Natural 7

Reflections on the UVG

I've been running a weekly Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City 2e game since late January of this year. We aren't really close to finishing the game, but I'd like to share some of my thoughts and observations about both the game and the setting.

Some Context

The Ultraviolet Grasslands (UVG) is a weird science-fantasy mashup. It was written and illustrated by Luka Rejec and serves as a very pretty artbook and setting guide. The UVG is an expanse of wild ruins and strange biological phenomena. The goal of the setting is to allow players to traverse the UVG all the way from the Violet City to the Black City on caravans inspired by the Oregon Trail. In my case, the group's goal is to assemble three Keys to the Stars so that they can build a space ship.

There is a rules system for an RPG inside the Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City, and it fits on one single page. I guess I could describe the system as a combination of FIST, D&D, and OSE, but in reality it's more of a d20 fantasy game that combines your ability to make attacks and roll skill checks into "traits" which give you bonuses to dice rolls and maybe a passive effect beyond that.

My group is using the expanded system rules that were released in a beta version of the Vastlands Guidebook. The full version of these rules will probably come out soon-ish, since Luka just finished most of the writing and art.

The expanded rules make the game a lot easier to understand and give some further examples of what "traits" your character might pick up. There's lots of other character oriented things in the book too, but we don't really use much beyond a smattering of the equipment options and some of the spells (called "powers" in this game).

An example of a trait is Souljuicer - Read people's intentions. Possess their bodies. Milk them of energies and information.

Whenever a player can describe their trait applying to a situation, they get +3 to their d20 rolls related to doing stuff in that situation. When characters level up, they can increase this bonus to +6 and then +9.

Things to Like

The Dice Rolls & Traits

Before running this game I had just finished a D&D 2024 campaign and was a little sick and tired of rolling d20s for everything. However, now that I'm well into this UVG game, I really think the d20 adds some fun to the game.

Being able to offset the variance of a big dice roll with your trait bonus (again, these are +3/+6/+9) makes it really cool when someone is prepared for a situation with a useful trait. This also means I can encourage my players to solve problems very creatively by looking at their traits to see what they could possibly get away with.

Players are encouraged to create their own traits in this game, which has led to lots of cool character concepts being formed. You also might think that this would leave people in different directions, but it's actually helped my players form an relatively cohesive group that cares about the substances that make living beings "alive".

I like this free-form style of play that favors creativity but also has pre-made traits in the book to fall back on. I think my players would enjoy the game less if they hadn't seen some of the strong examples in the Vastlands Guidebook.

There are also other dice rolls that don't get such big bonuses: Saves. When only luck will save a character they roll a d20 and try to beat a 13 or suffer the consequences of misfortune. This means almost any character is vulnerable to bad luck and powerful danger at any time in the game! So, even though my players are getting higher in level and have lots of cool traits, it doesn't mean they can get out of every situation cleanly if luck isn't on their side.

Hero Dice

UVG has a really cool "inspiration" mechanic called Hero Dice. These are d6s which you get at the start of a session and then again every couple hours. You can spend them to modify your dice rolls for the better, helping players succeed when they really, really don't want to fail. Alternatively, you can spend Hero Dice to regain hit points, which helps when the only way to get hit points back normally is to do nothing for an entire week!

Hero Dice are also really useful because lots of the downtime actions in the UVG have tiered dice rolls where different numerical values correspond to better or worse effects. I tell my players what the next highest cutoff is and they can decide if its worth spending a Hero Die to get the next tier for haggling.

I think this is the most popular mechanic among my players. They love gaining and spending their Hero Dice because it makes them feel powerful and gives them a meaningful choice.

The Time Scale

UVG is a caravan-exploration-point-crawl setting. That means the players are constantly moving between locations and seeing cool landmarks. They also are buying and selling bulk loads of goods to fit on their large caravans. To help facilitate the scale of the player's adventures, the game time is tracked using weeks instead of days.

