Arc Philosophy & Knowledge: Part 19 Collectivism

There's been a lot of content to cover outside of just the Gambler's Chest, something I am very grateful for, but I'm also keen to “complete” this series1 so with that in mind I am going to interlace the Arc Philosophy series with other things, and that means we are finally on the Tier 2 philosophies! This group of philosophies include some of my favourite ones to play with as they offer unique styles of play for survivors that are delectably game changing in a delightful manner.

I am running through these in alphabetical order, which means we start with Collectivism, this is a practice and philosophy for life that has both historical and current relevance in our world. A strong example of a functioning collectivist country would be South Korea, a place where individuals place great value in supporting not just family and friends, but to their overall society. You can also see this in many European countries where socialist policies like universal health care or social working are designed for the collective to help lift up those members who are struggling.

It's stark opposite is unsurprisingly Individualism, a philosophy where the needs of the one triumph over the needs of society as a whole. Some examples of countries where Individualism is the leading culture include America, Germany and the UK but you can point to many other western countries and highlight individualistic elements to their culture.

It is also worth highlighting that there are always trade-offs, compromises and weaknesses that come in both collectivism and individualism. Collectivism asks those who are better off, be that physically or financially, to give in order to help those who are struggling for whatever reason. Whereas individualism does not ask those who are managing well to spend their personal resources in support of the struggling members of their culture, this keeps the burden of functioning in society off the backs of those who are thriving.

In Kingdom Death's philosophy system, the polar opposite to Collectivism would be Homicidalism, which is a mechanically selfish philosophy that revolves around harming others in order to grow in personal strength, and we have already looked into the sheer strength and power that philosophy offers a settlement in the entries on that.

In truth, Collectivism is something that's been a core part of Kingdom Death's base mechanics since the conception of the game. The strong survivors go out on hunts to bring back resources for the settlement as a whole to benefit from, lives of survivors are spent for the good of the whole and even the “selfish” goal of completing weapon proficiency has a collective reward via weapon masteries becoming inventions along with Family allowing future generations to start their weapon proficiency journey a lot earlier than their parents did. It's pretty much a necessity both thematically and mechanically that Kingdom Death is this way because it is about settlement survival in the face of adversity and the game isn't lost when any particular survivor dies, instead it is over when the settlement as a whole dies due to there being no more people living in it.

The way that the Collectivism philosophy works is to conceptualise the settlement as being “The Many-Headed Monster” a beast with “many thrashing arms, stamping legs and gnashing teeth that can defend itself against the stalking horrors in the darkness”2. These strong thematic representations through writing and art are also supported by ageing tables that give bonuses to the settlement as well as the survivor gaining them and knowledges that either gain stronger when used in multiples or help protect others. It is a really fun philosophy to engage with and it really leans into the support and squire roles that the game's mechanics offer.

Hunt XP and Neurosis

Collectivism is one of the slow build philosophies that has a track with even spaced development between the 2+ ranks. Once you have collectivism it is going to take another 4 hunt XP before you can gain the next rank, meaning ways of accelerating survivor XP gain is very valuable for this philosophy.

The Neurosis is quite a challenging one if you want to use it while hunting, this is because each Collectivism survivor gives +1 to the settlement's survivor limit, but when they depart their survival is set to 0, meaning they are incredibly vulnerable to the hunt phase, which has multiple events that exist to kill 0 survival survivors. Overwhelming Darkness in particular is quite a concerning one.

As such, in addition to being given incentive to focus on departing survival gains where possible, you're almost encouraged to leave Collectivism survivors in the settlement, where they can function as +Survival Limit supports and then increase their hunt XP through settlement phase methods (Similar to how one gets a Shadow Caesar with Survivalism). This isn't a permanent situation however, there are knowledges that help soften this, with the core tenet All for One being a prime example of this. You may not have any survival when you are on the hunt, but you can borrow other survivor's survival and spend that. This is a design trick I appreciate a great deal, because it's causing a huge problem while also offering a solution to that problem in the same package. It is worth noting that even with this solution, the price being paid remains very high due to the overall survival pool that is being taken on a hunt is reduced.

