players: Brandon, Pat, Ben

We played Chronicle, so our history was the story of a single thing: a ring. A magic ring? Nope. A normal ring, but one that was central in the fiction.

Rulers swore oaths on it (and broke them). Friends spirited it away and swore more oaths on it (and broke them). Later it was the wedding ring binding two houses in marriage (guess how that turned out?).

During setup we were initially going for a more fantasy setting but we shifted towards a real world history of families and politics, running back from a medieval-esque time up to a modern world, but with distinctly a-typical traits like the some houses being ruled by a “duarchy” of two sibling heirs instead of a single monarch.

I am a big fan of the anchor characters in each Period. They really speed up the process of making the history personal and human. The ring was the center of the story, of course, but it was never really important in and of itself. It was much more about the people: the doomed bromance of Calder Muerig and “Crown" Angor, the very sketchy union of Lord Wynn and the badass Lady Baden. Lots of great human stuff.

If we kept going I would have loved to jump fully forward to modern times and corporate take-overs. Did reinstating the ancient practice of duarchy and sharing the title between Lady Baden’s son and Lord Wynn’s bastard save the Wynn-Baden alliance and avoid the looming schism? And what *really* happened to the Saeth sisters after their faux execution was announced? We never found out.

I do love me some human political drama. Great game, guys!