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Kingdom
Kingdoms are all around us. They are the communities that unite us.
We're playing with a colony ship as our Kingdom. We're still years from the target system when we pick up the signal. Could this be first contact with an alien intelligence? Unfortunately, it's light years out of our way. This is our Crossroad: do we change course to investigate?
The colonists are excited even if it means abandoning our carefully calculated settlement plans. But by now all the players suspect that Captain Browning (ahem, *Acting* Captain Browning) cares more about looking like a good leader than being one. He's in charge and he wants to keep it that way. My character tells the Captain that the data's conclusive: the signal is definitely not natural. But she also mutters that if we're abandoning the plan and just making things up as we go along, pretty soon everyone is going to want a vote.
I'm Perspective so what I predict is true. A Touchstone character showed us what the people wanted. But the Captain has Power. He decides what we do. And I just told him that if he does what the people want his precious authority is going to be a thing of the past.
Captain Browning carefully straightens his uniform, then flips the switch to make a ship-wide address…
Your Kingdom can be any group or organization that interests you. You could play a Wild West frontier town, a colony ship crawling to a distant star, or a sprawling Empire holding conquered peoples beneath its thumb.
As you play, you'll confront your Kingdom and your characters with Crossroads, critical decisions that may change your community forever. What will your Kingdom do? What will it become? Strive to make your Kingdom live up to your ideals... or watch as it burns.
The Kingdom is in your hands. The question is: will you change the Kingdom or will the Kingdom change you?
Includes over twenty sample Kingdoms to get you started quickly, from the mercenaries of the Banner of the Black Serpent, to the galactic weapon-smiths of Starfall, to the wealthy dilettante mystics of the Eye of Osiris, to the devoted doctors of Sawyer Memorial Hospital.
For two to five players. No GM. No prep.
We're playing with a colony ship as our Kingdom. We're still years from the target system when we pick up the signal. Could this be first contact with an alien intelligence? Unfortunately, it's light years out of our way. This is our Crossroad: do we change course to investigate?
The colonists are excited even if it means abandoning our carefully calculated settlement plans. But by now all the players suspect that Captain Browning (ahem, *Acting* Captain Browning) cares more about looking like a good leader than being one. He's in charge and he wants to keep it that way. My character tells the Captain that the data's conclusive: the signal is definitely not natural. But she also mutters that if we're abandoning the plan and just making things up as we go along, pretty soon everyone is going to want a vote.
I'm Perspective so what I predict is true. A Touchstone character showed us what the people wanted. But the Captain has Power. He decides what we do. And I just told him that if he does what the people want his precious authority is going to be a thing of the past.
Captain Browning carefully straightens his uniform, then flips the switch to make a ship-wide address…
Your Kingdom can be any group or organization that interests you. You could play a Wild West frontier town, a colony ship crawling to a distant star, or a sprawling Empire holding conquered peoples beneath its thumb.
As you play, you'll confront your Kingdom and your characters with Crossroads, critical decisions that may change your community forever. What will your Kingdom do? What will it become? Strive to make your Kingdom live up to your ideals... or watch as it burns.
The Kingdom is in your hands. The question is: will you change the Kingdom or will the Kingdom change you?
Includes over twenty sample Kingdoms to get you started quickly, from the mercenaries of the Banner of the Black Serpent, to the galactic weapon-smiths of Starfall, to the wealthy dilettante mystics of the Eye of Osiris, to the devoted doctors of Sawyer Memorial Hospital.
For two to five players. No GM. No prep.
ebook
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 2, 2021
It is cool to see that there is something playable in the veins of a fiction first approach that also works for more competitively minded people. It is also cool to see that it is adaptable with Microscope, since this one is more focused on a specific period. I feel like it has less amount of freeform, but the ruleset felt ambiguously strict, structured but without clarity, so will probably feel like I am playing the game wrong, if I am to teach this to others.
August 15, 2020
In role-playing games the focus is often on character. Players create their own custom characters in order to explore a given setting or play out a particular plot or solve a particular problem. Even when the character's a pre-generated there is a conformity to the features of that characters skills and abilities, so the focus is often more on the personality and character of the individual.
When RPGs grow into longer term campaigns it's very common for the setting to take on a life of its own with recurring characters and increasingly fleshed out histories and conflicts which many times the players themselves help shape. But what if the focus goes to the setting and its role more than the individual characters? That is the question Kingdom seeks to explore.
In Kingdom the group plays out the life of a community. The community can range from a family to an empire spanning a galaxy. The format and mechanics of the game allow a wide-range of possibilities and its very adaptable to different circumstances. Players play out not truly individual characters, but manifestations of forces within society and how they shape and determine things. So, while they may be a particular character, the King, for example, the King exists to represent the one who decides what direction the community goes.
The overall game is remarkably simple. It seems like with 30 minutes of instruction most people would be able to carry out a session.
