I started up King of Dragon Pass again. It’s still great, and I found myself unable to stop playing. With all the HoI2 threads going on I figured, what the hell, lets make this a KoDP chronicle.
In case you’re wondering “what the hell is KoDP?”, it’s an odd strategy game where you lead a clan of fantasy vikings who have been driven from their home and settle in the dangerous Dragon pass. There’s cattle raiding, attacks by strange beasts, divine curses, feuds, trading and a ton of events that bring it all to life.
Anyway, lets get started. I opted not to pick my clan background, letting the game randomise it for me. I can’t really complain about the end result.
As a balanced clan we don’t specialise in either raiding or farming so I can go either way when it suits me. Aside from that the biggest impact of the background is the ancestral enemies, in this case Trolls, who can be pretty nasty. On the other hand, so are all the other ancestral enemies. The ancestor’s attitudes towards dragons and strangers are also likely to come up since the clan is expected to follow the ancestor’s example.
It’s important to keep in mind that both ancestor spirits and gods are very tangible in this game and at the very least you don’t want to antagonise them. Honour them and you will be rewarded.
Next up is the first years allocation of magic.
I start with seven points of magic. I can use these to conduct rituals that give me better chances of success at actions that fall in the ten categories here. This year I’ll allocate one point to health to avert diseases and keep the people healthier, one to trade taking the omens about good trade into account I want to maximise my chances of success here, one to war which never hurts since conflict is likely whether I seek it out or not, and two to mysteries which will increase the chances of the gods teaching the tribe rituals or lore when offered sacrifices. I intend to do a lot of this.
Two points in reserve, you never know when they will be needed.
With that out of the way, here’s a look at the mapped areas of Dragon pass.
Names in red are clans we’re feuding with. Names in blue are allies. The redder a name is, the worse relations we have with them, and vice versa with blue. The Wildcat clan to our north are our allies. To the northwest are the Vanstali and to the south the Old Owl clan who we are feuding with. More enemies than allies is a bad thing, we can either appease them or beat them down. I’m opting for the latter course.
For the very first turn I swap out half the clan ring of leaders. Those are the seven portraits at the bottom of the screen. The starting ring did not have a representative from the healing goddess Chalana Arroy, nor a representative of the Trickster god Eurmal. You can’t have all the gods represented on the ring but it’s a good idea to have as many as possible represented. Certain event options are only available if you have a representative from a specific god in your ring and they also serve as advisors on all your decisions so having many different perspectives available is a good thing.
They also have different stats and the original ring was not made up of the best candidates I noticed.
More to follow…
