Kingdom of Loathing

Kingdom of Loathing (KoL) is a satirical browser game created by Asymmetric Publications (Zack "Jick" Johnson and Josh "Mr. Skullhead" Nite). It is notable for the usage of simple hand-drawn stick figure graphics and surreal gameplay.

The game is an RPG, where users fight monsters for experience (stats), for meat (which is the currency), and for items. This is done through a turn-based system, where users get at least 40 "adventures", or turns, a day. The number of adventures can be greatly increased by food and booze, as well as certain items.

Gameplay and features

The object of the game is to defeat the Naughty Sorceress and free King Ralph XI, who has been "imprismed" by her (imprisoned in a prism). Gameplay involves adventuring through the kingdom while encountering vampires, knob goblins, bats, snowmen, chefs, gravy fairies, and other such beasts, collecting various items, and accumulating meat, which is the in-game currency. The game is humorous by nature, and all quests and battles generally include at least one or two jokes.

In a system that is sometimes referred to as turn or tick based gameplay, a player is supplied with a number of adventures each day at a time called "rollover", which currently starts at 11:30PM EDT (GMT -4) and usually lasts about 30 minutes. 40 adventures are allotted to each player each day, and certain items increase that number when they are either placed at the player's campsite or equipped by the character. Adventures can also be acquired through food and booze; however, only a limited amount of each can be be consumed each day. Although a player can essentially have an unlimited number of unused adventures at one time, the number is reduced to 200 at rollover.

In addition to the items found while adventuring, players can use "meat paste" to combine items. They can also cook food, mix cocktails ("cocktailcrafting"), smith weapons ("meatsmithing"), and make jewelry ("jewelrycrafting"). Some items can only be created by players with a certain skill, which makes them rarer and more valuable (for instance, Saucerors have access to a skill which allows the creation of the most powerful potions in the game).

The game also includes a chat system, available after completing a test to prove one's basic knowledge of English grammar and spelling. There are many channels, including one for people in the player's clan, a trade channel for buying and selling various goods, a channel for players who have ascended, and even one for discussion in haiku. Most of the chat channels are moderated; those who violate the chat rules are banned, with ban duration increasing for successive bans.

In addition to the chat, players can communicate with each other using in-game messages and the official forums. Other forms of communication are also encouraged, such as meeting outside of the game, and fan-based Internet radio stations.

Players may join a clan, a group of players who can share items (through the clan stash), or save up meat to buy special equipment (through the clan coffer). Often members of a clan will work together to accomplish a goal, such as acquiring "bags of goodies" through the in-game clan warfare system.

The Kingdom

The kingdom itself is full of references to movies, television programs, pop music, video games and other forms of pop culture, especially to online culture (including the occasional use of leet speak, and the grammar and spelling test mentioned above). The Kingdom is under the malicious control of the Naughty Sorceress, who holds its king captive and is fought at the end of every ascension.

Most of the power in the Kingdom of Loathing is held by the Council of Loathing (ruling in King Ralph's absence), which gives players up to 14 quests that increase in difficulty as the player levels up. You can also unlock up to 15 miscellaneous quests (with ascension). As much as they care about their king, it seems that they are in no particular hurry to aid his rescue. In fact, they tell the player this at one point, saying "we would continue to have absolute power throughout the land" if the player does not free the king, and that there is "Seriously, no rush."

The land is filled with monsters, which range from drunken half-orc hobos and "sk8 gnomes", to skullbats and furry giants. Although there are theories that these monsters were created by the Naughty Sorceress, they continue to attack even after she has been defeated because they "just really hate you".

Classes

Players in the game choose from a number of classes when they sign up for an account:

Seal Clubbers: "Seal Clubbers hail from the frigid Northlands, because one character class always hails from the frigid Northlands. They rely on their Muscle to survive.": An offensive class, with skills that expand their fighting style and help them in combat. They can create many weapons and elemental objects.

