James Sterrett on 7/9/2001 at 01:55
It came up on another thread, but I figured I'd give it its own...
King of Dragon Pass is great! 8)
Website: (
http://www.a-sharp.com/kodp/) http://www.a-sharp.com/kodp/
KoDP manages to combine strategy, role-playing, and Sim(Thing) styles of gameplay into a wonderful package. You play as the guiding spirit of a small clan in a mythical Bronze Age, colonizing a chunk of Dragon Pass. Guide the clan well, and you might wind up eventually uniting the entire area - an event that will not occur (extremely minor spoiler here) through the exercise of military force. Not that warfare is absent - raiding is, in fact, extremely frequent - it just isn't how you unify Dragon Pass.
The "Sim" angle comes from the aspects of the game that are, in essence, SimClan - how much of each crop to plant this year, what nobles to put on the Clan Ring.
The strategy angle comes from deciding on the overall courses of action you clan will take. Time to go raiding, or exploring? Sacrifice to the gods? Heroquesting?
The role-playing is interwoven through all of this. Much of the game is played out through situation which presdent you with a range of options. your Clan Ring (think of it as your cabinet) presents their views on each of them - and some of them have their own distinct agendas! - and you choose, after which the game rolls dice in the background to determine success or failure.... Since the nobles have stats and personalities, there's a distinct role-playing flavor there. Furthermore, the game is heavily steeped in the culture of "glorantha" (based off the RuneQuest RPG), and the better the player can "think like an Orlanthi clansperson", the better the player is likely to do. 20th Century attitudes and solutions often *do not* lead to victory. Orlanthi attitudes and solutions do....
No built-in multiplayer in theory - but put a group around the computer, and watch yourself gain several new additions to the Clan Ring... instant multiplayer as you argue over what to do next. I know Corinne (my wife) and I have a lot of fun playing it this way.
kostoffj on 7/9/2001 at 19:07
Yes, the role playing aspect threw me for a loop. I responded to a lot of situations as I would in real life - generally giving people the benefit of the doubt, trying to avoid violence when I could, and so on. This was not a successful strategy as an Orlanthi tribal chieftain ;). I thought it was great though - talk about immersion factor! That game had better immersion than just about any game I've played, and nothing but text and static images to create it. Only game I know of that simulates the entire way of life of a people in a culture radically different from ours.
David Dunham and gang did an excellent job with this game.
krummi on 7/9/2001 at 20:35
Quote:
Originally posted by Felonious Punk:
<STRONG>That game had better immersion than just about any game I've played, and nothing but text and static images to create it.</STRONG>
Maybe that just the reason, gives much more space for imagination. Just the same reason that books capture the reader more easily than a movie (IMO).
aardvark on 9/9/2001 at 19:38
Thanks for posting this, James.
KoDP is one of the richest and most engrossing computer games ever released. I thinks it's one of the top five best games to come out in years.
And yet this thread dies, sinking lower and lower into the abyss.
Why? Because many gamers can be swayed by hype, pretty boxes, silly screenshots and shallow online reviews, and in doing so actually miss the really good stuff.
King of Dragon Pass is an amazing introduction to the rich and magical fantasy world of Glorantha popularized by the Runequest role playing game. Believe me, you wouldn't want to miss it.
Gamers: If you love fantasy settings and stories or if you simply love good games set in a fantasy universe, be sure to check KoDP out.
Do what James tells you. It's good for the soul. ;)
:bounce:
James Sterrett on 10/9/2001 at 14:00
More on KoDP: one of the things I have to thank it for is my part-time reviewing position at Games Domain. I figured they needed a review, and sent one in. Ironically, somebody else had the same thought just before me, so I was pipped past the post, but they liked the review anyway. 8)
At the risk of mailbombing the forums, the review follows.... it is still, IMO, a rough draft, but it should still convey most of what I wanted to say. 8) Appended to the review is the game's log of one year of a clan's history. The log is NOT very detailed - there's a lot more that happened in those events that it records!
-----------------
Review: King of Dragon Pass
Developer/Publisher: A# (http://www.a-sharp.com/kodp/)
By James Sterrett
Played any good stories lately?
The first problem a reviewer faces with King of Dragon Pass is categorizing the game. Is it, at heart, a strategy game? Or an RPG? Or a SimClan? In fact, the answer is “none of the above” and “all of the above”: King of Dragon Pass is itself, and in the end the category is irrelevant, because King of Dragon Pass (KoDP) is both superb and unique.
