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Now this will be an interactive LP, when prompted please vote.
What is King of the Dragon Pass?
A game originally published in the mid-90s by A-Sharp, it is best described as a combination of civilization and choose your own adventure where you lead a tribe of late neolithic viking-celt wizards to survive nature's wrath, rival clans, strange creatures, chaos, and your own dickery to form a tribe and eventually become KING OF THE DRAGON PASS.
The game is quite text heavy, but is known for it's fantastic art.
It's not an easy game to play to the end due to a combination of RNG and needing to learn the intricacies of the Orlanthi society that you're playing as, so what makes sense to you the player will NOT make sense to the superstitious viking wizards.
There's two versions: the original that you can buy on GOG.com, which is the original release, and one for the ipod/ipad that has some interface changes and new events and art assets added to it. I will be playing from the original version.
So is it based on anything?
Why yes, the world of Glorantha, formerly HeroQuest and RuneQuest, created by Greg Stafford from the ground up as an Anthropology experiment basically, it's less Tolkien and more Beowulf and Jung.
So how are we gonna participate?
First we roll up the clan, base on decisions you give. At the beginning of the year, Give me a general attitude towards outsiders (Friendly, Neutral, Hostile), whether we trade for treasures, who to raid if we raid, and what Hero Quest to go on when it's the time.
I'd love to vote on events, but you can't save during events and it would require me to set up a virtual machine to make voting during events possible.
Now let's go through the introduction and decide on the clan.
There was a time when gods and people walked together. Your clan traces it's lines to to those times. Your ancestors had aligned with Orlanth, who was one of the many rebellious, upstart gods bent upon conquest of the world. What Orlanth's unique contributions at that time were personal honor, and close kinship to the other deities who seemed to be on the winning side
Italics will be near-Verbatim text - I will abbreviate parts for ease of transcription, plain is me. Anyways, the people as a whole, regardless of who they worshiped are known as Orlanthi after this guy.
After many adventures, Orlanth proved himself worthy of marrying Ernalda the Earth-Mother. The two established the marriage ring and established harmony upon the world. Your clan took part in the wedding. Some went to whoop with Orlanth, learned a secret from Ernalda or guarded the part with Elmal. What did your clan do?
A. Your men and women donned gleaming armor and stood guard with Elmal
B. Your men whooped with Orlanth and drink the eight know drinks until your heads hurt.
C. Your women withdrew with Ernalda and return with a list of names, which they promised not to repeat.
AWOOOGA first choice, and one of the two most important. This is one of the two Hidden difficult choices, choosing your clan's chief deity.
Orlanth: the Default choice, and the medium, clans that start with Orlanth will have one of his shrines and have the easiest time forming tribes and kingdoms. However, his blessings are mostly war-based, while they are useful, Orlanthi clans have a harder time getting off the ground then Ernaldi. Clans start with the Myth Orlanth and Aroka which has some useful treasures and stops drought.
Ernalda: Orlanth's wife, and the easiest. As you can guess, her blessings are oriented towards farming, which can save a starting clan from a starvation spiral. All Ernaldi chiefs are women which can be mixed blessing depending on your future tribe's make up. While she is not in high esteem as Orlanth, she is respected as ruler. Clans start with Ernalda Feeds the Tribe quest, which is extremely useful to keeping clans fed and wealthy.
Elmal: Hard mode. He is subordinate to Orlanth, and as a consequence, the majority of the other clans - who are Orlanthi - will look down on you, and think of you are being uppity when you start moving into the tribe-building stage. However, as a horse god, his blessings help you get as many Thanes (warrior caste) as possible as they require horses, though his mainly war-based blessing doesn't help much in the domestic side. Clans get the Elmal guards the stead quest, the 2nd hardest Hero Quest to perform successfully, and honestly one that the usefulness of it's rewards can be limited.
I'll be frank, this would've been annoying to transcribe. These will decide what your clan is known for among other clans and has some influence on your goals, like picking the knowing god helps you with legal wrangling, and if the god has a shrine, it'll erect a shrine to them.