In truth, there's a fun parallel between Collectivism and Homicidalism in that they are both philosophies where their knowledges work best on survivors that do not have the matching philosophy. Trying out cross philosophy/knowledge interactions is always a fun part of playing with Arc Survivors, but it is rare that the answer is so strongly 'use it on a non-collectivism survivor' a lot of the time. This parallel between the two diametrically opposed philosophies of Collectivism and Homicidalism is a fun one to see, “We're not so different you and I.” is almost certainly part of the speech Homicidalism would give to Collectivism as it killed one of the settlement's many limbs for its own benefit.

Rank 1 (2 Hunt XP) – The Birth of a Monster

Our first rank into collectivism gives us the standard +1 lumi and roll on a table. This table has no additional knowledges being gained, which means collectivism's impact on your settlement knowledge progression is slower than others and compounds upon the already slow hunt XP developmental track.

A 1 to 2 result gives the next group of departing survivors +3 survival (note that this is of no benefit to a departing collectivism survivor) and then three other survivors (non-departing ones) gain +1 lumi each. This is a somewhat underwhelming, but reasonable result for low rolling.

From 3 to 7 we gain +1 strength on the rolling survivor and a survivor of your choice. Being able to target a strength gain is an incredibly useful tool for players, there's a lot of exceptional weapon abilities that are held back by poor base strength and additional survivor strength can overcome that. It's also really desirable to convert as many hits as possible into wounds due to the friction between hit location punishment and wounds progressing the players towards their showdown victory.

The 5 to 7 results also have a Collective Cognition (CC) 15 reward that gives an additional random knowledge to the forum. While this is a small bonus, seeing additional knowledges each settlement year helps because it's another chance to see some powerful, or combo orientated knowledge that could be a game changer. As the Knowledge deck grows in size, gaining access to these additional draws is one of the key smoothing elements we have and it is nice to gain it for “free”.

Finally we have the 8 to 10 result, which gives a survivor without any philosophy collectivism and gives both survivors involved in this +1 lumi. That means we have another +1 to the settlement survival limit, which is always welcome. There's an edge case which covers the situation where there are no survivors in the settlement without a philosophy (which can happen as a campaign moves forward) and here the rolling survivor will erase their name (giving them an opportunity to gain +1 survival for being named) and +1 understanding.

Rank 2 (6 Hunt XP) – Monster's Roar

Another round of the standard +1 Lumi and d10 roll here, with the 1 to 2 result giving departing survivors a very useful +1 strength token and +1 insanity. It's always worth remembering here that Gormundism (which we'll be covering soon) likes to eat tokens for permanent bonuses.

The 3 to 8 result gives the survivor the Legion knowledge, and with CC18+ Legion is also gifted to another two additional survivors, that's super useful because Legion wants you to have multiple survivors with this knowledge and one of its observations is based around having 8+ survivors with the knowledge in the settlement.

A 9 and 10 gives a simple +1 population, which is never something to be sneezed at and the entire table has a CC 22 unlock that gives the settlement the incredibly powerful Lights in the Sky.

Lights in the Sky has only gotten better with the advent of Arc Survivors because the Inner Lantern endeavour has a 50% chance of adding Skull Eater to the timeline in the following year and Skull Eater leads to unlocking the incredibly unique, fun and powerful Marrowism philosophy. I really enjoy this interaction, it was a lot of fun when I drew Lights in the Sky and suddenly an endeavour I didn't really pay too much attention to became a point of extreme interest.

This 9 and 10 result; along with the artwork, is also a continuation of the world's lore in respect to how many survivors are "clones" of each other. We've seen this in People of the Stars and especially Faceism; between the Sculptor(s?) and The Scribe's creating of life from the landscape in combination with the lanterns from the Parasite Queen (speculation on my part there). Here we have a fresh new survivor who is a twin of the Collectivism survivor arriving, it is another nice little snippet that supports the world building.