In brief, you play as the guiding spirit of an Orlanthi clan which has recently settled into the sparsely populated area of Dragon Pass. Your goal in the Short scenario is to form a Tribe of several clans, and prove your worthiness to lead it. Your goal in the Long Game is to unite the various tribes and other groups of Dragon Pass under your leadership, making one of your clan's members the King (or Queen) of Dragon Pass.
The game's source material is Glorantha, a world used by the RuneQuest and Hero Wars pen-and-paper RPGs. Glorantha's inventor, Greg Stafford, has a solid background in the mythology of a number of human cultures, and used this to create a deep, vibrant background of myth and culture for the world of Glorantha. It is fantasy, with magic and gods, but it is certainly not the usual Tolkien ripoff. Moreover, A-Sharp has done a wonderful job of bringing both the myth and the culture of the Orlanthi clans to KoDP. The manual advises players to “think like an Orlanthi” in order to win, and it is good advice.
Fortunately, the game also does a good job of educating the player in the business of “thinking like an Orlanthi”. The basic background myths are available in the game for the player's reading pleasure, and the 64-page manual is clear, informative, and full of tips for new players. Furthermore, the Clan Ring - a group of seven advisors who are, in essence, the player's cabinet - will offer their opinions on every situation that comes up or action you might take. The Ring is, itself, a source of gameplay. Your clan will usually have around 30 nobles who are personally simulated, each with a set of skills, a god they worship, and, not infrequently, a hidden agenda. You must choose your Clan Ring from this pool. This usually becomes a tricky balancing act. You want to represent seven different gods on your Ring. However, you also want to have the best person for each of the seven skills (Animals, Bargaining, Combat, Custom, Leadership, Magic, and Plants) on the Ring. You also may want to have certain gods on the ring, even though their available worshippers aren't the best at anything at the moment. Get the balance wrong, and you may pay in subtle ways. Or in not-so-subtle ways: for example, if your best leader isn't the Clan Chief, the better leader may foment a leadership crisis.
The game flows through the seasons of the year: Sea, Fire, Earth, Dark, Storm, and Sacred Time. In each of these seasons the player can take two actions, and one or more random events (or events that are repercussions of earlier decisions) may occur. Your decisions will tend to follow the seasons: Sea is for planting, Fire is for raiding, Earth is for the harvest, Dark is for the clan's internal affairs, and Storm is often a last-minute catchall. Sacred Time is two weeks of celebrating the arrival of spring and allocating the clan's magic to the rituals you think it needs to support its efforts in the coming year.
The available actions are numerous. You could reorganize your clan ring, allocate the balance of planting between wheat, barley, and rye, or conduct an emergency slaughter of livestock to stave off starvation. You might explore your territory, or areas far away, conduct diplomacy, send out trading expeditions, sacrifice to the gods, build defences, recruit more farmers or warriors, or raid to neighbors for fun and profit. You might even attempt a heroquest, risking life and limb to tread the paths of the gods for great rewards.
Heroquests are the heart of the RPG aspect of KoDP. In a heroquest, the noble of your choice attempts to recreate one of the great myths by following the footsteps of the gods. This takes place in a deliberately ambiguous amalgam of ritual re-enactment (as seen in the artwork at the beginning and end of the quest) and quite literally attempting to fill the shoes of the gods (as seen in the artwork during the quest). Heroquesting is perilous but brings powerful rewards, and knowledge of the myth you are attempting to re-enact is necessary. As a result, not only are the really important background myths only available through “research” - sacrificing to the gods for insight into the myth - but a successful heroquesting player needs to read the myths and understand both their details and their attitudes. As in the rest of the game, an understanding of Orlanthi culture is important to success, and these myths are fundamental to thinking like an Orlanthi.
The actions you take often put the player into screens that seem, at first, to come out of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, presenting the player with a set of options. However, while the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books soon grow stale, because there is only one right answer, the options in KoDP are rarely so clear-cut. Because of the depth of the simulation, the situations surrounding these events can change the “correct” response even when the underlying event is the same (KoDP has over 450 scripted random events, some of which are linked into a number of longer-term plots, so you will see them again in repeated play). Furthermore, the success or failure of the “correct” response will depend on a die-roll in the computer based on the skills of your relevant leaders - the RPG background popping again.
KoDP is presented by a smooth interface, and backed by beautiful artwork - it won the award for Best Visual Arts at the 2000 Independent Games Festival. In addition, the Celtic-inspired music fits the setting well and carries you into the game without becoming repetitious. There are few annoyances. The game runs in 640x480, and does not force Windows to resize the screen. As a result, it's best to use QuickRes to switch your screen resolution to 640x480 by hand before the game starts. The game also defaults to putting its savefiles in My Documents instead of its own savefile directory, which is pesky if you use that folder for other things. Actual bugs seem to be very few, however, and the game has yet to crash on me.