During the time of darkness, many people have lost their lands and came to others begging for hospitality. One of these was the stick people who came to your Ancestors. How did your ancestors accept them?
A. As Thralls
B. As Adopted Family
This will decide how you deal with war prisoners and strangers who come to you. Thralls eat less then Carls (Farmers), and can be sacrificed to certain gods (While others will be offended by such sacrifices), but they have a chance to run away or rebel, and other clans will be angry if you keep their members as slaves.
Adopted family can lead to overpopulation and makes certain treasures useless. Your ancestors will gift you magic if you follow tradition, and take it away if you don't, so no take backs if you regret it.
AWOOOOGA! This is the second Hidden difficult selection. Your ancestral enemy will determine event chains, and how these races will fuck your guys over.
Urz: Trolls
Prax: Confederations of non-horse riding peoples, and one tapir-like race herding mindless humans
choosing the Beastlord locks us out of some interesting events, and one of the clans is a Troll-friend. Basically, the Ice Lord or Trolls are the easiest enemies, with Elves being a next step up, Beastlords, and Prax can be really annoying.
And if you guys pick the salty lord of the sea, I will fucking kill you. These guys are so hard that they've been removed in the iOS version.
To summarize, Orlanth kills the Sun - Bad Emperor Yelm, humanity has to flee for their lives in the darkness, and in an effort to bring the sun back, the Great Compromise was created, creating time as we know it.
One of the great Orlanthi heroes of ancient times was Heort, a just, courageous, and strong man who battled all others to establish a place known as Heortland. Your clan had a role in maintaining this.
A. War
B. Balance
C. Peace
Now this is the least important, as we can change the clan arrangement at any time, though the Ancestors prefer if we stick to it. Peace lets you put more magic in farming magic at cost of war magic, and vice-versa, Balance splits the difference. Peace is overall the best choice to start with.
Now this is another shrine check. If you pick your chief god, or one of the gods listed in the 'Your Clan's renowned' act, it will upgrade the shrine, allowing you to have more blessings active, and produce more nobles that worship that deity. otherwise, you get a shrine to another god, allowing you to have up to three shrines to start with.
No text, just a follow up picture.
This determines how we interact with Dragonewts (basically baby dragons with alien, incomprehensible worldview), Wyrms, and Dragon Artifacts, and like Thrall/Slaves, our Ancestors will reward us if we do what they do.
(Insert blurb regarding your previous choice), everything was all well until suddenly dragons rose up and started attacking and consuming the people who had gone along with the Dragonewts, the incident becoming known as the Dragonkill war. All those who survived the Dragonkill abandoned the Dragon Pass, considering it cursed
In current time, Heortland has been conqueror by a Sorcerer who crowned himself Pharaoh and used sorcery to enforce his rule. Your clan started to fight, some accepting the rule of the outside, others who will stay to plot his downfall, while others refused and wanting nothing to do with it. In order to prevent the act of kin-slaying, the worst sin, you chose to depart from your home land in Heortland.
This will decide how much people you can take into your clan, how easily you can defend it from enemies, and whether if you can give away land should the need arises. The only other way to get land besides from marking some from the start is to seize it from another land, a long, and somewhat risky prospects.
However, if your land is too big, other clans can sneak past your guards undetected, and it makes you a bigger target for raids.
A Short game ends when you become a tribal king and rule for ten years, and if you can do that, you can win the long game which is to build a kingdom. I believe the iOS version got rid of the short game since really, no one played it.
Difficulty: I will not do Hard. Basically the modes decide how often bad events pop up, and how easily you can get decisions to work out for you. Hard mode does not add anything Normal doesn't have, and makes the game unfun for me. EDIT: depending on the clan make up, I will be going easy or normal, depending on how much the votes set me back.
Name: 10 characters max.
Don't understand some of the things? Don't worry, you're kind of suppose to pick it up as you go.
NOW VOTE
What is King of the Dragon Pass?
