Kingdom: A Role Playing Game About Communities

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The entire last half of the Kingdom book is full of really clever suggested seeds, how to customize them, the locations involved, the people who influence events, threats to status quo and the crossroad events they will face. There are sci-fi seeds, historical Earth, real world seeds and fantasy seeds. There's even a nod to D&D where you're in a popular 1980s Pencil & Paper RPG company facing some interesting threats and crossroads. If you play just one role playing game this century, make Microscope that game. Microscope is a game that takes many standard assumptions of a role-playing game and stands them on their head." A role-playing game for two to four players. No GM. No prep. Microscope was playtested for two years by over 150 awesome gamers.

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. That's what Kingdom is all about: communities and how the people in them decide what they stand for. You'll sit down together and create any kind of group or organization you want to explore: 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. Microscope is a model of minimalist complexity: with easy-to-learn tools you gain the power to create a believable history that will surprise you even as you're authoring it. Microscope excels as either a stand-alone game or a collaborative way to build a setting with your gaming group for another game entirely."The overall game is remarkably simple. It seems like with 30 minutes of instruction most people would be able to carry out a session. If you play just one role playing game this century, make Microscope that game. Microscope is a game that takes many standard assumptions of a role-playing game and stands them on their head. Players share the creation of an over-arching storyline, like the rise and fall of an empire, the mythic beginnings of human culture, or a bloodthirsty war between interstellar species. It's a unique storytelling engine that sweeps away blinders of limits we enforce on the medium, which, I hope, will help us better realize the full potential of this form. There is so much more we could be doing. Microscope is a great start."

Microscope is a model of minimalist complexity: with easy-to-learn tools you gain the power to create a believable history that will surprise you even as you're authoring it." 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. So while these roles are fairly mechanical as it pertains to Actions Players take in the game, I also find that thinking of your Mover & Shaker NPCs in your D&D game - political games especially - in this way can help shape NPC function to the central tensions of your game. You essentially have the Oracle, the Voice of the People and the Establishment. And these are almost always in disagreement/conflict which is a great way to grease your central tension on an interpersonal level (and thus make it easier for your PCs to connect with what's happening). 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.

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It also adds LEGACY mode, which turns your Kingdom into a whole interconnected campaign. Explore the past and future of your community to see how it changes across time. How long? We've played over 70 sessions of a single Kingdom setting, with no signs of stopping… This new edition is a complete rewrite of the original Kingdom rules to make the game easier to learn and play. Though this is typically a binary proposition (because it's a game mechanic), thinking about and framing central tensions in your D&D village, region, kingdom in this manner seems very useful to me. A role-playing game by Ben Robbins, creator of Microscope and Follow. For two to five players. No GM. No prep.

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. 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. Why, yes, you can! I always try to make games that you use to tell a lot of different stories and play over and over again. Kingdom is always about a community, but you have huge latitude about the group you make and the kind of decisions it faces. This new edition is a complete rewrite of the original Kingdom rules to make the game easier to learn and play.It also adds LEGACY mode, which turns your Kingdom into a whole interconnected campaign. Explore the past and future of your community to see how it changes across time. How long? We've played over 70 sessions of a single Kingdom setting, with no signs of stopping. You have vast power to create... and to destroy. Build beautiful, tranquil jewels of civilization and then consume them with nuclear fire. Zoom out to watch the majestic tide of history wash across empires, then zoom in and explore the lives of the people who endured it.

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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. A role-playing game about communities, by Ben Robbins, creator of the award-winning game Microscope.