Kingdoms Forlorn: A Preview & Overview (Patreon)

Kingdoms Forlorn, an upcoming game from Into the Unknown Studios has between 1 and 4 players taking the role of a specific knight in a series of dark fantasy kingdoms. This place was once ruled by the Grand Kingdoms; and things were joyous until the Kings stopped listening to the Good Church and ignored the warnings that its Pope was proclaiming.

Soon, the land became cursed and a deep fog rolled in, isolating the Grand Kingdoms and shrouding them in an inaccessible mist which lingered for many years. Around this mist the previously weak Border Duchies grew in strength, the Church returned and things began to once again return to some form of normality.

Then the fog lifted; and the previous Grand Kingdoms were revealed to the world once more, but now they were changed, twisted in strange ways with inhabitants and rulers that were alien to the people of the Bored Duchies.

This is Kingdoms Forlorn, a game that tells the stories of the Principalities which fell under the curses and the Knights who explore them.

I have been one of the fortunate few who received a demo copy of Kingdoms Forlorn, and I've spent nine days with its material; both reading and playing it as exhaustively as I can with the goal of being able to give you readers as comprehensive an overlook of this upcoming Crowdfunded game as I can.

Kingdoms Forlorn is a Cooperative AI Boss Battler (CABB) at its heart, and it firmly falls into the CABB subset of Boss Battlers while also providing some new twists to the experience. The game's core loop revolves around two main phases; the Delve, where the group of players will control the knight party as they collectively explore the given Principality in search of clues to help them advance their personal goals; and the Clash, where each player will control their own specific knight in a classic CABB battle with a twist that sometimes the battles will be against a group of enemies rather than just the traditional singular boss (with sometimes minions) that previous offerings in this genre have aimed to lean on.

In this demo; there are four knights to control – The Fleishritter (yes, I know) a brute of a knight who seeks monsters to feast on them. Renholder a wizard knight who converses with an unknown power, Kara, the self proclaimed  'last of the Wilder Knights' who's home village has been petrified; and Syr Sonch, an elder knight (plus his pet monkey Little Ser), a man driven by the destruction of his estate when the Black Dragon attacked it.

In the full game each player can control as few as a single knight, allowing for solo players to take as many knights as they're comfortable with. The game's mechanics also aim to allow for drop-in, drop-out play where others can join your game for sporadic sessions, using their own personal knight when they do so and advancing their story, developing friendships and changing the world as they make decisions.

The Knights

Each of these Knights in the Demo has the following elements to them:

• A Knight Miniature
• A Character Board detailing statistics and abilities
• An Attribute Tracker that keeps a record of their Vigor (health), Heat and Passion. These are the ones which change during a typical delve.
• A selection of battered starting gear
• Some tokens that relate to abilities; such as a Little Syr token for Syr Sonch
• A Knightbook that holds the character's story events
• A character sheet where you record changes to stats and log various significant decisions/events
• Knight specific Mortis and Exploration cards
• Knight specific ability cards, which have two sides; one for use during the Delve phase and one for during the Clash.

For example; here is Renholder's cards and suggested starting loadout for this demo.

Renholder is a Wizard Knight, as a consequence; he has far more ability cards than the other knights and is therefore more complex than the others to operate. The other Knights have less Ability cards and a different focus to their kit. You'll see the other starting load-outs further on in this piece.

This is what a Knight's Sheet looks like, I have used the example from the book here because it already has each section labelled.

1. Is the Knight's Name, below it is some flavour text that tells you a little about the Knight's background.
2. This is the Knight's Class, not all Knights have a class. In the Demo only Renholder and The Fleishritter have classes. A class is a keyword, it doesn't do anything itself per-say, but it can be referenced by other cards, such as being required to use certain gear.
3. These are various areas where ability cards will go when used. The Sink is a 'removed from the Delve' pile which cannot be recovered, where as the Sink Pile is a temporary place for them and the Delayed area holds the cards for a little while before they return to the Sink (before coming back to your hand).
4. Speed – number of squares your knight can move during a Clash, this is 4 for all the demo Knights, but it can change.
5. Starting Vigor – this is your health/life at the start of a delve, run out of it and you might die. If everyone dies at the same time, the Delve is over.
6. Knight Power Dice – this is a dice that is added to your weapon's dice when you attack
7. Hand Limit – the maximum number of ability cards you can have
8. Card Refresh – how many cards return from the sink when you reach a refresh step during a Clash
9. How much heat you lose each refresh step
10. Your Knight's skills for when a skill check is called by events.
11. Knight abilities that can be used during a clash
12. Peril Arc – this shows you what type of Mortis card you have to draw when you're wounded by an enemy.
13. Heroic Arc – a set of bonuses and abilities which are gained when you attack based on your current Passion level.
14. The spot where you keep the Attributes Tracker

The Peril and Heroic Arcs are modular, you can get alternative Heroic Arcs unlocked and then a knight can choose to use one of those instead when you first use them. This can increase your Knight's starting Vigor above the amount printed on the sheet.