A game originally published in the mid-90s by A-Sharp, it is best described as a combination of civilization and choose your own adventure where you lead a tribe of late neolithic viking-celt wizards to survive nature's wrath, rival clans, strange creatures, chaos, and your own dickery to form a tribe and eventually become KING OF THE DRAGON PASS.
The game is quite text heavy, but is known for it's fantastic art.
It's not an easy game to play to the end due to a combination of RNG and needing to learn the intricacies of the Orlanthi society that you're playing as, so what makes sense to you the player will NOT make sense to the superstitious viking wizards.
There's two versions: the original that you can buy on GOG.com, which is the original release, and one for the ipod/ipad that has some interface changes and new events and art assets added to it. I will be playing from the original version.
So is it based on anything?
Why yes, the world of Glorantha, formerly HeroQuest and RuneQuest, created by Greg Stafford from the ground up as an Anthropology experiment basically, it's less Tolkien and more Beowulf and Jung.
So how are we gonna participate?
First we roll up the clan, base on decisions you give. At the beginning of the year, Give me a general attitude towards outsiders (Friendly, Neutral, Hostile), whether we trade for treasures, who to raid if we raid, and what Hero Quest to go on when it's the time.
I'd love to vote on events, but you can't save during events and it would require me to set up a virtual machine to make voting during events possible.
Now let's go through the introduction and decide on the clan.
There was a time when gods and people walked together. Your clan traces it's lines to to those times. Your ancestors had aligned with Orlanth, who was one of the many rebellious, upstart gods bent upon conquest of the world. What Orlanth's unique contributions at that time were personal honor, and close kinship to the other deities who seemed to be on the winning side
Italics will be near-Verbatim text - I will abbreviate parts for ease of transcription, plain is me. Anyways, the people as a whole, regardless of who they worshiped are known as Orlanthi after this guy.
After many adventures, Orlanth proved himself worthy of marrying Ernalda the Earth-Mother. The two established the marriage ring and established harmony upon the world. Your clan took part in the wedding. Some went to whoop with Orlanth, learned a secret from Ernalda or guarded the part with Elmal. What did your clan do?
A. Your men and women donned gleaming armor and stood guard with Elmal
B. Your men whooped with Orlanth and drink the eight know drinks until your heads hurt.
C. Your women withdrew with Ernalda and return with a list of names, which they promised not to repeat.
AWOOOGA first choice, and one of the two most important. This is one of the two Hidden difficult choices, choosing your clan's chief deity.
Orlanth: the Default choice, and the medium, clans that start with Orlanth will have one of his shrines and have the easiest time forming tribes and kingdoms. However, his blessings are mostly war-based, while they are useful, Orlanthi clans have a harder time getting off the ground then Ernaldi. Clans start with the Myth Orlanth and Aroka which has some useful treasures and stops drought.
Ernalda: Orlanth's wife, and the easiest. As you can guess, her blessings are oriented towards farming, which can save a starting clan from a starvation spiral. All Ernaldi chiefs are women which can be mixed blessing depending on your future tribe's make up. While she is not in high esteem as Orlanth, she is respected as ruler. Clans start with Ernalda Feeds the Tribe quest, which is extremely useful to keeping clans fed and wealthy.
Elmal: Hard mode. He is subordinate to Orlanth, and as a consequence, the majority of the other clans - who are Orlanthi - will look down on you, and think of you are being uppity when you start moving into the tribe-building stage. However, as a horse god, his blessings help you get as many Thanes (warrior caste) as possible as they require horses, though his mainly war-based blessing doesn't help much in the domestic side. Clans get the Elmal guards the stead quest, the 2nd hardest Hero Quest to perform successfully, and honestly one that the usefulness of it's rewards can be limited.
I'll be frank, this would've been annoying to transcribe. These will decide what your clan is known for among other clans and has some influence on your goals, like picking the knowing god helps you with legal wrangling, and if the god has a shrine, it'll erect a shrine to them.
During the time of darkness, many people have lost their lands and came to others begging for hospitality. One of these was the stick people who came to your Ancestors. How did your ancestors accept them?
