Introducing Kingdom Death to New or Casual Gamers (Patreon)

Recently I had a short discussion on the subject of what promotional material would be good for a newer or more casual group in order to make their play experience more fun and engaging.  While I thought about this it kind of spiralled in size (this happens EVERY TIME, I can't even review a game without it turning into some three thousand word essay) reaching a point where I knew I would be best off writing this all down. 

I've introduced Kingdom Death to a lot of people at this point; more than I can count, and some have been huge successes, others have been failures – more than enough have had moments that allowed me to learn some great lessons that I hope to pass on to you all. We're going to start with some general rules/guidelines; then I'll talk about some under the hood house rules you can introduce from the start that the people you're playing with are not even aware of and then we'll close it out with a look at the best expansion and promotional content to use for new players.

Some of these are going to be very obvious and/or self explanatory but I'm aiming to be as comprehensive as possible; so if it's something you already understand feel free to skip onto the next one!

Rule 1 – Fun is Number One

Games are meant to be fun; fun's a highly subjective experience and differs from one person to the next. So at the start of the game, before even beginning it is important to set expectations for players, it's important they they understand that like Darkest Dungeon or XCOM this is a game where individual survivors can die. If they do not like that concept, that's fine, it means that you should be looking at playing with the heroic mode from the beginning (note: you can even let some players play heroic while others play normal, the game works fine). Heroci is a mode where survivors fall unconscious rather than dying – this can allow players who want to play specific survivors for long periods to flourish and have an experience that matches their concept of a fun time. It's worth mentioning that even in this heroic mode you don't get to play the same survivor forever; injuries still happen and the wheel of Hunt XP gains push survivors constantly towards retirement.

Once you've established that much, it's time to outline what the game's setting and core gameplay loop is. I usually describe this with something along the lines of: Everyone is working together to construct and grow a settlement in a world where there is no sunlight. This settlement has to send out some of its members to hunt nightmarish monsters for food, clothing and survival. I phrase it this way to try and make new players understand that the settlement is the lead construct here not the individual survivors. It is worth asking after the prologue fight if players want to pool resources together and decide as a group what to build, or if everyone wants to be assigned their own individual share of the resources for them to use, barter/swap and similar (gather up all the resources gained from the showdown and then split them as equally as possible). This second option can be interesting because as a barter game with each player having autonomy on their own resources there is more freedom for them to make their own decisions independently.

If you know what people want from the game in advance, from the simple like “I want to whip things.” to the complex “I want to play multiple generations of sword fighters.” all the way to the purist “I want the full experience with all the randomness and challenge.” If you know what they want then it's easier to help them achieve these goals and have fun.

We'll also look at a few ways of helping facilitate fun later in this under the house rules portion of this post.

Rule 2 – Be Hands Off During Sessions

It can be very tempting to take charge and explain all of the various options and steer players towards the optimal ones; but that's not going to help them if they don't want such direction. To provide a specific example; in one campaign a friend wanted to craft the Lion Headress because (to quote) he thought it was “Elegance itself.” So we crafted one for his survivors and he loved every moment of wearing it during showdowns.

This hands off rule I follow has always been a delight; people think differently and can be very surprising with their ingenuity – the first time that another friend; Tom played the game around five years ago he noticed that the Shadow Saliva Shawl could be utilised with tools without suffering any loss of speed, a combination I had not noticed before! It not only opened my eyes to more variants of the Pickaxe/Scythe/Toolbelt builds but made me take another look at all of the gear in the game with fresh eys.

This doesn't mean you should be completely hands off, I recommend that you don't mention or highlight the Innovation choice and instead showcase the gear after the first one to two hunts because gear is going to always be more engaging, more flashy and it simply helps players succeed in the early game more than a piece of cardboard with text left back at the settlement does. It also allows players to get a better grip on survival actions by letting them get used to using the  defensively (Encourage/Dodge); let Dash and Surge turn up a bit later on in the settlement's  lifespan when everyone's got a good grip on position play and what role(s) they enjoy their survivors being constructed around.

