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Review of The King's Dilemma
Blurb from the Publisher: 'The King's Dilemma™ is an interactive narrative experience with legacy elements, featuring several branching storylines leading to many possible finales and an evolving deck of event cards at its core.
In The King's Dilemma™, players represent the various Houses leading the government of the Kingdom of Ankist. You will draw one card from the Dilemma deck each round and experience the game story as it unfolds. Each card will pose a problem that the Council will have to resolve on the King's behalf. As members of the King's inner circle, your decisions will determine how the story proceeds and the fate of the kingdom. Each event only happens once: you will discuss and bargain with the other players and finally you will have to make a choice, determining the outcome, progressing the game story, and possibly unlocking more events.
You will have to keep the kingdom going, while also seeking an advantage for your own House; this power struggle may lead the kingdom into war, famine, or riot, or it could generate wealth and well-being. It will depend on your choices! The thing is, each decision has consequences, what is good for the kingdom as a whole may be bad for your family.
Will you act for the greater good, or will you think only of yourself?'
What you get: Your EUR 70 or equivalent will buy you The King's Dilemma, a legacy game with both gamist and narrativist aspects. The game can accommodate from three to five players in around an hour. Since its release in 2019 it has won half a dozen award nominations like most innovative board game or best game.
In addition to the English 48-page (!) rulebook that can be found on the publisher's website free of charge, the game also contains the following: 75 closed Envelopes (usually with four cards each), 15 Vote cards (5 Aye, 5 Pass, 5 Nay), 6 Secret Agenda cards, 12 House screens, one double-sided Map, 3 Mystery Sticker dossiers (with 4 stickers each), one Sticker booklet (with 176 stickers), one Cover tile, one Stability marker, 5 Momentum markers, 5 Positive Open Agenda markers, 5 Negative Open Agenda tokens, 72 Coin tokens, 65 Power tokens, 5 Resource markers, 12 Outcome markers, one Leader token, and one Moderator token.
Note: I playtested a full campaign of The King's Dilemma before writing this review. It contains spoilers about the backstory and the rules changes that are slowly introduced in the game depending on your progress. Seeing how it is not an RPG, I don't believe the spoilers will diminish your entertainment in the least. If you feel however that reading about what happens could spoil the fun, you might wish to jump straight to the conclusion.
Gameplay: The King's Dilemma is a legacy campaign running its course through around 15 games, which unlock Mystery stickers. As is, the campaign is designed to be played only once. At approximately one hour per game, expect between 15 and 20 hours to conclude the campaign.
Each player represents a House in the Council of the (fantasy) Kingdom of Ankist, advising the king (in reality: taking the decisions instead of the king). The kingdom to prosper, on the other hand however each house wishes to increase its power in the overall scheme of things. A player does not incarnate a single character from his House; he represents a string of characters, in a campaign that spans decades of game time. Even though the game can be played by a maximum of five players, it offers 12 Houses to choose from. Each House has a different history and background, and different likes and dislikes. Where the Dukes of Blodyn are the most literate, patrons of science and the arts, the Dukes of Coden have a reputation of being decadent and unmotivated. They also have different achievements with particular prerequisites, narrative and other. The narrative achievement can be triggered by specific story events, while the other three achievements have gameplay-related triggering conditions. Each house is also ranked in six different alignments (extremist, opulent, moderate, rebel, opportunist, greedy). These set a tone for each house, seeing how if it completes achievements it receives a higher bonus. Houses are nameless, for the players to further customize them. At the beginning of the game each House starts with 10 coins and 8 Power.
The kingdom is built around six characteristics: influence, wealth, morale, welfare, knowledge and stability. Their values will increase and decrease during the game, depending on the decisions that the players will take. The game revolves around opening envelopes, adding dilemmas to the dilemma deck, randomly drawing them, and resolving them. As an example, envelope 00 includes the first story line (the crowning of the new king) and three dilemmas only.