A. As Thralls
B. As Adopted Family
This will decide how you deal with war prisoners and strangers who come to you. Thralls eat less then Carls (Farmers), and can be sacrificed to certain gods (While others will be offended by such sacrifices), but they have a chance to run away or rebel, and other clans will be angry if you keep their members as slaves.
Adopted family can lead to overpopulation and makes certain treasures useless. Your ancestors will gift you magic if you follow tradition, and take it away if you don't, so no take backs if you regret it.
AWOOOOGA! This is the second Hidden difficult selection. Your ancestral enemy will determine event chains, and how these races will fuck your guys over.
Urz: Trolls
Prax: Confederations of non-horse riding peoples, and one tapir-like race herding mindless humans
choosing the Beastlord locks us out of some interesting events, and one of the clans is a Troll-friend. Basically, the Ice Lord or Trolls are the easiest enemies, with Elves being a next step up, Beastlords, and Prax can be really annoying.
And if you guys pick the salty lord of the sea, I will fucking kill you. These guys are so hard that they've been removed in the iOS version.
To summarize, Orlanth kills the Sun - Bad Emperor Yelm, humanity has to flee for their lives in the darkness, and in an effort to bring the sun back, the Great Compromise was created, creating time as we know it.
One of the great Orlanthi heroes of ancient times was Heort, a just, courageous, and strong man who battled all others to establish a place known as Heortland. Your clan had a role in maintaining this.
A. War
B. Balance
C. Peace
Now this is the least important, as we can change the clan arrangement at any time, though the Ancestors prefer if we stick to it. Peace lets you put more magic in farming magic at cost of war magic, and vice-versa, Balance splits the difference. Peace is overall the best choice to start with.
Now this is another shrine check. If you pick your chief god, or one of the gods listed in the 'Your Clan's renowned' act, it will upgrade the shrine, allowing you to have more blessings active, and produce more nobles that worship that deity. otherwise, you get a shrine to another god, allowing you to have up to three shrines to start with.
No text, just a follow up picture.
This determines how we interact with Dragonewts (basically baby dragons with alien, incomprehensible worldview), Wyrms, and Dragon Artifacts, and like Thrall/Slaves, our Ancestors will reward us if we do what they do.
(Insert blurb regarding your previous choice), everything was all well until suddenly dragons rose up and started attacking and consuming the people who had gone along with the Dragonewts, the incident becoming known as the Dragonkill war. All those who survived the Dragonkill abandoned the Dragon Pass, considering it cursed
In current time, Heortland has been conqueror by a Sorcerer who crowned himself Pharaoh and used sorcery to enforce his rule. Your clan started to fight, some accepting the rule of the outside, others who will stay to plot his downfall, while others refused and wanting nothing to do with it. In order to prevent the act of kin-slaying, the worst sin, you chose to depart from your home land in Heortland.
This will decide how much people you can take into your clan, how easily you can defend it from enemies, and whether if you can give away land should the need arises. The only other way to get land besides from marking some from the start is to seize it from another land, a long, and somewhat risky prospects.
However, if your land is too big, other clans can sneak past your guards undetected, and it makes you a bigger target for raids.
A Short game ends when you become a tribal king and rule for ten years, and if you can do that, you can win the long game which is to build a kingdom. I believe the iOS version got rid of the short game since really, no one played it.
Difficulty: I will not do Hard. Basically the modes decide how often bad events pop up, and how easily you can get decisions to work out for you. Hard mode does not add anything Normal doesn't have, and makes the game unfun for me. EDIT: depending on the clan make up, I will be going easy or normal, depending on how much the votes set me back.
Name: 10 characters max.
Don't understand some of the things? Don't worry, you're kind of suppose to pick it up as you go.
NOW VOTE
no subject
Date: 2013-06-04 03:58 am (UTC)From:2. SKY BEARS FUCK YES
3. Slaves if whoever our god is approves of sacrifice
4. Beastlords let's punch some tapirs
5. That Hunter guy let's have him fight some fuckin bears
6. Peace
7. Negative apparently dragons are assholes
8. Let's get land to grow into
9. And we shall be CLAN FISTBEEF.