Getting Started

## Pen & Paper

The genre pen & paper (or role playing) is a game category where players turn into characters, experience adventures and use the game's specific mechanics and world content, all by using pen, paper (or some sheets of them), plus their imagination.

The basic idea is that the players are free to decide what to do and HOW to play. However, a so called game master will tell the players the consequences of their actions. Whereas he is not actively playing along the story line as the players are (since he already must know every detail of the story from the beginning) he acts as a kind of storyteller, describes locations and characters and answers questions of players concerning their surroundings. As mentioned he or she is also responsible to tell players the consequences of their actions and to test their abilities. Additionally the game master can provide sounds and music to create a deeper and more immersive game experience. Above all, the game master should provide a pleasant, exciting and balanced experience to the participating players. This is his most important task and stands above every other rule of the game. The ultimate goal of the game is to create an atmosphere that serves the setting and all players having fun.

## Dice & Skill Checks

One mechanic that is often used for determining the abilities of characters is the usage of dice with more sides than six, such as so called D20 (twenty sided dice) or D100 (either one dice with 100 sides or two dice, one representing decimals, such as 10, 20 and so on, the other one representing digits from 0 to 9. 30 and 6 would be 36.

Unitum also relies on this mechanic and uses the D100 method (with 10 and digits dice). The basic behind any dice system (and especially the D100 one) is that you have a "chance" - based system when testing the players abilities. For example it could happen that a player is trying to fly an airplane. The players character has a specific CHANCE to succeed in this action which is based on the skill set mainly created when creating a character in the beginning of the game. Now you can simply let the player roll both dice of the D100 (-> let them do a skill check) and evaluate the result. The advantage of D100 is that each roll has a specific chance between 0 and 100% to succeed. For example, if my chance (or skill value) to successfully fly an airplane is 70%, the player needs to roll 70 or less to succeed in flying and not crashing the plane. It's always very visual and simple to calculate how your chances are for specific actions.

Whereas the explained system above is used in other role playing games, Unitum is advancing the system here and there. However rolling dice and evaluating the result is still one of the core mechanics of this game.

## Materials

If you prepare to host a session of Unitum, you should prepare enough sheets of white paper to print and hand out the Character Sheet and Talent Tree Sheet for the players. Additionally it can be useful to print out one sample of each class + destinies, as well as the Field Overview so the players have a better overview when creating their character.

Since all story elements exist in this wiki, there is no need for the game master to print out story content, if you are using a laptop / tablet when mastering. Actually I think it is even much easier when mastering with "digital" tools, since you have access to many little helpers, such as links to jump to (e.g. jump to specific characters or location when questions pop up and so on), you have the good old internet (for details and facts you don't know yourself, and you have a tool to control sounds and music for the adventure. Since you are the only one using digital stuff, I think you don't destroy the classic "pen&paper" vibes.

Please make sure that you bring enough D100 dice for the players, as well as some D6 dice. Even though it it's not necessary to have own dice for each individual player, it is recommended since it is somewhat irritating to pass around dice all the time, and it has a nice feeling to each player that he or she is using HIS dice when doing skill checks and so on. It just creates a deeper feeling of being self-responsible for your actions and consequences.

Of course you can also ask the other players to bring their own dice if possible. Maybe they even prefer to play with their "fellow" ones.

You can find all materials needed for Unitum in the "Materials" tab of this site's navigation.

## About the Setting

The story of Unitum takes place in our world, in our current time. The game was designed to start in spring 2019, but you can adjust dates as you like.

In spite of playing in our world as we know it, players will perceive it from a new 'perspective', and they will see (and be confronted with) things they most likely wouldn't in their ordinary lives.

Almost all elements of the game are something that at least some group of people on our planet believes in. This means, there are 'Dan Brown-like' elements in Unitum, like common world conspiracy topics, secret societies and religious lore, as well as some 'Cthulhu' elements (in the form of mythical creatures and paranormal entities), as well as some adventure elements like in Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider or Uncharted (in the form of historical mysteries, dangerous places and dark secrets that need to be revealed).

Unitum basically has the approach to 'unify' and to combine all those common legends, conspiracy theories and mysteries into one big adventure, answering the question, in what world we would live in, if all the things that people believe in, were actually true.

## Character Creation

As mentioned every new game of Unitum (and most of any other role playing game) starts with the players choosing who (and how) they want to play.

Please see the Character Creation page for the next steps.