About King of the Castle
My greatest misfortune (slight exaggeration for dramatic effect) is that I have three best friends. Two are not really gamers and will simply never be gamers. One is a gamer, but doesn’t really like a lot of the stuff I like. The end result is I know basically no one in my real life that consistently games with me. And unfortunately, some games are simply designed for people with friends.
I explained King of the Castle being played over Twitch in a prior post. It’s more or less a party game where, if played on Twitch, the host narrates while the players vote on various choices that impact the kingdom. If played on Discord, people narrate their lines and it’s a much more interactive experience. The cool thing about King of the Castle is that only one player needs to own the game in order to play. Basically what happens is one player streams the game while the others vote using the kotc.app website. This means that anyone with access to an internet browser and the discord app can play (Discord is free). It can be played on mobile, desktop, and probably tablet. The shitty thing about King of the Castle is that you need at least four people to start a game. You can look for people on the official King of the Castle Discord chat, but the community is not currently large enough to get a game whenever you look.
The game, for anyone that didn’t read the bachelor party post, is all about the nobles of the kingdom trying to overthrow the monarch. One of the more interesting parts of the game is seeing how the kingdom changes over the course of many games. For example, in a save file I play with random people, at one point the kingdom had no military and was totally devastated. It’s been rebuilding over several games since then. This kind of dynamic story building is pretty rare in the gaming world, so I yearn for people to play with on a more consistent basis, and maybe together we all see how many stories we can get out of the kingdom.
If it’s something you’re interested in, feel free to reach out to ChristopherDay227@gmail.com or join the official King of the Castle Discord.
About Suzerain of War
I’ve mentioned before the political text game Suzerain. It’s for readers that want to experience being president in a fictional 1950s setting where you take on the role of Anton Rayne, Sordland’s newest president, during a time of economic recession. The game features many, many endings based on the choices you make throughout the game on the game map. As you might imagine there are endings ranging from dying horribly to being a competent leader of your struggling republic.
As luck would have it, I happened across a Reddit post about a week ago that advertised a play-by-post game made by a fan with the title Suzerain of War. Suzerain of War is not an actual computer game or board game, but a group of players (at the time of writing, about 70 people) who are going to act out and roleplay the roles of several key figures in the game world of Suzerain. For example, I had my heart set on being the admiral of Valgsland (pinkish island above), a country known for its powerful navy, and soon became Storamiral Christopher Blade (laugh all you want. The majority of the game is typing, and I do THAT for a living!) The idea of the game is that each playable country will have a leader (people that control the country), high commanders (army, airforce, navy people that control the strategy), and TAC commanders (people that control the actual battles). The leaders will give orders to the high commanders who will in turn give orders to the commanders using a map of Suzerain divided into hexes. The competence at each level impacts each other level.
For an example of how this can go, the previous admiral of Valgsland was given orders. He didn’t really do too good with those orders from what I’ve heard. He was then executed. Now I know the same fate might await my character if I make poor choices over the course of the game.
How will we do this? We message the man behind the game, someone that goes by the name Mithras on Discord. We send him our orders and communications via email or Discord and they are entered into the official game record. To be short and sweet about it, Mithras is our game master and we are all involved in a very big simulation of impending war in the world of Suzerain that he will be calculating behind the scenes. Personally, I think Torpor Games should hire him to help design something. It would track with their history of hiring brilliant people. Special shout out to the creator of the Suzerain game’s music, James Spence, who actually answered my fan mail a few years ago!
Let me stress that Suzerain of War is NOT a fast game. Every 2 weeks in real life will be about 3 months in the game world, which we will call one turn. This means that for two weeks people will be sending their orders and communications, and then we won’t know the outcome until the end of those two weeks. This is really ideal for a working court reporter like myself, because I can place orders during my commute to work and not worry about it for another two weeks.
There are NO RULES regarding communicating with players outside of the official record. This can lead to conversations between players that otherwise wouldn’t know anything about each other. This consequently adds a psychological element to the gameplay where other players can and do fake each other out. For example, the leader of Lespia told me I’d better watch my eastern coast. Do I actually need to watch my eastern coast? Will that cause me to order my fleets to my eastern coast? Mithras allowing that level of interaction means the game can dynamically change in unexpected and exciting ways, and it’s a welcomed and refreshing change from many games that disallow such out-of-game communication, such as Space Station 14.
If this interests you, come check out the Suzerain of War Discord. There are public-facing manuals that will help you decide if it’s something you want to try. Strategy enthusiasts of the world unite!
Additional special thanks to Mithras for putting this together and letting me write about it! For all my issues finding friends to play with, it seems I’ve just found dozens. Can’t wait to see what happens in the wars to come. This might end up bigger news than Democraciv.
Addendum:
I’ve learned after writing that Mithras is, in actuality, Freestyle Rap Legend and proud Vancouverite Connor Ruther.