Member-only story
Gaming | Worldbuilding
‘Unbound’ Does What D&D Can’t
This criminally ignored TTRPG makes Dungeons & Dragons obsolete
“Want to tell a story about CORRUPT CYBERPUNK POLICE OFFICERS in OVERCLOCKED POWER ARMOUR? You can do that. Princesses riding SOULBOUND UNICORNS? YUP, as long as you LET US PLAY TOO. Captains in charge of ELITE MILITARY UNITS, taking back a fractured city, BLOCK BY BLOODY BLOCK? 100%. BEARS, as in, everyone just plays a BEAR, and some of the bears are wearing HATS? A HUNDRED TIMES YES.”
— Rowan, Rook, and Decard
Some Dungeons & Dragons loyalists think they can reskin D&D for any genre: superheroes, science fiction, etc. They are wrong. 3rd party publishers have released 5e-compatible games in other genres, and they’re terrible. The cancelled 5e Rebel Moon game would have been terrible too.
Unbound can do the genres D&D can’t. Sci-fi, superheroes, survival-horror, and modern action are all in Unbound’s wheelhouse. It can even make fantasy more epic than D&D, mainly by being nothing like D&D. In a perfect world, Eberron would use Unbound’s ruleset.
Moreover, Unbound forsakes control freaks. Control freaks ruin everything.
D&D is dictatorial. Unbound is communal.
“ALSO you make the world when you make the characters. How great is that? I’ll tell you — MANY GREAT.”
— Rowan, Rook, and Decard
Besides being stuck in medieval or high fantasy, D&D’s settings are played out, old fashion, stale, and boring. And homebrew fantasy settings concocted by some dungeon masters are often boring self-wanks, devoid of any inspiration but chock-full of whatever they thought was…
