I am a veteran of many MEPBM games. I have played 1650 & 2950 quite a lot, and have played a few 4th Age games, even before they added kings and princes and such.
So I am looking at the other games variants as a potential change from the standard game, and staying away from games with too many neutrals.
Kinstrife looked interesting, but I cannot find any solid info. Even Last Alliance has a good document to give you a nice intro, Kinstrife seems to lack that.
I haven’t found a map (sure I can put it on JOverseer, but seems there is one I just can’t find it) and I haven’t found much info. Best I found so far is that this is basically a 1650 game with nation setups and no dragons?
Totally different nations that are very large and span the whole map - Elves and Dwarves in every corner. There are 2 compressed neutrals in the middle, as it’s based on the Kinstrife of Gondor. I believe the neutrals get bonuses for choosing early and choosing opposite each other.
I play-tested it once right at the beginning of it’s development/release and found the fewer, larger nations with super 3-order characters gave the game a very complacent feel. Lose an MT? Ah, whatever, I have 7 others… It had the look and feel of a big mess of “What can we do to make the game cooler?” - all thrown in a jumble, like spoiled kids in a candy store.
There are many set up options that include characters, pops, SNA’s, hidden options, etc, ala FA that ensure the game is different in some esoteric ways every time.
One of my biggest let downs when they unveiled it for testing at the beginning was the map. Instead of narrowing down/zooming-in to the actual region in play, they kept the entire MEPBM map, but then made some adjustments - so there are differences in terrain, roads, etc. Instead of Either this Or that, they chose some bizarre middle ground.
It’s worth giving a shot, I have been tentatively interested in giving it a second chance, as I expect there have been some adjustments since I ran it through.
There’s pros and cons of the game - we decided to keep the map large so that players could have bigger nations, and have nations that last longer than the 6 months and we’re done. Saying that you can still have nations go bankrupt and you push your nation more (2950 cf 1650 cf KS) and you play within that economy.
The NPCs are great fun, having SNAs, and artefacts are more interesting on the whole.
New set of encounters add to the game - strategically it plays well but still needing feedback and development.
I’d give it a go as it is fun though and generally we have positive feedback from players on the whole experience.
and click on the word module under the KinStrife materials. I had a problem finding that when I started as well. Since it is so narrow, it looks more like a heading than an actual link to a pdf file.
You know what I didn’t see that link either! Module… I was looking for that this whole time!!!
My 2950 game just ended and I think I want to try a 1650 game again or hit up something all together new.
Technically there is still one Dragon in KS. Turukalon is still there and I believe potentially can be recruited, though I’ve not heard of it happening yet.
