Welcome to A Game of
Very Small Thrones that You Mostly Have to Share
We are playing this game as a rough model of the political world
of Hugh of Lusignan and Duke William of Aquitaine. Almost every detail has been
simplified to make the game easy to play in one class. And yet, we will see
both that there is a common vocabulary of power: lord, vassal, oath, obligation
and no real system to organize it as each of you competes to achieve your
goals.
The game begins
by each player drawing an identity. Read your player page, put on your nametag,
and go to one of the castle where you have resources. Then come up with a plan to achieve your goal
and start negotiating, fighting, or otherwise working on your plan.
You have various
attributes:
Liege Lord: You have sworn not to harm your liege lord and
generally should come when they ask you to fight for them, unless you don’t
want to, or are busy, or are mad at them. If you do come, you should command
all your direct vassals to come as well. If you do fight them, you need to have
a really, really, good reason (such as – you want to! But you’ll have to sell
it as something important).
Direct Vassals: They have sworn not to harm you (or your interests)
and must come when you ask them to fight for you, along with all of their
direct vassals.
Prestige: It feels good to have a Liege Lord with more prestige.
Starting Resources: These resources belong to a castle. They enable
you to muster one army per resources.
Resource Distribution: Where are your resources? This will matter
if a castle gets attacked and you lose resources (or gain them through
victory!)
Castle Management: Every castle has a manager. The manager gets to
distribute resources (really income from the resources) as he or she wishes. But
be careful, it takes five minutes for the armies to re-set, so if you take resources
away from someone, they may come attack you.
Core Armies: These armies are not linked to resources and cannot be
taken away. But if you fight with them and lose, you can’t use them again for
10 minutes.
Available family: You and/or your children might be able to marry.
Marrying up (prestige) is a key goal for many of these families and might be
worth trading some resources for, or, if you marry a male to a richer woman,
you could get resources too as dowry.
Goal: Every player has a goal. Achieve your goal and keep it in 45
minutes to win!
Read about the combat system on your army cards. Keep track
of your resources. See if you can find a path to glory. Remember, if you are going to break promises,
you’ll need an excuse. But excuses are easy to manufacture.
