Re: What's the hardest part?

From: Curtis <curtis3331_at_...>
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 07:58:25 -0000

>
> A common comment about KoDP is that it's too hard. One factor is of course that the difficulty labels weren't very accurate, and people played on a harder level than they realized. But in fixing that, I'm wondering what in particular makes the game hard. Food? Cattle? Goods?

In my experience there were two things that made the game hard. The first was not having worshippers among your thanes to match quests or positions on the ring. For example, my clan might go twenty years without having a Lhankhor Mhy initiate to perform the Lhankhor Mhy heroquest. Worse was trying to find an Orlanthi to wear the torc. I've got constant nagging messages that I really should have an Orlanthi chieftain, but there are no Orlanthi in my thane pool, so there's nothing I can do to correct it.

The second thing was trying to hold a tribe together. In 'real life' Orlanth's tribe had twelve or fifteen clans, but I found it difficult to keep even a four clan tribe from splitting. I contributed to the tribal regalia, gave everyone the seats they demanded, went broke bribing them to agree to join, then stayed broke bribing them to stay in the tribe, offered magic sacrifices to all of their patron gods and goddesses, bought their crappy potteryÉ and it was all for nothing. I never had a tribe stay together for more than a decade, though admittedly I only got as far as forming a tribe half a dozen times.

I never failed to have one form, once I got as far as the reconciliation council, but once together they fell apart again very rapidly.