TL;DR: I bought the game, and both love it and regretted it. Why? because it works so well and is broken in so many places, and its just like my game for the concepts, but none of the clarity.
Kingdom Death Monster
I bought Kingdom Death monster, no, let me get that right..
I 'bought into' kingdom death monster when it was v1. The idea that you could choose your mini based on your equipment, and swap and change the weapons and armour, oh wow.. so when it came out in 2016, I bought into it, bad.
When I opened it up and played it? Oh Wow, did I love it.. it felt just like a setting I was working on.. I was like, Wow, Cool, This is what my game it going to feel like when I publish... It has a cool kind of combat System... like my game..
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| Choose your weapons, your armour, then pick out the mini parts, glue together and viola, here's your hero. |
When I opened it up and played it? Oh Wow, did I love it.. it felt just like a setting I was working on.. I was like, Wow, Cool, This is what my game it going to feel like when I publish... It has a cool kind of combat System... like my game..
And a Crafting system, in a roleplay like game, cool, thats what my game does too...
And with a location based system, that's what my game does, oh and a damage based system, that's what my game does, and your home base, being as important (if not more so) than the characters? Also, exactly what my game is all about..
Kingdom Death Monster is a tight, focused game on major events, not the day by day or even the small regular events, they get refined into a die roll, no, you pretty much hand wave away all the story and plot of how your characters got to the boss monster, and you fight him/her/it as the main event, and its brutal and wild and the AI system is gorgeous, Death is the only escape from the battle, his, or yours.
Once you survive you take the corpse of the monster and cut it up into resources to be used by your village of survivors, to fashion a better set of equipment. Again, its hand-waved away the food, resources for building huts, its like the basic costs are all done in the background, and whats left over is given to you to choose with.
All prepped and ready? new armour, new weapons? Cool, Off on the next hunt.. The small events leading up to the boss monster are quick, sometimes (often) nasty, very thematic, but you end up at the next boss monster ready to fight
Those three paragraphs above are what you typically do in one game session and are called lantern years. It can take between an hour or three to do, so you might do two lantern years with your mates on a sunday arvo, or you might play solo each night. But it'll take around 8 lantern years if you suffer bad luck, to lose the game, or 30 lantern years to win.. and its a rush.
Since fights are very likely to end with at least one maimed if not dead character, tension is high to play. There are still moments in the village phase and the hunt phase where you might lose a character to death, insanity or worse.
In case you don't want to google 'what is KDM'
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| Unarmoured vs a stage II boss? TPK! |
Once you survive you take the corpse of the monster and cut it up into resources to be used by your village of survivors, to fashion a better set of equipment. Again, its hand-waved away the food, resources for building huts, its like the basic costs are all done in the background, and whats left over is given to you to choose with.
All prepped and ready? new armour, new weapons? Cool, Off on the next hunt.. The small events leading up to the boss monster are quick, sometimes (often) nasty, very thematic, but you end up at the next boss monster ready to fight
Those three paragraphs above are what you typically do in one game session and are called lantern years. It can take between an hour or three to do, so you might do two lantern years with your mates on a sunday arvo, or you might play solo each night. But it'll take around 8 lantern years if you suffer bad luck, to lose the game, or 30 lantern years to win.. and its a rush.
Since fights are very likely to end with at least one maimed if not dead character, tension is high to play. There are still moments in the village phase and the hunt phase where you might lose a character to death, insanity or worse.
Now its Not perfect, No, Its most definitely a hobbyist game, the minis are designed for people who like minis, wanna make minis, paint minis, its awesome for mini maker/painter/show offs, its like the ultimate trainset, but for violent fantasy. I (as a hobbyist) enjoyed scraping back the flash, aligning the parts, cutting, gluing, choosing the bits, undercoating on the sprue, layers and layers of paint, until they look like little people, ready to be eaten.
Yet the game, stands alone, maybe because no-one has had the audacity to make each and every single item, upgrade, skill, bonus, equipment and resources to make said equipment as a card. random draw? shuffle and draw is so much more pleasing than roll and consult a chart.
And for the same reason, its horrid. do you sleeve them all? trying to find each set to draw from, should you glance at a card as your looking for a specific card? oops, spoilers, too late, ruined that future surprise. Can't keep it all out and set up, but the hassle to take out the character sheet & then all the cards that match your character.. Argh
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| Hundreds of item cards, playing cards, bits of plastic, hundreds of each, literally.. its 9kg! |
So you can't play straight away, yet funnily enough, the rule book is the fastest one I've gone from open to play.. its literally, open, and play.. don't read ahead the rules teach you tutorial like, the first battle, but like a plot..
