Dev Diary 2 - So You Wanna Break a King?

The ultimate goal of Kingbreaker: The Crownday Festival is to become one of the eponymous Kingbreakers, a sort of heavenly hitman blessed with eternal undeath and endless resolve and tasked with defeating each of the Six Kings that rule over this land. However, to become a Kingbreaker one must survive a gauntlet of duels held over the course of a single day - the victor of these duels will have proven themselves worthy in the eyes of Providence and will be promoted from a plain old Duellist to a fully-fledged Kingbreaker. 

Kingbreakers will take more of a story-focus in future games, in which they will be the central protagonist. For The Crownday Festival, however, the player characters are known as Duellists. Each Duellist enters the Festival with a backstory, a motivation, and a suite of weapons, arms, and armour with which to destroy their enemies. In today’s dev diary, we’re going to look at the process by which players will create their Duellists, as well as some of the tricks and traps they may employ in their pursuit of victory. 

Character Creation

Character creation in Kingbreaker is centred around the Banner, an iconic representation of a Duellist’s abilities, inventory, specialisations, and history. Inspired by the coats of arms that communicated rank and heritage to the medieval mind, the purpose of the Banner is to have a pictorial reminder of your character’s build that can be accessed at a glance. 

The Banner is comprised of five elements: 

• The Shield, which denotes how many Hearts (health) and Vigour Tokens (stamina) a character has,

• The Helm, which denotes the character’s backstory and starting inventory, 

• The Mantle, which denotes the weapons the character begins the game with, and the status effects they are most likely to deal in combat, and 

• Two Aspects, which take the form of heraldic animals denoting the special abilities and magicks the character has access to. 

As the player progresses through the game, they will be able to spend the game’s internal currency to purchase upgrades to some of these elements: New Mantles that grant new, more powerful weapons, or new Shields that upgrade their overall Hearts and Vigour Tokens. 

Let’s take a look at the banner for one of the pre-made characters found in the book - Pallbearer Andvari - and see what we can learn about this shambling, rust-stained knight. 

• Pallbearer Andvari’s Banner is centred around the Pelta Shield. This Shield, used since ancient times during swift, brutal skirmishes, prioritises speed and agility while providing some protection from harm. This points to Andvari’s play style: He moves quickly and attacks often, able to weather some attacks but not all. In another game, Andvari might be a Rogue or Bandit, someone whose playstyle is built around their capacity to dish out damage rather than take it. 

• Pallbearer Andvari possesses the Pauper’s Cap Helm, which points to his lowly status. Andvari hails from a lineage of lay-folk and wretches, abandoned to the frostbitten north by their wealthy masters. He has little money to speak of, but he carries with him the magickal traditions of his people: He begins the game with one Alchemy, a sort of blasphemous hedge magick used by the downtrodden and wicked in the game’s setting. 

• In battle, Pallbearer Andvari wields the Sabre Mantle. This Mantle demonstrates his skill with the blade, and his proficiency with weapons that cut, slice, and slash. In combat, he focuses on attacks that bleed his enemy dry, dealing quick attacks that swiftly build up to create devastating combos. 

• Finally, Andvari’s Banner is flanked by the Lion and the Hound Aspects. The Lion is an Aspect of nobility and ferocity, and can be triggered in battle to let loose a violent roar that harms those who hear it. The Hound, however, points to Andvari’s true nature: He is a cannibal, feasting upon the flesh of his fallen foes as surely as a wild mutt will scour the battlefield for carrion. In this dread-stricken world, one must do anything they can in order to survive. 

In the finished game, I’ve designed a total of 6 pre-made characters, each of whom possessing a Banner that both tells their story and explains their playstyle. A quick calculation based on the total number of Shields, Helms, Mantles, and Aspects that will appear in the finished book results in a total of 14,040 potential permutations of just the base character build, without taking into account the game’s magic, inventory, and upgrade systems. 

All this is to say that I wanted to make something that translated this customisability into an easily-readable, simple to understand system that can be put together quickly and parsed efficiently. The Banner mechanic makes a nice alternative to the more text-heavy character sheets (which do appear in the book, for what it’s worth), blending the tone and setting of the book with the practical requirement of understanding your character’s build and loadout in the heat of combat.