I think my big concern about Kingdom is that... I may not be great at sharing to this degree where worldbuilding is concerned. I feel a bit anxious about people including or creating things that I don't enjoy when I'm in a shared creative space. Relinquishing that amount of control could be, for me personally, difficult. I think I would probably have to set more groundwork than the base game calls for just to keep things where I'd want to tell the story and then have the right group to pull it off. This is a flaw of my own character and not necessarily the system itself, but I think when it comes to worldbuilding it can be hard for people to play in each other's sandboxes.
It's a quick read and is probably useful for setting up initial ideas in session zeroes for campaigns or games.
When RPGs grow into longer term campaigns it's very common for the setting to take on a life of its own with recurring characters and increasingly fleshed out histories and conflicts which many times the players themselves help shape. But what if the focus goes to the setting and its role more than the individual characters? That is the question Kingdom seeks to explore.
In Kingdom the group plays out the life of a community. The community can range from a family to an empire spanning a galaxy. The format and mechanics of the game allow a wide-range of possibilities and its very adaptable to different circumstances. Players play out not truly individual characters, but manifestations of forces within society and how they shape and determine things. So, while they may be a particular character, the King, for example, the King exists to represent the one who decides what direction the community goes.
The overall game is remarkably simple. It seems like with 30 minutes of instruction most people would be able to carry out a session.
I think my big concern about Kingdom is that... I may not be great at sharing to this degree where worldbuilding is concerned. I feel a bit anxious about people including or creating things that I don't enjoy when I'm in a shared creative space. Relinquishing that amount of control could be, for me personally, difficult. I think I would probably have to set more groundwork than the base game calls for just to keep things where I'd want to tell the story and then have the right group to pull it off. This is a flaw of my own character and not necessarily the system itself, but I think when it comes to worldbuilding it can be hard for people to play in each other's sandboxes.
It's a quick read and is probably useful for setting up initial ideas in session zeroes for campaigns or games.
May 14, 2022
I THINK this is cool...but I don't feel like I came away with a good handle on it. This might be because of my current difficulty with focus? Whatever the case, unlike Microscope (also by Robbins), I didn't find myself immediately trying to recruit my wife into playing a game of it with me. Instead, I found myself hoping that at some point I'll be able to get into a game with at least one very experienced player. Sure, it's got a lot of explanations and examples, but I came away feeling too unsure of myself.
That said, I think this could be a really cool game for creatively minded friends who want something a bit different from a game night. It's got elements of traditional tabletop roleplaying games, but is definitely on the fringe of that hobby.
I do think you could have fun using this and Microscope together to build a fairly in depth setting/world background and then follow it up by playing a more traditional tabletop RPG in the world you've made.
That said, I think this could be a really cool game for creatively minded friends who want something a bit different from a game night. It's got elements of traditional tabletop roleplaying games, but is definitely on the fringe of that hobby.
I do think you could have fun using this and Microscope together to build a fairly in depth setting/world background and then follow it up by playing a more traditional tabletop RPG in the world you've made.
February 12, 2018
Part of my ongoing foray into non-traditional rpgs/story games. Really cool ideas presented in this one to create the history (and possibly fall) of all sorts of communities.
June 12, 2018
Interesting idea for an RPG. Simple, but original and flexible.
November 15, 2018
This game generated one of my most memorable gaming experience. I love that each perspective can throw the entire narrative in other directions. Another great gem by creator Ben Robbins.
May 7, 2023
I'm afraid I'll never get a chance to play this, but I really enjoyed reading it. What a find!
November 24, 2023
It’s hard to rate a RPG, but I’m excited to try this one out and see how it plays!
May 7, 2016
So, if you've read my Microscope and Microscope Explorer reviews, you know what I think about those. This is like, but not like, Microscope. In Microscope, you're creating something a little more like a timeline, like something that would span a number of books or an extended series the sort of thing you might look up to see what happened in your favorite setting.
Kingdom is more like playing the Game of Thrones.
It does a number of things that are a little more familiar than Microscope: you have a (mostly) persistent character, this character has a role they play and certain information about them written onto a sheet, in a way they are kind of the main protagonists of the story.
What it does that aren't as familiar, even for Microscope, is very interesting: rather than fighting dragons or dealing with Cthulhu cults like so many other RPG protagonists, the main purpose of characters in Kingdom is to manage... well... their Kingdom. What a capital K Kingdom is in this case could range from something you might expect, like King's Landing, to something a little different, more in the order of Castro regime Cuba or even a modern corporation or anime mecha police force. The range of what could be defined as a Kingdom is honestly surprising alone, which is a good thing. It's just a little more complex than Microscope, but that's because it formalizes a number of rules about how players interact with each other because honestly anything you say in this game as your character, even just speaking, can have a serious impact on how the game goes. It's a weird but kind of thrilling idea.
A lot of the game is down to just playing out your character and how they react to the other players, or even deciding to take a certain power away from another character (which is something you can do). Every role has their own sort of power, a very fine control over what direction the kingdom they're part of is going to ultimately take. Characters may change over time as they change roles or affect the kingdom, but the kingdom itself will change as well: characters will have to make decisions and deal with the consequences of them, popular opinion and the various stresses of rulership no matter what form it may take.