Turtle Tamers: "The Turtle Tamer's mystical connection with his terrapin brethren imbues him with great power. He excels at moving very slowly and winning footraces with smug satisfaction. His Muscle is the key to his success, and to his long lifespan.": A defensive class, with their skills complementing their defense. They can craft armor and cast a number of useful buffs, including techniques to aid their familiars.

Pastamancers: "With his mastery of the arcane secrets of Noodlecraft, the Pastamancer is a force to be reckoned with. He relies on his Mysticality to get ahead in the world.": A crafting/offensive class, with skills to make some of the best foods in the game and very powerful, but costly combat spells.

Saucerors: "Long engaged in an uneasy truce with the Pastamancers, the guild of Saucerors protects the secrets of the Ancient Brotherhood of Gravymakers. Their Mysticality is their most important attribute.": A crafting/defensive class, with skills to make powerful stat-boosting, cookable, and elemental potions as well as casting buffs on themselves and other players.

Disco Bandits: "The Disco Bandit boogies to and fro, hither and yon. Whence comes he? No man knows. Whither strikes he next? All men live in fear of him and his Moxie.": An offensive class, with very high Moxie (and thus very high evasion), as well as the skills needed to make very potent booze. They also have a number of beneficial passive skills, including some that increase item and meat drops.

Accordion Thieves: "The scourge of mariachis and polka bands, the Accordion Thieves have plied their malign craft since time out of mind. Their Moxie serves them well in both their adventures and their interactions with 'the ladies.'": A defensive class whose skills are all buffs, providing a vast variety of boosts to himself and/or other players.

Attributes

Each player has three major attributes, and each class specializes in one of the attributes. Raising that special attribute sufficiently results in gaining a level:

Muscle: Determines hit chance and damage per attack with melee weapons, and the maximum HP of a character - Seal Clubber and Turtle Tamers specialize in Muscle. A minimum amount of muscle is also required to equip non-ranged weapons, some hats, pants, and most shirts (unlocked after ascension).: (Roughly the equivalent, in mainstream RPGs, of stats such as Strength, Constitution or Endurance.)

Mysticality: Determines the damage of certain skills (mostly magic spells), and the maximum MP of a character - Pastamancers and Saucerors specialize in Mysticality. A minimum amount of mysticality is also required to equip most accessories, certain hats, and off-hand items (which can only be equipped while the player is holding either no weapon or only a one-handed weapon).: (Roughly equivalent to Intelligence, Magic, or Wisdom)

Moxie: Determines the chance to evade an attack, and reduces the damage taken when one is hit - Disco Bandits and Accordion Thieves specialize in Moxie. A minimum amount of moxie is also required to equip most ranged weapons, hats, and pants.: (Roughly equivalent to Dexterity, Agility, or Charisma.)

Ascension

Ascension effectively allows players to "win" the game, and then re-start their characters at first level. Players select a new character class and a zodiac sign. Optionally, they may add a skill they currently have to their "permanent skills" list, select a dietary path and opt to do a hardcore ascension. These extra challenges (dietary path and hardcore ascension) may be removed, or "dropped," at any time during an ascension. All meat and most items from the previous life are kept, but they are held in storage at Hagnk's Ancestral Mini-Storage.

A large amount of content is only available to players who have ascended, both new areas (which depend on the chosen zodiac sign), and new items (either as rewards for ascending, or from combinations of permanent skills).

Dietary path

There are three dietary paths which players may optionally choose from when they ascend. They may either become a "teetotaler" (who cannot drink booze), a "boozetafarian" (who cannot eat food), or an "oxygenarian" (who cannot eat or drink). Although taking a dietary path lengthens ascension, a player who completes a pathed ascension receives larger rewards, including special food, booze, or usable items appropriate to that class.

Zodiac signs

The various zodiac signs have different effects on the game, including access to special post-ascension areas (determined by sign). These zodiac signs are not the traditional zodiac signs, but ones specific to the game, with names like "The Marmot", "The Blender", and "The Vole".

