I've been doing world building for a long time, and have also for a long time purchased and read various guides and books on history, and on the construction of realistic campaign worlds. With Farm, Forge and Steam, I hoped I had picked up a document that would allow me to put numbers on some of my questions.

Unfortunately, I didn't get that.

The first five chapters provides an overview of the subjects of the Farm, the Forge, and Steam, such as diseases and demographics, the development metallurgy, and the development of machine power versus muscle power. Good stuff that both provides an overview, and sprinkles it with interesting examples. It also concentrates not only on Europe, but also takes the occasional look on China, the Americas and other cultures.

At the end of each of the first four chapters, it provides a few rules for your world building purposes. Unfortunately, they are mostly fluff, and rarely have much substance. They are good to keep in mind, and will give your campaign character, but they don't provide any skeleton to build that campaign on. After the farming chapter I hoped I would get a table for the proportion of farmers to specialists, the farmland required and typical city sizes. After the forge chapter I hoped for information on when various metals appeared where and what prerequisite technologies were for their use. I really hoped for some type of step-by-step technological progression somewhere (settlements before agriculture, agriculture before smithing, furnaces before steel).

But I didn't really get that. Sure, the answers to some of those questions are buried in the text, but they aren't set up so I can take this document, and make myself a bronze age civilization. Or a fantasy world with a "roman" civilization surrounded by barbarians.

Chapter six is dedicated to pointing out some flaws in some fantasy world. It does provide food for thought, but doesn't actually provide any help on what you should do, only what you should not.

Chapter seven briefly looks at magic, taking the stance that magic must equate to technology. From there it makes a couple of conclusions which I've already seen made in dozens of internet discussions on the subject. Nothing new here.

In conclusion, buy it for the history and fluff, not for the worldbuilding promises.

LIKED: The first five chapters

DISLIKED: Provides no solid information for the creation of a playable fantasy campaign world.

QUALITY: Nice pictures and layout. Noticed no spelling errors or layout problems. But it doesn't implement bookmarks, so you have to scroll to get from chapter to chapter.

VALUE: Nice for a guide on historical development, abysmal for guide on campaign world creation