In a given round the players draw and read a random card from the dilemma deck. Dilemmas are always covered by a card, seeing how both their sides contain useful information. The upper side states a situation and the approximate results of the positive or the negative result increasing or reducing one or more of the kingdom's characteristics. The precise result however is only revealed only after players have voted on the dilemma. The players move the Outcome Counters on the board, for everybody to be reminded what approximately they are voting for. The council then votes. A player can vote positively (aye), negatively (nay), or he may pass. When he votes for either of the first two options, he must also place Power upon his votes, i.e. how much the vote is worth. If a player passes, he has two options: either gather Power (placing himself in a pool of players who will gain a part of the power distributed at the end of the vote), or become the Moderator. The latter does not hand out power at the end, but allows a player to decide in case of a tie in ayes and nays. Voting might last more than a full round, seeing how the player with the most Power on his vote (the Leader) practically dictates when the voting round ends. Once placed a vote cannot change, even though a player can add more Power to the vote he already cast. Bargaining is both endorsed and encouraged, even though the only thing that can be exchanged are coins. If coins are exchanged, agreements are binding. If they are not, agreements are nothing but declarations that players may or may not honour. Coins can only be used for bribing other players and accumulating points at each game's end.
The vote is then resolved. The Power on ayes and nays is counted, and the side with the most Power wins. Ties are resolved by the Moderator. The Leader token goes to the player of the winning side who invested the most Power in that vote. Some players claim the coins they won due to their passing choices, while the Power on the board is distributed equally amongst the players that passed. Leftover power stays on the board for the next vote. The players who voted for the losing side reclaim their Power. The players who voted for the winning side place that Power in the pool of Power to be distributed after the next vote.
The dilemma is then finally resolved. The card is read and changes take effect. A card might state something as simple as Welfare -2, or Welfare +3 and Wealth -2, the kingdom's characteristics however might increase or decrease more than that due to the existence of momentum, i.e. how a characteristic behaved previously. Applying a Chronicle sticker on the realm's board is another possible result, with the leader signing the sticker. The board has three spaces for Chronicle stickers per characteristic (balance excluded), and stickers can be stuck upon one another. These stickers award Power bonuses and penalties for the Open Agenda tokens of the next game. The players then open a new envelope, if indicated by the vote's result. That is not always the case. As an example, on envelope 00, the six possible outcomes of votes lead to four potential new envelopes. They first read the story card, which the Leader signs if needed, place it on the matching storyline space, and shuffle the new cards within the Dilemma deck. Some envelopes are special, in that they include cards which end storylines and award bonuses to the players that signed most of their cards, or even provide narrative achievements which instantly fulfil a House's narrative goal. In many cases, such story related events are mutually exclusive; one House unlocking theirs means that another Houe cannot unlock its own.
The game proceeds like this round after round, with the dilemma deck increasing and decreasing in size, storylines expanding and the Houses promoting their agenda. Depending on how they do, they gain either Prestige points (how well they are doing) or Crave points (how much they want to do better). The game's end is triggered once the stability marker reaches either end of its track, signifying that due to the incredible imbalance in the kingdom the king has abdicated. Alternatively, the game's end is triggered by the king dying through a semi-random algorithm relating to the dilemmas resolved. Players calculate their scores based on their Secret Agenda cards and their Open Agenda tokens. The former show a range in the track where you need to keep a resource in order to score the card. The more you keep the the more points each resource is worth. As an example, the Moderate wants every characteristic more or less in the middle of the track, the Opulent on the higher end, while the Greedy doesn't care for which extreme a characteristic finds itself into, as long as it has a very high or a very low value. Players also gain points in relation to their ranking when it comes to the money they hold. Having the most Power tokens behind your screen also adds points. Scores are recorded game after game, as do House achievements. House alignments are also adjusted, depending on the Secret Agendas used.
Once the sixth Mystery sticker has been attached, the game instructs to open directly envelope 70, which contains the event of the campaign's grand finale. No instructions are given at the beginning of the game on how the finale scores, except from a mention that Prestige and Crave matter at the end of the campaign. The precise winning conditions for the campaign, many of them linked to the final events which are otherwise unrelated to the subplots that the players experience until then, are only made known once the players reach the grand finale itself.
In addition to the rules, the rulebook devotes six full pages on fluff concerning the world, the different power brokers, the kingdoms outside of Ankist, Ankist's main religion, as well as its history.
The strong points: The concept behind The King's Dilemma is interesting, to say the least. There is a branching plot that can be only partially explored, the legacy aspect that some people find interesting, rules, a lot of bargaining, as well as roleplaying. The mix is entertaining, especially the bargaining and the constant positioning vote after vote. The mechanism that regulates Power is clever, in that only the Power that helped the winning decision gets redistributed. In other words, if you participate in one or two successful votes, you will be short on Power, which you might want to regain by passing a few times. Yet, why not haggle about that, and gain something out of nothing? There's bluffing, counter-bluffing, deals that will be kept (the one where coins change hands), deals that will not, and many more. Coin feels like a peculiar commodity since you can either bribe other players or use it to gain points at the end and not do anything else with it, yet still, it is a tested idea that has worked for other games.