Normal ascension

When a player chooses to ascend normally (as opposed to ascending "hardcore"), that player's items go into Hagnk's Ancestral Mini-Storage. That player does not have full access to these items for the first 600 turns (a period known as ronin). That player gets twenty withdrawals, or "pulls," from Hagnk's each day. For each pull, the player may take either one item, or one thousand meat. In addition, while in ronin, the player may not be directly given or purchase items from other players, and may not have buffs cast upon him by others. Normal ascension is colloquially referred to as "softcore."

Hardcore ascension

When players ascend "hardcore", they cannot access items or meat from their previous ascensions until they defeat the Naughty Sorceress and free the King. A player in a hardcore ascension does not have access to skills marked only as Permanent (taken as permanent in a normal ascension), but only skills marked as Hardcore Permanent (taken as permanent during a hardcore ascension). A player completing a hardcore ascension receives a special piece of equipment, depending on which class the player had ascended as.

History

On Thursday 9th June 2005, the Kingdom of Loathing was officially launched, out of the beta-testing stage it was in for over two years. This came with the release of ascension. New content is constantly being added.

During the beta-testing phase, some serious bugs were found and exploited, resulting in a severe influx of duplicate items and meat into the economy on a day now known to players as "Black Sunday." In order to revive the economy without upsetting the player base, a number of "meat sinks" - expensive "must have" items - were instituted to slowly leech meat from the economy. Despite massive amounts of currency leaving the game (according to Jick, one-fifth to one-tenth percent per day), some of the richest players were reluctant to part with their meat and still hoard billions. Most would say, however, that the problem has essentially been fixed.

On Wednesday the 26th of October 2005, Jick accidentally deleted several data tables during rollover, causing all users' alternate ascension inventories (at Hagnk's) to be reverted back to their previous state as of September 6. It took 48 hours for Jick to fix this because he had to use the full backup from September. After he fixed this problem, he apologized to everybody and gave them a special item called "petrified time". He also added "temporal rifts" that sent players backwards and forwards in time. This date has come to be known as "White Wednesday". Jick has promised to try to get people their items that they lost back, and he seems to be making good on his promise thus far.

Another event, which occurred soon after "White Wednesday" called "The Gray Plague" caused the players' font to slowly gray out when infected with the plague. The cause was traced to a certain item, which if put into use would infect the user with the plague. A cure was instilled, which involved a mini-quest used to obtain an item, which, when brought to an in-game market, would be transformed into a cure-administering treatment.

Donation

Maintenance and development of the game is supported by sale of associated merchandise, and by donations. Donations of at least US$10 to the game result in a 'gift' of an in-game stat-boosting item being sent to the donating player, known as a Mr. Accessory or Mr. A. These items can also be sold for meat at the game's mall, traded for better items (including Ms. Accessory, Mr. Accessory Jr, and a Golden Mr. Accessory), or used to purchase customization of one's account (such as a unique avatar). New familiars and items with unique abilities appear every month, and as they can only be purchased with a Mr. A this helps keep a steady flow of incoming donations.

Jick also offers a gift as a reward for a donation of exactly $10 Canadian sent via Mail: an in-game item called a Mr. Eh?. The Mr. Eh? is a slightly weaker Canadian version of the Mr. Accessory, and cannot be similarly traded for other in-game items. The reason for the weaker effect is that Canadian dollars are worth less than American dollars. Jick has stated that if the Canadian dollar became worth more than the American, then the Mr. Eh? would be stronger. Ironically, the Mr. Eh? is worth more in-game, due to it being harder to acquire.

Community

Many of the regular KoL users have an obsession with proper grammar, spelling and punctuation, and will vehemently correct those who misspell words or use leet in chat (which contributes to the irony of the game's motto, "An Adventurer is You!"). A possible reason for this is the community's strong belief in the policy of noblesse oblige.

