I should admit upfront that I was never very turned on by Unsung from reading the cover copy and hearing about "what the game was about", which was: people with guns in pressurized situations. It honestly didn't interest me that much. It wasn't until I sat down with the book and read it that I realized there was more to sink my teeth into here than I had thought.
The book!
Before we get into that, however, a little bit about the physical format of the book: it is 52 pages, including a front and back cover, a blank spacer page, a dedication, book credits, table of contents, a little more than two pages of credits and insipirational resources, a three page index, a three page glossary of game terms, and two pages of ads. Ultimately, there are around a solid 33 pages of game system and supporting text here.
The layout is not professional but it is serviceable, not poorly done. It does not detract from the reading experience, though there are some odd choices here and there (the discordant choice of structure on page 10 bugs me to no end). However, I have not had a chance yet to use it as reference, so no statement there on whether the layout helps or hinders with finding the rules one is looking for while in play.
The text is in two columns of varying unequal size in a standard serif font that doesn't make your eyes bleed. Sometimes the smaller column serves as sidebar text, sometimes it is just a continuation of the main text. Illustrations, ranging from black & white drawings to grayscale photos (and even a flowchart), are interspersed throughout the book, with about one to a page.
The game's logo/title also repeats on every page next to the page number. These are a little large for my tastes (and thus slightly distracting); your mileage may vary and you may not even notice this.
Finally, the Deluxe version of Unsung, the one I am reviewing, is an electronically download version. It comes with a one page character and rules-reference sheet (very nice); an HTML version of the game with all sidebar text included, illustrations and formatting stripped out; a PDB file of the game for use on a PDA (which I note I have no ability to test or look at being that I do not own or know anyone with a PDA).
It also includes three versions of the game in PDF format: a high-res version, with illustrations suitable for high-end printing, a low-res version with illustrations that won't look at pretty but display just fine on screen, and a version without any illustrations for those trying to save on ink costs or who just hate illustrations in their text.
On to the game!
The rules seem more-or-less well organized, with a few bits here and there that are confusing, but become clear after further reading and some thought. I'll note these trip-ups specifically so they don't confuse the heck out of anyone else skimming through the text.
First off, note that Unsung is a system, not a setting. There are suggestions of possible settings it could be used with/in at the end of the book, but for the most part the game is written for no specific setting beyond: gritty police gun-drama. Or basically any situation where you have people with guns who live by a code and have to make choices, so soldiers fighting in a war, or mobsters working their territory would count as well. However, various phrasings in the book suggest the guiding vision for the work was as a police drama, with some smaller influence from soldiering/war stories.
The game is obviously influenced by such modern story-telling games as Sorcerer and My Life with Master, and take a few cues in its rules from these sources. Due this, one initial concern I had on reading through the rules was the issue of character control. One of the techniques presented for creating moral drama was the use of a Responsibility roll to indicate which way a character swings in a morally difficult situation, with failure meaning the character must take the least moral/humane option in that situation (as determined by group vote).
To me, this is contrary to the mechanics I would expect from a Sorcerer derivative, where scores indicate how long control over the character is retained before some breakpoint, rather than determinants of how they must or should or will act. Unsung's rolls seem to take away some of the moral chocie of the game, because the choice...isn't: it is based on a die roll. This has an effect of distancing the players from their characters as "their own", but this may be completely intentional given the Gift system.
Characters are comprised of six Traits, each with a relevant Descriptor -- a sort of adjective describing how that Trait manifests for that specific charater. Sample tasks that each Trait would apply to are listed in the text, and each seems to be clearly enough differentiated that what should be rolled for a given situation in play will not be argued. Sample lists of Descriptors are also given in the rules.
The Responsibility Trait is the odd man out in terms of what it measures, seeming to be much more loosely defined than the others and far more open to interpretation in terms of what it actually represents, given that it describes the character's morality and no two character's set of morals will necesarily be the same.
Traits are rated on a scale from 1-19 and generated via a point buy system, except for Instinct, which is calculated. Not having played, I can't tell if there is any sort of "magic number" for a Trait, or a specific combination of Traits that might be a "game breaker" in some fashion -- either positive or negative.
For those looking for such things, there are no skill lists or equipment lists in the game; in some ways, skills are lumped into one of the Traits. For example, sneaking and undertaking various stealth skills are based on Instinct. Given the way Instinct is calculated, however, this means that characters with high Responsibility are less able to perform certain tasks like interrogation and hiding. As I don't watch much in the way of police drama, I have no idea if that conforms to genre standards or not, but I mention it as it seemed odd to me.
