Lands of Tckia
 Only known screenshot of the game, taken by TheZipCreator. No definitive context of this image exists. | |
| Author(s) | clumsycapy (formerly thecoolkid26) |
|---|---|
| Genre | Early Developmental |
| Players | TheZipCreator, UnusualLizard (then Jeromye), others (8 total) |
| Date Created | May 2018 |
| Known for |
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| Successor | Lands of Tckia 2 |
| Inspired by | Kingdoms 1 |
| Inspired | Kingdoms 2, some Early Boom games |
| Status | Defunct, Unretrievable |
Lands of Tckia (also known as Tckia) was a short-lived Early Developmental game created and hosted by clumsycapy (then known as thecoolkid26) in May 2018. The game experienced a sudden rise in popularity and generated interest from players outside of Kingdoms' player base, raising awareness of the Executor RP concept and inspiring other players to create their own RPs, leading to the Early Boom. Within the Developmental game space, Tckia's deviations from the format of Kingdoms 1 contributed to SenorConejo's decision to end Kingdoms 1 and develop a sequel.
Context and Prelude
For several months, the nascent DiamondFire-Warlords Community solely existed around SenorConejo's Kingdoms 1, a successor to RP Wars that brought several improvements to the game. Activity on the game was high, with the game being hosted almost daily by SenorConejo. Even during its downtime, players of the game would hang around the plot, planning out their future moves ahead of their next turn. Despite the players' satisfaction over the mechanics of Kingdoms 1, some disagreements still emerged; notably, clumsycapy and SenorConejo would have semi-frequent arguments over accusations of host bias or the implementation of the game's technology tree, in which players could research certain items over a set number of turns. For some time, clumsycapy considered creating her own Developmental game that would fix what she saw as flaws in Kingdoms 1's mechanics and hosting.
At the time, it was not standard practice to have multiple games hosted at once, considering how much energy each player put exclusively into playing Kingdoms 1. As such, clumsy's idea was not acted upon until sometime in April 2018, when SenorConejo had a week-long period of inactivity. With doubts as to why he'd gone inactive and how long he would be gone for, Kingdoms 1's player base grew restless, and clumsycapy decided to begin developing her own game, named after herself (thecoolkid26 was often abbreviated to tck).
Game Mechanics and Objectives
The mechanics behind Lands of Tckia were largely derived from Kingdoms 1's mechanics, though two key changes were made to address clumsy's key concerns with Kingdoms 1. Firstly, the player size was doubled from 4 to 8, with the four new players starting along the edges of the map, between two players starting on corners. At the time, Clumsy felt that Kingdoms 1's gameplay could be made more exciting; in her view, the player count was too low and players were taking too long to discover one another's civilizations. Outside of the kingdoms of Vacce and Mushea and a declaration of war between Vacce and Avalonia, no player interactions occurred in Kingdoms 1. By having players closer to one another, Clumsy hoped to achieve these player interactions sooner and thus create more exciting gameplay.
The second major change in Lands of Tckia was the addition of lore for each country. Instead of starting with just an outpost and some units, countries in Lands of Tckia came with a book explaining their background and current problems facing the player's civilization. Usually, these came with pre-existing NPC countries that the player would interact with in the early game. This eliminated another chief concern Clumsy had: namely, that early gameplay on both RP Wars and Kingdoms 1 was both slow and boring. It took several turns before players in either game had significant NPC interactions or enough units to have their turns consist of more than just exploring and resource extraction. By adding these early obstacles and guaranteeing action early on, Clumsy hoped to hook players in faster and maintain higher player retention than both RP Wars and Kingdoms, both of which suffered from at least one country constantly rotating its players due to inactivity.
Combined, these two changes completed Clumsy's core vision for the game: have an action-packed early game where players' initial gameplay is shaped by their interactions by surrounding NPC civilizations, and eventually transition to a middle and late game defined by frequent player-to-player interactions and more formidable NPC countries. Overall, the game sacrificed gradual worldbuilding in favor of more dynamic gameplay.
Another notable change was that clumsy refused to play her own game, in contrast to SenorConejo, who played on both Kingdoms 1 and 2.
Documented Lore and Gameplay
Lands of Tckia was hosted for less than a month, and much of the initial gameplay was never recorded.
Valley Hunters
On a book documenting Lands of Tckia written by Clumsy in October of 2019, one player's gameplay was recounted. That player started out in a forested valley, where they led a town populated by hunters which resided in an NPC-led Kingdom of Solaria. As part of the player's lore, they had recently started a revolution against the Solarian king, hoping to achieve full independence for the community of hunters. Throughout their short gameplay, the player managed to secure control over a stretch of the valley, including their home city.
Mountain Kingdom
Another player was documented as having started in a quiet kingdom that solely claimed a small mountain range, and whose people did not venture far beyond the mountains. The sheltered kingdom believed that its isolation allowed for the community to thrive, and any ventures outside of their known lands were prophesied to lead to catastrophe for the community. The game starts with a scout falling into a river and being washed away, with the Kingdom's objective being to rescue the scout and bring them home in the hopes of averting a disaster.
Destruction of Tckia and Legacy
Upon his return, SenorConejo was surprised to discover Lands of Tckia's creation, but decided to spectate the gameplay. He asked clumsycapy for building permissions on the plot, which were granted. According to Clumsy's 2019 book, SenorConejo then cleared everything built on the plot with a WorldEdit operation and left the server, removing any opportunity to undo the command. He would later claim this to be an accident: he wanted to clear everything as a prank, only to then undo the command; however, he claimed to suddenly be timed out of the server, which removed his chance to undo the operation.
In SenorConejo's account of events, he was on the plot late at night with Tiberius210 and thought it would be funny to clear the plot and take a screenshot of the plot. However, because he was a Mythic rank (DiamondFire's second highest paid rank at the time), he was limited in how many blocks he could modify per operation. This resulted in the operation being partially completed and, according to him, unable to be reverted.
Regardless of the exact circumstances, this resulted in the immediate end of Lands of Tckia and SenorConejo's temporary ban by DiamondFire staff. According to Senor, this was a 23-day ban imposed by moderator TechStudios. The incident represented a peak in tensions between clumsycapy and SenorConejo, though the two would eventually reconcile ahead of the start of Kingdoms 2.
Lands of Tckia 2
Main article: Lands of Tckia 2
Clumsy hoped to recreate Lands of Tckia and renew interest in the game. She collaborated with Tiberius210 on the same plot of land to create a sequel, known as Lands of Tckia 2. Development of the game was short-lived; both players eventually lost interest before a final product was hosted, and the project was indefinitely abandoned.
Start of the Early Boom
On top of filling each of the 8 player slots for the countries, Lands of Tckia also managed to achieve considerable spectator interest during its lifespan, rivaling that of Kingdoms 1. Several players who saw the hosting process of an RP game (virtually unheard of in a server dominated by coded games) were inspired to create their own RP games, leading to the Early Boom. Notably, these games took little inspiration from Tckia and employed entirely new mechanics, leading to the creation of the Afterlife genre of games.
Creation of Kingdoms 2
Upon his return to DiamondFire, SenorConejo acknowledged that some features of Tckia (primarily the player count doubling) were improvements on Kingdoms 1's current system. He would make the tough decision to shutter Kingdoms 1 and immediately begin work on a sequel. Kingdoms 2 would have 8 players, though unlike Tckia, there would be two players in each corner, leading to immediate player interactions between whichever players started next to one another. This sequel would go on to be one of the most long-lived and memorable games in DiamondFire-Warlords RP history.