Player-based projects

There have been several player-based projects that revolve around the game. Successful projects include the official KoL fansite KoL Coldfront; Visual KoL, which now runs a growing KoL-specific Wiki; The Player-Made Music Site, a sizable collection of music created by players of the game that features both parodies and original songs about the game as well as non-game-related pieces by or involving players (as well as links to many band and artist sites); and KoL Trance, which has a large amounts of information and various KoL comics.

Radio KoL

A Web-based SHOUTcast radio station, Radio KoL, is the official unofficial radio station of Kingdom of Loathing. It is a 24/7 DJ-hosted station, with DJs drawn from the KoL user base.

Radio KoL was founded in June 2004 by Kingdom of Loathing players SeveredToe and Artsychick (all DJs are known by their KoL character names.) As their project gained popularity, they hired other players inari and EyeSpeculum to be DJs for the station. These four, especially EyeSpeculum, were known to pull insanely long shifts of up to 48 hours in desperate attempts to keep music playing at all hours, but by August 2004 there were enough DJs to take the station live 24/7. During the 2004 holiday season, Radio KoL climbed to the top of the station rankings of its current host, Fast-Serv.

Radio KoL does not have a fixed musical style; it is entirely DJ-dependent. The unifying theme of the station is its connection to Kingdom of Loathing. There is a high degree of interaction between DJs and players within the KoL chat system, from which the station frequently takes requests, and for which the DJs regularly hold contests. The prizes for these contests are typically items or currency within the game, including unique game items created for Radio KoL.

Radio KoL sustains itself solely through donations, with profit going directly back into the station (for reasons such as the increase in listener slots from 110 to 200 in October 2004, and the addition of an 80-person 64kb stereo server in July 2005).

In March 2005 the founders SeveredToe and Artsychick hosted the first official Radio KoL party, Arkanstock 2005, at their home in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. The weekend-long event involved approximately two dozen tents pitched on their property, karaoke, a tattoo artist for KoL- and Radio KoL-themed tattoos, and many party attendees trying their hand at DJing for the station (often more than one at a time). The success of the party, originally planned as a one-time event, has spawned plans for more Radio KoL parties and meets across the globe, as well as Arkanstock 2006.

In late July of 2005, controversy led to SeveredToe and Artsychick handing over leadership of Radio KoL to DJs Fusilliban and Haplo, who then handed it over to the administration team of EyeSpeculum (who remains in charge of the servers) and Amplitude (the station manager). Jick and Skullhead remained a part of Radio KoL but were otherwise uninvolved in the change.

SeveredToe and Artsychick opted to create a second, unofficial radio station for the KOL community called WKOL: We Know Our Listeners, which lasted until June 2006.

About Spoilers

Giving direct answers to players is generally discouraged in KoL. Instead, players use haikus and vague answers to help less experienced players (although in the KoL forums people will just write spoilers in black boxes). It is forbidden to publicly give away spoilers in chat. Even so, many spoiler sites do exist, and are extremely popular among KoL players.

External links

Official links

Official Website
Forums of Loathing
Asymmetric Publications
Chillin' and Loathin' at Coldfront — "Official Unofficial" KoL fansite

Community links

KoL Player Pictures Site
Pop Goes the Loathing — Catalog of pop-culture references in KoL
Fü Productions — Popular KoL fan comic, as well as other comics.
Radio KoL — "Official Unofficial" KoL radio station with forums and DJ schedule
Player-Made Music Site — Music created by players of KoL, often relating to the game. Includes both parodies and original pieces.
Vera Nice Graphics & Links Site maintained by RKoL DJ Prima Vera Angelhair to showcase KoL-related links and art, graphics, music, and other creations of KoL players.
The Display Case Database
An interview with Jick, one of KoL's authors

Game information links

KoL Walkthrough — Solutions to KoL's many puzzles
Subjunctive KoL — KoL Fansite
Main Page — KoL Specific Wiki