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Steven Robert
United States
Altadena
California
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"Medieval” is almost always followed by “fantasy” in RPG circles. But what if you want a game that cleaves closer to “reality” – without any magical elements, but inspired by medieval history and sociology?
Far fewer games transport you to a non-magical medieval world, so Chronica Feudalis (hereafter CF) fills a useful niche in RPG-dom. What’s more it has a solid mechanical foundation, interesting characters, and is a pleasure to read.
So what’s to love about it? Read on!
Image credit: IndyRick :brofist:
The Product
CF is available as a 122-page digest-format book (or pdf), of which the rules take up 82 pages. It has a color cover and a sprinkling of black-and-white illustrations, plus a number of helpful figures (such as how a character sheet works) and an index. The text is very easy on the eyes, and it’s a fast read.
There is one big asterisk to the book: the text is written in the voice of a twelfth century monk, who supposedly invented the game with his friends in the basement of their monastery; there’s even a “Foreword By The Translator” to kick things off. I found the writing both engaging and entertaining, so I found this a plus – the fiction never gets in the way of the explanations. But I imagine some would find it infinitely annoying!
A second big asterisk: after publication, the author (Jeremy Keller, also a user here who has been kind enough to answer user’s questions and post info!) revised some of the rules. The revision document is available for free from the Chronical Feudalis Downloads page. The changes are reasonably substantial, including changes to the skill list and conflict system – but they are also good, streamlining the action. The version now for sale incorporates those changes. (If you want to check which version you have, see if the skill list includes Fend – if so, it incorporates the revisions.) Even if you have the new version, though, check out the revision document – it has some good advice on the “Disarm” condition.
The System
CF uses a “step-die” system, meaning that everything is the game is rated by a die size – d4, d6, d8, etc., with larger dice being better. To complete a task, a player gathers dice of the various sizes representing his or her character’s skill, tools, and possibly other bonuses and rolls them, comparing to a set target number (usually four) or the GM’s dice (set by the scene or opponent’s skills, etc.). The high die is the winner – often, if the winner beats the opponent or target number with multiple dice, they get special successes.
The interesting wrinkle is that CF blends this system with a simplified version of FATE. Each character has a pool of Ardor points, which play the role of fate points. The player can spend these points to “invoke” Aspects, which are short narrative tags of a character or scene – like “dark” or “Brave Sir Robin.” Each Aspect has a die assigned to them – usually a d8 – and invoking it allows you to roll that die on your challenge. (Note that quantifying Aspects in this way is unique to CF, so far as I know.)
To earn Ardor, on the other hand, an Aspect must limit the character’s actions – either by interfering with an action, in which case the Aspect removes a die from your pool, or by compelling a character into an unfavorable course of action. Unfavorable Aspects are, of course, most likely to cause such penalties – which is quite convenient, as the system uses them to represent long-term injuries.
There are a couple of more wrinkles to the system. First, character status is represented by another statistic called Vigor, which limits the total number of dice that can be in a character’s pool for any action. A character who loses their Vigor is out of the current conflict – though not necessarily injured in any long-term way. In that fashion, it doesn’t (necessarily) directly represent injury – rather, it’s somewhat like Burning Wheel’s Disposition, as it represents how invested each character is a particular conflict.
Second, tools – whether they are swords or a fine gown – play a very important role in the dice pool mechanic, adding dice when they are relevant (or subtracting them when they impose a disadvantage, and earning Ardor for the character). They are a good example of how flexibly the step-die/Aspect approach can model various elements of the game world. In a sense, they are really just physical Aspects. The only problem is that this puts a lot of weight on tools – a d8 ball gown goes a long way on social checks!
Character Creation
A character sheet, with props! Image credit: RdGkA
One of my favorite parts of CF is the beautifully simple character creation system, which boils the “lifepath” approach down to its bare minimum. A player chooses three mentors – labeled by their profession, such as Courtier, Hunter, or Priest – from a list of 17. Each such mentor grants the character three skills and a tool. Each of the former increases the character’s die size in that skill (everyone starts with d4) – so you can build highly specialized characters by choosing complementary mentors.
Next, you choose three Aspects that describe the character. There’s a good list of suggestions to get you started; unlike most of the FATE games, Aspects are expected to be relatively simple and straightforward in CF, so they’re fairly easy to generate on your own.
This lifepath process is quick and easy, but it’s not as satisfying as the usual FATE approach (with narrative episodes that both develop Aspects and integrate the group organically). Keller has posted suggestions for developing such an episodic approach here, but the method does not directly connect the characters together.
The last substantial part of character creation is to choose Backgrounds. The game loses me a bit here…these are described as elements that your character is so good at that you don’t want to ever see them come up in a game. (The name refers, apparently, not to the background of your character – but to scenes you want to occur in the background of the game.) I see, in principle, why such an exercise is useful. But, in practice, why not just have an informal discussion with the GM and players?
It seems much more useful to have a way of focusing play on what you do want to achieve. One of the game’s interesting aspects is just how wide-ranging it can be – with characters ranging from veteran knights to monks to peasants, there is a huge range of skills, and all get roughly equal focus. It would be very easy to create a group so diverse as to be nearly incompatible – I would recommend the group settling on the type of story to be told before characters are generated, not by reacting to the characters each player develops independently.
