Welcome back to another exciting blog post where I speculate about what’s coming and then we all have a good laugh about it when Gencon ruins it all.

I’m excited!

I’m also in a lot of pain after messing up my wrists and hip this week in a freak Segway accident. I wish I was joking. FOOSH injury and all. This whole thing was typed with hunt-and-peck. Took ages…

Anyway…

Last time I covered the Campaigns of Death. They’re slated to arrive before all the new expansions as part of wave 3, alongside the pinups, and of course…

THE GAMBLER’S CHEST

Goddamn, where to begin with this one… I probably lied when I said that the Abyssal Woods was the largest expansion but it’ll depend on what form this thing even takes come it’s inevitable public launch. It’s a grand collection of disparate elements that has everything from regular game content ranging from fighting arts to new showdowns, some remixed base gameplay options unlike anything seen before, and enough plastic to create a second pacific garbage patch when you pitch it into the sea in a fit of madness from attempting to comprehend it all.

“Disparate” is definitely the word for it though. I think I’m going to break tradition and do some subheadings to try and make some sense of all this.

Lets start with the big one…

– Advanced Kingdom Death

Probably the most exciting part of the chest, at least for me. Advanced Kingdom Death is a pretty major overhaul of several core systems. Early in your campaigns, you can opt in to using the advanced ruleset, which Poots has described as a more hefty simulation of the settlement and it’s inhabitants, and having many features he personally likes better than the systems of the regular core ruleset. It’s also gonna be in a book of it’s own; fingers crossed for a sexy hardback instead of a flimsy booklet.

(Stress on “opt in”, this isn’t a replacement for the core game, it’s a variant. Poots may have different tastes to yourself.)

The lore to this is that your survivors have eaten a creepy looking blob thing that has left intelligence enhancing “arc cells” in their brains. These have allowed them to develop a broader comprehension of their existence, and a greater capacity to assist in each others development.

The effect is that the fighting art deck disappears completely. Poof! Gone. Instead it’s replaced by a pair of new decks: Character, and Knowledge. Somewhere in there, we also have philosophies as well. No word on what’s happening with the secret fighting arts.

How does this all fit together? A good question, it’s not currently super clear. It would seem that it starts with character, then philosophy, then knowledge.

When a survivor first receives a name, they’ll pull a philosophy from the character deck. The contents of that deck seem to be based on what sort of history, events and choices have shaped the settlement. There’s many that correlate directly to obvious milestones, such as romanticism and presumably barbarism, as well as certain settlement events like the bone eaters. The philosophy itself is a randomly determined outline of that characters progression, and it’s not known if they can change it once it’s assigned.

Characters can earn “collective cognition” points from engaging in hunts against different beasts of different levels. The potential points from each quarry is exponential, so there’s a real incentive to engage in level 3 fights in order to supercharge your progression. The points will feed into the survivor’s philosophy in order to obtain various perks that are added to the knowledge deck. Once in there, the entire settlement may access them, though whether this is innate or takes an investment of endeavors to teach is unclear. One card revealed showed a reworked fighting art system that accrues it’s own points earned through engagement with said art. Earn enough points to “complete” the art and an extra bonus card will added to the knowledge deck.

There’s also hints towards survivors retiring or at least taking a break away from hunting to teach their fellows. This may be the way the knowledge deck is shared among peers, and Poots has said that it’s likely that survivors will only hunt a handful of times when compared to the base game once this option is available.

This is all pretty cool, and probably far more interactive and fulfilling than the limited survivor progression options there are at the moment. However, I cant help but think that it all involves a heck of a of of bookkeeping. If you’re not the sort to enjoy the already substantial amount that exists with the core rule set, you may find that AKDM adds a lot more of more of what you dislike. I still think KDM paperwork pales in comparison to playing a caster class in Dungeons and Dragons though.

Along with these advanced mechanics is an advanced timeline. A new quarry, the Crimson Crocodile, is being added. It’s potentially a White Lion replacement, however, as AKDM begins at a particular milestone I imagine the Lion must still exist as the first hunt at least. There appears to be some reworking of certain events and possibly even showdowns too: The Hand was teased as bearing a much deadlier agenda than his usual mostly jovial self.

Another feature is the Scouts. This seems mostly fluffy, as an explanation for why the settlements gear returns after a total party kill. There’s a fifth member in tow, walking camouflaged and lantern-less behind the hunting party, prioritizing the safe return of their valuable equipment should they fail the hunt. Apparently this won’t always be the case, as the Scout may leap to action within the showdown, although with dire consequences should they die as well. They can also be trained to range ahead and report back on what is coming, although with similarly gruesome fates awaiting depending on how much on an investment was made in training them to do so.

There’s really not much more to say about AKDM at the moment, beyond that it’s an apparent black hole for Poot’s personal development efforts, and that it’s likely to be a focus in our incoming Gencon update due to being next in the release schedule. Look forward to reading that in November.

(NOTE: I wrote all this before Poots’ comment Q&A and I thought I wouldn’t change it so we can see just how wrong or right I turned out to be with some of this. For instance, Poots has just confirmed that Crocodile is a “node 1” quarry… which honestly still puzzles me as to how it fits into the AKDM mold).

– Nemesis showdowns and Encounter Monsters

We got two new showdowns here.

The Gambler, who Kingdom Death veterans will recognize from what I suppose are now cameo appearances prior to his full introduction to the game. Kinda like GSK. The chest is named after him and the model they’re tooling has to be seen to be believed.

