Kingdom: A Role Playing Game About Communities

Product Information

I’ve spent most of my life playing roleplaying games at the table, in person. I’ve only started playing online much in the last few years, so I’m no expert, but here are some things I’ve learned so far. I follow the “simpler is better” approach with technology. I want no bells and whistles, unless those […] 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.) 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.

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." 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.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.

I’m the god of fire. I have fire powers”“Fire powers? What are you, a superhero?” We’re in the middle of a game and you need to make up a god. Because you know, we’re gamers, we have to create whole worlds, gods, civilizations on the fly. What do you do? The number one approach […] 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. This new edition is a complete rewrite of the original Kingdom rules to make the game easier to learn and play.This is an excerpt from Kingdom, but it’s a good recipe for making scenes in just about any story game.) The secret to making a good scene isn’t coming up with an amazing or surprising idea. The secret is painting a clear picture so players know exactly what is going on. Being able to visualize […] The Kingdom is in your hands. The question is: will you change the Kingdom or will the Kingdom change you? We play these games together to be surprised and satisfied by ideas we wouldn’t have created on our own. How all our contributions combine is something no one of us can predict. For that to happen, we have to let go what we individually *expect* or *want* and just see what *does* happen. We had […] My first rule of role-playing games is to care more about the people at the table than the story. The players matter more than the fiction. The danger is getting caught up in the wonderful story and forgetting that. 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.