles, inscrutable sorcerers, and alien monstrosities."

"The Sword of Cepheus is a roleplaying game in the triple “Sword” genres: Sword and Sorcery, Sword and Planet, and Sword and Sandal. In Sword and Sorcery, often-amoral protagonists face vile sorcery and horrid beasts as they complete awesome adventures for gold and glory. In Sword and Planet, humans finding themselves on barbaric or decadent alien planets use their superior brawn and valiant hearts to win fame, fortune, and the heart of an alien princeling. In Sword and Sandal, often set in a quasi-Biblical or faux-Roman world, men and women with sharp wits and strong sword-arms fight mythological creatures and overthrow tyrants. The common threads of all three genres are the blade-wielding protagonists who use their brawn, as well as brains, to fight foes both supernatural and mundane and undertake hair-raising, violent adventures."

The Sword of Cepheus Second Edition Rpg By Omer Golan-Joel, Josh Peters, &  Richard Hazlewood came my way this morning from  Stellagama Publishing. Now the first thing I noticed was that the size of Sword of Chepheus has increased by it's page count to three hundred and seventy seven pages. This change shows the roll over into role playing into  the triple “Sword” genres: Sword and Sorcery, Sword and Planet, and Sword and Sandal genres. This is now reflected into the PC's generation system with 12 archtypes, 12 races of non humans, careers, & more. The magic system seriously reflects the corruption, mutation, and more. This system of magick is plugged into the Genres of thier category of Fantasy. Sword of Cepheus 2nd edition does an excellent job of capturing the lightning in a bottle aspects of Sword & Sorcery. 
The Sword of Cepheus Second Edition Rpg plugs into it's 2d6 adventure subject matter with gusto enabling the DM to get into running adventures right away with a plethora of monsters and creatures. There's the usual suspects from the world's most popular fantasy rpg but there's something profoundly diffferent in the presentation of these creatures. Because Sword is a complete rpg meaning you can buy the one book and get ready to run adventures! 
Treasure goes through the gamut of treasures found in rpg's from rings to helms as well as plunder. The section is well thought out and there's even a magical mishap table for when things go really wrong with the treasure. 
The encounter generating section is well done and has more then enough to get the players into trouble in a wilderness or a city. This is a really well done section with just enough randomness to create a campaign from the ground up. These encounters run from straight wilderness to complete urban areas. This section dovetails rather nicely into the NPC generation section. 
Finally we get a rather nice Super Science section that rounds out The Sword of Cepheus Second Edition Rpg. However overall what do I think of Sword of Cepheus Second edition?! In a word, I really like the changes to the sections, the overall feel, and increases in the system. The whole package doesn't feel unwieldly instead it feels like an overall 2d6 system of improvement. I highly recommend Sword of Cepheus Second edition.