The resolution system is based on a "roll under" philosophy, so the higher a given Trait the better chance you have of succeeding in an action utilizing it. Successful rolls are good for a few things, from gaining bonuses to successive rolls, to narration rights for the player regarding the action's outcome.
As well, the gamemaster never rolls in Unsung. Instead, he hands out bonuses or penalties, calculated from the opposition's Traits or the difficulty of the situation, and any relevant Descriptors the character has. It should also be noted there are no opposed rolls at all in the game; it is always a character rolling against a Target Number, even when the character is rolling against another character.
Confusingly, the text mentions opposing rolls in a formula regarding degrees of success and failure. I was wondering initially if this is a leftover from a prior draft of the game, but upon reflection I realized that this meant when a player declares himself the defender in a contest, he may have a degree of success or failure saved up that could be applied to their opponent's roll.
There is also a mention of "extra successes" in the text, which caused some confusion initially, until I realized it was a typo and was actually refering to the "degree of success" rolled on the die, rather than a number of successes. Minor points, but they tripped me up until I thought about them and reviewed the text.
The real heart of the system, however, is the player input it provides to character and situation from the other players around the table, rather than the GM alone. This is a way to help get other players at the table emotionally involved with each other's characters by bringing out aspects of each character that appeal to or interest them. This -- in-game player contribution -- is still somewhat of a novel concept in RPGs, but I think Unsung pulls it off well.
Such input is provided by what are called "Gifts"; from the text: "[Gifts] highlight another player's character...a player adds a detail or situation to a scene that challenges another player's character (character, not player) in an ethical, moral, or emotional way." And the text provides an example to help understand how this would look in play.
As with determining what the least moral option available to a character is, the player (or players) affected by any other player's suggested input is allowed to veto that input, as is the gamemaster (though he is discouraged from doing so). Notably, the player's ability to veto Gifts includes anything the gamemaster might wish to add to the game that affects a specific character(s) morally or emotionally!
For the player whose suggested Gift is accepted, they gain the benefit of a Gift point. Gift points are discussed later in the text, and can be spent for various mechanical game effects such as automatic success or rerolls with certain rolls, taking over NPCs and playing them for a scene, and increasing Traits, changing or gaining new Descriptors and such. Further, Gift points are retained by a player even between characters.
If you will recall, I mentioned above about moral choice seeming to be taken from the character when Responsibility rolls are made. These are technically referred to as Lapses. Each time a character Lapses, by failing a Repsonsibility check and having his actions decided by group vote (not including the player's own) the character gains a Retirement point. There is also a small (handy) flowchart that goes over the process of Gifts, Lapses, Gift Points and Retirement points.
Given the involvement of Gifts, the game plays more like watching your favorite television show and participating in writing the script than it does immersively playing a particular character. I can completely see playing this game, selecting a character, and then being surprised, horrified, overjoyed and so forth by the choices made by the starring characters -- including my own. Just as I would while watching a television series. To me, that's cool.
And with the safety net that comes in the form of vetoes, there is no danger someone can force your character to break its mold before you are ready for them to do so, nor ever go in the proposed direction if you do not wish it.
Chapter Four provides a "Mission System" which helps the gamemaster build scenarios for play. This is a very interesting chapter, and I could see something similar to the material presented here being stolen for other games, particularly for those gamers who like tactics and planning to count for something once the mission (whatever that may be) is underway. Though it states the system cannot be used with all possible scenarios, only concretely structured ones, I can't really see it failing to work for any scene or series of scenes that has a clearly defined goal.
The gist of the rule is that the gamemaster rates particular aspects of the situation, the players make guesses as to those ratings, and recieve either bonuses or penalties to those same situations during the mission depending on their ratings. The ratings also help structure and define the complexity (including length, elements, etc.) and pacing of the mission. This if very cool, very usable stuff, here.
This system also provides one other function in the game: it helps determine character advancement towards a state known as "Retirement". Retirement is exactly what it sounds like -- the character is retired from play -- though this can occur in any number of ways, as chosen by the player.
Reaching Retirement is actually the goal of play, as the player whose character manages to accumulate enough points is able to declare Endgame, allowing them to narrate closure to the events of the game for their character. More on this later.
