I’ve had a second edition of Kingdom simmering for a while now and it’s finally in a place I’m really happy with. It’s looking very good. I love playing Kingdom. Love it. My hit rate for engaging and dramatic sessions with Kingdom has always been very, very high. The game itself is great. But the […]
“That feeling when you revise your rules and cut your page count IN HALF.” Spoiler alert: Kingdom, 2nd Edition, is in the works.
A clever player asked me an interesting question: could you play Kingdom with characters writing letters on their turn instead of playing scenes? Very unexpected and very intriguing. The more I think about it, the more I think that not only could it work, it could be fantastic. The one-sided monologue of a letter opens […]
A Jurassic Park-style Kingdom, spawning dinosaurs and showing them off to tourists: what could go wrong?!? We had a petting zoo, dammit. A petting zoo. We were so close to saving the park. So close. But even though we turned a moral corner and decided to start fresh with *natural* dinosaurs instead of the genetically […]
I’m experimenting with a new way to do Time Passes in Kingdom. I removed it for one-shot games in the latest revision, but you can use this new rule in both one-shot and multi-session games: TIME PASSES When it’s your turn to make a Crossroad, you can instead say that Time Passes. Immediately play out […]
Kingdom at Story Games Seattle. When the new Archbishop of the Church of England forbids contracts binding demons to work on Sundays, the senior partner of our firm has an inspirational meeting with one of the founding partners (whose ghost haunts our office). He gets in touch with his inner lawyer, remembers why he started […]
Over the past few years, I’ve heard from a lot of different educators who have experimented with Microscope, Kingdom and similar games in the classroom. They were each trying different approaches, but didn’t have a common forum to share what they’d learned. So when Keenan Kibrick contacted me and we talked about creating a new […]
I released Kingdom three years ago, but every time I play it I’m still looking for ways to make it better. It’s a crowd-favorite at Story Games Seattle so I’ve had a lot of opportunities to try out refinements that streamline the rules and make things simpler, faster and more fun. This rules update includes […]
Time is precious gaming treasure. To streamline Kingdom character creation, I’ve been experimenting with removing Issues and using Bonds to take over that duty. I’ve found it to be faster and actually make better characters, for reasons I’ll go into below. To use this change, simply remove the Issues step entirely. When you are creating […]
If you’re playing a multi-session Kingdom campaign, what do you do if someone can’t make it? How do you play without them? When someone asked this, my first instinct was: never play without the whole crew. Just play another one-shot if someone can’t make it. But then I thought about it a bit… and started […]
The Story Games Seattle crew delivers some stunningly good Kingdom games. This time we played a Kingdom in the style of Toy Story, if Toy Story walked in on Lord of the Flies going to third base with Animal Farm. Playtime Is Over (Kingdom) Is there an award for darkest story featuring toys? Because if […]
A small but important official change to the Kingdom rules. If you switch Roles and leave orders or predictions behind, it’s up to the players who have Power or Perspective during Crossroad resolution to decide whether they happen. Kingdom Rules Update: Uncontrolled Orders & Predictions (one-page PDF) Update: I revised and simplified the text to […]
In Necropolis, you work even after you’re dead. Your corpse is state property, reanimated as a mindless undead laborer. It is an industrialized city-state powered by reanimated perpetual motion machines. If it can be powered by crank, piston, or gear, you’ll find it worked by a skeletal hand. Ryan Deugan was one of the Power […]
For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken … we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants and cause their prayers to […]
I was reading about how during the American Revolutionary War, Henry Knox hauled an entire battery of cannons from captured Fort Ticonderoga 300 miles through the dead of winter to give George Washington’s army the artillery it vitally needed to threaten the fortified British. It sounded like an epic trek: cannons falling through the ice […]