![The Unnamed World 1st Look: 3 New Packets](https://lumpley.games/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/theunnamedworld2-patron.jpg)
The Unnamed World is building momentum nicely! We’re having a lot of fun with it.
For developing the game, I’m organizing the text into packets. This zip file contains them all, revised from earlier releases and including 3 new packets:
The Synthene packet: Synthenes are artificial people created by the aristoi of a past age, to serve as their bodyguards and companions. Synthenes can be destroyed, but are otherwise immortal, and some have survived into this age. You can be one.
This packet is a whole new character type, with new character creation rules, new experience & improvement rules, and its own unique actions.
The Monster Creation packet: These rules form a branching path you can follow to create a monster, not an exhaustive tree of all the monsters that exist. Don’t limit yourself to these rules when you have a monster already in mind. They help you create:
1. A person.
2. A wild animal or natural super-predator.
3. A person or animal transformed into a monster.
4. A made creature, living machine, or artificial life.
5. A creature of the Unseen World or the World of Death.
6. A kertwk or another alien creature.
The Catalogue of Spells packet: You can start play with a selection of spells from character creation. This packet expands the selection of spells available to you after play’s begun, and lays the groundwork for a further-developed magic system.
I’ve started GMing it! Here are my pointers so far:
- As GM, the game asks you to improvise, stick to your vision, and only afterward, follow guidelines to mechanically interpret what you’ve improvised. It’s an imagery-first approach to scenario improvisation: you start by giving evocative answers when the players read a situation or study the skies, then let the game inspire and draw details out of you. It’s the same way that creating the ghost works in Murderous Ghosts. It means you can start playing with just some ideas, not much prep at all.
- The initiative rules are for managing the other players’ turns, not yours as GM. You should step in as often as you want, like, after practically every single action. Talk and free-play for as long as you want between actions.
- Your attack move is the players’ basic move defend yourself. The players want to roll that move and they only get to when you attack them, so don’t hold back.
- The players get experience when they discover a problem, not when they’ve dealt with it. They spend their experience to help them deal with the problem, and — if they have any left over — to celebrate having dealt with it. (This is inspired by The Shadow of Yesterday.)
- Also, they level up by spending their experience, not by getting it or saving it. It’s to their advantage to spend it as they go, even spend it frivolously. This might take some getting used to for them. They can spend experience 1 for 1 to improve their rolls, and they can spend 1 experience to improve somebody else’s roll by more than 1, if they’re in a position to help. Any time anybody rolls a miss, urge them to do this, it’s what their experience is for.
We’re going to keep playing, and you’re invited to play too. This is the ground floor! Look it all over, and if you need any answers to help get you started, I’ll be more than happy to answer.
Thanks, friends!