You can take this one step further and sit back as a “Games Master” the experience for four friends by being the person who manages the administration of the monsters/settlement and supports their decisions. It's a surprisingly engaging experience and it can help dial back any strong desires to over coach sessions, you also get to narratively build the experience that your players face through their settlement and hunt events and you can even take it a step further and directly control the monster in the way the rulebook offers. Just remember to be a true story teller and not just a cruel overlord in a 1 vs. Many game – early on, especially against new players, the monsters have the advantage so you should be looking to build a thrilling, tense game, not stomp your friends with a hoof or claw.

Rule 3 – Simple Goals

Kingdom Death is a long game; really long if you're considering the core campaign has an insane length at 30 years with forced L3 monster fight requirements. So instead I'd recommend sitting down at the start of the first session and letting new players know the following concept.

“We're all going to be playing a settlement of people in a perpetually dark world. We survive by hunting Lions, Antelopes and Angry Baby Elephants (if you include the Gorm, notes on that coming next). We have three years to get the best gear we can to help defeat the first boss; an invader called “The Butcher” who suddenly looms out of the darkness and attacks our home.”

This focuses the game's early years into a structure with a goal and an understanding that sometimes players get to hunt, but other times they'll have to defend their homes from invaders. While this somewhat spoil the “surprise” of the Butcher, I've never found this to be an issue – knowing that the Butcher is coming doesn't diminish the experience of fighting it because of how different the showdown feels when compared to quarry hunts. It does help focus players into understanding that they need to get strong quickly, because a big bad is coming to get them real soon.

What this succeeds at is giving your players a small, compressed experience of the game while also maintaining the capability of expanding it after the Butcher fight if players want that. You can repeat the experience with The King's Man and then again with the Hand, the L2 Butcher and so on. It breaks the campaign down into manageable blocks that feel like chapters and makes everything cleaner for players to grip on to while also providing excellent stopping/break points where other games could be played for a bit.

Rule 4 – Variety is the Spice of Life

"Did we all bring bows?"

The honest truth is that new players enjoy freedom and options. If you own them I thoroughly recommend adding one extra early game quarry (currently we only have The Gorm) and 2 mid/late game quarries chosen from the Dragon King, Dung Beetle Knight and Sunstalker. Because quarries are entirely optional and can exist in the game without needing players to interact with them they help round out the world and make it feel more lived in and dense. My personal choice tends to be Gorm, White Lion, Screaming Antelope, Sunstalker, Phoenix and Dragon King. However it's worth considering what your friends enjoy, while Godzilla lovers are going adore fighting the Dragon King, wrestling fans are probably going to love the Manhunter; theatre nerds may appreciate the Lion Knight and even Slender Man has pop culture reach way beyond this game.

I firmly believe that 5 quarries is the right number for a campaign in Kingdom Death, three can reduce engagement for your typical player as they may quickly tired of the same monsters, especially because higher level versions of monsters tend to be “I do the same thing as before, but more dangerously” rather than true evolutions in the combat experience against them.

House Rules

Alright, let's tinker with the back end of the game and add a couple of sneaky house rules that your players don't need to know exist!

1. I'd first up recommend trimming your Settlement Event Deck so that Murder and Cracks in the Ground don't turn up during the first few years. When it's time to choose a principle you can pop Murder on the table as a part of the price of Accept Darkness; creating a thematic, evolving experience. It also helps that Accept Darkness has a positive interaction with Murder; so they are well tied together thematically.

You can even take this further and curate a streamlined settlement event deck where extra events get added into the deck as thematically linked things are constructed. You just innovated Bed? Here comes a “Weird Dream”. First time you defeated The Butcher? Add in Hunt Re-enactment. There's a lot of different parts of the settlement event deck that can be thematically linked in like miniature strain unlocks and this can really help keep the game simple and streamlined at the start of the campaign in the same way that it mechanically starts of simple.

2. In respect of the Gorm I cannot recommend enough that you leave Gorm Climate out of the game for the first play through of this expansion with new players; perhaps you can add it in as a consequence of killing the first L2 Gorm as retribution. Gorm Climate is a fine balancing element for the power of the Gorm weapons, but having new players not deal with that additional overhead will make for a smoother first experience.

