Unisystem Round-Up

by Smiorgan Comments Off on Unisystem Round-Up

Ghosts of Albion finally turned up, along with a cheap copy of Terra Primate.

Uni

Now, what turned me on to the whole Unisystem line was the modular nature of the systems, which fit together well enough for a range of options for low powered, urban or science-fantasy games.

Going over the new aquisitions first:

Just as AFMBE serves the zombie genre way beyond Night of the Living Dead, Terra Primate goes beyond Planet of the Apes. It gives a grounding for any kind of enlightened ape scenario – genetic enhancement, natural selection, mutation; humans as equals, as superiors, as slaves, as aliens. The product is impressively focused on what’s important in the setting – namely how humans and intelligent apes would react to one another. Gamegeeks review here, Gentleman Gamer review here.

Ghosts of Albion promises a Victorian Buffy-esque romp and delivers. The magic system is comprehensive and clean, and it presents faeries and ghosts as well as a completely different type of vampire to the Buffyverse kind. Gamegeeks review here.

Following my rant on generic systems, the main purpose of this post is to catalogue the different features of the games and supplements I own. I’ll try to be brief:

  1. Angel Corebook

  • A “demon creation system” to build your own demon race
  • A point-based system for developing factions, agencies and so forth
  • A load of qualities and drawbacks that are well suited to urban fantasy

2. Buffy Monster Smackdown

  • Basically, more monsters. Qualities for monsters and monstrous characters that complement the demon creation system in Angel.
  • A lot of Buffyverse specific monsters.

3. Buffy Magic Box

  • A spell creation system.
  • All of the spells from the series. Hey, it’s useful to have lists.
  • How to bring Witchcraft spells into your game.

4. Ghosts of Albion

  • More supernaturals.
  • Another spell creation system. I’ve yet to play with it, but it looks as good or even better than the Magic Box.
  • Victoriana, if you like that sort of thing.

5. Terra Primate

  • Psionics.
  • Considerations for intelligent apes. With thought, could be turned to any intelligent race evolved from an animal. Dinosaurs, anyone?
  • Qualities for humans in an ape world (assumed the same for all Classic Unisystem).
  • Ideas for Apeworlds.

6. All Flesh Must Be Eaten

  • Zombie Creation. Basically, even more monster qualities. The key here are the qualities around spreading the zombie plague, and how fast/strong/aware the zombies are.
  • Qualities for apocalypse survivors.

7. One of the Living (AFMBE)

  • More qualities for survivors.
  • A load of ideas for deadworlds.

8. Atlas of the Walking Dead (AFMBE)

  • A load more qualities for zombies.
  • Undead from around the globe. The same depth and quality as I’ve seen in Chill supplements.

9. Witchcraft

  • All the different magic systems you could want. I generally find them harder to use and less flavourful than any of the equivalents in other games (including psionics, which is identical to Terra Primate).

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p>That’s it. There’s a ton of other settings – especially for AFMBE. Most importantly all of the differnt options hang together very nicely.