There are also rules for characters to advance their skills. It’s not a straightforward experience point system; rather, skills must be learned through play, in a manner reminiscent (to me) of Burning Wheel. That “realistic” approach fits the source material well, though it is also rather fiddly.
Playing the Game
The second section of the book describes the rules of play, many of which I’ve touched upon earlier. However, there are actually four separate conflict resolution subsystems: combat, parley, subterfuge, and chase, each with their own slightly different take on the basic task resolution. The book describes each one very clearly, as well as providing a good explicit running example of how they work. Task resolution is not nearly as rules-light as character creation, but it’s not particularly fiddly either – and it’s smoother than most other FATE systems.
The systems will feel very familiar to veterans of FATE, with the exception of the dice pools standing in for Fudge dice and Vigor instead of stress tracks. Basic actions will be to attack, defend, and maneuver (or impose a “Condition,” or temporary Aspect like “Distracted”) on another character. Much of the fun of a system like this lies in those maneuvers, because it’s a simple way to allow for a rich variety of combat options and it encourages teamwork by providing an easy way to give your companions bonuses on their rolls (by using those conditions to gain an extra die in their pool).
I also like the four different subsystems, which fine-tune the basic mechanics for these various arenas. Especially welcome is the Chase subsystem, which is ignored far too often in RPGs. It departs quite a bit from the base system – each character is rolling against the terrain, not the other characters – but it has space for tactical choices and maneuvers.
One other nice mechanism is NPC creation, which is very easy – three different flavors of NPCs exist, and they are quite easy to generate on-the-fly. That obviously makes for a low-prep, fast-paced game, and allows the GM to open things up for the players to do surprising things..
It is important to emphasize what is not here: magic. This really is a game about adventuring in real-life medieval Europe. It isn’t necessarily gritty – you can spin the skills and Aspects to get a game of chivalric action and such – but it isn’t fantastical or magical. Amusingly, the section on “Sorcery and Witchcraft” presents curses only as social stigmas – nothing magical here at all!
The World
The last chapter provides a brief overview of medieval Europe (focusing on the twelfth century). We get a couple of pages each on four big-picture events (the Papacy, the Reconquista, the Crusades, and succession troubles in England), a few pages on “daily life,” and a sample scenario setup. The brief chapter convinced me that there’s a lot of meat for adventure – be it knightly combat, court intrigue, or something else. The scenario itself didn’t grab me as much, although I appreciated how well it integrated into the history.
Bottom Line
I’m afraid that this review may make CF seem like just another “fantasy heartbreaker.” Take your favorite step-die system, stir in a healthy dose of FATE, sprinkle on some Burning Wheel and a bit of Ron Edwards evangelism…but in the end it doesn’t feel that way. It clearly reads as a cohesive game, with its own point of view and perspectives on these particular mechanics. The game could not fairly be called “derivative” even though it clearly draws from these different sources – Keller has welded them into a crackling engine that sings on its own.
How much of this is the new ground staked out by CF’s setting – a non-magical take on medieval Europe – is hard to say. But, in the end, CF feels like nothing else on the market, and if we can see what influenced it, who cares?
Despite drawing from all these rules-heavy sources, the game itself feels quite light – especially in character creation, but also once you get the hang of the task resolution subsystems. There are several steps to (for example) combat, but the open-ended nature of maneuvers, aspects, and conditions lets the game punch far above this still light complexity.
I can spot some “proud nails” in the game, such as Backgrounds, the Purse (an abstract representation of wealth), and a rather large reliance on tools. Prying some of these back out requires a gaming group that isn’t looking to abuse the system…though, frankly, that’s the only kind I’d play with these days, so I’m not real worried about it!
Despite its pedigree as an indie darling (garnering two Best Indie RPG Award runners-up in 2009), this game is, at its heart, traditional – a GM tosses a plot at the players, or lets the players explore a sandbox and build their own plot, and reacts to them. There’s no specific engine allowing players to drive the plot (save “declarations,” in which you can leverage Aspects to introduce new elements). On the other hand, the rules-light engine does allow the GM a lot of leeway in reacting to the players’ actions, so it certainly could easily be used in a player-driven game.
All in all, Chronica Feudalis is a beautiful little game that shows how even well-established systems can be molded to a new feel. The setting is simple but compelling, the writing is excellent, and the mechanics allow light but tactically-interesting play. I highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in medieval non-fantasy or just in game mechanics!
Note: This is my twenty-eighth entry in the Iron Reviewer series.
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DMSamuel
United States
Ithaca
New York
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Thanks for this review - I have heard smatterings of conversations about this game, but have never had a chance to pick it up and look at it. I never made it a point to do that either, but after reading this review, I now will do so.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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You had time to write a review this week?! Wowzers!
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Steven Robert
United States
Altadena
California
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wavemotion wrote: You had time to write a review this week?! Wowzers!
Don't worry - I didn't actually have time. But I wrote one anyway!
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DMSamuel
United States
Ithaca
New York
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vestige wrote: wavemotion wrote: You had time to write a review this week?! Wowzers! Don't worry - I didn't actually have time. But I wrote one anyway!
He invented a flux capacitor and used a DeLorean, but you don't need to worry about the details.
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Nathan Roberts
Australia
Bombala
NSW
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Lovely Review Steven, thankyou!
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