This is the set-up for Untamed Worlds, an anthropomorphic military Science Fiction roleplaying game published by Osprey Games. It is inspired by such things Band of Brothers and Babylon 5 on television, The Dirty Dozen and Starship Troopers on film, and Albedo and Justifiers in roleplaying. The Player Characters are Uplifts (or the rare Human) who are members of United Expeditionary Force. Theirs is not an entirely happy lot. They have a family in their brothers in arms, but they have limited rights, including the fact they have to seek permission to procreate, are seen as inferior, and ultimately, expendable. The roleplaying game can be played in one of two ways. First, as a straightforward, bullets and bravado military Science Fiction roleplaying game in a series of mission-based scenarios. Second, as a straightforward, bullets and bravado military Science Fiction roleplaying game in a series of mission-based scenarios, until such times as the Player Characters begin to chafe at the inequality of their situation and begin to seek a way out of it or a way to change it. In this it changes to objective-based scenarios with the aims of the Player Characters driving much of the play. However, Untamed Worlds does not support this objective-based play as much as it does the mission-based play, including as it does more detailed advice on creating and running missions and their consequences, as providing several example mission outlines. As a consequence, Untamed Worlds has a lopsided feel, emphasising one style of play over another, whilst leaving the other in the hands of the Game Master to develop in response to her players and their characters. In this way, the mission-based style of play is better suited to the less experienced Game Master than the more experienced Game Master. To be fair, the objective-based style of play is much less structured and open, so is harder to explore, but still, at just about a page in length, it is not up to the task. In the meantime, they will face marauders, pirates, dissidents, terrorists, the insectoid Bugs, and arachnoid Nids, as well as the poor regard of the United Inner Systems Alliance.
A Player Character or Uplift in Untamed Worlds has a Heritage, a Background, and two Specialities. The Heritage is the species from which he is uplifted and Untamed Worlds offers some twenty-four broad species types, from amphibians, bats, and birds to ungulates, ursines, and xenarthra. Within these broad categories, there is room for a player to be more specific. Thus, for the xenarthra, the Uplift could be a sloth, an armadillo, or an anteater. A Heritage provides skills , Tricks, and Permissions, whilst a Background grants more skills and a Trick, and the Specialities, just skills. The Backgrounds consist of ‘Fostered’, ‘Farm’ (an educational facility rather than an educational one), or ‘Feral’ for Uplifts, and ‘Troublemaker’, ‘Dissident’, and ‘Volunteer’ for Humans. The Specialities all consist of military training packages, such as ‘Communications’, ‘Infantry’, ‘Ranger’, ‘Sniper’, ‘Space Operations’, and Vehicle Operations’. There are thirteen skills, each rated between zero and eight, of which twelve are obvious. The less obvious one is ‘CQB’ or ‘Close Quarters Battle’, which covers close range combat using guns, and armed and unarmed combat, whilst ‘Marksmanship’ is for long range combat.
Tricks are one of two things. First, they are innate things that an Uplift might have because of his Heritage. For the xenarthra, these are ‘Armoured Hide’, ‘Hardy’, ‘Keen (Smell)’, ‘Resistant’, ‘Second Skin’, ‘Strong’, and ‘Smol’ (small). Second, they are special abilities that the Uplift is good at such as ‘Ace’, ‘Charmer’, and ‘Trauma Doc’. In some cases, Tricks are mandatory, but most are not. Then there are Permissions. These are simply things that the Uplift can do because of his Heritage. For example, the Hyena has the Permissions of “Sense of smell and hearing well outside human ranges. Excellent night vision. Natural Scavengers.” Permissions are not detailed in the roleplaying game any more than this and there is no mechanical benefit to them. The Uplift simply has them. Yet there is some crossover between Permissions and Tricks. For example, the Hyena Uplift could have ‘Keen (Smell and Hearing)’ Trick, which does provide a mechanical benefit, but definitely does have the “Sense of smell and hearing well outside human ranges.” Permission. The Trick provides an Advantage when used, but what does the Permission provide? Does it mean that the ‘Keen (Smell and Hearing)’ Trick is better than the Permission? Ultimately, it leaves it up to the Game Master to adjudicate when instead Tricks could have been categorised between those available to just the Uplifts from their Heritages and those available to both Humans and Uplifts rather being left in a muddle between what is a Trick and what is a Permission.
Uplift (or Human) Player Character is not difficult. It is simply a matter of making choices in terms of Heritage, a Background, and two Specialities, and then choose from the options they give. Lastly, a player picks some gear for his Uplift.
Name: ‘Baby’
Rank: Trooper 2nd Class
Heritage: Shark
Background: Feral
Specialities: Infantry, Special Operations
Tricks: (Aquatic) Adept, Hunter, Keen (Smell), Natural Weapons (Bite)
Permissions: Adapted to aquatic life (including cold and high pressure). Extremely acute sense of smell. Possesses electroreceptors capable of sensing electric impulses and magnetic field (enhanced by Tricks/modifiers that affect smell).
