Ulos Universe

To be frank, Ulos isn’t exactly a new world. It first appeared in the board game Hero’s Path, released in 2016 by Thunderworks Games. There, players create the perfect hero for a typical role-playing adventure. Using draft cubes, you need to set your ward’s characteristics (strength, wisdom, intelligence, etc.), acquire suitable traits and skills. A successful combination brings victory points at the end of the game, by which the winner is determined. Of course, the history of the world in “Hero’s Path” is not revealed, but all the illustrations, races and classes are selected so that every fantasy lover feels himself in his native element. The game gained popularity and in the following years it was enriched with additions.

Ulos was not abandoned at this point. Two years after the release of Hero’s Path, ThunderWorks Games released Locked Up, a game of a completely different genre, set in the same world. However, the idea turned out to be atypical for economic strategy: players take control of prison gangs that fight for influence in the prison. To do this, tokens with gang members are placed each round in locations like the rocking room, canteen, infirmary, and so on (and some tokens can be placed in the open, so the strength of the enemy can never be calculated 100%). Then the most reputable gangs take resources from the locations. Thanks to these resources you can create valuable items or pay useful mercenaries. The gameplay is filled with humor: for example, prisoners refuse to go to the “Library” location voluntarily, and golem guards conduct searches, during which the most notorious ones lose victory points. Each player’s tablet is labeled with a brief characterization of his race, and an addendum tells the legend of a great hero of antiquity whose grave may have been under the prison. In this game, the abstract Ulos began to take on vivid details.

Another year later, in 2019, a third game in the Ulos setting was released. “Cartographers” is still considered by many to be the best roll-and-write game in the genre. In it, after opening exploration maps, players need to draw pieces of the explored terrain – forests, fields, and bodies of water. The gameplay is perfect for players of different ages and with different levels of experience, and Ulos can almost be seen in it. The game has collected numerous awards and received several expansions.

Finally, ThunderWorks Games realized that their world was ready for something more. They had never realized its potential, they needed something big, something that would allow players to truly be in this world, to get to know its inhabitants, to influence its history. Roll Player Adventures: Adventures in Ulos was that something.

This is a cooperative role-playing game with a powerful narrative component. Already the introduction tells us more about the world than all the previous games: the kingdom of Nalos is being invaded for centuries by a warlike race of dragoons, the mysterious cult of the Stargate is trying to bring back an ancient god, and you, ordinary soldiers of the Royal Guard, will have to deal with all this. But are they ordinary? You can create heroes from scratch, or you can transfer them from “Hero’s Path”, the very first game, which has the same author with “Adventures” – Keith Matejka. Finally, all these heroes will have a place to play!

For each scenario in the box is a separate booklet with a colorful illustration on the cover. A glance at it and the corresponding field will give you an idea of the story to come: you’ll start in the forests, where you’ll encounter dragoons for the first time, then you’ll visit the capital, and then fate will throw you into exotic places like the underground city or the Kulbak Prison, familiar to those who played Locked Up (where you’ll have to find the legendary tomb, of course). The world is really interesting to explore, though it’s hard to escape the thought that you’ve seen it all somewhere before.

Most of all, well-written texts contribute to immersion. This is often a weak point of board games, because game designers are not professional writers. However, in recent years, board games with narrative are very popular, and creators work especially hard on artistic descriptions. Each Adventure scenario begins with a short introduction, after which the team of players begins to read out descriptions of locations together and make general decisions about what to do next. Whether to talk to NPCs, engage in combat, search for interesting items, or try to use something you already have – each such choice will redirect you to a new paragraph, where the consequences of that action will be described. The texts are filled with humor, and in general Ulos is a very bright and positive place.

The mechanics behind the gameplay are uncomplicated. Battles and skill checks take place by pulling colorful cubes out of a bag (how many to carry depends on the level of the squad). Each color symbolizes a skill: red – strength, blue – intelligence, and so on. In terms of meaning, the checks are tailored to these colors: it is logical that to successfully pass the test of suggestion will require a lot of charisma, and for theft – dexterity. But the dice are pulled from the bag randomly, and it may turn out that this time you were unlucky with the colors and with the values that fell out after the throw – too.

Throughout, it’s clear that the authors were aiming to create a game for those who have never played tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder, but might love them. “Adventures in Ulos” is pretty much D&D without the wizard: an achingly familiar fantasy setting, a character sheet with nearly the same stats, relative freedom of action, cube checks, and a scenario booklet instead of a narrator. Add to that an epic story consisting of several relatively short play sessions (the average game will take about an hour and a half). It’s always been the adventures that have been the main focus in NRI, so it’s no surprise that their mechanics don’t shine with variety. But Adventures is very friendly to newcomers: it’s almost impossible to finally lose here, even the death of the entire squad must happen ten times for the campaign to end prematurely, which is very unlikely. However, for those who like difficulties there are special rules of legendary difficulty mode.

In general, the main conclusions that you can draw for yourself after several games of Adventures in Ulos are as follows: if you didn’t like the game based on one simple mechanic, then narrative RPGs are not your genre. But if you followed the plot twists with interest, searched every corner of the map and sincerely worried about the successes and failures of heroes – then the next step should definitely try tabletop RPGs. They give you even more freedom of action, and the settings and stories that are possible in them are incalculable.