Karandrin

Immersion by the Numbers

Transitioning from Numbers to Verbal Values
By 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 I even limit player knowledge about the character too. Where lovely numbers should represent Strength or Constitution or Throw Spear instead stand only verbal impressions to guide a given player. Weird? Maybe, but give me the space of an article to explain.

A constant refrain you will hear both on the stream and in my articles is my desire for immersive play in a world rather than just a game. In “Killing the Robots,” I also talk about how min-maxing play began to erode the sense of Karandrin’s realism. Well, in a two-birds-with-one-decision approach, I realized that the fewer numbers players had to cope with, the less min-maxing players could do. In addition, the players would feel like real people who think of their skills and attributes in real terms such as “pretty good” or “terrible.” Less often would purely mechanical statements intrude upon the game setting. Instead of a character saying, “I’ve got a 121 in Battle Axe. What’s your best attack?,” characters would say, “I’m excellent [or what have you] with a battle axe. Anybody got a better idea?” Conversations felt natural and immersion in Karandrin is maintained.

You’ll see from Brise’s character sheet that not all the numbers went away. That sense will be corroborated if you look at her equipment sheet. The simple truth is that I need help running the game. A shameful truth is that I know min-maxing is fun and wanted to leave some of it in. To those ends, stats such as Hit Points, Power Points (magical energy), and others are maintained by the player. Also, magical or otherwise special items are replete with numbers to let players know that their gear is improving and to keep track of what certain enchanted items do. I acknowledge that in role-playing there are few pleasures as great as getting that powerful bow you’ve been after or finding that one magic item you didn’t even know you needed.

I know this approach to game values will not appeal to everyone. I even suggested the idea at a video-game-design panel at a conference and the idea was immediately rejected as being hated by players. Such a response might not be surprising given that particular game is entirely tactical and it’s plot little more than a veneer. For a more immersive world with a definite element of combat and danger, Karandrin strives to marry the best of both worlds, and I certainly hope you’ll join us on the stream to see for yourself.

Killing the Robots

The Need for PC Personality in Immersive Play Styles
By 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 to claim. I’m not interested in entering this ideological fray any more than I am in discussing what truly is or is not a hat. I am interested in saying that while I try to maintain a balance of both elements in Karandrin, as a gamemaster, a PC’s personality becomes a vital part of tactical play as well as immersive, plot-based gaming.

As a young gamemaster in the late ’90s, I gravitated to more tactical scenarios in my games, as did all my friends. But after a year or two, something began bothering me about refereeing combat situations, even as I struggled to come up with new and exciting environs and challenges. I still enjoyed structuring the setting for the combat, placing cover or traps, unexpected enemies, and complex dilemmas, but I fought a sense of boredom as well. Simply put, in the min-maxing of my players, I could predict what they would do. We all knew the combat rules, my players largely knew the threat they faced, and so their decisions were, for me at least, easy to predict. For me, the delight of not knowing what my players were going to do had evaporated beneath the heat of min-maxing. I was bored. “Bruce will use his broadsword after James casts his boosting spell and then Kristy will fire from a safe distance.” I knew it before they did; I knew it even as I designed the scenario.

Worst of all, play (particularly in D&D) became unbelievably robotic. Human, Dwarf, and Elf alike would barge into danger so long as the calculations showed a reasonable chance of victory. The inhuman lack of any other motive, any other trait other than a desire for victory, made characters who undercut the wonder and imagination of the setting. Conversations were short, utilitarian, and devoid of concern for consequence…regardless of the character, regardless of individuality that would exist in the setting if it were real. The game was becoming more dominant than the world, and as an outright worshipper of Tolkien, I couldn’t take being pulled out of a world I had worked so hard to create.

Again, I don’t want to be seen as claiming what role-playing should be; I’m stating what I needed it to be. However, these characters and their decisions driven only by the arithmetic of the moment had for the time spoiled my world and made me think about the absence of human weakness in the story. And that lead me to adding personalities to my PCs. Personality traits, both good and bad, are why we in the real world aren’t always making the perfect, calculated decisions. And now my PCs were going to get a dose of it.

My first attempts at rolling personality were not great. While my list of traits was accurate enough and fairly comprehensive, I failed to grasp what the traits truly needed to do: influence play decisions. Yes, Gondo the Dwarf may love blue, but we don’t see Gondo shopping much in Macy’s, so that trait can go. I began narrowing down on traits that mattered, including combat styles and preferences. This wizard may love the exhilaration of combat and move to the front; this ranger prefers a thrown-type weapon rather than a typical bow. Honesty, trustingness, generosity, temper, all came to play a part in their decisions as well. My system wasn’t (and isn’t) perfect, but it has added complexity to player decisions (both tactical and social), and my world regained some realism.

