untold: adventure awaits an unexpected review

Ever wanted to be the director of your own tv-series? Or write a book? or play an Tabletop roleplaying game on your own, but never found the crew to play it with? Maybe Untold is something for you?

What you get?

In the box you get a nice board, instructions of course, 30 scene cards (6 for each part of the story), outcome and reaction cards and a tile for each player that is playing. You also get tokens to represent actions and questions and some that go on your own personal tile to offer ideas and flashbacks and reroll a die, you also get a personal play/pause card.

The goal of the “game”

The goal is to write your own television episode. You start with creating a character by filling out a character profile. I suggest you go look online for more detailed character profiles if you wish to turn it into a book or something outside the game, because the profile you get with the game is a bit basic, but totally ok within the confines of the game.

When you turn over the first tile to start your story, the most important thing you must do for the episode is set the tone. What kind of episode do you want to make? Comedic? Serious? Gritty? Because it will guide every decision you are going to make in this episode. The goal is to make a detailed story out of random elements to get your creative juices flowing.

Rory Story cubes

The basis for this story is the rory story cube system. Thanks to these marvelous cubes, of which you have multiple sets, you get to create random things and you really have to exercise your creativity. You really have to see how each cube you roll fits your story and I have to confess that I had to reroll some cubes several times before I put them on the board to make up a part of the story. I don’t know if this is allowed within the confines of the rulebook, but I had to.

Is the game accessible?

You can play a game within minutes of reading the rule book. What also helps is that Wearehubgames made a marvelous video explaining how the game works, so you can decide by watching the clip if you want to play the game.

The game is accessible in this sense, but it isn’t in another. I suffer from adhd and it was a problem when I played my first game a few days ago. I didn’t have a refill for my medication and a playthrough of the game lasts approximately 60 minutes, so 60 minutes of concentration without meds, I must confess that I skipped over the last part and only wrote down the reactions and outcomes so I could invent them at a later time. I wrote down every question and every decision made and wrote a synopsis of the game to be fully fleshed out on a later date, because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to finish a complete playthrough without my ADHD meds. I have a problem with creating my own structure and how to start a story and am having trouble with my creativity sometimes and in this sense it is a marvelous tool to create your own unique stories. You can combine it with all the sets of the story cubes also of the story worlds so a story set in a doctor who setting or a Batman story is not out of the question.

How would you play it with an established RPG?

First I would use a pre-made campaign or story that the RPG offers and play it solo with untold, dividing it up into episodes of 2 scenes and a few actions. For the actions, instead of the outcome and reaction cards I would use the rules of the tabletop RPG so you can play on your own, but with untold as the DM doing most of the heavy lifting. I have to work this out more, but I will give you more details on how I would do it in a later rendition of this idea.

Also, I will write more of my unexpected tales, for which I used the story cubes now with untold, so expect weird fascinating stories under my unexpected tales tab.