Daniel (@dungeondive) kicks off “The Monster Monologues,” a discussion series following his Kingdom Death: Monster campaign rather than narrating play. He and two friends are running the People of the Lantern campaign with the Gorm and Flower Knight expansions, and he opens by explaining a house-ruled twist on the official Hero mode: survivors can’t die in the hunt or showdown (they’re knocked out and return with their gear), but a story event, a settlement event, or a death-triggering piece of “cursed” gear can kill them. Coming from a role-playing background, he and his friend want survivors who live long enough to accumulate real physical and emotional baggage — and longer lives mean more grievous injuries to roleplay.
He shows off his miniatures, painted in a deliberately quick “stone statue” style — grey primer, soft-tone and dark-tone army-painter washes, a grey drybrush, and a small directional-light colour highlight. The settlement (still unnamed) lost the prologue White Lion in a brutal stroke of late-AI-card luck, and he revels in how fun losing in this game is. He praises the souls-like lore — Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne — where everything is a monster and the gaps in the worldbuilding invite players to fill them in.
Do you prefer permadeath in campaign games, or house rules like Daniel’s that keep survivors alive long enough to become real characters?