Dawnforge: Crucible of Legend is a d20 fantasy campaign setting created and written by Greg Benage and published by Fantasy Flight Games. In fact, Dawnforge was one of the semifinalists in the Wizards of the Coast campaign search contest that brought the Eberron setting to the world.
Dawnforge is set in the early days of a high-fantasy world, where all races and creatures are new and there are no limits to their potential – the giants are taller, the elves more nimble, there’s only one basilisk, etc. This is the age when artifacts are forged, when the first empires are rising, the gods have yet to remove themselves from the earthly sphere, and the multiple patterns and pathways of magic have yet to condense themselves into the more rigid structures established in the Player’s Handbook.
Mechanically, this overall sense of newness and vitality is represented by two sets of game rules: racial talents and traits/transformations, and legendary paths. Players are allowed to choose specific racial talents to develop their characters’ skills at every odd level, and specific racial traits/transformations that alter their characters’ physiques at every even level. Each race has a given list. In this way, you can play much hardier dwarves than would normally be possible , or much more ethereal elves, or more mischievous halflings.
When players perform deeds of great renown, they earn legendary points, which can, when they reach other class, level and attribute benchmarks, be used to buy ranks in specific legendary paths. These paths represent tremendous accomplishments in activities governed by each of the character attributes – strength, charisma, constitution, etc. When players have enough ranks in the various paths, they can take levels in legendary classes, with their own amazing set of skills and abilities. These abilities can only be taken once per legendary class, but their effects depend on class level, forcing players to make difficult choices about how to develop their characters.
Earning legendary points is extremely simple, to balance out the relative complexity of advancing along legendary paths and classes. Characters earn those points when the DM decides they’ve done something superheroic or epic. Players can even store the points until their characters have met the prerequisites for using them.
In the world of Dawnforge, the playable races are dwarf, elf (in the usual flavours of high, drow, woodland and miscellaneous), human (highborn, lowborn and seafaring), tiefling, minotaur, low-level yuan-ti, halfling and gnome. The races generally have the usual origins a fantasy RPG player would expect: elves are immortals from another world; highborn humans have a little bit of the blood of the gods in them, and dwarves delve in the mountains and war against foes above (ice giants) and below (fire giants); the tieflings gain their powers from bargaining with demons; etc.
There were two surprises in the presentation of the races: gnomes are almost purely nature spirits, and the halflings are gypsy-like wanderers, rather than the sedentary not-Hobbits D&D fans know and love.
The humans were, unsurprisingly, the most disappointing of the revised races in Dawnforge. The Highborn are the Dunadan with the serial numbers filed off (touch of celestial blood, and all that), the Highlanders are the typical semi-anarchic farmhands, and the Saltbloods are brooding, no-nonsense, practical seafaring folk.
Of all the races and cultures, I think the Three Kingdoms of the Dwarves best captured my imagination.
The classes are also slightly modified to reflect the heady early days of magic and might. The spellcasting classes are blended, allowing for unusual combinations of permitted/forbidden schools; druids are replaced by shamen; and clerics worship living figures of power rather than distant gods, rendering the whole intercession aspect of spellcasting a bit more…personal…than is usually expected.
Aside from the races and classes, there’s precious little by way of new arms, magic items, spells, artifacts or equipment in the game. Perhaps that’s by virtue of the logic of setting – in a world so avowedly young, there are no opportunities for there to be ancient items of power.
Dawnforge concludes with a rather disappointing adventure. The story behind the adventure is interesting – the heroes are hired by the dwarven kingdoms to thwart a potential alliance between the Giant King and a half-dragon – but the plot points are haphazardly strewn about. I’ve been reading a lot of adventures recently, and I’ve seen them organized much better.
Dawnforge is a little more loosely edited that I would prefer, mostly regarding rules terminology. There’s repeated confusion between racial traits/transformations, and some of the NPC descriptions refer to old names of prestige classes (it’s easy to tell which is which by context, though).  A good substantive edit would have helped greatly.
The Dawnforge series continues with Age of Legend, a player’s handbook expanding the character options for the established races and classes, and introducing new material; and in Path of Legend, which is a complete campaign outline. Apparently, there’s a new combined volume available, which should be worth looking up.