Union

The unicorn befriends the young mother, but penniless she is driven to betray it, leading a wealthy noble to trap the beast for a pouch of gold, a sin that grieves her until she is old and grey. But the unicorn is not so easily caught…

Her son goes forth and leads a hard life in a world that has no need of him.

But is he really so alone? We see that no, despite the betrayal of the mother, the unicorn has watched over her child from hiding, protecting him in this dangerous world. But she dies never knowing…

Union is a game of family and ancestry. You'll start by creating the end of the story, a single hero who confronts some problem facing the family or the society as a whole. Then you'll jump back and forth across the generations to see how all their ancestors' lives made the hero who they are.

The path of each ancestor and how they came together to make the next generation is a tale all its own. Some of these unions may be happy, some sad. Some triumphant, some tragic. Some long, some terribly brief. But whatever the fate of each ancestor, we already know that the family’s story will continue…

You can use Union to create stories about wizards and god-kings or small town heroes just trying to keep the library from shutting down, because ancestry is something we all share. We don't all have families, but we all have ancestors.

This is the second edition of Union: the first was released as part of Microscope Explorer but it was always a very different game than Microscope. This new and improved version has been rewritten as a stand-alone game.

No prep, no GM, two to five players.