A Knight also has Gear cards, with slots for two hands (either two weapons or a two handed weapon), an armor slot and two backpack slots. There is also a hard limit of no more than two copies of the same gear being in a party.

Weapons and Armor

Weapons have six key elements to them, they are:

Type (One handed, Two handed, Armor, Backpack)

1. Name – for flavour
2. Weapons only – Offensive Stats, broken down into number of dice you roll when attacking, accuracy bonus for the attack and the number of power dice each hit generates (which is added to your Knight's innate power dice)
3. Ability Box – in the Case of the Dented Breastplate, this provides one red dice you can roll when attacked in order to prevent a point of damage.
4. Abilities – such as what tokens you leave in the Knight Pool for later knights to benefit from, or other combat tricks.
5. Keywords, which may be relevant if referenced, but otherwise do not do anything.

Heroic & Peril Arcs

A Knight's Heroic Arc determines what bonuses they get based on their current Passion. Passion increases when attacking, determines who the Priority Target is (it's basically a tiebreaker mechanic for targeting) and what bonuses you get when attacking. The Scholar Arc at Passion 1 for example gives a Catalyst when attacking (more on tokens later) and the option to use the ability Hug 1. An ability that lets you reposition during an attack, as long as you remain in contact with the foe(s).

At higher levels of Passion you gain access not just to the bonuses for that passion rank, but also all ones that came before it. This is how your Knight escalates during the fight and becomes more dangerous/powerful. As we can see, at Passion 5 the Scholar gets a bonus power dice when attacking!

In contrast the Peril Arc controls the limit of your heat and also what Mortis card you must draw when you are wounded. This is based on your current Vigor level, as we can see the Ardent Peril Arc starts at 4 Heat when unwounded, and climbs up accordingly as the Knight gets closer and closer to death.

Also, when a Knight is wounded, they will consult the Peril Level that they are now at and then draw a matching Mortis card. These are (in increasing order of danger) Minor → Major → Grave → Judicium. A Knight on 0 Vigor is not automatically dead, they have to draw a Judicium card and may, against the odds survive until another blow. Yes, you can be on 0 Vigor and still in the fight!

The Mortis, Judicium, Condition cards, Power Dice and Dice

If a Knight does succumb to their wounds and dies, this is not the end for them, as long as at least one Knight survives – the other Knights will resurrect after the Clash, Death is not a final end for Knights in this game, but there are other penalties for dying that you will discover while playing.

If all the Knights die, the entire expedition is lost and while the Knights will recover, they'll have to start a new expedition from scratch (after experiencing anything causes by the loss).

Ability Cards

In addition to having abilities printed on their Knight sheets the Knights also have ability cards. They are double sided, with one side for use during the delve portion and a second for use during the Clash. This is what they look like:

Reholder Ability Cards Delve side

Renholder Ability Cards Clash side

These cards can be used at certain times for various benefits and then they may go to one of three different areas where they can return to you hand during a Clash (or not).

The Delve

During the Delve Phase, players will navigate around the Principality they have chosen to explore, this is done by drawing cards from a variety of decks that hold different sized cards. Each card has up to four cardinal compass rose directions (N,E,S,W) and each available direction will have icons indicating what clues (if any) will be gained from moving in that direction and what size card you will travel to, the players will be seeking to gain a certain number of clues from particular categories. In the demo you're effectively trying to get four of each coloured clue if you want to complete every Knight's story as best as possible. However, other effects can occur.

The timer in the Delve is determined by the Exploration deck, at the start this is a Principality specific deck that is shuffled up into two piles with any Knight's personal Exploration cards split between them. The first pile is a timer until the Mob clash against the Ironcast Dead, we'll look at the Clash phase after this, the second pile is the timer to find a place where you can initiate a Clash with the boss of the Delve (this usually requires the largest cards to be revealed). In this case that is the Egg Knight. However, if the second pile is emptied before you start a clash, then the delve is lost – though individual knights may still have achieved personal goals.

Also, as you move around the threat level can increase (or decrease) depending on the size of the new card you are exploring to (small cards reduce threat, larger ones increase it by more) and if Threat goes past 10 then you'll lose the delve. Also curse levels can be gained through actions, events and if that goes past 5 then you'll lose the delve. There are also some additional effects, mostly harmful, that can happen at higher threat/curse levels.