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 bookshelves of gaming enthusiasts. Unfortunately, if the intent of a game designer (and/or game master) is to create a world that feels unknowably large, realistic, and unexplored, all of these informative assets undermine any sense that the players’ characters are anything short of absolute experts at every molecule of the game setting.

I grant that this problem is only a problem if the player is looking to experience a large world in the course of play. The more tactically minded player will shrug off the experiential components of play and focus on winning and winning alone. But for the gaming experience that is Karandrin (and the rest of us who wish to experience a palpable, interesting world with some degree of realism), the sheer amount of information available to a player can shrink any gaming world very quickly. (That said, I adore any and all sourcebooks I can obtain. Plunging into a given world is such a rich pleasure that I fully understand the rush.) For Karandrin, I don’t have any creature/lore access for the players and that decision has several important effects.

First, this lack of player knowledge allows the mystery of an unexplored world to actually exist in the player’s experience. Knowledge is gained through actual contact with the unknown, research in dusty volumes, or by asking NPCs. But in all three cases, I still allow myth and misunderstanding to permeate the world. A more futuristic setting might allow for more formal knowledge (though our present age of misinformation argues against that), but in a fantasy setting without the benefit of much critical thinking, people’s fears inform them as much as direct experience (or lack of same).

Second, no player can confront a threat or mystery with any degree of nonchalance. Stripped of the unrealistic knowledge that various sourcebooks might provide, players must rely on their wits and observations to make decisions. Without the comforting knowledge of a creature’s weaknesses, hit point total, or defenses, a player approaches each situation with all the caution and tension we should expect, and that anxiety makes each confrontation feel that much more real and the victory that much sweeter.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the denial of unearned player knowledge about Karandrin allows Karandrin to feel immensely large and ancient. Admittedly, my world is only a few hundred megabytes on a handful of hard drives, but the players forget that reality when they’re in the moment. The continual sense that there’s always more to discover, the sheer potential for limitless adventure, shapes player expectations, excitement, and eagerness to choose where the story goes next.

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 with others. Alas, then came the advice from kind friends that I should share both the GM style and the world of Karandrin with everyone. These dim-witted fools suggested I start streaming play sessions. A great idea that would soon challenge my some of my long-held practices as a game-master.

First, we learned that rolling treasure had to change. My trusty charts could stay, but a streaming audience has busy lives and a thousand things to watch. They don’t have the patience of three friends sitting in your living room drinking all of your beer (I’m looking at you Quinn.). So, rolling treasure had to be handled off screen but still be sandbox. Now, I have several treasures of various sizes rolled up ahead of time. Ideally, the treasures will account for most of what a streaming player will encounter, and when the treasure is too small, I simply combine several.

Second, I was fine winging the layout of a ruin as GM on the couch. I could make sketches as we go, particularly when the player/s are debating a tough decision. Now, with an audience looking on, I owe them every effort to avoid unnecessary pauses in the game. The sketch-as-I-go had to go. So, now I work on several layouts of possible sites at once. With the player completely in control of where the character goes, I just needed to keep track (or ask directly) what they were leaning toward and pay more attention to that one. It hasn’t been perfectly successful, but it still keeps us from really long pauses while I sort things out.

Third, organization has been more key. I use a database called FileMaker Pro (Yes, it’s really expensive, but I’m awfully fond of it.) and have entries ready to receive any new monster, NPC, or magic item that may arise. I have all these entries also connected by what player has encountered them. If we take Brise as an example, I can search the database for every magic item she owns, so that if her player (Max) has a question, the answers are at my fingertips and the audience isn’t kept waiting.

Finally, and this technique has helped both in-person play and streaming, I have a few post-its tracking the active NPCs most relevant to a player’s tale. If you’ve watched much of Brise’s tale, then you can imagine it’s up to quite a few (around nine, actually). The lists included each NPC’s next action, future success (or partial success) at it, and any scheduled encounters/meetings they have with the player’s character.

While this list system sounds complex, I’m really surprised at how simple it has been. It takes me about ten minutes to roll the NPC tracker after a given session. Keep in mind, that I only need to reroll if the NPC has learned something new or rolled a success on a goal and therefore needs to move on to the next part of their decision. Let’s again use Brise as an example. If she has a meeting with Lady Miagrall, a Goblin noblewoman in Brise’s Tale, then I will in the course of play have discovered what Miagrall has learned and in what direction (if any) she has been swayed. After the stream, I will consider these factors and more and then roll how these factors affect Miagrall’s plan. The story stays organic and logically consistent given the goals and personalities of the characters involved, and no one has to sit on YouTube or Twitch waiting for me to make the world move.