Skills: Athletics 5, CQB 7, Demolitions 1, Espionage 1, Marksmanship 4, Mechanics 1, Recon 4, Survival 4
Hits: 7
Defence: 6
Carrying Capacity: 9
Mechanically, Untamed Worlds uses what it calls the Lucky 7 System. Any time a player wants his Uplift to undertake an action, he rolls two six-sided dice. Any result of seven or more is a success, whilst a result of six or less is a failure. To this roll, the player adds the appropriate skill, whilst subtracting the difficulty modifier set by the Game Master. The levels of difficulty range from ‘1’ and ‘Easy’ to ‘9’ plus and ‘Hellish’, which means that even the easiest of tasks levies a penalty. Having an Advantage means that the player rolls three dice and keeps the best two, whilst having a Disadvantage means he rolls three dice and keeps the worst two. Having multiple incidences of Advantage adds a ‘+2’ bonus each extra incidence of Advantage, whilst having multiple incidences of Disadvantage adds a ‘-2’ penalty each time. Getting a result of above or below seven generate Effects for each point above or below. Good Effects include increasing damage inflicted on a target or another target, moving to a different zone, adding new information to a scene, shaking off a Hit, and so on. Bad Effects include suffering an extra Hit, running out of ammunition, being a bad spot and suffering a Disadvantage, having some bad information come to light, and so on.
Both players and the Game Master have access to their own pool of Momentum. A player can spend the players’ Momentum to add bonuses to his Uplift’s rolls, but levy them on the Game Master to inflict penalties on an NPC’s dice roll. Conversely, the Game Master can spend her own points of Momentum on improving her NPCs’ dice rolls and levying penalties on the players for their Uplifts’ rolls.
Combat in Untamed Worlds uses the same core mechanic. Initiative is handled narratively with the Game Master deciding who goes first—the NPCs or the Uplifts, and then after each combatant has acted, their player or the Game Master deciding who acts next. The rules also scale up to enable combat between vehicles and spaceships. Each combatant has a pool of Action Points to spend during his turn, typically two for a player Uplift. Actions costing one Action Point include ‘Aim’, ‘Assist’, ‘Attack’, ‘Evade’, ‘Reload’, and more, whilst ‘Full Evade’ is the only action which costs two Action Points. Optional rules enable a player to spend Momentum to seize initiative; costly success for more heroic style of play; critical rolls and fumbles; wounds; non-lethal attacks; and more.
Armour reduces damage, but most armour is ablative. Most NPCs die when their Hits are reduced to zero, but Uplifts and major NPCs suffer a Down status and subsequent Death task checks. It only takes one successful Death task check for an Uplift or major NPC to recover, but two failed ones or a Death task check failed by five or more and they are dead. An Uplift or major NPC who has suffered the Down status can take a Last Stand and take one more action, and as long they keep making the rolls to do so, they can continue making a Last Stand. However, it does get progressively more difficult to do this.
As expected for a military roleplaying game there is an extensive list of arms and armour as well as gear and vehicles, with most modern weapons being electromagnetic slugthrowers, though there are laser weapons available as support weapons. Vehicles include land, air, and watercraft, plus spaceships of various kinds. For the Game Master, there is a wealth of background details that detail the United Inner Systems Alliance, its culture, corporations, enemies (such as Moreau’s Children, the New Reich Conglomerate, and the Blue Skull Brotherhood pirate gang), and more. Worlds both in United Inner Systems Alliance and in the ‘Untamed Worlds’ beyond are described and several secrets of the setting are given ready for discovery by the Uplifts, likely furthering their disillusionment with the United Inner Systems Alliance when they do find out. The duties and structure of the United Expeditionary Force are also covered, and there is not only advice on running the roleplaying game, but also several missions ready for the Game Master to develop.
There is much to like in Untamed Worlds. Both the setting and the military Science Fiction genre are accessible, there are a lot of options in terms what species types that the players can roleplay, and the Game Master is provided everything she needs in terms of a set-up. The rules for the Lucky 7 System are surprisingly uncomplex for what is a military Science Fiction roleplaying game and they are also fast playing. Yet Untamed Worlds hampers this with mundane presentation and annoyingly poor organisation. The rules are simple enough, but they are not organised in a wholly coherent fashion, the general rules mixed with the combat rules. The rules also come immediately after the setting explanation and before the character creation rules, so they are talking about elements before they are explained.
Physically, Untamed Worlds is uninspired. It is text heavy and there is not a lot of art to either break up the text or help bring the setting to life. The majority of the art, all done in a cartoony style that really is quite good, consists of depictions of Uplifts in the United Expeditionary Force service, and that makes sense. Yet that also means that very little of the arms, armour, and other gear is illustrated and certainly none of the vehicles or spaceships are illustrated. Lacking such illustrations means it is difficult to get a feel for what the future of Untamed Worlds looks like.
Untamed Worlds takes a cartoonish concept, that of anthropomorphic military Science Fiction, and pushes it towards an intriguing consequence, essentially that of indentured soldiery coming to the realisation as to the inequalities of their situation and aspiring to do something about it. Unfortunately, the roleplaying game does not explore this consequence in as much depth as it should, especially in comparison to its focus on the anthropomorphic military Science Fiction. Couple this with a dreary layout and confusing rules, and Untamed Worlds is simply not as well realised as it could have been.
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