Rowan, Rook & Decard RRD090101 - Unbound

Rowan, Rook & Decard RRD090101 - Unbound
Whats in the book?

Want to tell a story about CORRUPT CYBERPUNK POLICE OFFICERS in OVERCLOCKED POWER ARMOUR? You can do that. Princesses riding SOULBOUND UNICORNS? YUP, as long as you LET US PLAY TOO. Captains in charge of ELITE MILITARY UNITS, taking back a fractured city, BLOCK BY BLOODY BLOCK? 100%. BEARS, as in, everyone just plays a BEAR, and some of the bears are wearing HATS? A HUNDRED TIMES YES.

We designed the rules to be liquid, in that whatever space you create with the setting, theyll FLOW NATURALLY IN to fill it up perfectly. (We are VERY PROUD of the rules.)

ALSO you make the world when you make the characters. How great is that? Ill tell you - MANY GREAT. Gamesmasters, tired of having to spend HOURS slaving over a HOT NOTEPAD while your players SWAN UP every week like they OWN THE PLACE? Weve written a system that lets you run with BASICALLY THE SAME AMOUNT OF PREP AS YOUR PLAYERS because they do MOST OF THE WORK and you turn up and TAKE ALL THE CREDIT.

Whats more, making a character is EASY and FUN AS HECK. Heres the breakdown: a characters CORE is their motivation, their story position. Every character in the group shares the same core - like WARRIOR or OUTLAW or DEVOUT - and it comes with SIX GROUP QUESTIONS that cement the WORLD and the PLOT into place in ONE FELL SWOOP. Okay, SIX FELL SWOOPS.

Next up is the ROLE- the particular way you rock in combat. DEADEYES are masters of shooting stuff, WARDENS are excellent at getting punched in the face, STRIKERS stab people and look good doing it, PROTECTORS heal and support their allies, and BRAWLERS generally get their teeth kicked in but take a few guys down with them.

Finally theres the TRAITS, and traits are awesome stuff like MIGHTY WEAPON or SPIRIT or FIRE or THE UNNATURAL or RAGE, and they FLAVOUR your character and give them COOL POWERS. Want a pet swarm of bees? Want to become a werewolf? Want to teleport to the SHADOW REALM with one UNLUCKY CHUMP who GOT IN YOUR WAY? Weve got that covered. And they all have QUESTIONS ATTACHED which BUILD THE WORLD, like: Who is your BEE SENSEI? How am werewolf happen? WHAT AM SHADOWREALM? Et cetera.

POP QUIZ, HOTSHOT. Whats the average intended length of a roleplaying game campaign? Yes, you at the back - thats right, FOREVER. You get a bunch of people together and you pretend to be elves once a week until a) level 20 or b) you get bored, and AINT NO-ONE GOT TIME FOR THAT. Unbound works in LUMPS OF STORY called ADVENTURES which are FOUR TO SIX GAMES LONG. Loads of ADVENTURES make a SAGA.

But heres the deal, you change characters when you change adventures. You find some interesting part of the world and explore it through play like a GENIUS. You play the BAD GUYS. You play the KIDS of the previous characters. You play ALIENS landing six thousand years in the future, skimming through the wreckage. You play the CHUMPS left behind to defend the city while the HEROES went off on an adventure. You keep playing, you keep changing focus, until you want to make a new world.

And thats UNBOUND.

As players make their characters, theyre guided by the gamesmaster through a series of questions to build the setting, the plot, and the supporting characters thatll make up the game.Fleshing out that world through play, games are broken up into 5-session long adventures focusing around a set of characters - and once theyve told their story, the group moves on to a new set of characters to explore a different facet of the setting theyve created.Unbound now contains both Cyberpunk and Urban Horror expansions!The book has beautiful artwork from Adrian Stone throughout, and a selection of world-building charts from such game design luminaries as Cara Ellison, Gav Thorpe, Naomi Alderman and Jason Morningstar.