# Kingdom *Created:* 2023-07-23, *Modified:* 2026-10-05 ![[Kingdom 2nd Ed (cover).jpg|600]] **Kingdom** is Ben Robbins' gm-less roleplaying game about communities. Two to five players sit down, create a community together, then strive to make it live up to its ideals — or watch it burn. The pitch is that groups are stronger than individuals, and that the interesting question is never what a community faces but what its members do about it. The "or watch it burn" isn't really a threat — it's the point, and often the better show. Like **[[Microscope]]** and **[[Follow]]**, it's another no-prep, no-GM design from the same hand, but where Microscope compresses centuries, Kingdom sits in the messy, personal decisions of a single group and the people who keep deciding a little louder than everyone else. ## Setting There's no fixed world; your **Kingdom** is whatever group or organization the table decides to inhabit: a school for wayward wizards, a revolutionary pharmaceutical company, an anime fan club, the first settlers on Mars. You define it in four strokes — what it is, the **Threats** pressing on it, the **Locations** it occupies, and the **People** who fill it — and your characters have to *belong* to it; they can hate being part of it, but walking away simply isn't an option. The game then turns on the **Crossroads** — the critical decisions that may change the community forever. As the book puts it: will you change the Kingdom, or will the Kingdom change you? ## Mechanics The drama runs on three **Roles**, and every character starts with one of them (more than one player can share a Role, and some Roles can go unused): - **Power** — you have authority over the Kingdom; you decide what it does and doesn't do. - **Perspective** — you understand the Kingdom, merits and flaws alike, and can foresee the consequences of its decisions. - **Touchstone** — you reflect the desires of the people; your attitudes show what the populace wants and how it's reacting. ### Playing the Game Play is turned and role-played in **Scenes** around a **Crossroad**. When a Crossroad needs resolving, it runs a fixed order — **Power** makes the decision for the Kingdom, **Perspective** shows what the consequences will be, **Touchstone** shows how the people feel — then time passes, the good and the bad, until the next decision. Characters can **change** their Role mid-game, **overthrow** another player's Role, and resolve personal stakes through the **Fight-or-Fix** rule; a **Crisis** can end in an outcome where a character dies or retires. If roles disagree about what should happen, the game has explicit tools for when the volcano erupts. > We're playing with a colony ship as our *Kingdom*. We're still years from the target system when we pick up a signal — could it be first contact? It's light years out of our way, and this is our Crossroad: do we change course to investigate? The colonists are excited even if it means abandoning our settlement plans. My character is Perspective, so what I predict is true; a Touchstone character shows us what the people want; but the Captain has Power, and the Captain decides what we do. The game ships with over twenty sample Kingdoms to get you started, from the Banner of the Black Serpent's mercenaries to the galactic weaponsmiths of Starfall. ## Editions - **Kingdom** (1st edition, 2013) — the original, including its advance/release drafts. *In the library.* - **Kingdom, 2nd Edition** / **New Legacy Edition** (2021) — the current edition, a stated complete rewrite to make the game easier to learn and play. *In the library.* **Kingdom** is by **Ben Robbins**, creator of **[[Microscope]]** and **[[Follow]]**. ## References - [Kingdom — Lame Mage Productions](https://www.lamemage.com/kingdom/)