Wrath of the Autarch
Writing: Phil Lewis, Amanda Valentine
Art: Doug Kovacs, Eric Quigley, Alyssa Maynard, Jonny Gray
Copyright © 2016 Ziapelta Games, LLC
First, understand that this is an ambitious game. The author explains it as a passion project to create “a strategic kingdom building role-playing game” and that is definitely accurate. The players collaborate on a kingdom, known as the Stronghold, in the land of the 6 winters. The Stronghold is threatened by the expansion of the empire of the Autarch, a magician of unparalleled power distracted at the start of the campaign by conquests elsewhere. Over the course of 24 seasons, each of which should take a session, the Autarch concludes her other business and hatches increasingly threatening plots against the stronghold. The players build a collection of stronghold heroes, some starting resources, a list of neutral areas with varying resources in them, factions they can seek to ally with, and various ways to resist or defeat the Autarch (win conditions) over those same 24 seasons.
How do we play?
The game uses the Fate Core System and Fate Accelerated Edition, and the author suggests knowing these rules isn’t strictly necessary to play, but we recommend you familiarize the players with aspects, fate points, the fate deck or dice, invokes, boosts, stress, skills, and stunts. These concepts are necessary to play.
Additionally, prepare them for a lot of creative narration because the whole campaign is a collaborative story with only a few specific mechanics that define the Stronghold, its heroes, key Non-Player Characters (NPCs), resources, developments, hazards, and missions. Everything else is made up by the players. For example, in the mini games for skirmishes, warfare, and infiltration, the players take turns adding map elements using index cards with locations written on them. There are some general directions to indicate what is required, the actions available for heroes/guards/units, and so on, but the cards themselves are custom to the mission and require creative thinking to develop a successful story and a successful strategy. Other missions are similarly abstract, like “Diplomacy, difficulty 5” or similar, with some defined benefit for success and failure. The actual mission details, the obstacles, narration, structure, and play is very open. On one hand, this makes the game a very different sort of challenge than other RPGs. On the other, doing this once a week for 6 months will inevitably lead to occasionally tiresome sessions wherein players are hard-pressed to invent more obstacles, guards, dialog, etc.
Finally, there is book-keeping; you’ll need to keep the text handy for development trees and progress, log sheets for every season and what adjustments are made to resources and aspects, sheets for all the heroes, and a sheet for the different trading schemes for factions when they become closer allies. If you use magic, there is a little more book-keeping for spells and missions for casters. There is also a resistance movement within the Empire that is tracked separately. It’s complicated, but then running a country is. We’re just not sure if most players will enjoy this aspect of the game or if it will be a drag that keeps getting in the way of enjoyment. It is also prone to error or forgetting a particular aspect has a free invoke under certain circumstances, what the end game goal was when we are 10 sessions in, and so on.
What we like about it
The setup is pretty cool – being queens and kings for 6 years is a unique experience. As a mega-module that’s different every time you play it, it’s quite impressive. There are a few missions and events that are concrete, like the mission to sever the Autarch’s connection to the Animaelic Forest, that come to life right off the page. There are detailed NPCs and missions for the factions as well, providing spectacular experiences for the players that are unique and sensational in each context. These aspects of the game shine.
We might also mention that the Fate system with troupe-style play supports a much broader storytelling and world-building experience than any game we’ve ever run or even heard of. Ars Magica comes to mind, as the collection of heroes are playable by any of the players for all the missions. The game doesn’t stop if a hero is captured, incapacitated, or killed, which leads to more story. If one player or another cannot make it to a session, the game goes on. If handed to the right group of experienced players, we see the potential for a really good time.
What gives us pause
When we ran the D&D module B1 In Search of the Unknown for the first time, we had to spend a long time filling in all the material that was left to the Dungeon Master (DM) to complete. However, there was a map and an encounter key, so we knew how much we needed to add and where. Wrath of the Autarch is similar, but the map is missing and the keys are designed to change as play proceeds. This is a credit to its ambition but players have to organize a strategy and learn how to play before we begin storytelling, which is its own task as well. For example, it is not clearly defined how you need to approach the resistance within the empire (it is defined as a diplomacy challenge) nor how the players succeed and can start doing stability damage to the Empire by smuggling in luxuries, which in turn makes missions against the Empire, such as the nearly impossible mission to assassinate the Autarch, easier. Altogether, this path can be written and mapped but it’s up to the players to do that, and they need to do that for nearly every mission, every session. Decision fatigue is a real possibility, as is the demand for long-term commitment from the group.
There are a few other missed opportunities that bear mentioning.
- In Birthright (AD&D 2nd Edition), there are Relics of Power player characters can quest for to build their power and the power of the realm. These quests are reminiscent of Arthurian romance tales of the Holy Grail or Excalibur. In Wrath of the Autarch this isn’t an element of play. When skirmishing, which is an adventure for a few heroes to go out and slay a monster or NPC, treasure is never the goal. The whole notion of material wealth is summarized in resource counters or aspects which just don’t have the same flavor as a Doubling Sword of Chaos, the 7 Keys of Fate, the Crown of Command, etc. A few of these would enhance the game, though the Fate system doesn’t prohibit these things, but they represent more work on the part of the players.
- Fully written scenarios with story structure often make for more satisfying games. This module has a lot of space to fill out dungeons, quests, ransoms, natural disasters, curses, inquisitions, undead outbreaks, arranged marriages, and any number of other specific fantasy story elements that could be woven into the frame story of the conflict between the Stronghold and the Empire. Because it is open-ended, the players again must be creative and know what they are doing to create memorable story arcs. Frankly, this is much easier to arrange in the hands of a Storyteller/GameMaster/LoreKeeper willing to put in the work. In this way, Wrath of the Autarch seems more like a game system than a module, even though the conflict is the same for every campaign.
- For such a commitment, the hard end of the story at 24 seasons means letting go of anything interesting or noteworthy the players’ built. There is no continuation after the stronghold is saved or perishes, even though there is ample space and material for many more stories. The Animaelic Forest alone begs for its own module, if not campaign. Such a resource has a history and is bound to be threatened and contested even more than the Stronghold; the potential for more wonders and mysteries are so plain it seems almost squandered as just the source of the Autarch’s magical power. This letting go of creative products and potential gives us more pause than anything else, even though we are sure the author chose a specific scenario so the rules would be tight, balanced, and functional. However, we think what really dwells here is a game system for empire management and conflict, coupled with a scenario that is just one of hundreds we could play.
Final Thoughts
We really want to love this game and intend to adapt several aspects from it into our own games because some of the material is absolute gold. But, when we try to think of any group of 5 people who would put in the time on such a campaign, we know they would want more than 24 sessions. They would want more than the factions and opponents detailed here. It’s fine for a module in a bigger world, maybe even one of the best scenarios we could build, but it’s incomplete as a game or setting. It’s one of those rare instances of too little of a very good thing. We think this rough gem is worthy of greater consideration, but also worthy of a greater library of material.