Heirs of Leviathan is a game published by Dithmer. Game material and content is reproduced here for review purposes and is owned by Dithmer. We have benefited from a review copy.
1. Every Individual Component Is The Best
In our analysis, we consider every individual artistic element of a game the best; we do not find bad or good useful. So, the Split/Party framework assumes it is the best art, best layout, best writing, best design. This is an acknowledgement that nobody makes “bad” art on purpose; any given element is the best art that could have been produced at that point, restricted by its material conditions and constraints of time and effort. This is also because saying something is good/bad art is the most useless criticism that can be given. In practical term, this section is for things we will not touch on the review but merit acknowledgement. )
Ludo
If you are a regular reader, you know I’m always saying that while PbtA are no long fashionable as the popular-one-size-fits-all of design, that only means we will see the most remarkable PbtA design from now on1. If you are choosing PbtA when it is no longer the “design default”, it means you have rotated that framework in your mind and there is something that you can only do with it and/or you don’t have a homogenizing pressure on what a PbtA game “should be”.
Heirs of Leviathan takes World of Dungeons — one of the simplest PbtAs and uses it as a framework to design a push of pull of powerful individuals in the highest ranks of society competing for control of the superstructure while dealing with threats against said superstructure.
The game understands the fundamentals quite well; it knows what World of Dungeons can do and what it struggles with — and so is able to build upon in a fascinating manner. Alas, for a design space that many find overexplored, Heirs of Leviathan is another game showing how much you can still do, and how a solid simple framework has a lot to offer.
The rules are simple, however, not always the most clear. Finding a crucial point can be a struggle. This is a game that is meant to be transformed, and this includes in reference: you will make your own references and they will probably do a better service than relying on the book. But otherwise, it has choices of art and design that echo its inspirations, and will not disappoint those expecting “a political take on World of Dungeons.”
Brad
This is our second World of Dungeons game review and I find the return to a PbTA-derived system interesting. Heirs of Leviathan knows what it is and has all the confidence in the world about it, being focused on reframing a system designed around normal dungeon crawling to be about the powerful people in a powerful organization struggling against each other and outside threats.
The designers know World of Dungeons incredibly well, and that simple fact is what gave me hope that such an unusual attempt could work.
2. Meet The Game At The Level It Is At
Each game comes with certain expectations and tone. To properly breakdown, we have to meet the game at the level it is: not lament its choice of premise and wish it was something else, nor resent for not conforming with our politics, not letting “missed opportunities” stand in our way of applying the critical framework relentlessly. It also includes not working with the game as marketed or how it exists in our desires, but as it is.
Lucrécia
It would be a mistake to linger too much on the World of Dungeons’ starting point, however. World of Dungeon is a much bigger game than its brochure — it comes with all the assumptions of the adventurer-conquistador genre: half a century of semiotics, scenarios and approaches. While a game like Noctis Labyrinth takes World of Dungeons in a new direction, it still plays with the adventurer-conquistador genre, being very much in dialogue with said assumptions.
Heirs of the Leviathan takes World of Dungeon from its incubator, sees what collapses when that happens, replaces those with new parts and feeds it into a quite different genre of play. This game has no place for adventurer-conquerors, it is about creating a world that has been conquered and shaped long ago, with a superstructure crystalizing what power is and who gets to wield it. You are positioned into inheriting it and confronted with challenges against the machinery that keeps you in power.
As you can expect from this radical implementation, you cannot really stick to said assumptions and are going to have to adapt yourself to the kind of collaborative storytelling Heirs of Leviathan seeks to facilitate.
Heirs of the Leviathan expects a willingness to share narratorial and referral authority to some degree, to engage in a bit of more abstract “trope play”; they will create a cast of Heirs and play them, rather than piloting a particular character as they seize more power. Not only players must create a cooperative interpretation of Tragedy, Drama and Fantasy to even start playing, all these assumption dismantling and rebuilding permeates multiple aspects: a willingness to have the Heirs you are currently holding stewardship over do fitting “bad” choices, a willingness to express the collaborative storytelling through other arts as an extension of roleplaying and yet still part of the gamespace, a stance to violence and death as something that is done through systems rather than individual characters, and embracing the calcification of institutions or oblivion beneath the entropy of crisis.
These assumptions and the building of them anew carries additional vulnerabilities; Heirs of the Leviathan understands the importance of safety and comfort and how those depend on fostering a culture that values those. It supports it with check-ups and no internal gamespace obstacles to doing that needed work — a need it properly acknowledges.
Brad
Heirs of Leviathan is not happy to do any half measure of transformation from that brief brochure that is World of Dungeons. Heirs of Leviathan instead does a full transformation, disregarding the idea of having an “adventure” as we usually imagine them, instead focusing on the players as, well, Heirs to seats of importance and power in a fractured and crumbling Empire, you are not going out and doling out violence to strange peoples, you are doing to both each other and the outside threats to your power.
