Threedom: The King is Dead

As the mysterious third (Chris) needed a few weeks to prep for his next game, and prompted by a recent Open Hearth Podcast on GMless games, Kieron suggested we finally try one of the Firebrands games – specifically, the Bakers’ The King Is Dead.

First seen in Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands, the Firebrands’ framework is its own lineage derived from their PBTA, but showing what you can jettison. Each essentially takes the form of a series of minigames – epic, hyper-evolved moves – which form every narrative beat. In the case of The King Is Dead, all the Game of Thrones-’em-up-ing you could wish for.

Did we like it? We did, to a level inversely proportional to how much the people of Redehall Castle, seat of Dillestone power, loved the invading, blood-priestess-fuelled Antyrean invaders.

Jim: Now, there have been some successful GMless games, and some that I have not gone much out of, but that was one that I could have kept playing. It’s really very engaging. Why do you think that is?

Kieron: I think it’s actually mainly for the reason I’ve always been shy of bringing a Firebrands game to the table before. It takes the move structure of their PBTA and then expands it to being a blueprint for the whole scene – so you essentially have a script for each of the minigames, each of which is any of the core scenes in the genre it entails. In The King Is Dead’s case, Game of Thrones.

The reason I was shy is that if I was going to facilitate them, I should know it all – so know the games enough to help people through it, which is a dense amount of reading to truly internalise. In fact, no, you don’t. You can do what the Bakers say. We sit, and read what’s there, and then elaborate on top of it. I was aware that, after a certain point, as facilitator my main job was ensuring folks read what was there. 

Because what was there is what you need. Just do it, and build – because what there is really strong. Between our two sessions I listened to the Dice Exploder on Firebrands Minigames, and the observation came up that Firebrands isn’t really a GMless game: the 

GM in the game is the Bakers, and the script is just a masterclass in what a GM does in a narrative game.

There’s also the backbone of the King is Dead  being about hands of cards — which is a good way to simulate assets and strengths but also allow significant unpredictability, and adds teeth to the decision.

I mean, I think the firm focus and question in the game helps – we know what the endgame is. What do you like about it which you didn’t get elsewhere? 

So the reward for me here was that I have been wanting to play something that was just political and social interaction to deliver a story of thrones and kings, that is exactly what this produced. It actually couldn’t have been more what I was wanting us to play in terms of meeting an exact fantasy of “medieval melodrama”. We got to duel, with tongues and with swords, and we got to betray and fight wars, and there was a lot of running about and casting loading glances across a hall. Actual politics in games is often tricky (and exhausting if you are GMing it and the players are all interacting with NPCs) so this being something in which the load is balanced across everyone, allowing us all to take meaningful actions, prompted by the near-perfect pointed questions of the mini-games was precisely what I needed. Also it was very low-prep indeed, what a treat.

Also I accidentally played war as a battle.

You did! But, as we said, that’s also fine – like, the size of that move is the thing. Sure, you can do it as the whole military campaign (as I did when I ran it as we approached the endgame, with your forces from the North crushing the Oake southerners on your march to claim the capital and the heir) but it’s core opening line is just that two of the scions of the house face. “Choose one of the other players to be your enemy in the field.” Sure, we were using it as a raid, but that still worked.

It’s also telling that this is one of the games where it feels most GMed. In this, the players who aren’t in the war (just one, in our case) are actually narrating the flow of the war. They have a startling amount of control over what could happen, and what is under threat.  It’s telling that it’s the only game we played where someone had to stay out of the game, and everyone wasn’t able to join. This is as GMed as this GMless game gets.

But other games have the audience in a much quieter way, right?

The involvement of the players who aren’t in the spotlight is very significant. They are deciding who gets to take what action in some games, who asks what question in others, as well as often deciding what is at stake. They can do this in a way that follows what they want from the narrative, and they can follow actions which has strategic advantages for them, such as making people reveal the cards in their hands. It has a lot going on, and it means the game is rarely passive. 

The involvement isn’t an entirely unmixed blessing – the game suggests 3-5, and that puts a lot of pressure on the audience when there’s only one player in the audience, and it’s a game which involves a lot of GM fiat. You could see how uncomfortable Chris was in the ‘An Animated Disagreement’, when he just had to decide which of each of our arguments was best all on his lonesome. It’s a shame we didn’t play that one again – I’d have liked to see how either of us handled it. I think I’m less nice than Chris.

