This is the conclusion of the critical analysis of Reign 2e You can find the first part here.
5. Disassemble Engine
Games have a flow, which, when you hit, the game pretty much runs itself. It is extremely satisfying. After examining the interactions of game elements, we single out the most important - the one that sets the pace of sessions, or even campaigns. We focus on how that engine works, how it makes the game move along, and what to do to make it do what you want to do - and how to keep it running clean.
BradSo Lu broke down how ORE worked way back in the previous section how the actual One Roll Engine works, and as we frequently go on about here at Split/Party, system does not mean engine. That’s actually kind of a problem here though, the engine of Reign 2e is weak. This is by intention, both halves of the system the Character and The Company are designed to work independently of each other, it means that having an engine that drives play in one would dominate the other.
At the end of the day go, I fall down on Passions being the main driving force between the player, the character, and the company. Passions come in three distinct flavors, Mission, Duty, and Craving, and whenever you follow them you get a dice pool bonus, and whenever you ignore them you get a penalty. This colors what your character will do, and can inform what you use the ever-growing power of your company to do.
The wild thing is, even those are modular, and the game is designed to work fine without them. I could spend genuinely a whole article talking about the number of modular systems, from the more granular mass battle rules to the ability to captain your own ship, to some fun chase rules. But in the end, I have to conclude that Reign’s driving engine may be its weakest point.
LudoBrad is correct in finding the Reign 2e engine weaker than most games that made this far into critical analysis, but I advise against dismissing it out of hand based on its low horsepower1.
When you slide into the Company play, the engine chugs along without missing a beat. It feeds the Company opportunities to preserve itself; it keeps throwing challenges to its identity, offers more opportunity to expand itself and immediately sets off competition with other Company-machines. Which is, well, great; it is exactly what it makes a good engine. However, the locomotive is not carrying the rest of the train — where its weakness shows is that it does not seem to connect and feed back and forth from other parts of the game beyond Company.
What may be a flaw in certain games of Reign 2e, it is unfortunately a requirement for its strongest points compared to other ORE games: Reign would not be as modular with itself much less with other games if the strong Company engine it was setting the pace and the rails; low horsepower is a conscious choice of design compromise and not a consequence of design failure2.
Passions act much more like an engine, as Brad correctly pointed out. They tie neatly to framework, making it a system rather than just some ORE rules for institutions; they make it Reign. Passions always center on why you are doing something, and the considerable mechanical rewards of engaging with them constantly3 keep them in focus, often hinting at what would make sense as a follow-up. However, it may still feel like a weaker pull than people may expect, and that will always remain something that Reign seems to have had to compromise on.
6. Essentials For Session One
So, you got this game, you going to play it, but you don’t have the time to read everything. Or even worse, your have read it and now it is all jumbled together. Here we break down the things that you absolutely want to try to get right and/or hit during your first session, so you get the felling of what makes this game stand out from similar art.
BradSo, I have two thoughts on session one for Reign. The way I did it (and that I recommend) is to go through character creation and build a group of normal characters sans company. Spend a couple of sessions with those guys, learn how the base game works, and then give them the resources to found a small company, and slowly build off of what you know. Reign 2e, has strong enough rules on both ends to be compelling without commanding armies, and it gives you time to familiarize yourself.
The other way is to start with something like the core books Imperial Harlots give the players each character total control over one stat of an established Company and lets them work out how to get what they want both from each other and the world. This method is kind of the reverse from the above, so trust your knowledge of the group.
As a GM, the system is modular, if you aren’t comfortable with something, don’t add it in yet. I used Word Magic from Nain and Fighting Styles/Esoteric disciplines, and that was it at first. The only things that I would consider essential to understanding for session one are
How does the width and height of a roll work.
How do multiple actions work
Why is Sense important for combat
Whichever Magic system you use.
Do that and you will go very far.
Lucrécia This is a difficult proposal, given the way Reign is laid out. Brad’s suggestions are good, but if I really had one hour and really needed to lay down something about Reign…
It has to be the Company, ain’t?
So, keeping reading to a minimum, I would suggest picking the Company rules module (Chapter Five of the Rules book), and also how to roll dice and interpret them (pages 8-13). And then, I would advise you to set all the books aside.
For the Company rules to work, they need to have weight, to be grounded in the world; Brad’s suggestion does a great job doing that: if you start from the character level surrounded by these institutions, looking up at them and interacting with them as an individual, you are going to have a clear view of them when switching to the Company level; all the Companies, their place and how they are expected to work is also easier to grasp when working with one of the Realms or Realities books’ settings.
It is really worth digging in, but keeping this to a minimum reading and prepping, we already have something that is grounded and carries weight and expectations.
One of your existing games.