I try to run my game at conventions, and to do so, character creation is either part of the flow of the game, or you pre-gen characters for people.. So when I saw KDM? a blank character sheet IS a standard character, I was like.. Yeah, that's right.. start fast and furious..
When the game arrived, be a hobbyist, Make the first 5 minis, they have to dry, and it takes an hour, at least.. if you're friends are due to come play another day.. paint? but don't spoil the rules by reading ahead, no no no..
Yet, when you do.. seriously these are the rules? knockback does what? knock down does what? and when you leave the board you just die? or don't? There are so many flaws, its obvious that they could have, should have, done a version 0.5 and published that, with the caveat that they'll redo the rules later and republish for their audience. I was rather dissapointed, but, then a little glee came in, because my game would not be like that.. no..no..no..
I was reminded of all the paths I went down, and had to back-track, all the things I tried and failed with, my horrific worst case combat round that took 4 actual hours of real life for a mere 6 second of combat ... that was such a pain to test..
I was reminded of all the paths I went down, and had to back-track, all the things I tried and failed with, my horrific worst case combat round that took 4 actual hours of real life for a mere 6 second of combat ... that was such a pain to test..
My players (god bless their hearts) would put up with so much crap, rules changes, rule edits, everyone had their limits, and it broke them down, then 3 months later I'd make enough revisions to start again and we'd all be like "oh, this works, oh, this doesn't all over again.. so I can just imagine what Poots went through to get his game to where it is.
The cost of Kingdom Death Monster
The cost, well ALL-IN pledges in games cost like $250-$400 these days, because of the limited first (1.3) edition, people just had to buy 1.5 (FOMO), and the models are expensive, not just because he's gotten awesome artists to make the models, the art and the lore, but because he prints only 500 of the pinups, and supply vs demand, he always sells out, so why not sell them for $40 each.. if Warhammer can do minis for $30 each, and they're lower quality (underpinnings)
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| The Main Box, and the Mini boxes in black, and eleven of the maybe 40 expanions.. $2,000 on ebay |
If you were looking for a Folklore/Gloomhaven style game, I'd get that instead, I have Massive Darkness, I played it, and if I didn't want to use all those $1.60 each minis for roleplay, I'd sell it, much better dungeon crawlers out there.
This game is awesome, for the few people that its made for. For everyone else, its a bloody expensive hobby.
The thing is, all those FOMO buyers, they bought the game or the lot, some found out, they were not actually so keen, but for all the people who missed the campaign, they bought the games from those who didn't want it, at stupid increased prices, and that hype, brought in more people..
The thing is, all those FOMO buyers, they bought the game or the lot, some found out, they were not actually so keen, but for all the people who missed the campaign, they bought the games from those who didn't want it, at stupid increased prices, and that hype, brought in more people..
There is just now, a turn, people who have the game, but just can't see themselves playing 30 runs of the thing, deciding to sell out, and the price is starting to drop. Might see some half priced versions in another year.
Funny part is.. the hype & price gouging matches the dot-com bubble and the crypto currency bubble.
If you paid full price, or worse, you're self-preserving brain will justify your purchase, maybe by claiming its the best game in the world.. because heck, if you forked out the price of a small car for a game you might realistically only get to the table 4-6 times.. you're going to be soooo pissed at yourself.
If you're honestly interested in playing KDM, try to find a group that is playing it, play it and get a feel for it, if you really like it.. the 1.3 versions are selling at 75% of cost these days (I picked up one myself, for 50%) give it another 6-12 months and you might get a 1.3 for half again.. when 1.7 or 1.9 or v2 comes out, 1.5 will drop in price again.. delayed gratification will always pay off.
Then again.. hang in there, Dungeon Delver Twelve Cataclyzm is a little more PG, has much of same mechanics, just done with different dice in a roleplay environment, no cards and minis, but more than enough content to roleplay a KDM styled campaign with some tweaks.
Then again.. hang in there, Dungeon Delver Twelve Cataclyzm is a little more PG, has much of same mechanics, just done with different dice in a roleplay environment, no cards and minis, but more than enough content to roleplay a KDM styled campaign with some tweaks.
Fudge that's a big post.. maybe I'm self-justifying too.. I'll TL;DR at the top.
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