UNITY RPG: The Best of D&D 4E, Pathfinder, & Dungeon World

Unity is an interesting new game going soon. With diceless GMing, a narrative approach, and tactical gridless combat in which players operate in "unity" rather than taking turns, and inspirations from D&D 4E, Pathfinder, and Dungeon World, it's an indie game with great production values. I've been sent an exclusive preview of the game, which you can see below - two page spreads, one introducing the game and one taking a look at a combat encounter.

Designer Anson Tran says "If I could sum up what I’m trying to do with Unity, it would be to create a game that has the tactical depth and crunch of D&D 4e, the excitement of character builds from 3.5e/Pathfinder and finally the narrative ease and storytelling potential of a game like Dungeon World. All of this oriented around very team-focused turn-less combat. Unity is Epic Fantasy infused with a flavourful dose of long lost magic-powered technology – there are guns, robots, and floating cities but they are a rare and momentous thing to discover."

There's a Kickstarter coming later this year for the 330+ page full-colour hardcover.

 

[Igwilly]

Well, that seems to be interesting. After I left D&D because of 5th Edition, I’ve been more or less an expatriate, a wanderer without home, so I will look at this once the Kickstarter campaign runs out.

 

[GMMichael]

[MENTION=6811052]Anson[/MENTION]: +1 for reaching out to your market. + another 1 for good-looking marketing. ENworld won't let me do back-to-back +1s though.

 

[CapnZapp]

[MENTION=6811052]Anson[/MENTION]: +1 for reaching out to your market. + another 1 for good-looking marketing. ENworld won't let me do back-to-back +1s though.

There's a thread on this in Meta.

(Sorry, can't find it for you, am on a train.)

 

[TwoSix]

An interesting post, though I think it could have been given a little more...meat, I guess?

That is, you did a good job of explaining the internal and external ("Watsonian" and "Doylist," if you prefer) justifications for the Breach mechanic in Unity, but left it really vague as to how this concept of "setting-justified mechanics" could be tailored to fit other, well-known settings. I think this would have been a very useful way to "sell" your system to people who might like it but don't care for the default setting.

As an example, consider Planescape, which has two (more or less) setting-specific mechanics that seem ripe for use as examples. Firstly, one of the Things about the Planescape setting is that belief shapes the planes. Sigil is constantly re-aligning itself, both for understandable and incomprehensible reasons. Locations can shift between planes if a sufficiently strong change in its residents' behavior occurs, as when the border-town in Planescape: Torment shifts from the Borderlands to Carceri due to the malign influence of an extraplanar being. These kinds of "reality shifts" share a certain similarity to the Breach mechanic, and would thus be a good way to show how to re-work the already present mechanics into a new, more Planescape-specific form.

Secondly, Planescape in general--and Sigil in particular--is ALL ABOUT the crazy random Portals and the weird Keys that open them. This is less clearly like the Breach mechanic, but still has a certain vein of similarity (crossing between locations). Thus, it gives you a degree of contrast--still potentially making use of mechanical elements already present in Unity, but going further afield.

Agreed that Planescape feels like a strong thematic fit for the Unity system. Eberron with its manifest zones and orbiting planes would also fit quite well. I mean, it's not like metaphysical incursions into the material is a completely novel thing to happen in fantasy. The MMO "Rift" has that idea as one of its central conceits, for example.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Agreed that Planescape feels like a strong thematic fit for the Unity system. Eberron with its manifest zones and orbiting planes would also fit quite well. I mean, it's not like metaphysical incursions into the material is a completely novel thing to happen in fantasy. The MMO "Rift" has that idea as one of its central conceits, for example.

Hell, it's woven into the very fabric of our stories. The myth of Orpheus. Alice Through the Looking-Glass. The Chronicles of Narnia. (Honestly, Judeo-Christian myth/legend/folklore is the odd man out on this one: it's one of the few great narrative traditions with more or less *no* "passing into another world and then back again" elements.)

 

[DM Howard]

Color me intrigued. I would just like to see how it is supposed to work. It sounds like it will reach for too much without being effective at anything. Also, personally, I'm not sure I would want a 4E without tactical combat.

 

[ADrollThief]

Cannot really express how excited my group and I are for this! We experience our fair share of disengagement during combat when there are a lot of turns to get through. This is an even bigger issue because we use Roll20 to play together. Have a really good feeling that Unity is going to help in that regard


Wondering if there are any new updates lately?

 

[Anson]

Cannot really express how excited my group and I are for this! We experience our fair share of disengagement during combat when there are a lot of turns to get through. This is an even bigger issue because we use Roll20 to play together. Have a really good feeling that Unity is going to help in that regard


Wondering if there are any new updates lately?

Thank you, I really appreciate your enthusiasm. I hope it's what you and your group are looking for

Yes for updates! Things have been very busy. With the "Mid-2016" launch date rolling in, a lot of work is being done prepping for the Kickstarter. There's a sampler package being put together for the general public. Between that, continually working on the book and play testing we've had our hands full for awhile. I'm almost finished writing up a blog post that gives a glimpse into the power design thought process behind Unity. Stay tuned for that in the next day or two - the blog can be accessed on the main website.

If you want to stay up to date, we release regular updates on the social media platforms just pick a flavour: Facebook, Google+, Twitter.

With the Kickstarter closing in soon, if you haven't yet you can subscribe to the mailing list. We're giving out an exclusive subscriber only NPC/monster for the KS. It will be something similar to what you see below, which was part of a recent update. The email is only used to alert of you of the KS launch.

I can tell you that if you use Roll20 predominantly, Unity plays very nicely on it -- one of my play test groups is completely online based and we use Roll20. The triple value bubbles that tokens come default with make tracking HP, Class Resource and Spark points a breeze.

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