So if you really want to get a glimpse into the potential of Reign 2e and if it is worth investing more time into it, I suggest you look at the existing institutions of your games and stat them as Companies. Then, do some Company actions as them, and let players take them for a run at the end of sessions. Once you are comfortable, it is time to take it big: run an interlude where all the different Companies interact with each other and react to the events of the game/prepare countermeasures against the player characters.
Once you return to the individual character level, you will have a better grasp of the dynamics of Reign play.
7. Playing The Game Wrong
Games are played wrong. Rules will be misunderstood, interactions will be confused, the importance of certain tech disregarded; etc. This is good, and it is good to acknowledge for: you cannot have the designer at your time, and even if they were, they would be just another player - and entitled to play it wrong. After identifying stress points of the game, things that don’t connect that well, we think of the things that are more likely to be (or have been) “played wrong”. What happens when you forget a line in page 273 clearly saying this is impossible?
BradThe base system of ORE is simple, but there will be mess-ups. Most players (including myself) struggled with multiple actions at first, and the fact that getting damaged weakens your die sets in combat. If players are not used to a more dangerous combat system, it can be lethal as all hell, so give them a little bit of warning and maybe play some early-game softball.
The different magic systems all play slightly differently, so familiarize yourself, and definitely get some experience under your belt before you try to build your own.
There is not a direct social conflict system, that should be answered by either a.) your company getting benefits/penalties, or b.) some easy-to-guess-at rolls.
As you add modular systems, be prepared to have the game change, and for those areas to take longer, not every chase needs the chase rolls, and not every combat needs Die Men! Learning when to use them will come with time.
LudoI have little to add to Brad’s notes. ORE is pretty well-tested and polished, and shows the strength of its fine tuning — once one gets used to it.
The stress point I keep coming back to is the modular system. Reign 2e can do and be strapped on to so many things, one may easily be overwhelmed or over-commit. One should pace oneself and only include as much as they need in the game in a need per need basis, erring in the side of caution.
8. What to Steal
Experiencing good art is the most important step in making good art. We look back at the things that worked and did not work about this game, see what we learned for design work, interesting tech and just a general overview of things that we will take from this game and bring into others. Or more honestly: since many of us may not play this game and we have it in our library, this way we can get some use out of it.
BradYou can steal Reign 2e’s Company rules wholesale outta the box, for your own home campaigns. I recommend this highly if your players decide they want to run a kingdom in almost any other game. You should steal Reign 2e’s wonderfully bizarre settings which I didn’t even touch on in here (The core one is set on two continents that look like lovers embracing and gets cooler from there) Just as inspiration for how interesting you can make your worlds.
Reign 2e is a masterwork in modularity, and as mentioned in last review, that is one of my favorite things, design more modular games.
I genuinely cannot talk enough about how much Reign’s unique approach really hooked me as a young GM disappointed with all the current kingdom managing TTRPG, I have used it for everything from a band’s superfans to building kingdoms, to managing feuding guilds and I will use it again.
LucréciaSteal Reign wholesale, slap it in your game and never look back.
Reign 2e is a masterclass of condensing information, delivering it and making it usable. ORE is not only used to obtain meaning and information in game, it is also used to generate and decode tables4, setting details, options, character creation and even extensive bestiaries. When space often materially limits projects, and as new tools to ease play are always needed, one may benefit as a designer from studying how Reign manages to deliver so much in such economy of word, space and cognitive load.
The organization of Reign also merits spending time thinking with; specially if one is familiar with the previous edition, the way the presentation changes and how this impacts interacting with the game and the text can be quite insightful.
Furthermore, the worlds made to use with Reign, contained in Realms and Realities books show the power of engine and frameworks working together, and are splendid companions to anyone doing ORE-inspired art. Reigns-flagship setting of Heluso and Milonda was overlooked and dismissed as “generic fantasy kitchen-sink” the first incarnation of the game; a slight that will be corrected if one looks into it as a different way to present a rich setting that gives a lot of places for players to mess things up — seriously, Reigns Realms is a gorgeous world and worth looking into even if you are just scavenging Reign 2e for engine parts.
A lot of the original ORE content is available as a CC-BY 2.0, so it is very easy to make your own iterations of Reign and ORE; however, the publishers and designer have been quite friendly to sharing their stewardship. If embarking in such a project, it may benefit to contact them.
After all, high horse-power is HRT.
And it is in no way a feature of ORE games, as the strong engines of pretty much all others can attest.
Not using Passions on your dice pools gives you a considerable disadvantage; you really cannot rely on Skills alone unless you are extremely good at them.
Common Wisdom dictates that tables are the best way to convey extensive information in a roleplaying gametext; like every truism, this lent to misguided replication. Most of the tabled content is unfortunately superfluous, difficult to consult or outright useless — with the pinacle being the Hasbro’s Dungeon Master Guide being just assorted tables of nonsense to generate directions for running a game and nothing that actually helps running the game. Treating the table as a little paper machine the way Reign does is a good way to touch base again with what makes tables so good.