Rowan Rook & Decard

Unbound is a universal, rules-light roleplaying game that puts the whole player group at the forefront of the world. Newly redesigned for its second printing, the book contains both the Cyberpunk and Urban Horror expansions.

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.

They (the mad artisans at Rowan, Rook and Decard, that is) designed the rules to be liquid, in that whatever space you create with the setting, they’ll FLOW NATURALLY IN to fill it up perfectly. (They are VERY PROUD of the rules.)

ALSO you make the world when you make the characters. How great is that? I’ll 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? We’ve 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.

What’s more, making a character is EASY and FUN AS HECK. Here’s the breakdown: a character’s 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 there’s 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? We’ve 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. What’s the average intended length of a roleplaying game campaign? Yes, you at the back – that’s 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 AIN’T 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 here’s 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 that’s UNBOUND.