Union Stands Alone

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…

I love Union. Every time I play we get fantastic and really heartfelt stories. There’s something about a family history, where all the characters are connected to each other, that naturally strikes a chord. Because, love them or hate them, we all relate to family–even if we don’t have one.

But because it’s buried in Microscope Explorer, and you have to reference the Microscope rules, Union is harder to get your hands on and play. To fix that I’ve decided to revise Union to be a standalone game. It was always the variant that was the most different from Microscope. It shares some conceptual DNA with Microscope, but really Union always deserved to be its own game.

I’ve already been picking apart the text and revising every bit to be super-easy to teach and play. I really like how it’s turning out. My plan right now is to just release it as a PDF. It could be a book, but it’s short enough that you can easily print it out.

And yes, in that game the unicorn was the other “parent” to the boy, not biologically but as the figure that shaped him by the Union with his mother before their dark, dark Fate…