Still with me? What I haven't explained yet is that KoDP is really good fun. The whole package combines to draw you into the world of your clan. You'll know your Ring members and a substantial fraction of your nobles by name. You'll worry about the harvest with them. You'll fall into the ebb and flow of the seasons, watching generations come and go, trying to buff up potential leaders, drive off your enemies and expand your circle of friends. Most impressively, you will learn to think like an Orlanthi as you assimilate the game's cultural simulation. It's sort of like playing out the saga of Beowulf, learning to become “a ring-giver, and shield of your people”. KoDP combines long-term strategy, a deep cultural and mythological background, and RPG story elements to make a unique and wonderful game.
As a bonus, the game keeps a record of your game in the form of a saga, reminiscent of the Chronicles actually kept by monks in the Dark Ages. These serve both as a reference (when does our truce with the Wolf Clan expire?) and also as a record of games you win. The Saga shows the major events in highly abbreviated form. Herewith a year from the Saga of the Geats:
-------------------------
1343
The god-talkers predicted many piglets would be born this year.
Enastakos's leadership talent was acknowledged to be of heroic level.
We sent Jorator with gifts to the Beaker Ducks.
Humakti warriors sought our help in a war party against walking corpses. We sent warriors to fight alongside them. They said we were honorable, and then departed with our warriors.
We sent Jorator with gifts to the Tanaharts. They were pleased with our generosity.
Men gathered before the ring and said the women were not behaving properly. The other ring members urged Hend to curb his criticism of the women. Hend admitted that his complaints were, by and large, without foundation. He told the men this, and they also withdrew their criticisms of the women.
Outlaws blocked our emissary to the Tree Brother clan. Jorator attacked, but was wounded and had to return home.
Jonrik began the Lhankor Mhy Finds the Truth heroquest. Kulbrast took Jonrik and Rostakos along a short cut. Along the way, Rostakos had to fight many chaos beasts. The worst was a gigantic chaos thing, one whose name could only be pronounced by the dead. Jonrik let Storm Bull fight alone. The chaos creature created a crevasse which Jonrik and his companions fell into. They landed ignominiously in the ritual ground. All three were terribly wounded.
The dangerous rodents came back and bit children and horses. We ordered our weaponthanes to exterminate them. Many of them were wounded, but they said that they killed them all.
A gigantic chaos creature appeared on the boundaries of our tula. It ate some sheep, and scared away the shepherds. We sacrificed to Urox for aid against chaos. While we prepared the sacrifices, the chaos creature ate some of our cows. The god-talkers said the signs were good; Urox would aid us in our battle. We attacked the creature. We slew the creature. It decomposed over a matter of days, and we had to keep everyone inside their steads. Where it died, nothing would grow.
We saw a rainbow; the people were cheered by this good omen. With this blessing, we sought to build friendships. The chief and thanes of the Tanahart clan pledged their friendship to us.
We were raided by the Trolls. We drove the Trolls from the battlefield, striking them down as they fled.
We were able to attract 55 new carls to the clan. They brought with them 89 children.
We sent Barntadus with gifts to the Antorlings. They were pleased with our generosity. They said that we were their friends, and that we could call on them in the future if we needed to.
The Issaries priestess Sora Goodseller came to our clan and asked if we wished to buy a treasure known as the Whirlwind Jar. Sora persuaded us to pay more than we had intended. But we had the jar, to use in battle against our foes.
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buglunch on 10/9/2001 at 14:43
It looks like an interactive comic book with maybe some behind the scenes dice rolling.Is this accurate?
Big Brother on 10/9/2001 at 22:45
This settles it. I can't resist it. This game WILL be my next purchase. No Matter What.
James Sterrett on 21/9/2001 at 03:18
Buglunch: it is, sort-of... but where the "Choose-your-own-adventure" books soon wound up rather static, KODP tends not to be. First off, there *are* dice behind the scenes; second, there is a much greater complexity of stuff creating context for your decisions (different courses of action may be "best" depending on your current goals and status of various things, what skills you have available from nobles, etc amen.); third, the number of events is very large; and fourth, the events are not the whole of the game.
If you want to look at it as interactive comic book, consider it such a thing Done Right. 8)
Melan on 28/8/2012 at 19:01
I wholeheartedly endorse this product. It is consistently great, and has aged very well.
