Review: Unsung

First and foremost, Unsung by Kirt A. Dankmeyer is a game of its time.

Rapidly approaching its 20th anniversary, the game

proudly bears the influences of 2005 RPG culture and, for better and for worse,

American culture. The credits section thanks the members of the Forge in general,

and Ron Edwards in specific, highlighting his game Sorcerer as being a major source of inspiration. The then-upcoming Spirit of the Century is being advertised in the back.

That is a context I can’t fully grapple with, because I was, at the time, five, meaning that it is perfectly within my cultural blind spot. All I have going into this is the Game Study Study Buddies episode about the Forge and half-remembered snippets from other podcasts.

How to Play

This is Candy, a swat sniper who's married to the mob. She's our example PC throughout this book.

So, what is Unsung? At its center, it is a game about people trying to hold on to their morals under stress. The game suggests a variety of different genres near the end, from fantasy to Western to Cyberpunk, and the rules are generic enough to comfortably accommodate anything within a certain tone, but especially highlights (in its cover, its examples of play, and the media in its inspiration list) law enforcement officers and soldiers. Those characters are composed of six Traits (basic statistics) ranging from 1-19:

1. Savvy: Your book smarts and experience
2. Sense: Street smarts, perception, etc.
3. Guts: Your ability to act calmly under pressure and handle stress
4. Meat: Strength and toughness
5. Responsibility: The character’s ability to stick to their moral code (everyone has one)
6. Instinct: Short for Killer Instinct, used for “cold animal cunning” and stealth and stuff. This Trait is generated based on Responsibility, with the two adding up to 20 (so if you have a 15 Responsibility, you have a 5 Instinct)

The basic resolution mechanic is d20 based; roll under the relevant stat, with a bonus or penalty based on the team’s priorities during a given Mission. At the beginning, the moderator will provide them with four or so Key Things (rescuing hostages, catching the bad guy, etc.) secretly ranking them in order of perceived importance (being realistic, the game highlights that it shouldn’t be random or arbitrary). The players then also rank them, and the closer their ranking lines up with the GM’s, the more bonuses during the mission and Retirement Points (currency with which to unlock the ability to define your character’s ending) you get at the end. 

So far, this is all fairly simple, so where does the holding onto your morals part come in?

The Gift Economy and Philosophy of Play

A good Unsung PC is not just an expression of the player, but also a fun action figure for the other people at the table to play with. The reason for this is the Gift system. During the course of play, other players can offer Gifts, changing the situation to challenge a character’s morals. Both the GM and the player have a veto on the Gift, but if it is accepted, the person who came up with it gains a Gift Point (which can be spent on rerolls and stat adjustments and other things) and the character makes a Responsibility check. 

On a success, the character continues to do what their player wants them to do. On a failure, everyone else collectively decides what the character does (the rules are explicit that the player who accepted the Gift has no say, though they are encouraged to offer suggestions and details). After that…the character has to live with the consequences.

 

This is the heart of Unsung, and a good litmus test for if you’re going to enjoy playing it: are you comfortable with the idea of sometimes randomly losing control of your character while they do horrible things? If you are, and love eating up the delicious delicious drama, then go for it. If not, well…you’re probably not gonna like it. 

Unsung obviously isn’t the first or last time this discussion has been had. Loss of player control has been a thing since the early days of the hobby, and more recent games like Greg Stolze's Better Angels have continued to make that into an explicit part of its mechanics and setting, but Unsung does a lot of groundwork and framing to make it clear this is part of its intended fun in a way that is helpful to people new to the idea. 

And that newness is a key thing. Again, Unsung came out in 2005. Concepts like “Play your character like a stolen car” (℅ Monsterhearts) were (probably, I was, again, five) a lot less prominent within the TTRPG mainstream (or at least the people I follow on Bluesky). As an introduction to these concepts, I think Unsung does a great job, and is well worth a read just to introduce you to the concept. All that said…

Caveats

I’m not here to “cancel” this game or whatever, but Unsung is an explicitly political game intended to be used as a means of exploring sensitive issues in a mature way, and I think it is worth engaging with it on those terms. Keeping that in mind, I’d first highly recommend those looking to play the game do so with some modern safety tools in mind (whether that be the RPG Consent Checklist, Lines and Veils, or your homegrown equivalent), just because these types of experiences can get fairly intense. I'm sure they would have been recommended had they been available at the time, and the game even has its own built-in-one via player veto of Gifts. 

Unsung is a game of its time, and is explicit about its influences, whether that be Law and Order or Full Metal Jacket (or some noir classics like Chinatown). What comes out of this is a game about people in positions of power (again, character creation explicitly highlights the two main options as soldiers and LEOs) who do horrible things to themselves and others and how they are affected.

This is not necessarily horrible violence, but the examples of play do tend to frame it that way. A game dedicated to “everyone who died for what they believed in, and especially those who died for someone else's principles” leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth given the very real atrocities that the United States was committing in the name of protecting freedom and combating terrorism at the same time under the guise of "making the hard decisions."

A lot of the art in this book is snipers

This is not a damning thing. I play Dungeons and Dragons, a game rooted in colonial violence and racializing other sentient beings, in part because my culture has raised me to view those things as fun. But it is worth noting, if only because without doing so we risk falling uncritically into those same cultural traps. Turning up the melodrama is fun as hell, and I think Unsung still works beautifully, even all these years later, at getting a group used to more traditional games to consider others. I know that I'm gonna be thinking about it a lot, and I wish I had a group I could run it for.

Unsung is available on DriveThruRPG and itch.io as a PWYW download.