3. Have a Hunt Deck so you can curate the hunt experience – Down in the Hunt Phase tag at the bottom of this article you'll find an entire Basic Hunt Phase deck that you can upload to Make Playing Cards and use instead of rolling on the table (Or you can even create an electronic app using them if you're skilled in that kind of thing). Using this means you can tweak the hunt phase to make it more flavourful or strip out cards/events that you think are thematically more interesting if they were a one off occurrence.

4. Consider leaving Spidicules in the box. The Taken mechanic where Spidicules abducts a survivor from the showdown as revenge is thematically neat, but in practice when you do not have a player group/count that can run a red shirt every other showdown this mechanic is wearing. Either you'll probably end up running the disposable Plebeian each time this happens or arguments may break out. Yes, I've seen this Spidicules mechanic create arguments that reached a Saharan level of heat; especially when the compromise of “Alright, Survivor X can be abducted as long as we go after them straight away.” Only to have that survivor be found missing an arm created a mood that resulted in us house ruling Spidicules Taken to apply to a non-returning survivor instead of a returning one. Whenever I play with 4+ players we always have the discussion around how Taken works before starting and decide if we are good with playing it 'as written' or if that is going to spoil the mood so we'll house rule it.

There's a bunch of other similar mechanics out there where one survivor gets punished and newer players understandably do not enjoy seeing one player singled out for something like this. Given time it can be an engaging challenge to deal with these issues, but engaging doesn't always mean fun and Rule 1 trumps everything else.

Promotional Content

I'm not going to list all of the promotional content here; instead I'm just going to list the ones I think that make for the most thematic, engaging and exciting experience. If there are other things you'd add in; go ahead and let everyone know in the comments below what and why.

Ringtail Vixen

Nothing can hurl an early settlement into a death spiral faster than innovating in the early years; but close behind that is rolling a 1 on your intimacy roll. This content negates that first one and provides you with an increase in population via an interesting survivor. It's really one of the best pieces of modular content out there and one of the things I consider to be a 100% must have.

Patterns

Patterns are an interesting element because they add a lot of single items that have some spice and they are just an additional element that doesn't have to be engaged with if a player doesn't want to. However it is super cool and fun for a survivor to hit insight and the player draws a weapon type that someone in the group loves. It helps push up engagement while also making that third understanding gain a real event. I put every valid pattern card into the deck for this because a large deck with a good amount of randomness can really help drive some memorable emergent stories.

Strains

Strains are an excellent partner to Patterns, instead of being a randomised reward for understanding they offer a bunch of challenges to players and if you have just the strains out there without showing the specific details of the rewards this can draw in and excite players who enjoy 'achievement hunting'. 

Again I recommend just putting everything in (relocking your personal achievements) and you can then display all the strains in pages of a card binder for players to flick through and study.

White Speaker

Yes, the Speaker Cult Knife is very powerful, but for newer players making training Fist & Tooth and/or Daggers more viable means a lot; because Fist & Tooth really is a huge landmark increase in the settlement's power level (as is Shield) but it is also a chore to do in the normal fashion. I think there is nothing wrong with letting new players feel powerful and this weapon can do that. The Bloodskin is also an excellent bleed token healing option.

Allison – People of the Lantern Only

In a similar fashion to the White Speaker box above, the Allison content makes a frustrating experience into a smooth one; having the Twilight Sword without sufficient insanity can be an exercise in doing “nothing”. Newer players want to roll the dice, they want to do the thing and the Dormant Twilight Cloak absolutely lets them do the thing with the Twilight Sword – it's a great learning tool that'll give them time to work on getting their insanity high enough to not have to rely on it any more. The Blue Lantern is also a super cool and fun piece of equipment that is powerful and can also give a lot of information for new players without requiring constant activation every turn.

Fade

Both of the gear cards gained from this hunt event are strong and the story that this card tells is an enticing window into the world. It's a fun moment for a new player to suddenly have the revelation that “Hey we got this sword from that deceased woman and now White Speakers won't come here. Was she involved with them in some way?” It's also a challenging ethical moment for players to debate over getting the sword or rescuing the child.

