Reign 2e is a game published by Atomic Overmind. Game material and content is reproduced here for review purposes and is owned by Greg Stolze. Reign 2e benefited of investment through crowdsourcing.
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.
Brad
Reign 2e, is a game that I waited for a long time, I have never concealed or hidden my love for ORE, and now comes a long-awaited opportunity to share that with you. Before I sink into themes, mechanics, and ideas, the pdf is worth discussing.
Reign has a table of contents, that is well organized and laid out, on clean red-bordered white background, which continues through the book. It finds itself truly unique amongst RPG’s in that it contains an excellent index as well, and has fantastic art pieces throughout that ooze flavor and atmosphere.
But, rather than break down all that, I will tell you about a unique book layout decision that helped me fall as madly in love with this beauty. The whole first chapter is dedicated to teaching you the basics of the game, it runs through the terminology, shows you how various types of die rolls work and explains things all the terms your players and Gamemasters will need. This comes before character creation, or world building which helps inform everything that is to come, rather than having a huge intro that fills your brain with lore that you might not need.
Ludo
For the first time in Split/Party, we are talking about a titan of the art of roleplaying. Greg Stolze is both celebrated and still does not get the praise he deserves; part of the reason is that while people may be vaguely aware of his games, few people have actually sat down and play them.
Ultimately, that was what won me over and how Brad wore me down to write a critical analysis of the latest edition of Reign.
The previous edition of Reign was kind of an unapproachable mess, and it is no wonder that it put off many people away. Reign 2e immediately turns this in its head: the books are gorgeous, modular, easy to consult, well-laid out, with evocative tone-establishing art direction.
If there is a game that can make anyone a fan of Greg Stolze’s work, it would be this.
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.
Brad
The One Roll Engine (ORE to their friends) is a d10 dice-pool system wherein you can resolve an important check with relevant information in one roll, it powers other games such as Better Angels, or Wild Talents. Reign 2e uses it for games of political fantasy.
Lucrécia
That’s it Brad? I better delve into the assumptions backed in ORE.
The ORE is one of the main obstacles for Reign 2e, as it differs greatly from many of the conventional assumptions of roleplaying games.
Dice rolls in Reign are not purely “I want to do a thing, and I want to see if I succeed”; they are not even tied to a single action. Instead, each dice pool generates as much information as possible, represented by sets of dice. You can try combined actions from the dice pool, you can assemble sets to protect against enemy dice, etc.
Reign requires one to accept and familiarize themselves with this language, relationship with dice, how to read them, how to manipulate them, and how they can create dynamic worlds.
It is a necessary work to perform before you can even understand the game, but it is well worth, as everything about Reign and other ORE system games become pretty simple to understand once you are equipped with such lenses.
Thankfully, Reign 2e opening pages do an excellent job in introducing the pool mechanics and related dice manipulation and goals. As I mentioned before, it may be the easiest it has been to get into ORE games.
It is worth mentioning that Reign is an extremely modular game. It is not a generic game system, nor it is a “SRD/OGL”. Reign has a powerful personality, permeating character and is very keen about replicating what it is about; and you can definitely play a game of Reign 2e out of the box.
Thing is, all the subsystems that you choose to use, which in turn interact with each other, make no two engine/frameworks of Reign the same. That’s right, Reign 2e can even change its engine and framework, which is a kind of dynamism we have not seen from a game we criticized. Two decades of polish at the individual components show as not only the game is internally modular, it is so modular that you can play Reign without playing Reign — freely integrating parts of it in the engines and frameworks of other games, not even ORE games, any other game.
This can seem pretty daunting. Surely it takes a lot of front-loaded work? No, not at all. If you are familiar with the basics of ORE, integration of a version of Reign in your game is not gonna take more than the usual time of prep. Then certainly it comes at a loss of identity? No, again, every module you pick know very well what it is and will keep doing that no matter how much you hammer it. It is an excellent tool to anyone playing with the palettes they use for collaborative storytelling.
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.