What I like about this that Microscope did really well is that the randomness isn't down to dice, it's down to how people find ways to complicate things. There's a great deal of control every player has over their character and the world around them in Kingdom, but at the same time all of the factors that are out of the player's control make it seem, just from the way it's written, like the sort of game that could be very tense and very fun.
What this also does is give more options in the core book. I could have easily seen it being split up like Microscope and Microscope Explorer, but honestly I think that was more just an issue of not having the info (much of which was taken from other people playing the game and figuring out their own neat ideas) rather than any desire to split up information. Kingdom, however, includes the kind of stuff you might have expected in a sourcebook in it's main book, which is excellent, tons of extra options and ideas to change up the mechanics of the game right away, and for about the same price as one of the other books. There are even some notes on inserting Kingdom games into Microscope and vice versa.
Should you check it out? Absolutely, even if Microscope isn't your thing Kingdom seems like it would be very fun and worth your time. There's just enough of player conflict and cooperation to let you add that little bit of fun tension that makes the game really interesting.
Kingdom is more like playing the Game of Thrones.
It does a number of things that are a little more familiar than Microscope: you have a (mostly) persistent character, this character has a role they play and certain information about them written onto a sheet, in a way they are kind of the main protagonists of the story.
What it does that aren't as familiar, even for Microscope, is very interesting: rather than fighting dragons or dealing with Cthulhu cults like so many other RPG protagonists, the main purpose of characters in Kingdom is to manage... well... their Kingdom. What a capital K Kingdom is in this case could range from something you might expect, like King's Landing, to something a little different, more in the order of Castro regime Cuba or even a modern corporation or anime mecha police force. The range of what could be defined as a Kingdom is honestly surprising alone, which is a good thing. It's just a little more complex than Microscope, but that's because it formalizes a number of rules about how players interact with each other because honestly anything you say in this game as your character, even just speaking, can have a serious impact on how the game goes. It's a weird but kind of thrilling idea.
A lot of the game is down to just playing out your character and how they react to the other players, or even deciding to take a certain power away from another character (which is something you can do). Every role has their own sort of power, a very fine control over what direction the kingdom they're part of is going to ultimately take. Characters may change over time as they change roles or affect the kingdom, but the kingdom itself will change as well: characters will have to make decisions and deal with the consequences of them, popular opinion and the various stresses of rulership no matter what form it may take.
What I like about this that Microscope did really well is that the randomness isn't down to dice, it's down to how people find ways to complicate things. There's a great deal of control every player has over their character and the world around them in Kingdom, but at the same time all of the factors that are out of the player's control make it seem, just from the way it's written, like the sort of game that could be very tense and very fun.
What this also does is give more options in the core book. I could have easily seen it being split up like Microscope and Microscope Explorer, but honestly I think that was more just an issue of not having the info (much of which was taken from other people playing the game and figuring out their own neat ideas) rather than any desire to split up information. Kingdom, however, includes the kind of stuff you might have expected in a sourcebook in it's main book, which is excellent, tons of extra options and ideas to change up the mechanics of the game right away, and for about the same price as one of the other books. There are even some notes on inserting Kingdom games into Microscope and vice versa.
Should you check it out? Absolutely, even if Microscope isn't your thing Kingdom seems like it would be very fun and worth your time. There's just enough of player conflict and cooperation to let you add that little bit of fun tension that makes the game really interesting.
December 14, 2014
Kingdom feels very much like it's from the Fiasco school of design. Characters with emotions (hopes and fears), with problems (issues), and with relationships work together to create a narrative.
The innovative thing about this game is that is that the story isn't about those people, it's about the kingdom they live in — by which Robbins means country, city, organization, or other group of people. It's got a scope that goes beyond most interactive indie games.
Beyond that, there's also an intriguing set of roles, where each player has slightly different mechanistic powers.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays.
The innovative thing about this game is that is that the story isn't about those people, it's about the kingdom they live in — by which Robbins means country, city, organization, or other group of people. It's got a scope that goes beyond most interactive indie games.
Beyond that, there's also an intriguing set of roles, where each player has slightly different mechanistic powers.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays.
November 29, 2015
The second game from the creator of Microscope (which is one of the best games of recent years, and I will happily play it at pretty much any time. (Microscope lends itself unusually well to online play, too. Hint hint.)
Kingdom is a game of navigating a community through a series of crises. The community could be the crew of a single ship or a galaxy-spanning empire. It's got a number of very clever mechanics, and a lot more emphasis on role-playing characters and scenes than its predecessor.
I can't wait to play it.
Kingdom is a game of navigating a community through a series of crises. The community could be the crew of a single ship or a galaxy-spanning empire. It's got a number of very clever mechanics, and a lot more emphasis on role-playing characters and scenes than its predecessor.
I can't wait to play it.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews