Tag: King of the Castle

For Gamers and Roleplayers: King of the Castle and Suzerain of War

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.

The game world of Suzerain

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.

News article from Sordland about Valgsland’s execution of its former admiral. The date is not the in-game world’s date.

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.

Join the Stenonymous King of the Castle Bachelor Party!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY.

Flyer for the Stenonymous Bachelor Party created by Joshua B. Edwards, RDR, CRR, CRC

NOTE: Anyone may join. We will not be checking stenographer cards at the door. This can be played on your computer via the Twitch website or on your phone via the Twitch app.

On March 2, 2024, at 6 p.m. Eastern Time, my personal cadre will be participating in at least one game of King of the Castle (official site). We intend to stream this and allow the audience to take part, likely through Twitch.

King of the Castle is a game where one player plays the monarch of a kingdom and a minimum of 3 other players play as nobles from the three territories that comprise the kingdom. The territories all have various traits involving things like farming, military, and trade. These are represented by a number between 0 and 10. The core of the gameplay is that the monarch does their best to stay on the throne. The nobles try to put the claimant from their territory on the throne.

There are two ways to play this game, party game mode, usually played through Discord and the kotc.app site, and Twitch mode. We’re focusing on Twitch mode here. You do not need to download Discord and do not need to log into kotc.app on your browser.

So what will this look like if you want to join?

First, you have to go to Twitch.tv and sign up for a free account. If someone needs a tutorial on that, let me know. Otherwise, I will move to the next part.

You’re going to head on over to my Twitch channel, XChrisUnknownX, and hopefully by around 5:30 or 5:45 Eastern, I will have started a live stream. You will be able to join the chat and type !join to join the game. You may also choose your preferred pronoun inside the game by typing (!join he) (!join she) (!join they), without parentheses.

When we start the game it’s going to look something like the streamer’s screen does below. You’ll be watching us through Twitch, but you’ll be playing too!

King of the Castle game by Twitch streamer Romolla. All the names on the left are nobles that were playing with the streamer.

NOTE: The reason that says 30 minutes in is because there was a long period of time before the streamer actually started the game. Each game is expected to last between 1 and 2 hours, but can be much shorter.

Our Kingdom will feature and you will be placed into one of the following territories:

Stenonymous shows off the Counts of the East from King of the Castle
Stenonymous shows off the Barons of the March from King of the Castle

or my personal favorite…

Stenonymous shows off the Chiefs of the North from King of the Castle

Likely the first thing that will happen after we launch the game is we’ll be looking at a map of the kingdom. You’ll also see the stats of the kingdom on the left-hand side. The state of the kingdom is told through these stats. If authority, treasury, or stability falls to 0, the monarch will lose the game.

Stenonymous shamelessly using another Twitch Streamer’s video to explain King of the Castle. Thanks Romolla.

The game plays out through events and votes that impact the kingdom. The monarch will select one of the events on the map, and the audience will be taken on a magical ride to whatever the event is. Just to get some idea of how this is going to go, one of the first events is the coronation.

Stenonymous continues to use Romolla’s streaming to explain King of the Castle.

Either I will be narrating the dialogue or forcing my cadre to do it. But the end result is the same, we’ll narrate the event and the event will, more often than not, go to a council vote. You, as a noble of the kingdom, will be on my council.

When we go to a vote, I will get to take a monarch action. In this case, Romolla vetoed decision C so that no noble could select that option. You will vote by typing !vote a or !vote b, whatever the letter of your choice is. As you can see, the game tells you how your vote will impact the kingdom. In this case, Vote A will raise the defiance of one or more territories. Defiance allows territories to rebel and begin a civil war. If that happens during our game, you can type !rebel to urge your territory to declare war on me and whatever loyalist territories remain. If all three territories rebel at once, I lose instantly. Vote A will also lower stability and faith. Vote B will raise authority and lower stability. Vote D will raise farming and lower the wealth of the nobles. Take note that wealth of the nobles is different from treasury of the kingdom. Wealth of the nobles impacts what you can buy. “Chris, what do you mean buy? You said no purchases!!!”

At some point in the game, you will be presented with the option to purchase buildings for the territories. These buildings change the stats of the kingdom. At this point, you’ll be able to vote for what building to buy using your wealth. Instead of !vote, you will use !fund. For example, !fund c 300 will take 300 of your money and put it toward choice C, the aqueduct, which will raise farming of the Counts of the East.

Close to the start of the game, each territory will choose a scheme to place their claimant on the throne. In the picture above, it shows that the Counts have reached their scheme objective for farming and will be able to advance their scheme. This is juxtaposed against the Chiefs, who need to raise their military. As you might imagine, the buildings can help sabotage or support schemes.

Please remember that this is a social game and the monarch’s goal is to stay on the throne. I will try to be fairly forthright so that newcomers can enjoy and understand the game, but the monarch is allowed to lie and do things to confuse the players. For example, there is a feature where the monarch can use “reverse voting,” which means that the vote with the fewest council votes will win. This makes for some very interesting gameplay and sudden twists as people accidentally vote on things they do not want to vote on.

That’s pretty much it. I’ll be talking you through it every step of the way. As long as you can remember !join, !vote, and !fund, you can play this game. Just let me know when Twitch interrupts your game with commercials in the chat box so that you don’t miss out on game time.

We’ll be monitoring the chat as best we can for comments and questions at the time of the event. Please know that if you miss the start of the game, you can join at any time while the game is ongoing.

Are you ready to overthrow the King of the Castle?

P.S.

Saw Leah Willersdorf featured recently. Check it out.

Addendum:

I’ve been asked if we have a registry. No one is obligated to donate, but here it is.

You can also contribute directly to the blog on the front page of Stenonymous.com via the donation box. But this isn’t meant to be a fundraiser, it’s just meant to be fun.