Troupe Play is a bit of an old-fashioned idea in TTRPG’s but just to rehash it, it applies the idea that you are not going to be playing a single character, instead that each player at the table will be able to take turns as multiple members of the cast. Heirs of Leviathan expects its players to engage in this to at least a slight level, understanding that you all have ownership and mastery of the whole of the cast, and just as importantly that you discuss what Tragedy, Drama and Fantasy mean to you and to the whole of the table.
Heirs of Leviathan does assume that you will play your characters dangerously, making cruel choices, making foolish choices, making short-sighted choices. These are the cornerstones of the genre and should be easy to embrace, and Heirs does stress that you should prioritize the player’s safety.
3. Identify What The Game Says It Is About
Games are about things. Usually. Mostly. That is often the same thing they market themselves as. This often means to establish the relationship of the game with systems, mechanical frameworks, genre, etc. This is how games establish exceptions about the nature of play and creates a common space for creation.
Ludo
Heirs of the Leviathan is a game about a fracturing realm, where Heirs to whatever remains cling to it and compete to hold more of whatever gives them the power they still yield. A game of political intrigue and high drama.
The game will have Tragedy, Drama and Fantasy. A Leviathan is gone or diminished, and its Commonwealth is now held by its Heirs.
Whatever any of that means is socially construed every single gamespace emerges or shifts.
Brad
Heirs of Leviathan is about a crumbling empire, long past its greatest days and now you have its Heirs, wielding the power that made it mighty just as often against each other, as in the preservation of their empire.
The Leviathan, a mysterious predecessor is gone, and now it’s just you and yours, hoping not just to maintain power, but to be on top of the dogpile. This story is inherently dramatic, fantastical, and above all else, tragic.
4. Uncover What The Game Is REALLY About
What the game says it is about is not always what the game is about. This is where we look at all the weird interactions, examining the system that game creates, how the way mechanics interact with the text and art, how it exists on a given context, how well parts flow together or get in the way. This creates a much richer environment that the original design could ever imagine once a game hits the table.
Lucrécia
Since the goals Heirs of the Leviathan sets for itself is to create a gamespace to collaborate in storytelling of Tragedy, Drama and Fantasy about Heirs of the Leviathan squabbling over the Commonwealth. When all of that is created as part of the game, and what means is what you bring to it, well, that is a goal that cannot be failed. So it is self-evident Heirs of the Leviathan fulfills that claimed goal.
But what about that other goal? About political intrigue?
It is pretty difficult to create collaborative storytelling political intrigue that feels satisfying. Heirs of the Leviathan takes an interesting approach: the game may open with a discussion on power and Leviathan, but the entire game is a conversation about power and Leviathan. The lines of this dialogue; its rules.
World of Darkness has few but very important rules; Heirs of the Leviathan does the same, making them crucial to getting the right gamespace to emerge. And while what the Heirs, Leviathan and Commonwealth may be is as fluid as imagination, it has always a shape, a shadow cast by a system, by a structure of power whose purpose is to preserve that power. No matter the object, the shadow cast seems awfully familiar.
Those superstructures are games, albeit not very fun ones2. When everything is expressed in rules, base and superstructure get blurred; so very difficult to make any game about superstructure feel satisfying.
What if you start fucking around with the rules?
What ultimately keeps the game being about power and the things needed to support it — and its goals of extraction — is done by rules. Rules, that you as players, willingly subject yourself under BUT as Heirs and those playing Heirs, you get to make. Heirs of the Leviathan will never be played the same way because making, changing and discard rules is where the game finds its meaning. Anyone can propose a rule is the most important rule.
Of course, a rule then has to stand on its merits in front of the superstructure. The game has clear guidelines of what a desired rule is like: a rule must have unanimous approval, ideally eagerly embraced; a rule ought to be fair, fun and flexible — at the very least flexible enough that it can be easily discarded or changed the moment a single player is growing cold on it.
This formalizes a common game culture trend and flips it on its head: Heirs have the same attitude to the rules of the Commonwealth as players do to the rules of the game; this game about being the big rat that makes all the rules does so by making you the big rat3. The consensus in particular simulates very well how this works between peers atop the hierarchy: anything is allowed, as long as everyone agrees this is proper; it is when those that benefit from the system that start taking issue that Norms have been breached — and we have a crisis.
Brad
Heirs of Leviathan is about the idea of unworthy successors, the Heirs are inherently weaker and less competent than who or whatever The Leviathan was, The Leviathan united this massive empire and ran it successfully for at least a portion of time, and now they are gone, and the Heirs aren’t strong enough to oust each other, and their struggles will probably destroy everything The Leviathan built.
The Heirs are political animals and every part of this game oozes that, with almost every ability being about how the world views you and how you can make demands of it, with a decent chunk of the remaining abilities being about how you can impact the other Heirs.
Despite what other indicators may say, no, that’s not Viacom’s Avatar Legends.
David Graeber, Utopia of Rules (2015).
You don’t make all the rules, you net to get consensus with the other rats.