Let's face it, its 2024 and we are in the fifth decade of TTRPG's and in many respects it could be considered the Golden Age, though I think its more of a Silver Age with all the love from designers for their wild creativity in the space. There are game systems to fit everyone's want, desire, every genre, every group. They come in all types from Narrative Style systems, to very light/low rule systems (rules light), to more in-depth rule systems (crunchy). All of it is at our finger tips today, and most can be found from print-on demand publishers (Drive-Thru RPG, for example).
Many of us are "locked" into a specific TTRPG, and learning a new ruleset when you want to change game genres or settings or whatever can often times be overwhelming, thus most of us stay in the same box that we were first introduced to. Yet, casting fireball into a room of full kobolds, taking down the Queen of Dragons for the 5th time, etc., etc., can get monotonous. Sometimes you want to jump into a Mecha, or pilot a ship through space (or the Void), or chasing sky-pirates high above ancient cities, but changing systems can cost a lot of money and hours of learning a new mechanic. You do not want to waste time or money, right? You really don't have to, there is another way: Legends of Kralis is a system that incorporates all this flexibility in its core rule system and with a ton of free resources to further support an improve that flexibility. Where the motto "What Legend will you Forge!" lives up to its goals and Legends of Kralis is waiting for you to become a lifelong Legend (and friend!) Legends of Kralis was originally intended to get rid of the restrictions of classes and species, and to play in an AetherPunk style game (where technology and magic collide), and it is designed to be flexible, fun and fast. The core players guide clocks in around 360 pages and includes every core species, skill, ability, magic system, combat system, vignette's and pre-generated characters, allowing every player from new players to veterans can be up and running in a matter of minutes. I could go on about the mechanics, the crunchy and fun bits of the game system, but rather let me give you four reasons why I think Legends of Kralis really stands out: 1. Absolute Adaptability I grew up and cut my teeth on D&D, AD&D, Role Master, and GURPS, I had a lot of fun with all of them. But changing settings often meant buying new books, or settings and learning new mechanics for that specific setting (though D&D and AD&D pretty much stayed the same). I always felt limited and constrained by the rules themselves. I had to follow the rules of a specific class, or sub-class, or I had to take a specific Disadvantage if I took an Advantage or only specific races could get access to X or Y. There always seemed to be limit to my character based on somewhat arbitrary game balance. Legends of Kralis bypasses all that by presenting rules for character creation without sacrificing any flavor, vibe or genre. Yet, each individual character is unique to what that player wants to do! Skills are just generic enough to allow players to wield two-handed swords or energy blades, the abilities provide character development so that no two characters are exactly the same. In all of this the mechanics never change, just how they are applied. A two-handed sword, ala Conan the Barbarian, uses the same skill as an energy blade, a'la Luke Skywalker. Each has different benefits than the other, but both use the same mechanic. These are all baked into the core rules, no need to change systems or learn new mechanics. It's totally customizable, it's 31 Flavors and all you need to do is mix and match to capture the flavor and feel of whatever you want to play. When we talk about Absolute Adaptability, it leads us to the second reason why Legends of Kralis stands out. It is all about scalability. 2. Scalability From the beginning Legends of Kralis is scalable both in terms of how high of a rank a character can achieve (30th rank so far has proven to be playable and interesting). Additionally, while there are appears to be a lot of rules these are mostly for the GM to be able to create any game genre they wish. This is often seen as being to complex, yet its core mechanics are a simple set of rules that can be applied from minions to mass battles, both in the Void (space) and planet side (where most games take place). In terms of game mechanics player characters, named NPC's (which include followers, loyalists, and hirelings) are more durable and harder to take out. The rest of the milieu is built from civilians, minions, hordes. Many will take a hit and they're down, others may require that a certain TS must be achieved in a single attack to take them down. They gain no use of Heroic Luck, they have many fewer abilities and skills. Even the monsters that players may face can have these Minion and Hordes rules applied to them all for the Glory of your Heroes. This extends through out the entire core rules, heroes facing a small squad of Voidship Fighters, Minion rules! Facing a 100 kaznarks or oku, Minion Rules! The best part? The rules for use of minions and mass battles are a few short pages! 