Atnas is the next. He’s an violent evil Santa Claus. I honestly feel like this one is more of a joke than some people tend to think and won’t have a great deal of content behind him. That said, apparently his bits must be collected prior to fighting him, so there may be some cool new timeline events to suffer first at least. I’d love a “Christmas Day” event that was actually just a jolly festive time without any violent twists on it. Save those for Atnas’ pointy candy cane spear (or whatever he’ll be wielding).

Literally zero information exists beyond the above, so really all we know is that they’re coming. I find it odd that more hasn’t been released about the Gambler, though Poots was quite specific about the information he shared concerning him at last years Gencon.

The encounter monsters are a cannibalistic tribe of Bone Eaters, and an unnamed monster that looks like a creepy bug-slug. Poots mentioned that encounters have been worked on extensively before reaching the form they decided to go with, so those initial pitches I used to determine how this might go may very well be totally useless! Still, the effort put into these will make Mosquito and Abyssal Woods even better value than I already believed them to be.

– Narrative Sculpts

Narrative Sculpts in general are the way forwards when it comes to survivor representation. While the armor sets are impressively modular, they are a bit “action-figure” static as a result. Narrative sculpts don’t offer any real customization options without a bit of conversion chops, but are already dynamically posed and exceptionally detailed representations of many different survivors. Their outfits range from general armor sets to representations of settlement or story events, all the way to things like Twilight Initiates and unfortunate souls in the throes of the King’s Curse.

All the new expansions will be using these in place of the armor set kits in the first wave, which is one of many tidbits I didn’t mention (skipped most of the lore too). The Gamblers Chest will be filling in much of the base game content with narrative sculpt representation, and includes a few things from the Dragon King and Sunstalker expansions as well.

Each of the GC sculpts also has some thematic gameplay additions, including philosophies and knowledge cards for advanced KDM, as well as general gear options, mixed sets and classic fighting arts. Some things like cooking have specifically been called out as receiving a few tweaks via new innovations.

There’s also a few bits and bobs, like a sci-fi Ana, a pinup catgirl, and fantasy versions of the Mr and Mrs Poots. These have mild related content but don’t really excite me. I want the brutal whimsy.

– Miscellaneous crap

Well, not really crap. Just some cards and things that help expand parts of the game. It appears that there’s going to be a fair bit more than just the ones that were mildly tied to the narrative sculpt themes.

THE STRAIN SYSTEM

Ok, so this is technically part of the Expansions of Death. But it’s more-so a macro level rework of how the KDM expansions work in general, old and new. So, it felt more appropriate to put this with Advanced Kingdom Death as it’ll be something that may potentially affect far more people than simply those able to use the Campaigns.

I’ve occasionally mentioned “nodes” in these posts. They’re the new way of determining what expansion should go where and with what. Putting too many quarries that provide rewards of a similar level and demand similar investment together generally results in only one or two being hunted since time doesn’t permit focusing on them all.

So, nodes help you work out where an expansion falls. Strains are a bit more complex.

I’m going to use a bit of an odd example to describe this as succinctly as I can, because lo, we have ourselves a looming update of which AKDM and COD are going to be the focus, so rampant speculation is going to go out of date waaaay sooner than everything up to this point.

Some of you may have played, or at least heard of, the popular video game Minecraft. Before you play you set a few parameters to create your world. Do you want it to be flat or extremely mountainous? What sort of biomes are there going to be and how prevalent is each? What level is the sea at? How deep can you dig? It’s all reasonably customizable and ensures that you have some control over how your world will be before you start playing in it.

That’s the first part of the strain system. You set the parameters of your upcoming campaign. What monsters will fill what nodes is the most obvious choice, but although Poots has been tight lipped about many key details so far, he specifically mentioned that

The strain system will be *the* way of playing KDM moving forwards, with the existing and upcoming campaign arcs being presented as completely pre-selected parameters. It’s essentially a fancy way of implementing the expansions you own and shaking up the world after each settlement falls. If you don’t have any expansions, it’ll just be business as usual.

The second part, as far as can be discerned from what little we know, is how the world evolves depending on your circumstances. This was teased in the content of the “Echoes of Death” release. In that, depending on some very specific milestones, you had some content permanently added to the settlements fighting art deck. Poots also shared one example beyond this of a new card being added simply by surviving the “Twilight Knight in Training” base game variant for long enough, so it’s fair to say this implementation is likely to be how this part of strains is going to look once it’s in our hands despite it being one year onward.

Interestingly, Poots also said they may even do something as drastic as “unlock a new campaign”. Can’t wait to see if you can pivot your existing one into the new direction or it it’s solely casting a light into the future with your actions, for new survivors to find and run with. I just hope it’s not legacy style content, I’d hate a bunch of envelopes to sit in the box unused for potential aeons.

It’s also been confirmed that the new expansions are going to have strain content, which makes the choice to focus on it first quite understandable.

————————————————————————————-

That’ll do for now. I feel like I spent years on this and I’m not particularly happy with it… but w/e, I’m on the mend. Sue me.

Please don’t actually though.

Join me next time when we cover what remains: The odd shit that don’t quite fit so good together. Then, Frogdoggod willing, we can do a big Gencon update to cover the inevitable “omg ur near baseless speculashun was NOT ACCURAT :P”.

I’m sure that’s gonna be fun!