Rank 3 (10 Hunt XP) – Monstrous Anatomy

We remain with the +1 lumi and d10 roll, but there's a lot more knowledges to be gained at this tier, starting with the 1 to 3 result giving us Myrmidion's Call. The 4 to 7 gives us Team Sacrifice and the 8 to 10 gives us Eight Eyes. We'll dive into each of these next week, but suffice to say they're all great gains and I'm happy to get any one of these almost equally.

The CC23 unlock is +1 evasion and +1 systemic pressure. Given that for the most part Collectivism survivors lean towards a more supporting role rather than a tank one this isn't a particularly great gain and it's what I'd consider the first really situational gain, +1 SP for +1 Eva is a good trade, but not if the survivor doesn't need the evasion.

Rank 4 (14 Hunt XP) - Monstrous Life Cycle

We deviate from the usual lumi pattern here with a gain of 2 endeavours in addition to our 1d10 roll. That's always pretty useful to have, because endeavours are essentially temporary resources given how they can often be converted into 'real' ones via various endeavours on innovations and locations.

The 1 and 2 result gives us either the Sculpture innovation or a third endeavour if we already have sculpture. Innovation tutors are excellent and I personally hold off from endeavouring sculpture if I have a settlement with collectivism because I value the Arc Survivor sculpture a bit less than the generic one. That is because Knowledges have a far more curated gaining process when compared to Fighting Arts. Not only do we see multiple knowledges a year, but also we gain synergistic knowledges for survivors by the process of ranking up a philosophy. It still isn't bad, it provides a 1 lumi reduction for gaining the knowledge and you can use it to lock in something that's generically amazing like Romanticism's incredible Potentia Est, so I do like Sculpture, but I like Sculpture for free even more.

The 3 to 7 results gives us the ability to pass on our attributes to another survivor who has less hunt XP. While survivors with Collectivism gain less attributes than other philosophies this is still something that can be quite good. It's worth noting that this passes on negative attributes as well because it blanket overwrites the receiving survivor's attributes regardless of their state. That means sometimes you might be forced to dump this onto a pleb rather than pass on something useful. It's a bit weird to be so situational in respect to this rank roll, there's a lot of work involved in getting here, but the real draw here is when you have CC19+ because at that point you get to grab the three best knowledges you need out of the knowledge deck and onto the forum. That's an incredible amount of potential power, you get exactly what you need at the point where you can afford it.

The 8 to 10 result is unique and honestly really sweet both mechanically and thematically. I am not the biggest fan of Saviors, but transforming a survivor who is at retirement and getting a fresh new

hunt XP chart which will allow you to go through the collectivism tables all over again (possibly even turning into a savior again when reaching Rank 4) plus gaining a permanent +1 survival limit for the settlement is absolute gangbusters. This is the kind of powerful rule breaking thing I want to see at Tier 2's Rank 4 results and it's providing potential for all of the previous ranks to pay out again a second time. That's super sweet and exciting both from the mechanical potential but also the emergent storytelling for the given survivor.

Final Thoughts

There is some nice, tight themes running through collectivism that helps it stand out from other philosophies. The way that this philosophy increases the survival limit cap based on population and also "infects" other survivors by giving them a copy of Collectivism and/or collectivism knowledges is really fun.

I do think it's a little unusual that this philosophy isn't tied to the "Collective Toil" principle and I am of the opinion that a philosophy for each of the society principles, in the way that Romantic has one, would have been a really strong and interesting direction to go in, but that doesn't take away from this philosophy's strengths.

Next time I'll go through the individual knowledges, I really like how they work and it is interesting how this philosophy espouses being part of a group collective, but it relies heavily on others for survival gains instead of creating some form of collective survival pool that everyone draws from. It's almost suggesting that the followers of collectivism in Kingdom Death are expecting others to carry them, but when you get to the knowledges you can see that isn't the case at all.

1 At least as complete as I can manage with a mechanic that still has more content to be released for it can be. Up to date with all current philosophies would be a more accurate way of describing this I guess.

2 The writing in the Collectivism handbook is particularly great, which is why I wanted to use multiple quotes from it. The art is also super fun in how it takes the abstract concept of the settlement as a monster and visualises it.