3. EXPLODING DICE! Critical skill checks are an important part of any TTRPG both during combat and through the use if skills. In Legends of Kralis any time that a PC (and most named NPC's) rolls a 01-05 most often, but this can get as high as 1-25 through the use of abilities; this is known as a critical hit or critical skill check. This also means that you get a couple of things. First and foremost you gain a Heroic Luck point; secondly, you get a Critical Hit Determination roll where you get to roll another single d10 and add whatever number you get to your total number of successes improving your overall success. Simply put, if my troll brawler has a score of 68 in his WeaponForte (Firearms) skill and I want to shoot the zombie that just shambled into town, I roll a 2d10 and roll a 05 I rolled a Crit. I now get that 1 Heroic Luck and i get to roll an additional d10, adding the extra number of successes to the original roll. If, by some crazy chance, I roll a 0, I do it again. This can continue for up to 5 times based on my rank. Think of it as a critical hit on steroids. These make for truly Legendary fights and skill checks. This also means that a low ranking individual could take on and take out a much higher ranked individual with the right roll, in Legends of Kralis there is always a chance for you to beat the odds. Of course, the downside is that if you roll a 96-00 (no matter how high your skill score is), you incur a critical failure, and the consequences of your failure can be very harsh. 4. HEROIC Luck! Perhaps one of the most utilized and important mechincs within Legends of Kralis is the use of Heroic Luck. What is a hero without luck? This mechanic allows the players to spend gained heroic luck to change the odds in their favor from getting a re-roll on a missed, poor or even failed (but not critically failed) roll to avoiding the consequences of a critically failed roll to gaining a helping hand and ultimately cheating death (if they have enough Heroic Luck). Unlike some other games that allow you only to have so many and you must either use them all or start over in a new game session, Heroic Luck is a persistent mechanic for characters. There are also optional rules for Group Heroic Luck. As a side note I am trying to build an amazing community. The website offers tons of free resources and the discord is filling up with great players and hopefully some great GMs. Legends of Kralis makes great use of its licensing: you can make whatever you want, and, as long as you don’t charge for it and will slap the ‘Legends of Kralis FAN!’ logo on the front, you can put it out to the world. The adaptable nature of the rules really encourages tweaking and tailoring the game to whatever you want, from existing fandoms and IPs to crazy original settings and everything in between. Runing, playing in Legends of Kralis is really a no-lose situation. You can get the free quick start rules, and some free adventures from the website and Drivethru Savage Worlds is a no-lose proposition. You can download quick-start rules from the publisher for free, and be playing in no time. I am hoping that third party publishing will have strong market, with ton more of creative material to explore, and make an inexhaustible source for ideas and materials. There really is not anything to lose here. I, of course, hope you will find yourself a convert to the Legendary worlds of Legends of Kralis.
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As Neo eloquently stated: “Choice. The problem is choice.” The problem is choice. It is one of our greatest desires (to have many different choices) but it is also one of our greatest disadvantages (too many choices). Yet in the world of RPG’s there is a need to have a choice, otherwise everyone is the same and that can get boring quickly. So, is choice really the problem? Or, is it more of a problem of players wanting to min-max their characters to be the best, in order just to have fun?