Here is a sample of the possible layouts you can achieve by exploring the Principality of Stone in the demo. Each new card when explored is placed so it is in the same orientation (with North and all text orientated the same way) and the entry path is lined up with the exit path from the previous card. The blue gates you see are Panzergates, and they are specific to this Principality.

Whenever the party moves onto a new card there will be an exploration phase where a card is drawn from the exploration deck. You can also backtrack, which will not trigger threat changes and various symbols on the travel, but some Knights may have additional effects that happen – the Fleishritter for example suffers a random effect whenever the party backtracks.

This card will cause some kind of effect themed to the Principality you are in, or the Knights involved in the delve. In the case of The Principality of Stone, one of the main effects are these 'Panzergates' which block off passages and are difficult to remove.

Also during this phase Knight story sections may be triggered (usually by reaching certain clue thresholds and/or locations), at this point you'll refer to the Knightbook and follow the instructions given there. This book may also include additional delve based special abilities your Knight can have. For example Syr Sonch can engage in scouting at “Points of Interest” (A type of location marked with a sign that has a ! on it). During a story section the Knight's involvement/interest with the particular Principality is explored and you will roll for tests and make decisions.

Also the Knight ability cards have a Delve side to them and they will allow you to do additional things during the Delve portion to help manage threat, control Panzergates, heal and so on. If they are used here, they may be unavailable at the start of the next Clash, or even unavailable for the rest of the expedition – so there are multiple costs involved in using these cards and you will have to weigh the benefit of the Delve effect against the opportunity cost of using the card now over saving it for the Clash. Yes, you may well start to suffer from 'too good to use' syndrome!

The Clash

There are two kinds of Clash in the Kingdoms Forlorn demo, the first happens halfway through the delve and it is against a new kind of 'Mob' enemy. A numerous enemy represented by acrylic standees (think VagrantSong) made up of individuals who can have varied traits that you discover when you attack them, also they can activate more than one individual per monster phase. Meaning that they will use multiple AI cards before the Knights get another phase.

The Monster Phase

Mob monsters are not very durable, once they are wounded they are removed from the Clash and once enough of them are removed, the Clash is won. In the case of the Ironcast Dead, they like to push the Knights around into optimal placements for ganging up, where they will gain additional benefits for surrounding the knight they are attacking (mob justice!)

Return to E G G

Boss fights on the other hand are against a singular individual who will require multiple wounds to remove. The Eggknight is the boss of this particular demo Delve and it is a weird and mysterious denizen of the Principality of Stone, one that the Fleishritter very much desires to eat. During the Clash it uses its bulk and heavy armor to charge down the Knights and employs a mixture of brutish bashing, sword play and even some horrible egg themed surprises that I won't spoil here.

The combat for both types of monsters uses the same framework, one which should be familiar for those of you who have played the Aeon Trespass demo on Tabletop Simulator. But I will outline it here for those of you who are not, it has some similarities with other CABBs, but also key differences.

The Clash board. I'm afraid mine got a little warped by moisture, so it's not photographing as well as it looks to the naked eye.

After setup The Monster will go first, drawing one of its six Level 1 AI cards and performing the actions. These cards provide a list of potential targets and you will move down the list until you find a Knight that fits the category. If there are multiple targets that fit, the monster will choose the one that has the Priority Target if possible.

Sample AI Card.

You will then perform the action, often this is the monster turning to face the target, moving and then attacking. When a Knight is attacked, instead of rolling for the monster, the defending knight will roll to evade. They'll roll a number of dice equal to the top right dice symbol (one of these dice will be white, that's the Critical dice which sometimes has an effect) and below it is the target number. They will also roll any armor dice they have (1 Red in this demo) and any Cup/Graal symbols rolled will prevent damage which was not evaded.

There is also a marked scroll section, this applies if your Knight is at or above the relevant heat level and it maks the attack more dangerous.

On the left side of the AI card certain points there is an arrow, this is the “Window of Opportunity” a space for Knights to use Reaction abilities, allowing them to try and perform defensive maneuverers (such as getting out of the way of a giant, angry egg).

There are also some after attack effects which occur even if the attack itself misses.

If, after defensive actions such as using a shield, a Knight is wounded by an attack, this is when they'll reduce their Vigor and draw the relevant Mortis card. These cards grow increasingly more and more dangerous at the lower levels, but they can also include benefits for the Knights, or even; perhaps, a last gasp action before succumbing to their wounds.

If the Eggknight is unable to find target, it will take a Routine action, these are special actions that some monsters have and they are a dangerous thing to experience, punishing Knights who hide behind obstacles or cower out of range.

