Fits for a King

I've written before about legacy games, board games with evolving gameplay that permanently changes over a campaign of multiple plays. Recently, I completed a very different kind of legacy game with a much heavier emphasis on story, The King's Dilemma. It casts the players as the advisory council of a largely inattentive king in a fantasy world. The council must debate and vote on how to respond to crisis after crisis.

The mechanics are actually quite straightforward. In each round, a new card is revealed, telling the story of a "dilemma" facing the council. Each outcome will affect some of the five different tracks in the game -- raising morale while lowering wealth in the kingdom, increasing knowledge while decreasing security, and so forth. Each player has power tokens to throw behind voting one way or the other in each dilemma. They also have money, used in handful of ways -- including bribery of other players to coax them into voting the way you want. A regimented system of voting around the table is used to settle the matter. Players on the winning side give up the power they pledged, players on the losing side retain the power they bid, and players who stayed out of the matter entirely divide up the power that was spent by the winning side on the previous dilemma.

Within that simple framework, there are a lot of strategic considerations. The player who contributes the most power to a winning side also essentially takes ownership of the policy that is enacted. That can take the form of a sticker brought out onto the game board, gaining or costing you power for the next few games. What's more, each player is given a particular "house" to role play throughout the campaign, with set goals you're trying to achieve. Plus, each new game deals you a specific goal to manipulate the tracks to a certain configuration by the end of the game. Sometimes, those goals will be compatible, and sometimes not so much. Balancing those considerations is the core of the strategy.

But you might also feel compelled to ignore strategy here and there because of what the story is presenting. The game box warns you that some of the content of The King's Dilemma addresses very serious topics. In the course of the campaign, the government you oversee will adopt policies in regards to criminal justice, foreign aid, civil rights, and more. And the story is painted in enough detail that you can get caught up with it and feel an emotional pull in a certain direction.

Unlike most legacy games, the mechanics of play don't change much over time. There are a few wrinkles introduced here and there, but there's never really a point where you're adding fundamental new rules to change the experience. What does evolve, though, is a story that's very much based on your collective decisions. There are a great many forks in the narrative, and choosing one path forever closes off the others. In the course of a campaign, you'll only experience about half the story The King's Dilemma has to offer... and you may often feel very curious to know what the "road not taken" would have looked like. (Especially when you were on the losing side of a key vote that set things in the "wrong" direction.)

It is a political game, with all the benefits and drawback that concept entails. You can be ganged up on, with opponents refusing to enact any policy you appear to want too much. Manipulating others and obscuring your true goals are absolute keys to success. When we ultimately "scored" the entire campaign, I was dead last of five players, in large part because I think I played too much of the campaign too brazenly. Yet I still enjoyed the experience, and would absolutely consider playing a new copy of The King's Dilemma from scratch; I'd be guaranteed to have a different experience with a different story if I did.

I'd give The King's Dilemma a B+. That is to say, there are other legacy games I've enjoyed more, but I still liked this one very much. If your gaming group is prone to taking slights personally, you might be asking for trouble. If you need mechanical depth to sink your teeth into, you might be disappointed. But the story depth here is remarkable, and I think the overall experience very satisfying.