Iron Kingdoms Unleashed RPG: Adventure Kit Review

Craig

What does this rating mean?

Posted by Craig on Apr 13, 2016

The role-playing game. To the uninitiated it’s the other half of the “is it more like Monopoly or…” question. To the gamer, it’s a lot of fun if you have the time and a group interested in creating memorable tales and stretching their imagination beyond what the tabletop can show them. For the longest time the initials were synonymous with D&D, but Privateer Press has forayed into the fantasy RPG world with Iron Kingdoms Unleashed, an extension of their popular Hordes tabletop system, and the role-playing world had better take notice. Their Adventure Kit gives an intriguing glimpse into an experience that’s no mere clone of Gary Gygax’s vision; it’s a fully-realized alternative with several innovations that should get D&D fans’ attention.

Unleashed’s best trait is the savage realm of the hordes and the characters’ place in it. In sharp contrast to the strict alignments of D&D, this game creates fully-realized characters sporting unique motivations and goals that alternate between supporting and colliding with the world around them, including their fellow party members. This gray area is the game’s greatest appeal to me. Gone are the days of unsavory characters forced to “do good” to complete the adventure, and players who always found frustration in trying to create an evil or chaotic character and then spend several play sessions either restraining themselves or fighting their own party will be happy to know there’s no need for such moderation here. The adventure included in the kit and the strange collection of characters undertaking it have their own barometers of success, and none could be described as crusading for the greater good, which suits me just fine.

The Adventure Kit is replete with the rules, suggestions and moderator leeway that differentiate role-playing games from tabletop dungeon crawls, and Iron Kingdoms Unleashed gives the game master freedom to add their own touches to the story and bend the rules where necessary to ensure maximum enjoyment for the players. Combined with the moral freedom given to characters, this loose framework creates an experience that feels more like an open world than most RPGs, a wild place where “heroes” can create useful items from the bodies of fallen foes, and may even need to consume those bodies to keep their character in fighting shape. The object of the quest isn’t always a clear blight on the land, and protagonists may turn a blind eye to a razed village on their way to confront the boss monster because, well, they simply don’t care, and the wilds of Immoren don’t require their compassion.

Character progression is another differentiator, eschewing traditional leveling for a skill system where players spend experience points at the end of an adventuring session to acquire new abilities or improve their martial prowess in a far more thematic way than D&D’s piling on of hit points. Experienced fighters are harder to kill because they’re harder to hit, not because they can be hit dozens of times without dying. Or at least, this holds true if you roll well, which, similar to its tabletop predecessor, is the one knock on the Iron Kingdoms Unleashed system.

During combat, the attacker rolls a pair of six-sided dice and adds the result to his martial skill, needing to exceed his target’s defense value to hit the mark. It’s a simple and effective mechanic, but in practice far too many attacks between closely-matched, and sometimes even disparate foes, are at the mercy of the dice, which can frustrate the best laid plans of both party and game master. Early in a quest, when the characters lack formidable skills, the result of the roll can be as large as the initial attack value itself, causing wild swings in combat and wide-spread damage among party members, which, in another nod to realism, is more difficult to heal in the Iron Kingdoms, and the referee’s prerogative to bend the rules in their favor may be the only thing keeping the expedition moving if the dice don’t roll the characters’ way, breaking the spell the game tries to cast.

Speaking of combat, Iron Kingdoms Unleashed includes trappings that bring it alive more than most RPGs, giving those of us who plodded along with graph paper, sketches and imagination in decades past what we’ve always wanted: quality sculpts and colorful terrain to make the battles come alive. Each pre-made character has an accompanying resin mini to move across the tiled game board, with trees to hide behind, ruined cottages to ransack and even a pile of bones to do with as they please.

All you need is imagination, you say? Fine. Leave the shiny bits aside then. Me and mine think they make a great addition to the experience and we’re happy to use them. Combined with a rich narrative, a fully-imagined world where good and bad are what you make of them, and a character creation system that allows players to mold believable fantasy adventurers, Iron Kingdoms Unleashed’s Adventure Kit promises a refreshing RPG experience for new and veteran players alike.