The monsters will respect obstacles, and their pathing has to take that into account, but they will not respect Knights and will push through anyone in the way, making them suffer Crash (1 Vigor damage, causing a Mortis draw, and the Knockdown condition). Perhaps you'd better 'Knight Roll' out of the way!

The Knight's Turn

The first thing that happens during the Knight's collective turn is the Refresh Phase. Here cards will move from the sink to the hand (respecting Card Refresh limits) and from the Delay to the Sink. Knights will also reduce their heat level, which means they have more reserves to activate cards.

Then each knight, in any order, will take their turn. During which they can do 1 move and 1 attack (in any order) and use relevant abilities. Abilities vary in what they can do during a clash, but here is a selection of them for you to review.

Movement is relatively straightforward, it has to be orthagonal (cardinal) only (no diagonals, but you can move diagonally when using the Hug ability). They can't move through other knights, obstacle terrain or enemies.

The attack is a little more complicated. You will start by declaring your attack, checking you are in range (adjacent to the target for melee) and what weapon you are going to use. You then increase your passion by one, which will give you access to benefits on the relevant levels of your Heroic Arc.

This weapon will give you a number of dice to roll, one of which will be the white 'Critical Dice' and the rest will be black. In most cases during this demo, Knights roll between 1 and 2 dice when attacking. They will be adding their accuracy modifier to these rolls and aiming to achieve the target number – for the Ironcast and the Eggknight this target number is 7+. If you hit with all dice, you'll score a 'Full hit' which matters for some abilities. This is where you can use Opening Tokens left by previous Knight's actions to increase all dice by +1 per Opening token used (more on Tokens later).

Once you have hit, there is the “First Ability Window” where you can apply effects that improve your own attack, things like Autobreak or Hug/Reposition are used here.

A sample Body Part card.

Then you will draw the Body Part (BP) card that is on top of the BP deck, or reveal the relevant BP card linked to the mob standee you attacked (Each Standee has a single BP card it is associated with). These cards are pictured above in the EggKnight and Ironcast images, but here they are again:

Here you'll roll the Power Dice based on your attack results and you're seeking to match/exceed the number in the large blue shield. Below that is a bonus for 'overkill' where if you score extra you can leave a Power (sword) token in the Knight Pool for the next Knight to benefit from..

[At this point here I was surprised by a spider descending from the ceiling to hang in front of my face. So I lost my train of thought a bit while I dealt with the offending interloper, their job is to live out of sight and kill pests, not try and get a sneak peak of what I'm writing before anyone else!]

After that you can see sections listed as Instinct, Wound, Fail and Critical. Instincts always  happen, Wound effects only occur if you score a wound. Fail if you fail to wound and Criticals happen if the Critical Dice rolled a “0” and they also stop any Wound effect from triggering.

If the Knight fails to wound, then the BP card will be discarded if it is a Boss (it will stay in place for Mobs - because it represents the specific individual). But if it is a success then the BP card will be removed from play as a wound; for the Mobs this means that the relevant Mob standee is removed from the board, in the case of Bosses, this means that you've scored one of the needed wounds (The L0 Eggknight needs 6 wounds for example).

But it also means that the monster(s) are going to escalate. As in, they're going to become more dangerous because they gain higher level AI and BP cards!

What happens is that you will remove an AI card of the matching level from the AI deck (or discard if there are no suitable targets in the deck) and shuffle in one higher. So if you remove a L1 BP card, a L1 AI card will leave the AI deck and a L2 will go in instead. In the case of monsters, the monster also gains a corresponding BP card shuffled into the BP deck.

Through this method the monster(s) become more dangerous in their active behaviours and tougher/more deadly when they are hit. But you'll always get a bit of information because you know what number is on the back of the top card of the relevant deck. Is that a L3 BP? Better get your heavy hitter in.

At the last steps of the attack, you clear out any tokens in the Knight Pool (there are some which stay around, like Pierce or Lux) and add in the ones generated by your attack. Therefore setting up the following character to take advantage of them.

The turn then returns to the Monster and this repeats until victory or defeat!

At the end of the Delve, you'll consult your clue tokens, check against the various conditions and experience a bit more of your Knight's story.

There are of course, many other small details, extra abilities, tokens, effects and so on, but at this point you should have sufficient understanding of the basic mechanics and theme to be able to decide if you want to back Kingdoms Forlorn when it launches on the 15th of February or not. Hopefully ItUS will give backers another demo on Tabletop Simulator as they did during the Aeon Trespass: Odyssey Kickstarter; so you can experience the game yourself and make an even more informed decision.

Our Knights face the EggKnight.

You can read more about the game and setting at the official posts on the ItUS website, the first of them is located here.

If you have any questions about further details in the demo, please put them in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer them here!