Brad
Reign 2e is subtitled “A Game of Lords and Leaders.” it purports to be able to handle that all too often stifled dream of players since certain games level up tables, that you will be able to build kingdoms, thieves guilds, merchant companies, revolutions, co-operatives, and even god help us corporations. The game claims that the players will be able to decide what these titans do, and then even make effects happen that influence them.
Many games have tried this because there is someone in most player groups who dream of doing it!
Ludo
There is the mythical Pendragon game that anyone that been in this artform for any time dreams of having — or similar large-scale, world-spawning, era defining games1. Reign may actually get you to play this scale in a feasible manner, accomplishing it in a manner comparable to the Worlds of Legacy line of games.
There is also rules for organizations, kingdom-building, mass warfare, conspiracies, etc, that at some point or other established games feel the need to promise but never deliver in any remotely satisfying way or connecting with its “regular” modes of play.
Reign 2e proposes to be all about those two ideas. No more, no less, and doing it well.
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 in 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.
Brad
Reign 2e, is two very different games with themes that connect, the Company game is one thing, and the personal game is another, and they both feed into and change each other, but are about different enough things that I think its worth mentioning.
The personal game of Reign 2e, is about wanting things. Your characters are built with loyalties and passions and earn xp for letting them inconvenience you, and you are going to want stuff, money, soldiers, and the hand of a beautiful foreign monarch. But you aren’t just going to be handed these things, you have to earn them, take them, and fight for them.
is a game about Power, not about the intangible thing that people often dream of, not about some magical force, but about the power to make your will manifest, about the clash between massive organizations and the terrifying, life-uprooting violence they do with their power. This is a system that makes it clear that your Company’s ability is on a scale, you might only be a regional force, but being the biggest kid in your sandbox is still important.
Where these themes meet is when the game sings, what will you do for a fortune? Will you lead raids on a weaker neighbor? Will you make attempts to marry well? What would you do for the intangible things? Would you kill for them? Would you make someone else kill for them? That’s where Reign 2e really sings.
Lucrécia
Reign 2e is about centering the violence of power: power is the Company, and every Company is about having the means to seize the work and labor of others2. No matter the means, much less the goals, everything about a Company is how good it is at consolidating those gains, where it is unchallenged and preserving its identity.
It is a game of Lords of Ladies, which is to say, it is a game about bastards. Yet, the game does not take values, other than modelling power in its myriad modular ways. It is about knowing power and learning to see like power.
As Brad said, there are two main levels: the Company and the Character. This is perhaps the best way this artform has ever accomplished the conflict between social formation of knowledge and power, the tension between two ways to see the world and people.
The Character has the power of their muscle, the knowledge of their brain and their social self; the Character are beings defined by their skills and passion. They do so because that is how they interact with the universal personhood of the world, how they relate to others, how they want to accomplish things and the means they use to do that. Knowing who you need to talk to, what pisses someone off, the desires of someone else, the joy of the spring setting sky between the embrace of two continents; this is all personal presence and knowledge that only a person recognizing another person can obtain - a form of social knowledge we may call the metis3.
Companies are not persons and cannot relate to the world through metis; no, they are machines, formed from certain social knowledge and seeing the world in a very special way: what can be replicated, what can be measured, what is part of a pattern, what is statistical. Seeing like a Company reduces everything to the four axis of power and identity, everything is simplified to what can be done and how the machine can replicate itself and perform its functions: the army to march, the cult to evangelize, the underworld to seize wealth, etc. The social knowledge of the Company is institutional, technical, professional — what we can call techne.
Playing Reign 2e is a balancing act between the contradictions of metis and techne, Character and Company. Characters use Companies like tools to fulfill their passions and goals, to accomplish things they could not on their own, to punch on another scale. However, the Company has demands and will collide with another Companies, not recognizing or even perceiving Characters. Will we see the balance pity over in one direction over the other? Will you start thinking on terms of the Company and sublimate yourself in its structures? Will you risk the Company for your Passions?
Which nobody gets to play.
The Sociology of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization, Volume III (2020), Abdullah Ocalan
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1998), James C. Scott