How I discovered RoU
I started following Dice Geeks on Twitter some time ago for the tweets, blog posts, and RPG content. Dice Geeks is a great content provider, so when I saw the tweet about Realms of Understreet with that magical rat floating on the cover I knew I had to check it out.
The setting intrigued me; it brought me back to movies of my childhood like The Secret of Nimh and Watership Down. And having this story stretched across the 5E OGL framework made it very accessible. So I jumped over to DriveThruRPG.com and snagged my copy.
What I Found in the Materials
Matt Davids of Dice Geeks wrote this pre-release RoU campaign setting as a kind of market research project. There are a few incomplete sections in the pre-release version that explain that more work will be completed if there is enough community interest. And apparently there was interest because Matt is working on the full setting now, you can pre-order it here. (Now Released Click Here!)
The pre-release setting may have a few bits and bobs missing but there’s enough meat on the bone to get your inner DM boiling over with ideas and begging for more. This setting’s racial re-skins, gear descriptions, and the Common Rat Names draw you underground and pull you into the sewers and caverns of the Understreet. I was quickly inspired by paragraphs like this one from the Repurposing Items section.
“Plastic bottles become houses. Bits of cloth become tunics and robes. Pieces of metal become armor and swords.”
These simple words lit a fire in my imagination of all the things that could make up the rat kingdoms. Before I knew it, I was piecing together a mental picture of Scrimpin Village, my first township. Which of course leads me into the next thing to get excited about, the kingdoms that actually make up the Realms of Understreet.
The rundown of the neighborhoods of Manhattan and how they relate to the Realms of Understreet is a lot of fun.
You are taken through a brief summary of each Kingdom, including the movers and shakers as well as some history and cultural information. I read through the Kingdoms from start to finish and as I did I imagined rat heroes traveling from one city to another. I thought about all the great villains of these regions and the terrifying creatures hiding away in the dark of the wilds.
I made notes as my rats traveled and battled through Matt’s mind-scape and by the time I finished reading the Kingdoms list, I had the basic framework of my first RoU campaign.
My Realms of Understreet
I’d like to tell you a little about my RoU campaign now but keep in mind that the pre-release setting doesn’t have a lot of lore available yet. I’m just warning you because I am very likely about to butcher the creative intentions of Matt Davids!
The beginning of my campaign is anchored on the idea that in the past the rats, mice, and other critters under Manhattan lived in tribal societies. At present, these creatures live in a social structure much closer to feudal, medieval Europe.
However, in the North there are some villages that still practice a coming of age ritual held over from tribal times. The trials in the ritual are intended to prove the worth and metal of wannabe adventurers and, at least in the North, to provide a kind of adventuring license to the successful participants. Without successfully completing the Trials, many respectable options for adventuring may not be open to adventurers.
The adventurers begin in Scrimpin Village and find themselves grouped together through a test of sheer physical will. Once the parties are formed, the group is sent into Filcher’s Canyon for a simple camp out.
They have two instructions:
1. Find your campsite,
2. Come back alive.
Easy, right?
In the Realms of Understreet, spiders are something like wolves, and Filcher’s Canyon is full of them. During our first session, the party couldn’t make it to their campsite before encountering a group of Black Widow Hatchlings and they encountered more once they found their site.
They also met a friendly bat that enjoyed devouring the spider remnants left over from of the party’s battle. They enjoyed the goofy old bat and I enjoyed tossing my own sentient creature into Matt’s world.
Since then, the party has wandered a bit and happened on a long forgotten dungeon then nearly lost their Rogue to a Giant Sewer Rat Zombie! This is as much as my players know about Filcher’s Canyon at the time of this writing so I’ll stop describing it here, I wouldn’t want to give anything away.
Suffice to say that after three sessions, the party is working on this first trial and they still have two more trials to go.
The Player’s Experience
The players in my group are made up of varying degrees of experience in table top RPGs. One player is an eighteen-year table top veteran while another is a brand new first timer. And so far, the experience has been great. You know it has gone well when your players want to hang around after the session and talk about it for an hour. You REALLY know it when this happens at 1:30 AM and everyone is tired but still excited about the game.
After the first session, our veteran role player was really excited to find out what was coming next. And our first-timer, who had started the night unsure of what to expect and a little nervous, ended the night as a convinced little Mouse Rogue and a big Table Top RPG fan.
Now it’s true I have been role-playing and running games for some time but I cannot take all or even most of the credit for my player’s enjoyment. Most of the credit must go to this great setting that sparks the imagination and challenges you to look at the world from a new level. I personally intend to keep an outlook on this environment that is dynamic and open.
That’s what the Realms of Understreet do to you, they challenge you to imagine your scenery and then re-imagine it as a being that’s only 6 inches tall.
Final Thoughts
This was an easy buy for me. It took hold of my imagination, glued some whiskers on it, and handed it a sword. I don’t believe that I could ask for much more than that.
I love horror and fantasy and this setting provides the possibility of both. And while the familiarity of the 5E OGL provides you with a system you know and love, the RoU skin wrapped around it breathes new and interesting life into your tabletop session.
Would I suggest this setting to you? Yes, definitely. I’m looking forward to the more complete Realms of Understreet setting myself. So yea, if this sounds even a little interesting to you, I would absolutely suggest it for your own group!
The Author
Ty Rucker is a gamer and game designer. He has played tabletop role-playing games for over twenty years and is the VP of Design and Publishing for Crypt Monkey Studios, LLC. Most recently, he is the Concept Creator and Co-Designer of the Crypt Monkey Studios title Jack the Ripper, a social deduction and bluffing tabletop game.