Simple Game. Epic Adventures. U3 Fantasy RPG

Role-playing games are our favorite kinds of games to play. And, yes, that includes the one that started it all: D&D. Problem is, we don't have tons of time to make characters, take an hour for combat, or make every aspect of an adventure. We love all that stuff, but we have jobs, and a kid, and other games we like to play.

So, what do we do when we have a problem with a game we love? We make one that works for us.

Introducing U3 Fantasy RPG. A new, rules-lite, fast-playing fantasy role-playing game that fits in a small box and plays entire stories in 3 hours or less.

10-minute Character Creation

One of the coolest things we love about U3 Fantasy, is how fast character creation is. Each Player Character (PC) can fit on a double-sided poker card. Each PC card has spaces for:

• A character name and description
• 4 Attributes (Fight, Sway, Think, and Explore)
• 1 Specialty (like Wizard, Fighter, Rouge, etc.)
• 3 Items (whatever you want them to be)
• 3 Proficiencies (like innate powers and abilities )

Because players can write in whatever they want, the longest part of creation is deciding what in the universe of possibilities should the PC should have. In all, though, 10 minutes is about all anyone needs to get their PC ready to play.

5-part Story Creation

One of the things we learned form U3 ConEx (and lots of playtests), is that adventures need a skeleton, some things to foil PC attempts at doing things, and a clear beginning. Something we've learned from just playing role-playing games in general is that players will always destroy any cleverly crafted thing a Game Master has created. With those kind of lessons, we kept Story creation really simple and light.

A Story in U3 Fantasy can fit the beginning and 4 key things that need to happen on a single poker-sized card. This makes Stories easy to follow, and gives the Game Master a lot of chances to roll with what the PCs are doing in the game. This has meant more time playing the Story and empowering players to be awesome, rather than forcing them into a particular corner. 

In addition to the Story being easy to make, each Story also has a set of Encounters (people, places, and things) that hinder PC action checks. Each Encounter fits on (you guessed it) a poker-sized card with all the information and Story Details needed to make character lives more difficult.

d20 Rules... Kinda

If we really wanted to, we could totally call this a d20 game. Does it use any rules from the world's most famous RPG? No. Does it use a twenty-sided die (d20) to resolve actions? Yes. In fact, to do just about anything that could fail at in the Story, players declare all the Details their PC has that apply to the situation (like that Dwarven-steel sword, their Fight attribute, and their Fighter Specialty). Then, the Game Master (GM) picks a difficulty level and modifies it with Story Details. Players roll a d20, add any Dots assigned to their Details to their total, and sees if they are at or above the target number. 

So, it has a little of the classic d20 feel (roll a die + bonuses vs target number), but at least half of the crunch. Best yet, if the PC succeeds, the player describes what happens. If they fail, it is the GM's responsibility to describe how the PC failed poorly. This gives players a lot of agency in the game, and makes everything move quicker.

Get Your Copy of U3 Fantasy RPG

If all of this sounds good, then get your copy of U3 Fantasy RPG today. Get the PDFs only, or the physical box with all the tokens, dice and cards needed to play (with the PDFs included for free).

• U3 Fantasy RPG Boxed Game
  ($24.99 at TheGameCrafter.com)​
• U3 Fantasy RPG - PDFs only
  ($9.99 at TheGameCrafter.com)
• U3 Fantasy RPG - PDFs only
  ​($9.99 at DriveThruRPG.com)