The results that come out of voting are interesting for the most part. One knows what to expect when it comes to repercussions (I really liked this mechanic, by the way), and sometimes the narrative turns towards unexpected paths. In other cases however it remains rather linear; keep on reading about that.
The six storylines that the game cautiously allows to flower are diverse. I enjoyed how they start mingling after the first few envelopes open. You might not be interested in all of them as a player or as a House, they do however make a point of how life goes on in a kingdom that faces many challenges of a very different nature. The setting is pseudomedieval with fantasy elements, yet current undercurrents relating to real-world problems or echoes of historical problems like slavery or witch-hunting are rather obvious. Some of these plots play heavily on the kingdom's fluff, others adopt a more vanilla-like twist on exploration themes, some relate to wars being fought. All in all, that's a good mix that also allows each House to feel as if it is progressing, with goals and achievements coming within arms' reach game after game. I don't want to spoil the end, yet like every good fantasy plot out there it ultimately ends with betrayal and PvP confrontation. Be prepared for it; it might suit you to be one of the traitors.
I don't need to describe legacy games, seeing how they already have a serious following. In one sentence, the board and the game changes the more you play. Once a campaign is completed, the game cannot be meaningfully played again at a particular stage, because of the altered elements. The results of your interactions with the board and cards will be visible for your group, and for others, to see. It is highly unlikely for two boxes to look similar once the campaign has been concluded.
The rulebook looks like a handful upon first inspection, in reality however the game is extremely easy to play once you start. This divide stems from the fact that the rulebook covers every situation, which however is very unlikely to arise when you only have one or two envelopes open at the beginning of the game. This does not mean that one should approach it as a learn-as-you-play, since this will aggravate the game's most serious flaw; keep on reading about this. Incidentally, when it comes to fluff, you should definitely copy or print, from the publisher's website, the six pages that relate to the setting, so that each player studies them in advance. The King's Dilemma comes out as immersive when the players become involved with the backdrop and create their own fun both in it as well as around it.
The production values are high. The artwork fits the premise nicely. I really enjoyed how the board and the materials went for functionality first and foremost. The envelopes are well made. Should you play the game in a way that will allow you to override the legacy aspect and play it again, you will be able to reuse every single of its elements. The box could have been a bit sturdier, but I won't complain.
The game does not have any expansion to support it, yet a couple of months before writing this review Horrible Guild announced its sequel, The Queen's Dilemma. That game is currently in development. Those who enjoy The Kings Dilemma can certainly come back for more. I know I will.
The weak points: The King's Dilemma has an elephant in the room: nobody knows at the beginning of the game what are the campaign's ultimate winning conditions. You know how to win games, yet you don't know if and how all that will be useful at the end of the campaign. There is an off-handed remark about Prestige and Crave points being of interest, and that's it. Yet, this mention is conspicuous, to say the least, since it appears on a text that has been then errataed (a new card replaces the text with another text). The new text obfuscates things even more. For such an important aspect of the game, that's a sloppy approach. Should you play strictly based on your House's prerogatives? Should you use them as guidance only? Should you adopt a gamist, matter of fact approach, as if you were playing a euro? Should you roleplay, and if yes, how much? Will your roleplaying be rewarded at game's end, like most RPGs nowadays do, or is immersion its own reward? None of these questions have an answer until the game's very end, and that is as incredible own goal. I do not understand the reasoning behind this. If this were the game's way of addressing mechanical imbalances like runaway leader issues or what have you, that should have been worked into the scoring system. If this secrecy aimed to increase the importance of roleplaying, rewarding the roleplaying aspect from the very beginning would achieve the same goal. If that's a way of keeping players interested in order to finish the whole campaign, I regret to point out that no other legacy game or RPG for that matter kept scoring a secret until the last round.
In a nutshell: you are playing a game for 15 hours, without knowing what you are trying to achieve, how to do so, and what exactly the game aims for. And even more so, since this is a legacy game, you cannot play it again. Ouch.
