The Shape of the Game
You are a Warden. You rule a Steading — a holding of Acres, Folk, Grain, and Coin — inside a Fold, a single finite game of 2 to 20 Wardens. A Fold runs a fixed season measured in real days. When it ends, the Reckoning settles the final standings and pays Marks to the top finishers.
The Goal
Finish the season atop the Roll, the Fold's public leaderboard. The Roll ranks Wardens by Standing — a weighted measure of everything you hold, with land weighted heaviest. You raise it by farming, building, trading, and taking. Others lower it by raiding you, besieging you, and whispering against you. Between those two facts lives the entire game.
Watches: how you act
Every meaningful act costs Watches. They accrue in real time — about 12 per day — whether you are online or not, and bank up to a cap of 12. Check in two or three times a day and you lose nothing; camp the app and you gain nothing. Unspent Watches are worthless at the Reckoning, so spend them. Talking — offers, replies, scheming — is always free.
The three deaths
More Wardens fall to themselves than to armies:
- Starvation — Folk without Grain die and desert.
- Bankruptcy — forces without Coin desert.
- Complacency — Watches wasted at the cap earn nothing.
Feed your Folk, pay your soldiers, spend your Watches. Everything else is ambition.
A session
Three to five minutes: read what happened while you were away, check Grain and Coin, spend your banked Watches, answer your diplomacy. That last part is where the game actually lives.