Oath! Or, "Does It Really Matter If I Win or Not?"

 Oath! Or, "Does It Really Matter If I Win or Not?"

The short answer to this question is: I don't know! Roll credits!

But seriously, folks.

My friends and I talk regularly about how much we enjoy Descent and Imperial Assault, but the downside is that it's one against many, and so the winning and losing of said game can sting. Especially if a campaign becomes one-sided, as rewards tend to be heaped on the winner and thus, there's a snowballing effect as the winners get more powerful and the losers don't quite get what they need to get over the hump. This can sometimes get in the way of enjoying the narrative of the campaign, which is really what the game is *supposed* to be about. But when the mission guide declares that SOMEONE WINS! and SOMEONE LOSES!, it's easy to lose sight of the game as a roleplaying experience.

Having campaigns run by an app (such as in Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth) can mitigate this, but only to an extent. If the losses start to pile up, it's easy for the players to feel like we're losing. Primarily because the app says, "The heroes lose." So while I have found that my own resolve and morale takes longer to flag against an app than against real players, it can (and does!) still happen. And then the campaign becomes a chore or a slog instead of, you know, fun. What games are designed to be.

This happens in asymmetrical games too, such as Twilight Imperium or Root. The game is tested, but that doesn't mean it's "fair," or even necessarily balanced (at least, not in the way players commonly think of it). There are certain set-ups that will favor a faction more than others, and so the players who use those factions and know how to exploit said set-ups have a measurable advantage. And at least Root isn't a very long game, but Twilight Imperium certainly is. And it can be easy to feel as though players invested a lot of time playing it "for no good reason" because they feel as though they were pushing a boulder up the mountain from the very start.

This gets me to the newest offering from Leder Games - Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile. I do plan on writing up an introduction and review of this game fairly soon because I've been excited about it ever since backing it on Kickstarter, and it arrived back in May. I think it'll be available for sale in your FLGS in September or so. I'll be honest: I already adore it. But I don't want to dig into all of that now. I really want to focus on a really specific aspect of the game about which I'm most excited.

The game comes with a little leather journal in which the winner of each game chronicles how they came into power. The game may be over in three rounds, or it might take eight. It might be close to the end, or clear from the second round who is going to sprint to victory. But however it plays out, it is to be recorded narratively through the lens of the victor. Why? Because the advisors and artifacts collected by the losers are lost to the annals of lost history and may not be uncovered for several future games before resurfacing once more.

Yes, it's true this game still has a winner and losers. But I think it's a really bold attempt at creating a legacy game without the trappings of legacy games. And it may not have the intention of being an RPG, but in this way, it truly feels like one to me: it is an attempt to tell an ongoing story that only ends if the players want it to. And that's insanely exciting to me. I'm not sure exactly when I'll get the full review of it up on my blog, but look for the Introduction post by the end of July!