Unfortunately, the stuff about Retirement and Retirement points is spread out over a couple of different chapters. Though this is done logically, in that the effect of Retirement points is located in the chapter on ending sessions and games, it does make for some annoying flipping back and forth to understand the subject in total.
Chapter Five talks about the central aspect of any game about people with guns: combat! The chapter opens with a discussion of the use of combat in a game of Unsung. Refreshingly, it also suggests how minor combat skirmishes with mooks and lesser bad guys be resolved with a few quick rolls to cover the events of the whole scene, rather than a blow-by-blow affair for every combatant involved.
For those big, bad, important fights where the main characters are supposed to get hurt or killed, the full rules are used. Unfortunately, this also leads to my only serious complaint about the way the rules information is presented in the book: reading through the combat section, even without reading the optional rules contained in the sidebars, results in a rather confusing view of how combat works despite the abundance of examples throughout.
The text continually references itself, causing some amount of confusion as the reader either feels he must or actually must look up the rules to understand what is being discussed. While this same "see the rules in another section" notation occured a few other times in the text, this was the worst case of it simply because of the density of the statements in the one area.
However, the chapter redeems itself somewhat at its end: the confusing nature of the preceeding rules is noted and the way combat works is summarized briefly and succintly in a very understandable fashion. For my part, I would have vastly preferred the brief summary text at the beginning of the chapter, with the other rules that can be applied to a basic combat following afterwards, but at least it is there! I just had to reread the chapter after reading the summary.
As befits the genre of Unsung, combat is chaotic and deadly, with those who fire first having the largest benefit simply by virtue of firing first! Unsung does not use hit points or health levels: only a saving throw-like mechanism to determine how bad off you are (with this being binary: "tagged" or "down"). This makes getting hit is a deadly affair, you can't just shrug it off.
Of course, as with everything else, the GM does not roll the opposition's attacks -- the player does -- though the GM may apply various bonuses or penalties to that roll depending on circumstances. This makes the chance of being shot completely dependent upon the character's ability to avoid it, rather than any skill of the opponent (unless a penalty to the Target Number is used to indicate their skill).
Additionally, there are no hit points in the system, just a series of checks that relegate the character to one of two states: Down (out of play for the moment) or Tagged (in play, but penalized the next time they check to see if they go down). This is an elegant solution to attrition-based combat and I like it a great deal.
There are also additional rules for performing First Aid, what happens to Down and Tagged characters in the aftermath of battle, and the effects of medical care. There is no magical healing pill in any of this, however, just a slightly increased chance at maybe surviving your internal organs being punctured.
All-in-all, the combat system is brutal, and getting into a fight has realistically deadly or long-reaching consequences, though there is an option to make combat more cinematic and less deadly.
Chapter Six details how to wrap up the evening, deal with the after-effects of injury and character death. The main focus is on a couple of special instances of Gifts that come into play when a character goes Down and does not want to die yet.
The rules note how character death, because of the way Gifts work, does not remove a player from play. They can still participate in the game even though they no longer have a personal character involved at that moment.
Retirement is also described here. I suspect the idea is that only those who Retirement points have reached the critical level can be retired, but unfortunately the text here is not as clearly worded as it could be. Only the Retiring character(s) retires (or is killed, put in jail, transfers departments, etc.) and the narrating player cannot force the other characters into retirement, though anything else they describe for other players' characters cannot be vetoed.
That is the main rules section of the book. The last few pages are devoted to descriptions of various settings or genre possibilities for play and what storylines might be tried with such, an overview of the game's premise, the credits and some discussion of inspirational source material. And finally, a nice little glossary and an index.
The genre suggestions, which range from the obvious (Special Ops, Westerns) to the not-so-obvious (Time Travel, Fantasy) are full of great suggestions for using the game in each circumstance, including ideas on how to handle magic and superpowers with the system. The glossary is nice, and an index is always a smart idea, so Kudos for its inclusion.
In summary!
Other than the minor bits I mention, the writing is clear and comprehensible, and the rules seem very simple to understand and apply, and full of fun mechanical bits such as the troupe-oriented style of play, the mission system, and the deadly violence of the combat resolution.
As I mentioned, I was not interested in this game prior to reading it for review, but various features of the system and the possibilities to which the game can be applied have brought up a desire for me to run a couple sessions of this. For the price, even if you don't end up playing it, it would be worth it just for the ideas the non-traditional mechanics can inspire in your other games.
