I have just had a great Sunday afternoon playing USR with my lads. The rules were a great balance between roleplaying and chaos. 10 Lego figures and a couple of sheets of A4... Perfect!

OK. What can I say other than it does what it says on the tin. However. As a seasoned roleplayer I find it too simple. The perfect system for me was the fantastic movie version of the uni system as used for army of darkness by Eden studios. Because I feel you need more crunch to help define your character and this is what usr is missing. However I wouldn't mind seeing a younger player using them. So in a nutshell. One for the juniors to cut their teeth.

This is a very rules-lite generic roleplaying game and it does what it says: it's unbelievably simple. There are some optional rules to make it more "advanced" but in its heart it is still a very leightweight system.

The rules are clear and intuitive. (Which is a good thing! So many games use "innovative" rules but those hamper gameplay if they are not logical in a game sense.)

You have 4 stats: Action, Wits, Ego & Hits. You divide an array of d6, d8 and d10 between Action, Wits & Ego. Hits are derived from rolling your Action and Wits trait. Every character gets three specialisations which are tied to either Action, Wits or Ego and round up your character. The resolution mechanic is binary: you need to roll over a difficulty rating to score a success. Contested actions are resolved by comparing the roll of both parties. Combat is also quite straight-forward. Both parties roll their Action stat and the difference reduces the Hits of the loser. Weapon and armor may give bonusses or penalties. You may use specialisations in combat. And that's it mostly.

Players will find the specialisations and the optional rule of narrative points useful for customizing their characters. Nonetheless, USR being a rules-lite game, much depends on fleshing out the character with narrative details instead of mechanical traits.

There is not much of a GM section in this short pdf. However, I don't mind because who of us is still a beginner in rpgs? :-)
I would have liked to see a small section on how to create opposition. On the other hand you can just devise opponents on the fly as the rules are fairly simple. (The free setting Halberd has some suggestions if you are interested.)

There is not much to distinguish it from other lightweight roleplaying games like Folklore, Dime Stories or Pulp! EXCEPT the support you get from the author and the community. At the time of writing there is a webzine, a solo adventure, a tongue-in-cheek-fantasy setting I heartily recommend, a mini-adventure and a cyberpunk supplement. Furthermore, there are some other gamers who are adding material like a Sword & Sorcery adaption.

So I can recommend it if you are looking for a very simple and easy game. There is nothing fancy but I favor it over the above mentioned alternatives because of the support material. Check out the google+ community for more stuff: https://plus.google.com/communities/118013867638584244405

At its core it is very tradtional in the sense that it uses a binary task resolution, no descriptive traits or other abstract means which became popular with the rise of games like Fate Core. Because I'm a fan of those characteristics I give USR 4/5 instead of 5/5 but that's personal taste. All in all, the game does what it says. And it's FREE!

A short, sweet rules system, this product is good as is, and provides a framework to hang any type of additional sub-systems you might find necessary off of. While its simplicity and bare bones design might not be everybody's cup of tea, for someone looking for a micro rpg system, this will do the job beautifully.

It says "Rules-lite gameplay that encourages roleplay" and "Role-play centric advancement". I find these two to be untrue and downright misleading, because these two "features" are essentially non-features. It's like saying not having a car in your house qualifies it as a "green" house. There isn't much rule to this, and calling it rules-lite would be an insult to all rules-lite systems out there. Picking up a die and making up your own rules on the spot, write them down on a notepad, and boom, you have a USR.

This product strikes me as incredibly lazy and poorly thought-out.

USR challenges players and GM's to bring their game. The mechanics will give a resolution system for any action which may occur in your game world, but what the game world is is squarely placed on your shoulders. Truly confident, and enthusiastict game players will thrive with this rules lite system. Others, not so much. Therefore the only reason I give it a rating of 3 is because of this gap.

If this review was confined to the above referenced "confident, and enthusiastict game players" it would 5 of 5 stars!

Nice little system for new gamers wanting to get into RPG's. Even experienced players can benefit from the concept of keeping things simple can be just as much fun as complicated systems.

Brilliant, compact, perfect for enjoying actual roleplaying with out scouring tables and charts .

Truly an elegant little gaming system! USR is great for quick one-nighters, or for ongoing campaigns. There's room to customize the rules to fit your group's needs without a lot of complication. The use of different dice also adds a fun tactile and visual element to game play. Well done, Huzzah for The Trollish Delver!

Simple. Compact. Multi-genre. Free. What's not to like? Awesome!

This is a great game - simple, well laid out and very flexible.

I've used it for both a basic dungeon crawl and also as a set of small scale sci-fi skirmish wargame rules and it handled both quite well.

I understand there's supposed to be some genre specific variants released in the future but you don't need to wait - modifying to fit a given genre is already provided for in the rules, it just takes a little thought.

Highly recommended! (and free!)

More in-depth write ups are available here: http://tabletopdiversions.blogspot.com/2012/04/lunch-time-with-unbelievably-simple.html http://tabletopdiversions.blogspot.com/2012/04/usr-skirmish-game-calling-dr.html