I hope this little behind-the-scenes look at my thoughts and practices has been interesting to all and even helpful to you other GMs out there. I’ve loved streaming so far, and I hope the work we put into it shows…even when it doesn’t show at all.

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 the Sandbox” for more.) I needed to run in-world time as it passed day to day so that my players could have opportunities to build the contacts needed to find adventures as well as whatever resources the characters needed. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was building an organic world that made sense within its own context, that flowed logically from its own premises. Slowly, the setting itself (for the longest time unnamed) needed to be a natural, palpable world that pushed back when a character put their hand out to feel their environment.

Examples of this organic nature to the setting abound in the stream, but a few examples are worth mentioning where they differ from many other fantasy settings. For instance, walking into a village fully armed—even with weapons peaceably sheathed or hung from belts—is alarming to typical denizens. Obviously, the more isolated the community the more alarming such behavior becomes. The high-quality (and quantity) of weapons you see in much of fantasy is the equivalent of present-day’s assault weapons and are treated as such by the inhabitants of Karandrin. Other than dagger, spear, and bow—the tools of a hunter—most other weapons are for war and violence, and it seemed logical to me that the simple inhabitants of most towns will not abide a weapon’s brazen display.

Another example is the common folk’s acceptance of magic. If magic is relatively rare in a setting and the setting’s populace is relatively uneducated, then their blithe acceptance of supernatural effects seemed to me to be completely ridiculous. Again, I decided that the common folk would react with fear and suspicion to any sort of magical spectacle, excepting those from trusted sources such as the local cleric, shaman, or what have you. The supernatural is the unnatural and even the educated typically avoid the unexplained. In a world where even the basic course of a disease is described in terms of spiritual imbalance, curses, or the will of the gods, seeing fire leaping from a PC’s hands is going to cause alarm.

Not that this fear can’t used to a player’s advantage. The more tactically minded player might try to push their point by a magical display and get the villagers’ compliance for a given purpose. Likewise, a careful display of benevolent magic can make a PC appear to be a source of good (whatever their real motives). In both cases, however, the world will feel more real, more alive, and in a sense more predictable because NPCs are acting according to cultural norms and not the convenience of a game system.

A final example—at least for this article—concerns in-game language choices. While a player’s character class or profession may very well be Thief, the character would never refer to themselves that way. The same is true for so many of the professions within a fantasy setting. A Fighter, Warrior, or what have you would not use those terms but maybe just shrug. In the context of fantasy role-playing, most characters would refer to themselves as adventurers as no technical terms for their skillsets actually exist within the world. Instead, when adventurer isn’t relevant as a term, most spell-casters would know a technical term for their specialty but would accept being referred to as wizard, sorcerer, warlock, or similar terms. Those practicing faith-based magic would probably accept the term priest, cleric, etc.

In fact, the religious-based magic-users provide an interesting exception to my argument and are therefore an exception in Karandrin. Technical terms for professions arise out of a tradition of long use or out of terminology developed in formalized training. Religions throughout the world have been one of the earliest adopters of formalized training and so an RPGs Cleric class might in fact be referred to by cleric. Similarly, Paladin-classed characters, formally adopted by ceremony and training into the role, might be referred to as paladins. Druids are admittedly a trickier case. Druid might be a term adopted in rejection to the use of cleric so as to differentiate mainstream religion from the druid’s less-accepted faith. Certainly, the transformation into a druid would require formalized training and ceremony and so some term should arise, though I guess it’s conceivable that term could be cleric, follower, or some other.

All of these lines of thought, I realize, are not wholly original but are nonetheless necessary to explain why some things happen and why others don’t. Not undertaking these questions leaves a fantasy setting (and really any fictional setting) vulnerable to my least favorite feeling when experiencing any form of creative fiction: contrivance. Why do characters refer to their professions so mechanically? Why are the townsfolk okay with flying adventurers landing in the town square? If the reason is because the gamemaster says so, my suspension of disbelief is dashed.

No doubt, I’ll touch on other expressions of organic worldbuilding as it’s one of my favorite elements of fiction, but I’ll leave those for later. We’ll talk more and this topic and others in future works.

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 had created. Unfortunately, it also meant that time needed to be a continuous element of the game. If one runs screaming from the castle but plans to return, then where does one go in the meantime and when?

Voila, continuous time must be introduced to keep track of what is happening. In the game that would eventually be called Karandrin, players play each hour of their lives, or at least those of interest to that player. Admittedly, this approach means that players must go through some of their character’s downtime, but the more uneventful or uninteresting parts can be simply rolled through with little fanfare.

