Transitioning from Numbers to Verbal ValuesBy Kevin Manus-Pennings In my article “The Known and the Unknown,” I discuss the reasons why in Karandrin RPG I limit player knowledge to only what the character could have known given their background and experiences to date. If you’ve looked at Brise’s character sheet, you’ll have realized that IContinue reading “Immersion by the Numbers”
Category Archives: Creating Karandrin
Killing the Robots
The Need for PC Personality in Immersive Play StylesBy Kevin Manus-Pennings We’ve all heard (or read) the various arguments about the true definition of a role-playing game. The story-driven, more drama-focused players want more social encounters and plot while those who crave tactics and combat, victories and evisceration, want monsters to smash and treasure toContinue reading “Killing the Robots”
The Known and the Unknown: The Effects of Player Knowledge on an RPG
Both table-top role-playing and electronic/computer gaming suffer from a similar problem: almost unlimited player knowledge. Video walkthroughs on YouTube, stacks of gleaming creature catalogs, sourcebooks on cities, online optimization guides, the variety and amount of information available to a player on a given game consumes considerable space on the internet as well as cozy bookshelvesContinue reading “The Known and the Unknown: The Effects of Player Knowledge on an RPG”
A Stream Runs through the Sandbox: Lessons from Streaming a Sandbox RPG
We’ve discussed in earlier articles how the sandbox, organic style of my world and my own game-mastering arose. I would maintain that style happily for decades. I would tweak things and add aspects that I felt made the game richer, but overall it was a stable, perky little approach that I loved to play withContinue reading “A Stream Runs through the Sandbox: Lessons from Streaming a Sandbox RPG”
Onward to Organic
The game that would become Karandrin started with many simple desires from its inexperienced creator. I wanted my own unique setting to play in, certainly. I wanted my players to have complete control over what adventures they took and have the option to abandon them for any reason they saw fit (See “Evolving toward theContinue reading “Onward to Organic”
The Advent of Continuous Style
By Kevin Manus-Pennings The sandbox approach I pioneered (or so I believe) back in 1988 was working well. My players had the freedom to accept or abandon adventures as they chose and could follow their own interests in doing so. This style felt natural and removed the artificial sense that episodic or modular play hadContinue reading “The Advent of Continuous Style”
Evolving toward the Sandbox
By Kevin Manus-Pennings Like so many of us, my introduction to role-playing was Dungeons and Dragons. Specifically, it was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons when I was in high school, probably around 1988. My group of friends divided into gamemasters and players and we would play during breaks between classes, on the weekends, and on campingContinue reading “Evolving toward the Sandbox”
Karandrin 