Spoilerrific! Seafall, prologue round

Thought I'd try something a little different this time... my game group just started in on Seafall, a so-called "legacy" game with a nautical theme, where the act of playing the game alters the game permanently for both the current session and future sessions.  I won't go into great detail on game mechanics and such (here is a handy video that covers that pretty well).  More interesting to me is where the game goes from that basic start point... and where better to post that than a little-viewed blog?  So, in case the title of this post wasn't clear enough, this is your final spoiler warning.  SPOILERS AHEAD!

The prologue is different from the main game.  Fresh out of the box, the game starts you out with four mostly-unexplored islands, and the stated goal for the prologue (gather enough glory to claim milestones that let you name each of the islands), combined with the relative ease of earning glory through exploration, says that one primary goal of the prologue is to populate the game board a little more thoroughly, making the coming games more dependent on skill and management rather than simple luck.  The fact that they use this as a no-long-term-detriment play session to get everyone familiar with the rules is brilliant, in my opinion.  Well, no major long-term detriment, at any rate, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Being seasoned gamers, the first players in our group quickly went after the few resources available on the opening round, which turned out to be a mistake.  Early-game exploration opportunities on a fresh board are plentiful, low risk, and guaranteed to earn you one glory for successful completion... plus, you get introduced to the "Captain's Booke", which adds a "choose your own adventure" element beyond the simple "you found a source of iron" that would otherwise prevail, and slowly introduces you to the lore of the game.  It's not just "subjugate the natives and take their stuff", you start to find bits and pieces that don't add up to a wholesome picture, whether that's odd coins in one place, or peculiar bones in another that the natives rush to prevent you from disturbing, or the natives wanting to meet you at the ruins of a port the 1000-year-dead Empire left behind, it's got the hallmarks of something Lovecraftian starting to come to life, but it's much too early to say what form it will finally take.

Once we clued in to the risk-reward of the exploration option, we went after it with gusto, finding more resource sites, naming our provinces, rulers, ships and advisors as we went.  Soon the milestones were falling, and we were all rewarded with the opportunity to name the islands, as well as entries detailing what was going on from the point of view of the provincial rulers and their underlings.  More stories of dreams of glory, grand things to come, that sort of thing... and then, we triggered the final milestone.  Turns out, whatever influence was in play must have gotten its hooks well and truly into the rulers of the provinces, as they basically all sailed west out of sight and were never seen again.  The provinces each blame each other for the loss, which brings each raiding the other, and it's in that environment that the new rulers are raised (so, the rulers you first selected from the initial batch of 10 are destroyed, and you choose from the remainder for the rest of the game).  So ends the prologue, with a little gut-punch for the players who've gotten attached to their leaders... and now, the game and players are really ready to play.