Take, for example, my wife’s character Mara. If she has left a set of ruins (completed or uncompleted) and set out for town, we roll travel encounters every four hours until she reaches her destination. Mara enters a pub, and I roll for anything interesting. If nothing presents itself, I ask my wife if she has anything Mara needs to accomplish before she goes to bed, such as ask questions, hire services, put word out on the street, etc. If Mara has no objectives to accomplish, we roll for events for her waking hours (brawls, strange news from the road, etc.) and then put her to bed. If she has errands to run, we roll through those to whatever level of detail my player needs. Characters may spend days in town and we use a very similar process for each day: less interest means less time spent on the accomplishment; more interest means more time. I cater to the players.

Another advantage of this approach is that the characters can build contacts and enemies. Now, a GM might produce an ingenious system of procedurally generating these elements, but those xxx will lack nuance and the actual history and feel of the relationship. More importantly, the player will feel as though their character has a history. Now, where your players are not interested in these aspects at all, roll away and hand out contacts and enemies. Sorry for wasting your time.

An astute reader will feel some overlap between continuous play and elements of sandbox I mentioned earlier [Link Needed]. The two approaches definitely evolved hand in hand. Characters seeking out their own adventures would benefit from the ability to make regular returns to town, double check facts, research in a local temple, or what have you. If you can return to any point in a world, the GM has to know how much time has passed to know what may have changed at each of those locales.

An astute viewer will note that much of these activities is missing from the stream. Well, while players generally enjoy their own errands and in-town objectives, we find that observers don’t. We’ll take care of most of that off-screen and leave you the juicy bits. (Stay tuned also for a later article on what I’ve had to change for the streaming of Karandrin.)

A final point on continuous style that I know some role-players will find off-putting: continuous style does require a bit of note taking for players. While I as the GM take lots of notes, a player needs to be able to at least keep their days straight, particularly if they’ve made arrangements with NPCs in the future, etc. To date, however, no one has quit playing over the amount of notes, so I hope I can say this requirement has not been a fatal error.

Indeed, what few players I’ve had in Karandrin seem to enjoy it. The world, wild and wondrous as it is, was their oyster and it felt less arbitrary, less forced than many other approaches. Another aspect was developing, however, and that is what brings us to third key element of my world and how I run it: deeply organic.

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 camping trips. Our gamemasters would use modules or even created their own adventures. We even had a talented artist who could draw the most fabulous maps and had great story ideas.

Unfortunately, the more adventures we had the more I grew unsatisfied. So often there seemed to be no real reason for my character to be a part of the party as there was no real goal for me in play or, indeed, for so many of the other players. We were just here and we were going to explore this keep or what have you. The arbitrariness of it all began to take the shine off the fantasy apple that I once loved.

Admittedly, some adventures would have some important goal for one of our characters. In one instance, two of our group were pursuing a powerful staff, but as there was only one staff and two seekers, that became problematic as well, and in a way that threatened to split the team. In addition, an NPC (the staff’s creator, in fact). So now most of us were faced with a mission that held nothing for us, could split the team, and earn us a powerful NPC enemy in the future. (At some point, a few of our characters literally napped in a bedroom of the castle while our wizards fought the staff’s creator, but that’s whole different article.)

Other missions were more clearly beneficial for us, but again, lacked any specific reason why we would have chosen them. Yes, we would earn gold from the village or other employer, but the automatic assumption that we would accept for that reason alone began to wear thin. Essentially, the larger world and the adventure had no connection; really, I suppose, our outer lives and any adventure had no connection.

Eventually, I started gamemastering with my friends using Rolemaster, 2nd edition, and gradually moved to an approach where the player/s began in a town and had to make their own enquiries into anything strange or unexplained. They would search out tales of local lore and decide which one to investigate or explore. The players would be in charge of what jobs they took and even which they abandoned. They were completely free to choose and if a player was uninterested in a mission that a party chose, that member could always negotiate for more loot and so on.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me say that I have never prescribed to the “railroad” style of play wherein I would orchestrate outcomes of any kind. The one exception might be cases where a player was having delightfully bad luck or the antagonists were having delightfully good luck. Here, I might intervene, especially if the players were feeling somewhat beat down. I took two basic principles to heart in making these decisions: fun and interesting. I’ll address these issues more in later articles.

Now obviously, I had to adapt to the very changes I had made. I would sketch out several ruins and several antagonistic NPCs so that no player’s choice would have to wait on me to fulfill it. If I was running several groups, I could even swap material between them, change some things and keep the variety coming. This approach was made easier, I should note, by the fact that I rarely allowed players access to floorplans or any other form of “battlemap.” First and foremost, I could never understand in other games how we could possibly have that knowledge. As for monsters and the like, I was always good at making those up on the fly and the treasures were procedurally generated by tables.

Thus, my sandbox was born and I was happier with this approach than the more episodic systems I had seen. But more changes were needed and that brings us to the next article: The Advent of Continuous Style.