[fable]

I found an old review that I'd done of King of Dragon Pass for a magazine. As the magazine has long ago ceased operation, I have no problem in placing it, here:

Summary:

A true RPG isn’t simply one guy with three statistics hammering at demons. An RPG is meant to give you a detailed but fun experience in a novel environment—and that’s exactly what King of Dragon Pass offers. You are a barbarian clan leader in the fantasy world of Glorantha, derived from the Runequest pen-and-paper RPG. Each season you explore the surrounding lands, engage in diplomacy with your neighbors, launch raids, worship for blessings, build defenses, undertake heroquests, and deal with an unruly group of seven distinctive nobles that you select for your clan ring. You’ll need their very forthright opinions, because there are also more than four hundred plots, large and small, one of which usually triggers per season. Doing something decidedly different and doing it very well, KoDP is a must for the strategy/RPG fan who wants an immersive experience.

Review:

In a business that’s obsessed with “niche,” here’s a game that defies easy categorization: a turn-based strategy title with an extra-heavy dose of RPG, and a menu-driven simulation that puts you in detailed charge of a barbarian clan.

King of Dragon Pass takes place on the world of Glorantha, in the Runequest pen-and-paper RPG. Its clans pursue typical barbarian activities: herding, farming, exploring, trading, feuding, building different defenses, worshipping gods, forming alliances and raiding neighbors. You’re not physically represented in the game, but you manage a clan ring that is, filling its seven positions with disputatious nobles (each rated for seven unique skills, like Magic, Combat and Leadership) who willingly contribute their contrasting viewpoints and advice at every opportunity.

Like any good, turn-based resource management game, KoDP supplies dozens of activity options and forces you to make choices: two activities per season, in a five-season year. Even the simpler choices may contain a subset of selections that force you to think. Perhaps you need more farmers. Do you lower numbers in your other clan professions, buy the services of farmers away from other clans, offer land to passing vagabonds, or seek farmers from the land of your origins, far away? And do you offer incentives, like land, or land and cattle? Action fans who prefer vikings endlessly hitting one another over their horned helmets will blanch, but this spin on Celtic cultural history is fun, varied, and attractively presented.

It’s also set in a fantasy universe inhabited by dragons, ghosts, trolls and other potential health hazards, which means swords can do only so much; magic is essential. KoDP allows you to worship more than a dozen gods, who offer a range of more than fifty blessings (and curses) for an appropriate sacrifice. One of the most interesting activity choices you have involves sending your most powerful nobles on heroquests. In good, authentically shamanistic tradition, these quests are trance-state attempts to recreate powerful legends, with the hero cast in the central role of a particular god. The gods don’t die in the legends, but if your hero strays from the appropriate responses or luck is against you, the quest may turn sour. Success conveys a range of specific but powerful magical benefits upon the clan, while failure can mean anything from earth-scorching famine to your neighbors’ hatred to the quester’s death.

But the single most interesting feature in KoDP is the way it effectively becomes a different game every time its you play it. Yes, I know you’ve heard it before, but it’s never been attempted on this scale; for KoDP tracks hundreds of clan variables and more than four hundred potential plots, at least one of which is randomly generated nearly every season of your clan’s existence.

Some plots are one-shot situations with immediate, shortterm effects, like a proposed marriage between members of your clan and another’s. Others create story threads that hibernate for long periods, only to burst into view many years later—like one noble I had on a ring, whose occasional, whimsically silly, non sequitur advice about the evil of Elves suddenly turned deadly serious after more than twenty years of excellent service, when he deliberately maimed three Elves in the clan woodlands, victims of his desire to force a war.

You are always given a range of four-to-six options in every plot situation that go far beyond the usual good/evil stereotypes of so-called “interactive” gaming. Most choices offer equally effective solutions to the same problems, though with different attendant benefits and dangers. The apparently poorest reply to a given situation in one game could well provide the best results in the next, depending upon what gods you’ve worship regularly, who’s on your clan ring, your clan’s wellbeing, military might and diplomatic relations.

The interface is simplicity itself, a series of screens whose activities are grouped by subject. There’s a help mode that explains each screen, a very good in-game tutorial, and a hardcover manual that provides a great deal of highly readable detail in a well-organized format.

KoDP isn’t without its flaws. The game’s visuals feature colorful, attractive menus, but no animation—even combat is handled this way. And while the other clans follow the same rules you do, it’s easy to regard them as passive spectators, because you seldom see the effects of their actions unless you’re on the receiving end. There are few spies among Gloranthan barbarians.

You also expect to move to a new level of difficulty when your clan leads others in forming a tribe—after all, you’ve bargained away tribal ring seats to reach this point, and it seems reasonable to expect at least a periodic tribal meet to challenge your burgeoning diplomatic skills. But nothing of the sort occurs. At best, when one of your nobles is elected tribal chieftain, a few new plots affecting the tribe appear; still, it’s not much.

But I’ll gladly raise a drinking horn to toast the creators of such an original and rich game as KoDP. With variety, depth, and a Celtic folk soundtrack to die for, this game’s a solid keeper.