As expected, this issue is serious enough to spill over everything, including the initial choice of Houses. With what criteria do you choose a House at the beginning of the game? Their narratives and backstories? Their hidden objectives and how you might feel (with no criteria, mind you) about what they are trying to achieve? Any roleplaying potential (even though you don't know whether that matters)? Or something as irrelevant as their colours and faux heraldry? Again, at the beginning of the game none of these questions have an answer when it comes to the gamist aspect. Incredibly enough, the game does nothing to help when it comes to the roleplaying aspect or the plot itself. I expected at least one page from the rulebook to be devoted to what the Houses are known for. We get nothing. If you want an informed choice, you have to read through 12 screens with thick texts, a number of stats and what have you, and decide. No reference leaflet, no chart for an easy comparison, nothing.
To make matters worse, the choice of a House increases or decreases narrative involvement. Some Houses touch upon the game's subplots better than the others. If you are playing a House which never appears to be in the thick of things, your immersion in the game is likely to suffer. One has zero control over this.
Flaws aside, it is important that players share the same mindframe. If one is gaming to win (with the all caveats I just described), the other cares for the plot, the other for the intrigue, and the others simply want to roleplay a bit, the game can come out as disappointing. Also, it is a given that games with intrigue play better with more people. The King's Dilemma is a game to be enjoyed by five, full stop.
I do not understand the desirability of legacy games, compared to campaigns which you can enjoy again, and again, and again. Setting aside the already mentioned flaws, if you play The King's Dilemma as is, you will use around 60% to 70% of its content, and will never get to see the rest. Never. It does not have a post-campaign mode like Pandemic Legacy where the game can be played in its standard version even with all the stickers on board. Obviously enough, you cannot resell the game either. Now that's civic responsibility and understanding of global issues like, I don't know, global warming: to buy a game, and once you finish it, to bin it with a large chunk of its materials untouched. The good news is that the pointless legacy element can be short-circuited. You might need some cards and a notebook to write on, sign here and there, while the board might look and feel rougher than it would have with the game's proper elements. At the end of the day however it fully works. Each dilemma card is tagged (I wonder why, to be honest, since this is a single-use boardgame, but I shut up since it suits me fine), thus you can easily reset it for another go with another group of friends or with the same friends a number of years down the road. You can even sell it after completing it, if you so wish. I am not holding my breath, yet I hope that The Queen's Dilemma, the successor to this game, dumps the legacy fad and turns the game into an honest, replayable boardgame/RPG mélange.
The game's voting is to a large extent repetitive, I might however be biased because of how the lack of knowledge largely turned the votes into crap shoots. If we knew from the beginning what we were aiming for, maybe the game's single mechanic would have felt tighter. Amongst others, things feel messy because of poor interactions between the game's sub-mechanics. Setting once again aside the fact that you don't know what to do to win, how do you vote if your House's narrative describes something as its principle but your Secret Agenda requires the exact opposite to flourish? Is that seriously supposed to be the king's dilemma? Idem for the narratives, which at times are disconnected. You will never get to know the extent of your full options unless you open every envelope and deconstruct the game, in reality however the differences between choices are less prominent than you would think. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the game offers the illusion of free will, yet it is admittedly more linear than I would wish it to be. Further integration between the storylines could have also helped, i.e. achieving something in one that helps you in another.
Incidentally, if you expect ground-breaking risqué subjects, don't. There is violence, slavery, inequality, and issues that are condemnable in today's world, that's however hardly something that the TV hasn't shown in a much more explicitly and thought-provoking way. The ending is generic. It does not take care of loose ends, nor does it cater to each house separately. This could have been better addressed.
Conclusion: A 3,5 / 2,5 if I were to be more accurate, The King's Dilemma has merit as a combination of non-invested gamist elements, light roleplaying aspects, and social dynamics, where exploring the branching plot and the narratives is a major part of the deal. If all players around the (full) table are on the same wavelength, there is quite the entertainment to be had. Extremely excited about it as I was however, the game is unfocused and rough around the edges. The incomprehensible choice of not clearly disclosing its goals until the very end tramples upon the gamist aspect. Worse, it makes finding whether it is something you would enjoy a shot in the dark, while still requiring many hours of investment. As for the legacy aspect, it is as sociopathic as it has always been. Thankfully, the game can be tricked and I can experience the campaign again a few years down the line. Then, fellow council members, the players will know what to strive for from the beginning.
For more info on The King's Dilemma and Horrible Guild, visit their website at https://www.horribleguild.com.
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