The Ancestors require that the people to only marry within the Kingdom - that is why the Princess would rather be with the Knight than the Earl from the Eastern Kingdom.
But neither the Seidkona nor the King want to see the Princess married to the Knight, practically a commoner!
Not to mention the Earl is batshit crazy.
What's a Seidkona to do?

Take a moment and think about what answer you'd come up with.

Did you get incest? Ben, playing the Seidkona, did - she drugged the King and the Princess and arranged for them to mate. He claims the questions on his character sheet made him do it.
And thus the kingdom was saved.
But not before the Knight was killed for deflowering the Princess (not to mention being a werewolf), the King and many of his people were poisoned, and the Earl was sacrificed to the ancestors on his wedding bed.

I think we outdid Sophocles there.


Thoughts on Seid? One unique thing is that everyone has Themes printed clearly on their sheets for everyone to see - they really worked, we did keep bringing those motifs back into play in various ways, not just the "theme guides", but everyone worked together on them. Another unique thing is the Events on the backs of the location cards - when I was Event guide, although what these added was tangential story-wise, it really felt like they added detail and life to the world...

By the way, here's what Jason Morningstar, the designer, said about our AP -

"That ... is a new outcome. You guys play hard."

Hah, it certainly sounds more extreme to me when reading a synopsis in the light of day. Still, I think it was appropriate given the theme and it definitely made for a memorable story. Nice job, Ben!

Gaming... to the EXTREME!

"Mate" sounds so cold and calculated. You've got to remember, the Seidkona genuinely cared for the old King and wanted to preserve the kingdom. Add the image of the doped up King thinking he's getting it on with his dead Queen (thanks Cy!) as he's embracing his (also doped up) daughter, and the Seidkona watching from the whole thing from the shadows, openly weeping that it's come to this.

You know things are going well when there's an audible gasp of horror from the whole table. Score!

Oh yeah, murdering the Earl in his nuptial bed? Awesome, Cy. I also loved that the Princess just spilled the beans to her dad. No cunning whatsoever. Perfect self-absorbed teenager.

Everybody was awesome in this game. Pat as the beleaguered "oh my god, what is it now" old King was the bedrock for all the shennanigans. Jamie's knight turned out to be one of the most sympathetic characters in the game, as soon as the whole werewolf/mom/breaking the curse/blackmail angle kicked in. And the depraved Earl was hilariously unstable. Scenes of him just hanging out with his swarthy minions were too much fun.

As far as absent gamer requests: "Love in the Time of Seið" has a pre-built setting and characters, but I think we did get some ancient evil in there, given what a strong pressure the demanding and destructive ancestor ghosts were on the whole plot. No dogs though... unless you count the werewolves (hey, that kind of works).

Definitely a lot of fun.

I really liked the scene with the King threatening to kill the wolf-mother unless he got answers, and threatening her because the Knight had hurt someone he loved.

I'm also happy that the werewolf curse on the Knight's bloodline came back around to seemingly threaten the royal line. I'm not sure we did/could have planned for that, but it definitely felt like a coherent storytelling move.

I'm also happy that the werewolf curse on the Knight's bloodline came back around to seemingly threaten the royal line. I'm not sure we did/could have planned for that, but it definitely felt like a coherent storytelling move.

Yeah, I didn't see that coming, but when the King and Knight were having it out and being fairly reasonable at first, suddenly it was like "oh my god, your daughter did it with a werewolf!" Oh, the poor, poor King.

I also really liked the symmetry of the sacrifice beginning (on the barrows) & the sacrifice ending (on the nuptial bed).

Oh yeah, the werewolf curse thing, not where I intended to go with that, but was Even Better.

Actually, since Cy said there were no sympathetic characters, I was surprised at how sympathetic everyone turned out to be. Except the Earl. Everyone else was just making the best of a bad situation and staying true to what they believed in.

Is this a five person only game or can it work with fewer players? I kinda wish there was a recording of your play -- I'd love to have seen it!

It's five fixed characters, which was a big part of why we picked it.
You're supposed to be able to drop one or two of the characters for fewer players. I'm not sure how much that would leave out in practice. Since it seems to have limited replay, I'd recommend at least one five player round.

I wish I could distill what made this click so well. It seems like a great mix of details (too much to have them all come up, not enough to be overwhelming) and situation (clearly established relationships/tensions, but lots of player decisions about underlying motivations and decisions.) I feel like these rules + Fiasco playsets could be a good match.