Retrospective: Kingmaker

Though I have dabbled, I cannot by any stretch of the imagination call myself a wargamer (everybody taken a drink). That said, there are a handful of "historical simulation games" that I've played a great deal over the years. One of the most prominent is Kingmaker, designed by Andrew McNeil and originally published by PhilMar in the United Kingdom in 1974. I never saw that version of the game. Instead, I first encountered Kingmaker in its US edition, released the following year by Avalon Hill. 

Kingmaker is a simulation of the Wars of the Roses, a civil war of the 15th century fought for control of the English throne between two rival branches of the Plantagenet dynasty. These branches, the House of Lancaster and the House of York, each used a different colored rose (red and white respectively) as their symbols, hence the popular name of he conflict. Being very fond of medieval history, the subject held great appeal to me, as did the fact that it could accommodate a variable number of players, from two to seven, thereby making it a perfect game to play while waiting for friends to arrive for a weekly gaming session (back in the days when people still saw one another in person). Another element of the game's appeal to me was its lack of concern for how the actual Wars of the Roses played out. 

Unlike some wargames, before and since, which place a premium on ensuring events unfold in a manner vaguely approximating history, Kingmaker is sufficiently open-ended that counterfactual things can and do happen. Thus, Richard Plantagenet can die of plague in Calais rather than ascending St Edward's Chair as King Richard III, for example. This greatly appealed to me and one of my continued frustrations with many contemporary wargame designs is the concern for modeling the flow of real world history rather than using past historical conflicts as a frame for a more wide-ranging game. Consequently, Kingmaker remains for me the gold standard of what I hope for in a wargame, despite its age and occasionally infelicitous mechanics.

Each player controls a faction in the civil war, being dealt resource cards that represents things such as people, which is to say nobles; offices, cities and towns, military forces, and so forth. The goal of the game is to marshal sufficient resources to have one of the nobles your faction controls crowned king of England, a process that takes time and a great deal of effort. What I love about Kingmaker is that the throne cannot generally be won solely through strength of arms but through a combination of a success in battle, diplomacy, and dumb luck. The game includes numerous random events that can disrupt one's well laid plans, such as the aforementioned plague, as well as revolts, piracy, and the summoning of Parliament. Random events ensured that even the most skillful and clever player might suffer a serious reversal, a fact I know annoyed many players but which I thought was key to keeping the game's re-playability.  

Because a player's faction is made up of named nobles, some of whom hold specific offices, like Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall or Warden of the Northern Marches, Kingmaker games inevitably acquired pseudo-roleplaying elements. One came to identify with the noblemen of your faction, investing them with hopes and goals, almost as if they were characters in a RPG. This kind of identification with one's "pieces" is, I understand it, quite commonplace in wargames and no doubt led to the birth of roleplaying as a separate, derivative hobby. Reading Tony Bath's descriptions of his various campaigns as I have been lately, I see a similar dynamic in action. Playing Kingmaker gave me a greater understanding of the process by which my preferred hobby was born.

Like Revolt on Antares, Kingmaker is a wargame I once played a great deal and, as a consequence, has deeply influenced my expectations of what a wargame can and should be. I still own a copy of the Avalon Hill version, but I don't think I've played it since the last century. That may need to change. It's a truly excellent game that's given me untold hours of enjoyment – not bad for a game that's almost half a century old.