You have a thing about not being nice at the moment. Be nice! 

Writers aren’t nice, Jim. Get your characters up a tree and throw bricks on them. Though I know I do have a tendency towards “actually, I’ll set the tree on fire.” You’re right. New leaf. Let’s say nice things.

I’ll go first: The Bakers are good at the questions! The questions allowed just the right amount of breadth to allow players to feel like they’re expressing themselves and exploring in a direction they way to go in, but also they are super loaded. Stuff is going to happen! There’s also a powerful Game of Thrones influence, which is explicit in places, and speaks to the creative process. We all react to big pieces of culture and that’s what The King is Dead is doing.

It really is. Look at its release date. This is almost certainly something born of watching the show and figuring you want to mess with it. In my “Games are high art or fanfic” dichotomy, this is the latter. Especially as it is explicitly queerer and even more sexual than GoT.

The Duel was super interesting, because it’s essentially a narrative process. We establish first who is the better fighter, in conversation. Like, you have to agree before you can proceed (and while we agreed quickly, I think that could lead to debates) and then you conduct the battle through a series of prompts. The storytelling decides how the fight goes and who is hurt and how, or even if someone is killed (at their own discretion). This seems wonderful to me: combat that is played out without leaning on the capricious chance-engines of dice, and instead looking completely at what the players want from the scene. So Sword to Sword ended up being interesting in a way that combat often isn’t!

I mean, all the games were interesting, I think. I want to play again, to try to get to the ones which didn’t turn up (or at least try a Firebrands game that has overlapping moves – though playing one which diverges more is also really appealing. There’s a lot of these!). I think one of the interesting things is the various levels of intersecting player skill – some of the choices you make are about 

I was aware in both the chase scenes we did the moment when I had won it – and it was via a choice you made in terms of asking the question which I couldn’t fail (“Show your high card to beat the challenge”), which would put me in a number of wins that I was going to win the chase. Was that an oversight of you not getting exactly what the game was? Was that you choosing to lose the contest to learn my high card? Was it you deliberately wanting the scene to end with being caught? Like, that’s fascinating – you can play to lose, but to play to lose, you have to have higher player skill.

Right, the choices there did have some mechanical weight to them, but it was most interesting to see where it forced the story to go. I would be captured! What would you do with me?

While everyone knows the endgame, and the cards you’ll need to do well, and so can try to keep the relevant cards for then, the games are so aggressive in their card use it’s almost impossible to hang onto your best cards. If someone picks the War game and selects your involvement, you have to discard your best card to get extra cards. The cards will churn. In reality, it’s actually easiest to keep hold of the cards (2s and Jacks) which let you mess with the end game, which is also fun.

Talking about neat design – that the order of suits varies from game to game, so no one card is always better than another solely on suit is very clever. My Queen of Spades was my high card when the final war was going on… but I knew if I entered the war, I’d have to discard it, and Spades are the worst card in that particular game.

So I didn’t, knowing the endgame was coming, and hoping the queen would end me as queen. Or your queen. Queening was Lucia’s thing.

Was that our first love scene, KG?

And in the game, etc.

I think I’ve run at least erotic scenes for you when GMing, but – yeah – first romance. Certainly the first time I suggested you tie me up, to make your escape more convincing.

“To make your escape more convincing,” right right.

The pirate princess and the beautiful boy prince of the north! Two sexy chase sequences! One sexy dance sequence! One sexually interested mother! Plus a kiss and all that. The erotic undertow in the game is well done – when you’re doing the actual liaison scene, it’s structured in a very precise string of consent. A conversation interjected with explicit requests and answers (“I touch your wrist. May I?” “I loosen your armor. May I?”) – with tension added to the scene that any time after three back and forths, the audience may interject with someone disturbing us. In our case, when you were the prisoner in our castle, that would have been awkward. For stuff which can be awkward in many group, the game really gives support to you, in doing it gracefully. The game holds your hand in holding hands.

It was graceful, yes. A completely different experience from the One Dice Wife. There were no dice at all! But linking back to my starting point: this whole experience has been a boon to my appreciation of GMless games, which is a realm I find consistently uneven. This is one of the high points, and it was from the first scene to the last. For now, this one presides in my GMless game experiences. A coronation, indeed.

The King Is Dead is available from Lumpley Games.