Review: Unconquered

Edit 8/12/23 - Plagiarism in Unconquered recently came out and casts a new light on things. I looked at Ultraviolet Grasslands myself seperately and failed to catch this. As of time of writing this update, Unconquered appears to have been yanked from most places it was available by the author.

A kickstarter by Monkey's Paw Games I backed in 2020 - because it looked interesting - the chunky bright colours, the promise of Bronze age mayhem and adventure - coming shortly after doing some reading about the Bronze Age collapse and an awareness of the very different world of that time, it struck the right chord at the right time.

From the publicity "UNCONQUERED is a beginner-friendly, rules-light, bronzepunk swords & sorcery & sandals & sci-fi fantasy tabletop adventure role-playing game, inspired by classic pulp serials such as Savage Sword of Conan, Flash Gordon, and John Carter of Mars; the Dying Earth genre; the Dark Souls video game series; and webcomics such as Kill Six Billion Demons and Necropolis."

Cover art by Peter Violini

First impression - we get a clear aesthetic wrapped around a stripped down ruleset; lots of the world building is through random tables. The art throughout is bold, stylised and evokes the mythic bronze age well. In full disclosure I got sent a press kit by the team at Monkey's Paw and was amused to be able to go 'hang on, I already backed you' - it did prompt me to expedite this review from the giant backlog and I am glad I did because I like the world generation tools a lot.

So what is all this stuff you get in the book?
2 pages of Introduction
13 pages of Travelers Guide with stats and basic rules
36 pages of Characters
22 pages of Equipment
14 pages of the Words of Creation how magic works
4 pages of Chroniclers Guide with DM facing rules
12 pages of Myth, not History
40 pages of Mapping the Spheres
8 pages of Encounters
31 pages of Weird Tales
2 pages of Appendix N

Going chunk by chunk through it we open with the Introduction and get a half page on what TTRPGs are, a half page on Safe Play. We set our pithy, to the point standard from the off. Like all sections we get a half page of art at the start, bold, sylised designs.

Next we have the Travelers Guide - opening with a tone-setting piece of fiction, we are then welcomed to either use the ruleset within or use the toolkit for creating adventures in the Million-Million Spheres in your own game. I like this a lot. The rule system within is a three stat - Silver, Salt and Iron - but it maps easily to most OSR systems as Silver to Dex/Cha, Salt to Con/Wis and Iron to Str/Int. Most of the rules are actually within the Glossary of Terms at the front. It does leave out a lot of detail (what exactly is a save, when should you use it) one assumes on the basis that you know the D&D syatem and will fill in the blanks from that.

The ethos of the game is laid out right after the glossary - "the dice are not your friends" and "if you are in a fight, something has gone wrong" and "Live. Die. Roll a new Traveller."

Characters are randomly generated and start at level zero - we are advised to roll up 3 and see who makes it through the first adventure. Again, we are steered towards the game of learning to love the characters chance gives us - attributes are 3d6 down the line, then d6 each for Will and Stamina, then cross your Stamina with your highest stat to get your vocation (starting gear), roll your background (tribes of human, animalfolk), and chose your class - Sword or Sorceror. I like it a lot - fast, interesting character generation with lots of world-building in those tables.

In the playing rules we see old school x-in-6 chances determining encounters and other events and XP is gained through carousing, going to funerals or having sagas told of you. Not treasure, not killing things - the central mechanic making all this go is your legend, partying with the living and waking the dead - the adventuring is just to fund the carousing and provide bodies for the funerals. I love it.

Next in the Equipment section we get tables for all the stuff you could need - including hirelings and naval combat rules. Over a third of the section devoted to a d100 Mysterious Object table, giving you your worldbuilding through what you loot from the pockets of a foe.

The Words of Creation addresses how magic works - fragments of the Word, the building blocks of magic, are unique and cannot be duplicated. They take an inventory slot per Form (what is affected) and Shape (how it is affected) and combine with the five commonly known Commands to do whatever you want - I Control Horrifying Sound for a fear effect, I Control Sound for auditory illusions, etc.

The short Chroniclers Guide is very simple, covering Surprise, Reactions and Morale, thats it. Really, the content to aid the GM is the sections that come next.

The Myth, not History section describes the lightly moored events of the past and the great powers active in the Million, Million Spheres. We get tables to generate the many gods, others for their divine servants and rumours about the orders of being out there.

Mapping the Spheres has lots of random tables to populate hexes, starting with advice to take a hex-grided page and drop dice on it, one per point of interest - then note what results fell where and look that up in the tables. We get terrain specific tables for hazards and points of interest, general encounters and settlements. The city at the centre of everything, the Outer Heavens, the Middle Kingdoms, the Low Worlds and the Deep all get similar sets of tables to populate a grid of 6km hexes with adventure.

Encounters is essentially our bestiary - all foes get a name, 3 stats (HD, #, AV) and a special. Everything else scales with HD - saves, number of attacks, stamina. Straightforward and easily adapted to other early D&D compatible sources if you want more.

Weird Tales covers story hooks and adventure ideas, starting with a great Title Generator to spark ideas then including tables for NPCs, Ruins, Tribes, Caravans, Criminal Bands, Drugs, Guilds, Herbs, Nomads, Vessels and more.

Closing with Appendix N that covers books, games and music.

This is a great, simplified ruleset and a really neat toolkit for GMs. I wonder is it the *beginners* game it is pitched as, my gut would say that a real beginner might need the pedantic walls of text from some other sources that hold their hand through exactly how gaming works - but for anyone with a grasp of the basics, this is a great book. This is more the rationalised structures that let someone who knows how to run a game be much more efficient. Combat is simplified and more dangerous - in keeping with the 'combat is a fail state' edict. I like this and the creativity of magic - I am going to see if I can get this table tested and see how it works. The worldbuilding tools I am also going to get use out of, they are easily turned to sword & planet style gaming.

You can find another review on Bell of Lost Souls from back in 2020. If you like, a bestiary & treasure book Fiends & Fortunes is slowfunding on itch.io - suitable for Unconquered or your sword & planet game of choice.