Rob Zacny

Episode 328: King of Dragon Pass

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I really enjoyed playing KODP. I had a very warlike clan and I aggressively raided my neighbors and expanded my borders. I had around 50+ weaponthanes and plenty of cows and silver goods from trading and finding resources with explorers. I loved creating a blood feud with another clan and forcing them to move away in defeat. Then later I accepted a truce and we became allies, with them being instrumental in convincing other clans to form a tribe. Also, I always screw over the duck people, I just can't take them seriously being raised with Ducktales.

 

Another thing I like about the game is how you learn it over multiple play throughs. Eventually you figure out... oh our children grew beards? I know how to handle that. I guess thats a sign of a good strategy game. It was a bit frustrating when I ran into two major issues though.

 

1. There is a random event that gives you a choice to be allies or enemies with another faction. If you choose to be enemies, they basically wipe you out and its game over. This felt a bit odd to me, as I was doing very well and close to finishing the game. I could either just shrug and start over, or reload and choose to go against my ancestors in order to survive. I didn't like that there wasn't even a battle, I just lost 80% of my clan. 

 

2. There seems to be a general loss of talent as the game goes on. You start out with very skilled clan nobles but as they get old and die you are left empty handed. I found that I had fewer nobles coming of age than were dying, and their skills were all very average. Maybe I was trying to win too quickly and needed to wait another 5 or 10 years for my children (50% of my population) to come of age. Perhaps you are supposed to use Hero Quests to level up your nobles but considering you typically only do that every other year I feel like it would be slow going. Perhaps I just need to learn the system better.

 

I think what makes the game really shine is all the different elements of the game that support eachother. The management system for your farmers, workers, and warriors gets a little tedious after a while, but it is really important to keep your resources balanced. This is because you need resources to get favorable outcomes in random encounters as well as to give sacrifices to the gods and build temples. The sacrifices can help turn the odds in battle, as well as feed the powerful warriors. The warriors are needed to keep your resources safe and to plunder from other tribes. Basically everything is connected and mirrors the seasonal rotation. The mechanics and theme are so intertwined that it immerses you in the world and make you want to actually read through the manual and lore sections to succeed at the game.

 

Its no surprise then, that KODP is an inspiration for the game I am working on!

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this game is the enemy of planning (which is entirely what strategy is about), so it's hard for me to see this in a positive light as a strategy game

 

roguelikes have a lot of the same "stuff happens to you" design, but at least they generally put mechanics ahead of the lore/theme so they work better when it comes to making informed decisions (as opposed to making uninformed decisions)

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The latest Ken & Robin Talk About Stuff podcast has a segment on it; 'Robin' from the podcast is Robin D. Laws, (pen & paper RPG author...), who was involved with both the original and the new KoDP.

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