Vagabond Armor & other Hybrid Armors

Vagabond Armor without a doubt a very potent armor set, but if you have a player who wants to use swords I would absolutely put this in and make sure they're aware of it. Same with all the other hybrid armors; they provide long term projects that let players put together an armor set from a bunch of disparate pieces. Plus some of them look super cool – so I always pop in Gloomleather, Brawler, Dancer and Warlord.

Holiday White Speaker Nico

Just the presence of this card can allow you to be more generous to your players; if someone has an awful roll and feels really bad about the consequences of it; you can say “Well you can avoid that consequence; but we'll have to add one to the cheating count.” Nico makes cheating a legitimate element of the game and provides a small punishment for doing it. It's certainly going to make players gawk and boggle when they learn that the game has a “cheating count” mechanic – it also gives them another safety valve if things happen that would really upset them. Also knowing there is a “cheating count” but not knowing the outcome of using it can make players feel better about bad stuff in the first place, they could cheat and avoid it, but if they choose not to then they've been given control over the events that harmed their enjoyment in the first place and that can return fun to what otherwise could have been a sour moment.

White Gigalion

This vignette provides a great 'one shot' experience where players can play in a single evening and see what the game is like at a mid level of development. The gear grids provided in this box are well balanced to provide a tight and exciting showdown and also can strongly showcase play styles that do not rotate around deck scouting & manipulation.

I don't think that the Gigalion is a great addition for increasing the power level of survivors during a campaign and it is an excellent replacement for the tedium of the L2+ White Lion (Though lets be honest, it's more efficient to farm L1s and then jump directly to L3s). I wouldn't personally put it in a newbie campaign, but I wouldn't disagree with you if you did.

People of the Stars

I honestly believe this is the best campaign for new players to learn on. It has the most surface level/easy to grok and the showdown fights against the Tyrant are some of the most subtle and multifaceted in the game – there's a load of levels of skill to discover during that fight and it can make people feel clever and happy as they work them out.

Other Promotional Cards of Note

A short list of other game pieces I think are good for the game's overall experience:

• Xmaxe – It's just a fun weapon, but a pricy purchase.
• Vibrant Lantern, Dying Lantern, Prismatic Lantern and Black Friday as starting lanterns for the new survivors. They're all nice boosts to have early on and also offer a choice of archiving them for some benefit. I'd recommend that you say the lantern dealt out to each player is for their own personal use and can't be used on any other player's survivors. Just to stop stacking the Dying Lantern with the Black Friday Lantern (cause stacking too much evasion is a smidge powerful)
• Sword Hunter – Let people see what the Sword Hunter event is going to do before they decide who's carrying the Welsh Sword out to showdowns.
• Lonely Tree Expansion – Sweet fight; fun event, just make sure that it's triggered by a disposable survivor so no-one feels punished for not knowing the event in advance.
• Till Death Do Us Part – Both of these are so cool, and having a decision about how your society will treat its relationships is a great world building moment.
• Scoopy Club (if the settlement is struggling or you have a friend you think will love hitting things with a spoon)
• Ancient Root (because of how it synergises with the Doomed pattern gear)
• Corsair Coat (A fun one for People of the Lantern)
• Strange Spot/Belt of Gender Swap – mechanically solid, but it depends how your friends feel about this trope, you know them better than I do and if you're not sure, it's worth having a short discussion in advance before adding it into the settlement deck.

The main thing to remember when introducing Kingdom Death to other players is that despite having innovative mechanics like AI/HL decks, Gear Grids and Affinities; a lot of the design leans heavily on 1980s mechanics and those are things which are clunky and can turn off players who are used to the lean and smooth moves that new designs put out. This is not as finely tuned or modern a system as the ones in games like Gloomhaven, Oathsworn or Aeon's Trespass: Odyssey it stll leans heavily into older games like Warhammer Quest and games that use randomness to increase difficulty (Like how the video game Darkest Dungeon, a game that inspired Kingdom Death in part, can make you go from perfectly fine to in a desperate situation in a single turn if multiple crits land).

Try and be cognizant, open and willing to adapt the way the game flows to how your friends interact with game mechanics. If something happens that really upsets players it's time to stop, take a break and then come back to discuss the events and see how things can be dealt with in a way that returns the fun back for all.

This is a sandbox game, once it got into your hands it is now your world, not the designers, so shape it in your image.