Last week I had a chance to play the storytelling game Love in the Time of Seið with its co-designer Jason Morningstar and it was a lot of fun!

The game focuses on intense character drama among five powerful characters in a Norse-inspired fantasy kingdom. It’s a very tight setup with a cast pointed at each other’s throats in ways guaranteed to result in interesting plot.

 I played the King who was marrying his daughter off to a treacherous neighboring noble. By the end of the game, most of the characters were dead (mine included) but the Princess had become Queen and the kingdom was pointed toward a positive future.

The lightweight mechanics are based on Archipelago, which I had been wanting to try for a while. The core of the game is players setting interesting scenes for each other and playing them out until somebody says “It’s not that easy” and you flip over a card that determines if succeed and if there are consequences. This led to fluid, improvisational play with just a touch of randomness to keep us on our toes. It was great!

I highly recommend playing this (or Archipelago) if you have a chance. I look forward to playing its sibling game Love in the Time of Khvareneh sometime soon!