Kingdom, Second Edition
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 rules text? Not so much. I don’t think the rules as written present the game in a simple and clear way, and there are just too many wooooords.
Over the years I’ve made small updates and patches, but there is no substitute for going in with a machete and revising the whole text. So that’s what I did. My goals were laser-focused:
- Make Kingdom easier to pick up, learn, and play, so more people could enjoy it.
- Make the text truly reflect how the game plays.
- Remove unnecessary complexity or any tricky bits that get in the way or distract players. The spice must flow.
In other words, a leaner, meaner, easier Kingdom. A text that reflects the game it has always been. Are there rule changes as part of this cleanup? Yes, definitely. The heart and soul of the game is fundamentally the same but the devil is in the details. I’ll dig more into specific rule changes later.
The net result is that the rules are half as long as they used to be. HALF. It takes a lot more work to write shorter and smarter, but the players reap the rewards at the table because you have less to read to learn the game and less to flip through to find what you’re looking for. Exactly enough to tell players what they need to know: no more and no less. And it looks damn good too.
I’ve already been playtesting iterations of the new Kingdom for the last year, so now that the text is cleaned up the next step is external playtesting, sending the new version to outside groups to try out. Stay tuned…
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Thanks, Carmen! Will do!
I love your games and would like to know when the revised version will be available to purchase it. Could you please include me in your mailing list? Thank you!
@ Admutt: I’m looking forward to seeing how the new version compares! Yes there’s one more checkbox than the number of players, so everyone gets at least one scene with the Crossroad *and* the person who made it gets to go at the end again. More if people check Crisis.
One thing I definitely recommend: shorter scenes. Keeping scenes tight and cutting early is critical in so many story games.
Would it be worth having two Crises and two Tracks? I remember moderating a game for 5 players a few years ago (before any of the rules updates) and have a vague memory of not completing any of the tracks in a four hour session. While the players had fun with their scenes, I don’t think they managed to engage with the greater part of the game. (If I remember correctly, track length is based on number of players, yes?)
@ Admutt: That’s a lot, and definitely more than I would recommend, but it’s worth a try! Off the top of my head, I suspect the more players you have the more the choice of Kingdom will matter. You need something big enough that there can be a lot of dissent, but that’s just a guess.
I can’t wait to get a copy of K2! Where do I mark off Time Passes so I can fast forward to the Kickstarter??!?!!??
I’m also wondering if K2 will work for larger groups? Say, 6 – 8 players?
@ Southmountain: Thanks! Yep, I’m planning on kickstarting.
Interesting to hear about a second version of Kingdom. I just found out about Kingdom a few weeks ago, after looking around for a system that could simulate these kind of stories for a long time (the “small council” meetings in Game of Thrones always called out to me as a great RPG opportunity).
Will this be a kickstarter once the playtesting is done?
I am looking forward to following this project!