Game 29: King of Dragon Pass - Part 1

Initially I'm not sure of what sort of game King of Dragon Pass actually is. The start menu had some tips for 'those who don't read the manual', but that's not me so I did read the manual and while I'm glad I did and I feel a little bit more prepared for the game now, I don't think this game falls into any particular genre that comes to mind. I'll be managing a Clan that has recently migrated to Dragon Pass, and the objective of the game (I'll be playing the 'long' game) is to become the King of Dragon Pass and unite the other Clans there under my rule - which sounds like the pitch for a strategy game, but this isn't a game that takes place on a map where I'm going to send units around conquering things, it's a series of choices and selections made on text screens in response to events and changing seasons.

Starting a new clan prompts me to answer questions about my Clan's history.

My clan absolutely drank themselves into a stupor

From the manual I had planned to allow thralls (slaves), since I wasn't too concerned about the moral implications and figured they'd be taken from a people we'd been fighting against.

When I saw the story involved a people we were assigned to protect I changed my mind

Our Clan is leaving our current area because of Pharoah, who is oppressing everyone and nobody can stand against him.

Pharoah must be really bad if this is the better alternative

With our choices made, I get to choose the clan name. I don't think there's a character limit on the clan name.

Hello, we are Clan Hey Do You Have More Beer We Are Not Drunk Enough

We begin in Sacred Time, which is where the clan allocates its magic for the year. Mechanically I'm very unclear about what any of this does, so I'm just going off of general ideas of how it's supposed to work. I haven't even seen a map or have any idea what clans might be around us, but I do know from the manual that the main thing that's likely to destroy my clan is starvation - we've got to keep our food stocks maintained first and foremost.

What does a magic point DO, exactly?

I've put the most I can into crops and herds for the food supply, and then split 1 among Diplomacy, Health, and War anticipating that we can start interacting with other clans or possibly fend off attacks soon. I keep one point in reserve as many of my Ring of Advisors (that panel of people) advise me to do so. I found a map, looks like we have a lot of clans as our neighbors. Those are the ones we'll mainly be interacting with.

I hope this means the Boskovi are fanatical about Pottery

I guess there's already been some interactions because Hey Do You Have More Beer We Are Not Drunk Enough already owes and is owed favors by several of the neighboring clans. We already have a couple allies (I guess that's blue), the Blackrock and Hendart clans, though we're not neighbors with either. A lot of the game seems to be about making choices, and the Ring has helpful (sometimes) advice for you.

Sadly I can't actually choose to follow Bastakos' suggestion

Going through the tutorial, I have to deal with a lecherous little man. Insisting that he marries the woman he slept with does not go over well and we end up raiding another clan despite it being 'Sea season', which is usually the time for planting.

I hope following the tutorial doesn't cost me too much food!

At least the raid goes well. Combat consists of deciding to commit magic resources and what battle tactics you choose.

One sexual encounter leads to the deaths of 8 people

The year passes and the harvest isn't as bad as I feared - we'll still be ending the year with more food than we started with. Bastakos goes too far and gets himself in trouble with another clan leader. We're already feuding with two clans, we don't need to add another conflict.

We don't want a war on behalf of someone who's idea of a diplomat is Ace Ventura

Bastakos, as fun as your suggestions were, you are out of the Ring.

Despite that the Herani ended up feuding with us anyway, thanks Tutorial.

We are now tutorial-less and on our own. This year we're going to allocate some magic to mysteries and try to learn more blessings / lore from the gods - the shrines you can build for the Gods confer permanent advantages for your clan so I want a lot of them (But not too many as you have to sacrifice goods / cattle to them yearly. I also need to go on 'Heroquests' which are re-enactments of the stories about the Gods - these This year our efforts in Mysteries reveals the story of Lhankhor Mhy finding the truth, and thus gives us clues about how we might go about achieving the Lightbringer's quest. Since the Herani hate us now, I send an emissary to the Blue Spruce clan to end that feud between our clans - it works with a gift of 50 cows. I don't mind feuding with someone - I think it'll be useful to conduct cattle raids and give our warriors something to do - but I definitely don't want to make too many enemies.

I love that these events have their own artwork. Varsens, take care of the old man.

Apparently the Undead are going to be a problem. I hope you won't think that I've gone senile when I say that the ducks are helping us defend our lands against them.

Option 6: Shame everyone else into fighting the undead because right now Ducks are doing that

Apparently there are Duck-people in lots of places - including our own territory. The clan is united in getting rid of them - when it came time to choose an ancient foe, I chose Beast Men, and the manual recommends that we will do best if we behave in a manner that would please our ancestors.

When I chose 'Beast Men' to fight I was imagining something furrier and more ferocious

We are going to embrace the spirit of our ancestors and be extremely cruel to ducks. That valley is ours for the taking!

Sing loud the songs of Victory! Our mighty warriors have defeated the Cabbage Ducks!

Entering our third year, I have a ton of magic this year and I don't know why - maybe building shrines / temples gives you more. This year we're going to attempt the Heroquest 'Lhankor Mhy Finds the Truth' so I can try to figure out what Heroquesting is about, and it says this one can reveal additional Myths. I have one point invested in 'questing' magic and I have the basic story of the quest but not the 'details', plus I don't know what I'm doing so it's anyone's guess whether I can actually do this yet.

Looks like a Heroquest can do a variety of things and you get to pick

Once you begin you go on a series of events related to the story.

In the story the Storm Bull fought alone, so we go with that option and he murders everything

This gets pretty involved so I'm very glad that I kept the text of the story as a handy reference - it's too long to memorize in the detail you need for some of these events. In the end, the Heroquest is successful, and since I chose Knowledge about Dragon Pass as the reward, large areas of the map are now visible to me.

This would have taken a lot of exploration parties to achieve!

I've built so many shrines that I'm having trouble maintaining them, and one falls apart as I lack the goods to keep it upright. Now I'm working on establishing permanent trade routes with as many clans as I can - it seems to get me more goods at no cost to myself. It's a shame that the clan most interested in trading is the Heran that I'm still feuding with (I keep taking some cows from them every Fire season in cattle raids.) The events seem to be drawn from a random selection and it looks like there's no provision to stop an event happening more than once, because this one happened twice. In a row.

They just can't resist beating the crap out of poor Enjossi I guess

Some people came to our village seeking refuge - they had been enslaved by a distant clan. Months later, those enslavers on strange horses came after them and demanded that we return the people we had taken in - and haughtily proclaimed themselves lords of our lands, to boot. I attacked them on the spot.

It went extremely badly

Over a dozen of my clan dead, and three leaders kidnapped by these intruders! This will not stand! Unfortunately, I have no idea where they are. But thanks to Leikan, I know where to start looking.

We will be exploring West for the forseeable future.

The way events interact with each other is very cool. I had an emissary from another clan ask us to give them some of our magic in exchange for some Thralls. I declined the Thralls since we don't do condone slavery in Clan Hey Do You Have More Beer We Are Not Drunk Enough, and instead asked her to perform a ritual to see into our future. She mentioned that soon a four-legged creature would appear and make us a very good offer.

And that is why I'm about to give more than two dozen cows to a fox

I think the damn fox got away with enough meat for a lifetime. Diplomatically I'm doing very well, I've been holding the occasional feast and sending gifts of food to nearby clans and we've allied with three others - the Eagles, the Greydogs, and the Isoltings. That makes five with the two we began with. I've been sacrificing to Orlanth and obtained the basic info for the Making of the Storm Tribe quest, which is the one I need to accomplish in order to unite several different clans into a Tribe - a major step towards becoming King of Dragon Pass. I figure it's worth a shot to try the Heroquest for it now, with five allies I expect I should be able to form a decent Tribe and I assume we can incorporate more clans later.

The Hurt Everything Clan will not listen to reason

I'm enjoying these stories, they have a quaint primitiveness to them that makes me feel as though they were translated from some other language.

So Orlanth searched for some good laws, and found the Knowing God, who was head of the Marks On Bark Clan. The Knowing God was trapped inside a great cube. He said that the Stone Tribe had put him in there. Orlanth ruined the cube so that it fell apart. Orlanth gave the Knowing God one of Yinkin's old claws, and said, "Now you must join my Storm Tribe, and help us remember our good laws." The Knowing God agreed to make the Marks On Bark Clan part of the Storm Tribe, so long as this new tribe had fierce warriors.

Success!

With the Heroquest for forming a tribe complete, we now await prophecies and events to arrive that will let us form a tribe. In the meanwhile we will be generous with our fellow clans and work to get more of them to like us.

And there's a lot going on in the meantime. Explorers find a group of dragonewts guarding a silver statue, and we steal it.

Alirene joined the tribe earlier, she was a wandering warrior who had killed a Pharoah agent and I made her an honored Weaponthane. She has proved her worth today.

The Ancestors showed up, and they are well pleased with us.

We've been killing Beastmen just like you did, dad!

The Beastmen showed up and they are not so pleased.

A war with the Beastmen doesn't sound good.

And then one day, a crazy man shows up and says that making a Tribe is not only a good idea - it's destiny!

You heard the man, let's do this!

With the councilors off to assemble the tribes, I get lucky on the timing and it's Sacred time again.

Expecting to form a tribe this year I max out on Diplomacy magic

Forming a tribe takes time - I need to contact each of the tribes in our potential confederation and negotiate with them one by one.

Some clans like the Greydogs ask too much and negotiations break down, they won't even come to the moot

After over a year of visiting other clans, six agree to join.

And it almost immediately falls apart

Thankfully I think I've been a relatively good steward of my cows (plus many taken from the Herani (who were not invited to the tribe)). Giving away loads of bovines smooths over the rough patches.

The time has come to select a King. Just forming the tribe has hurt my supplies, and the King is expected to be generous. Instead of trying for kingship now we support the leader of the Eagle clan to be the First King of the Drink All Things tribe.

Our time will come

And thus the Drink All Things tribe was born of the clans Eagle, Blue Jay, Boskovi (who are actually pottery fanatics and everyone has to use only their containers now), Gorind, Hiord, Isolting, and Hey Do You Have More Beer We Are Not Drunk Enough.

With this many clans banded together this tribe ought to be a force to be reckoned with - but right now that force is commanded by someone else. I'm going to try to use the reign of the first King to restock all those cattle I spent getting everyone together. Exploration has been going badly - no sign of those horse warriors that kidnapped my people and the last scouting party I sent disappeared entirely. It's a dangerous world out there. Extremely dangerous, as it turns out. I had just fired up the game intending to rebuild my clan wealth when this happens.

Utter Catastrophe

To be fair, this didn't come out of nowhere - the Lizards did send emissaries warning that this might happen if I didn't become nicer to them, and I just sent them away without a lot of gifts to try to mollify their wrath. So much for having the strength of a Tribe to help me here! We will attempt to soldier on to see if this can be salvaged but this is a long fall to try to recover from. We're down to less than a hundred people.

Or rather, I may want to soldier on but the remnants of my people do not

So... what did I do wrong? The first and most obvious is that I didn't treat imminent threats of destruction with the seriousness they warranted (granted, I didn't know how much real danger these threats actually posed) - I was visited both by beastmen and dragnewt emissaries that threatened destruction of my clan, and while I didn't treat the emissaries badly, both times I simply shrugged and sent them away with vague promises to behave better. For the Dragnewts that clearly wasn't enough. Looking back at the saga of Clan Hey Do You Have More Beer We Are Not Drunk Enough, I'm surprised to learn that it only lasted 8 years (It felt much longer!) - I don't know how many years you actually have in which to achieve victory, but I suspect it's pretty long (I got a prophecy at one point speaking of events over 200 years in the future!). I was probably trying to form a tribe much faster than I strictly needed to, and if I had built up more wealth and relationships before making the attempt I probably could have formed an even larger tribe. So taking these lessons to heart, let's give this another shot. May the next Clan fare better than this one.