Create your own

We’ve put together a basic guide to help you get started with making your own scenarios for The City of Kings!

Before you begin, you should download the scenario template kit here.

How to create a scenario?

Creating a scenario for The City of Kings can be a quick simple process, or a long complex one, depending on how much you want to customise the rules. This guide will start with the basics.

Step 1. The story and objective

The first thing you will need to do is write a story and set an objective.

The story can be anything, but the preference is for something that fits within the theme of the world. You can read the lore on the character sheets, creature templates and a few of the existing scenarios to help come up with ideas. The more you play the game and read the stories, the easier you may find it to add in to the existing stories.

The standard objectives are:

• Fight Something(s).
• Gather some resources.
• Build a building tile.
• Escort an NPC to a location.
• Travel to a location.

For new creators, I recommend choosing one of these, but it is possible to come up with your own objective!

Step 2. Map tiles

The next step is to choose the map tiles you wish to use, there are 16 sets of map tiles and you will need to choose a combination of those sets.

For scenarios I recommend sets which add up to 19 map tiles. You can choose more, but typically this will extend the length of playtime to more than 2 hours.

Full map tile breakdown:

Step 3. Layout

With the map tiles selected, you will need to design a layout for them.

I recommend keeping it square or rectangular, many of the battles require positional play and having oddly shaped maps can put creatures in very difficult positions.

There is a table in the scenario template you can use to design your map layout.

Face up tiles and positioned items

Once you’ve chosen a layout, you will also need to decide if any map tiles start face up, and whether any extra items are on the board at setup.

You could place temporary structures, tokens or creatures on your map.

Step 4. Starting stats

The toughest part of designing a scenario is choosing some interesting starting stats to make your objective more challenging to complete.

You can pick any numbers you like, but here are some general rules to keep your scenario balanced.

Hope

Typically, 1 hope reflects 45 minutes of play for an average group.

It varies per player count, and based on the complexity of the level, but this is a great guide line.

1 hope: 45 minutes
2 hope: 1.5 hours
3 hope: 2.25 hours
4 hope: 3 hours

Time

Unless your story says otherwise, it’s great to start at midnight so players first turn is Early Morning.

Balancing time per player count is a little trickier and often depends on the complexity of your scenario, but if in doubt, the following works well before playtesting.

Hope: 1
2-player: Midnight
3-player: Midnight
4-player: Early Morning

Hope: 2
2-player: Midnight
3-player: Early Morning
4-player: Late Morning

Hope: 3
2-player: Midnight
3-player: Late Morning
4-player: Afternoon

Hope: 4
2-player: Midnight
3-player: Afternoon
4-player: Evening

Morale

Always start with 3 unless there is reason not to!

XP / Stats / Skills / Creature Stat Bars

This is the hardest part to get right as there are endless possibilities, if you would like to balance your own there here are some rules:

XP – The higher the starting XP, the slower players will level and the harder it will be for them to be more powerful.

Stats / Skills – You typically want players to have slightly more stats and skills than they would have if they got to the starting amount of XP by normal progression.

Creature Stat Bars – The higher the starting stat bar, the more stats and skills players need to start with.

Some standard combinations are:

XP – 0
Stats – 0
Skills – 0
Creature Stat Bar – 1

XP – 3
Stats – 2
Skills – 0
Creature Stat Bar – 3

XP – 5
Stats – 4
Skills – 2
Creature Stat Bar – 5

XP – 8
Stats – 4
Skills – 4
Creature Stat Bar – 6

XP – 10
Stats – 6
Skills – 4
Creature Stat Bar – 7

Remember. The higher these numbers are, the more challenging your scenario will be!

Equipment

If you are starting players at a higher level, then it can be great to give them some starting equipment to set some goals for them to work towards.

Step 5. Starting locations

Finally, you just need to decide where the heroes and workers are going to start in your scenario.

Step 6. Put it all together

You now have everything you need to create a scenario, so why not download the scenario template kit and start filling it in?