The pearl of the Dark Realms system is its fluid rules for character Skills and Spell Casting. In the Dark Realms players do not learn a 'skill' or 'Spell', but rather learn much broader areas of knowledge, leaving players to create unique applications of that knowledge during game play. For instance, a character doesn't learn a 'Fire Ball Spell', but rather simply learns the Spell Field of fire. With it, a player may attempt any mysticism based upon fire, with success, failure, and effect being based on the difficulty of the exact applications the players come up with and the skill level the character has with the Spell Field of fire. In this manner, there really are no "spells", just hundreds if not thousands of unique and specific things the players may attempt with their knowledge/talent. 

A role playing game truly designed to empower role players who enjoy the role playing aspects of a role playing game above and beyond the ol 'hack-n-slash' and dungeon crawl. But fear not, this easy and flexible system can let players do those as well...