Since we began the campaign, nearly over three months have passed in game time, which is about the same as my year and a half long D&D campaign (which started at level 1 and ended at level 12). Time isn't slowing down for this group though, they've got placed to be and money to spend. I'm pretty certain we'll see a year pass in game time before this adventure is over.

It's not like we skip a lot of stuff with the shift in time scales though, because something interesting happens every week because of the framing of the weekly procedure. There is an encounter and misfortune each week that can affect the party and give them meaningful choices to make.

At the end of the week we make some notes about where the caravans ended up and determine where they head next. This creates a seamless loop that I've begun to enjoy.

The Creativity of the Setting

The UVG is really, really cool. There is something interesting around every corner and you can count on Luka to have drawn something truly inspirational on every page.

When I'm preparing my sessions, I often skim the book for bits of lore to throw into the game, particularly about the current destination of the group. Each destination has cool stuff to find and discover, interesting people to talk to, and weird things to happen to unlucky players. I like this a lot!

Science-fantasy is also my preferred genre of storytelling. I think I have a firm grasp on all the tidbits that make the combination interesting and cool. Being able to describe LED lights in addition to the skulls of dragons makes me happy.

Things to Dislike

The Layout & Writing

The UVG was not designed with the modern influences of Dolmenwood, Cairn, or Shadowdark to help inform its writing. Also, Luka is very particular about how he writes, and sometimes (usually, frequently, always) that writing can be hard to interpret because it's lots of flavor and vibes and not very helpful to someone who just wants to know what the differences between oldtech and fantascience are.

The book is reasonably split into chapters about each destination in the UVG, but I'm not a fan of the use of plain text paragraphs for describing locations and information. I find it hard to skim for the genuinely useful information, and often I end up changing things so that I can actually understand what's happening.

Having the change lots of things makes me sad, and I don't like that I can't always understand what Luka's words are trying to convey about a person, place, thing, or idea. I know that Luka's writing style is specific to him, and I don't expect him to change, but I know that this is a big downside for my preferences in a setting guide.

Equipment Tags

Lots of the weapons and armor in the Vastlands Guidebook (also in the UVG, but there are less of them there) have these confusing little tags attached to them that add bits of tactical or strategical relevance. Oftentimes though, I just find these more trouble than their worth. Every single time someone picks up a new piece of gear they ask "what does intravenous mean?" or "what is reload again?"

Sure, this could just be a skill issue with us taking time to continue learning the system, but also I don't know how much value the tags would add even if you did know what they did all the time.

Trait Passives

I like that traits give you bonuses to rolls. I don't like that many of them give you a passive benefit, because that means my players want all of their future handmade traits to also have passive benefits. Sure, I like to make my own content for games, I'm a game designer after all, but I also like having some space in my brain for other things than helping balance the abominations handed to me by my players.

If there were more trait examples in the Vastlands Guidebook, I think this problem would be solved. If my players ran more games as GMs, I think this problem would be solved. As it is, I'm stuck with lots of questions about "I want to take a trait that does this thing, but I don't know how exactly what to say for it..."

Grr...

Honestly this isn't that much of a gripe, I just want to be lazy.

Final Thoughts

Okay, I mentioned only a few things I like and dislike so far about the UVG. In general, I think the core gameplay system is phenomenal, and one of the best chassis I've ever used to run a game. I also think that the game isn't fully polished. Obviously we're working with the beta version, but I'm not confident much will change when the full book comes out. Maybe I'll be proved wrong though.

I don't really think there's much else I dislike about the game beyond what I mentioned, though there is plenty more than I love. The monetary and experience economics of the game are awesome, the quick monster stat table is great, and the ideas for trade goods the players might buy are really cool and thematic.

Would I recommend someone else buying and playing this game? I dunno, maybe look at when the Vastlands Guidebook is fully completed and see if they have a preview to look at first. The game is great, it's not for everyone, and the setting is cool but occasionally hard to understand if you aren't inside Luka's brain.

Thank you as always for reading, see you next week!

Things on my radar: