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Summation
Herein lies the recordation of my interrogation of a monk known by the name “Jeremy” and the treasonous activities he was a part of. The game these monks play can be found appended to this report, but my Lord unless you wish to partake of a recreation of history you might best leave the text be. It contains some heresy, but more importantly I am not convinced it is a sufficient entertainment to draw your interest. Still, the heretic does show promise and I recommend to my Lord that we spare him the headsman to keep an eye on what he next pens.Positive: The game takes very little preparation to play. Aspects are always fun. The focus on mentors in character creation immediately sets up an interesting character background.
Negative: Using a tool die along with a maneuver system that can remove it causes some problems. A few mechanical issues cropped up in play, most notably the lack of importance of skill as compared to tools. The system focuses on highly varied characters, which can be difficult to mix in historic medieval play. Some readers may not care for how extremely light the system is.
The Physical Thing
For $20 this 124 page black and white digest sized softcover showcases average production values. The artwork is sparse, and what is here is meant to make the book feel like a much older text. I don't think the artwork is particularly successful at this, and I wish instead it was better connected to the text. The formatting is simple but easy to work with, and the editing is acceptable. I am pleased to see an index included, though I wish the author had bolded especially relevant page references.It's worth noting here that the writing style takes on the perspective of a monk who has created an RPG to play with his brothers at the monastery. Personally, I find this to be an unnecessary gimmick that gets in the way of the text more than supports it. That's a very subjective take on it, though, and your mileage may vary.
Under the Cover
As requested, my Lord, the monk Jeremy has been put to the screws and I have a full accounting of his treasonous work. At the outset this “game” seems quite harmless. A motley band of day dreamers describe a character they wish to portray, as an actor in a play might, and one member of the band sets the scenery and controls all of the minor characters in this play. These dreamers first pick a concept, and then pick three mentors to determine their Skills. Each Mentor offers three distinct Skills, and every time a Skill is offered the character is better at it. As you know, Lord, I have studied with priests, guardsmen, and the finest apothecary in perfecting my craft of truth finding. Jeremy would say I have the Priest, Guard, and Doctor Mentors. Each offers three Skills along with gifted tools, though I have to say that the apothecary I studied under was never so kind.To prevent the bias of the dreamer controlling the scenery these monks devised the use of multi-sided dice, much as a common gambler might use. The dice range from four sided to twenty sided. All Skills initially offer the dreamer's character the chance to roll a d4 without the Skill, a d6 with the Skill, and an increasing die size if multiple Mentors offered the same Skill. Tools also have die values, ranging from a d4 for simple bandages to a d20 for a war horse able to carry a knight into battle.
The dreamer who plays the stage will set numbers that must be overcome for a task to succeed. The number 4 is quite common, while more incredible tasks require higher numbers. The dreamer rolls two dice, one for the Skill and one for the Tool, and adds them together. If they beat the set number, or difficulty as it is called, then they succeed. If each die beats the difficulty on its own then it is an incredible success.
The dreamers are not satisfied with so base a way to tell their tales, however. Each character receives three Aspects, short descriptive phrases that are positive, negative, or both in character. Characters also have a small pool of Ardor points which may be used to Invoke an Aspect for a bonus, or to change the scenery created by the dreamer handling the stage. When Ardor is used for a bonus it offers the dreamer another eight sided die to roll. As a penalty it removes a die. A character's Vigor, a representation of their overall effectiveness, ultimately limits how many dice are rolled. Vigor begins at three and decreases in play as a consequence of losing fights, be they physical or mental.
The rules for conflict are somewhat vague, with both plenty of room for interpretation and frustration. Characters take turns attacking and defending, though there are two stages to defense as many characters will both actively defend (such as by parrying a blade) and passively defend (such as side stepping that same blade). More descriptive actions, such as striking a guard senseless or smothering speech, are called Maneuvers. They amount to a simple opposed roll, with the victor gaining the advantage and applying an Aspect to another character or the scene. Disarming an opponent, setting a scene on fire with a candle, or something similar could apply here.
Of course, there is a little bit of a problem with Maneuvers here. Since swordplay is so common, and since many will have nothing to fall back on without a sword, using the Disarm maneuver can be quite devastating. A guardsman without his sword is denied the Skill and the item bonus, likely dropping him down to a simple brawl attack that is unlikely to be successful. Those vile men and women who are the subject of our epics might similarly be disarmed and taken advantage of. Though the simple solution to this problem is to play in good spirits, this monks work does suffer a bit from it.
One artifact of the dreamers' characters is that of the Background. A Background is an explicit statement that a character is known for something in the past, but that the dreamer does not want to explore that while playing. It seems to be used, quite rightly, as a way to represent men who are known as great lovers but where we should not pretend they are making love while talking with our friends. It specifically sets a concept aside as something important, but which the dreamer wants to see no attention to while playing. I concede that I am not as well versed in this dreaming as the monks, but it occurs to me that removing something interesting from play with such a mechanic may not work quite as intended.
That, in simple form, is the game. These dreamers build a band of characters who journey around our present day, or even a few hundred years before, and set about righting wrongs and doing whatever they please. Dice rolling is minimal, character creation is fast, and the characters the dreamers portray can only be as effective as their tools allow them to be.
It is my recommendation, Lord, that this work be hidden away so that it may not circulate among the peasantry. Fanciful, and occasionally heretical ideas, are not for their eyes and the notion that monks may be reading this suggests that those same literates may further spread such wasteful fancy. As a game I believe it shows promise, and perhaps would be well suited for courtly entertainment, though it is my recommendation that we have the monks work on it some more to uncover its true potential.
My Take
My group took Chronica Feudalis and gave it a test drive with a little bit of mythological history interjected. We mixed Robin Hood with the Knights of King Arthur and adventured across a heroic England as a group of knights. Each character was a knight of a specific color and automatically assigned the knight mentor, but from there they differed. One was a former merry man, another a monk, and so forth. The adventure focused in on a noble abusing a purported miracle to satisfy his own dark desires.In play the game was enjoyable, though it didn't fit my group's interests as well as it could. We found the system to be a little too crunchless for our tastes, and the lack of skill customization was a bit of a turn off. Ultimately my evaluation of Chronica Feudalis is that it will do a good job of supporting a group that prefers a minimum of rules and already has a strong sense of what they want to do in a medieval setting, though I think it could be further polished. The way equipment works tends to dilute the value of skill, and the mentor system further tends to create characters that are broadly competent but not particularly skilled at any one thing. If FATE is too crunchy for your tastes, or if you'd rather have an explicit restriction on skill selection along with more emphasis on gear, then Chronica Feudalis will deliver.
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