Red Pill or Blue Bill? The problem according to psychologist Barry Schwartz is choice, or more precisely too much choice. To sum up the Paradox of Choice Theory: “Instead of increasing our well-being, an abundance of choice is increasing our levels of anxiety, depression and wasted time.” Such an unpleasant thing! Too much choice makes us upset and unable to make a choice. But, is that really so? Since the publication of this theory, there have been a number of article published such as “Too Many Choices: A Problem that Can Paralyze.” and “When It’s Bad to Have Good Choices.” Red Pill? Blue Pill? As gamers, we want to maximize our fun and often this is done during the creation of our characters in which we pour a great deal of time and effort. But are we sacrificing our fun by maxing out what our character can do, instead of working with limiting our ideas of what it takes for us to have fun? Red Pill? Blue Pill? In the early beginnings of our hobby there was just a few choices: Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Thief. Then there came the Player’s Handbook of X, and Player’s Options: X. Then the advent of 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons and the multitude of feats, ease of multiclassing, etc. With 3.5 you had close to 27 books to pull from just to create a 1st-level character. So many choices. What class am I going to play, what race, what feats, oh my!! So many choices! Yet, before there were so many choices I remember players of the White Box were attempting to add more choice so that they would be somehow different from each other of the same class and race. So, is too much choice the issue? Or, is it more of a problem of wanting to do everything with no restrictions? I would argue that it’s our want and desire to be allowed to be given all the options, even though it might make character creation to overwhelming. We demand more choice then get upset when we are given to much perceived choice. So What do I do? So, if too many choices are not really the problem what is? It is fear. The fear of missing out is what really causes us the issues. A nagging feeling that you need to have access to all the options so that you do not miss playing the most awesome character ever! EVER! So how do we make this better? There are few ways to do this:
The Problem of Choice in Talarius Gaming The Talarius Gaming System is built on the premise of giving a great deal of choice to the players in everything they do. In the core rule book of Legends of Kralis there are a combined 40,000 different combinations that you can create if you so desire. Oh my! Are there really that many choices? Yes, and no. While there are that many combinations there are not that many choices. It all starts with your choice of species. This really is the biggest and most important decision you will make. It’s the biggest decision you really need to focus on. That means looking over 15 core species. If you want to play a fighter then choose one of the larger species as they tend to be the ones with the most health and are stronger: Bhahuul, Fhen Khanur, or Troll. Because Talarius Gaming is a classless system, we decided to make the species the core choice that comes with most of the features that sets the standard for a basic, run-of-the-mill character. Even if you stopped here with one species you can have a basic 15 different characters. As each species comes with eight species abilities that can be used to generate a unique generic character. With just that there are 120 basic combinations. The Glory of Choice in Talarius Gaming Unlike some of the more popular game systems where you may feel like you need to the official options that they have buried in other books and products. In some cases you could potentially use or need 27 books to make a 1st level character. That is insane. With Legends of Kralis everything you need to know to have all these options is just one book: The Player’s Guide. To produce a game system rule set that empowers players to create archetypal characters by encouraging creativity, immersion and flexibility through the use of species, skills and abilities rather than classes. To allow players to determine their own level of character complexity.
To help GMS run the sort of campaign that they prefer through the use of rules to generate an open-ended game with flexibility, clarity and ease of GMing by blending system and setting together. To design a unified rule system that everyone from GM to Player can easily refer to from campaign to campaign without learning new rules. If you are a diehard fan of tactical combat then this game is for you. If you are a diehard fan of strong narrative stories where characters actions influence the story then this game is for you. If you are GM that enjoys using your skill to strengthen game play through adjudication, manipulation and breaking the rules of the game, then this game is for you. Where players can create characters without the need for classes. As a GM you are the end-all of the rules in this game or any game, as such it is up to you to keep the game moving forward while allowing the players to be the coolest kids on the block and become the Legends they want to be.
If you are not familiar with the Rule of Cool, its a long standing trope that means that there is willing suspension of disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its awesomeness or coolness. This is something that happens a great deal of time in film and television. In RPG's this is occurs when a character or characters want to pull off something incredibly cool, and so long as it is plausible within the rules, the character(s) are allowed to break the wall of belief. This rule is meant to break logical consistency, but so long as the break is advancing the story or adds the excitement of the story, then this should be allowed, and allowed as often as the players can come up with cool but somewhat plausible reasons or thinking behind what they are attempting to do. With that stated, the key to this rule not becoming a drag on the tension of the story is to establish early on just how much crazy you are allowing, and that everyone understands the feel and flow of the story. As the GM you need to maintain a consistency with the rules in the world and the game, and allowing things to happen all the time because "it's cool" makes this rule lame. In any case so long as the cool factor of the character's attempt is within the realm of possibility allow it to happen. Make it an intense moment, they are after all break some rules of reality, have them make some skill checks, attribute checks or even spend some of that valuable Heroic Luck. While the cool moments should be something on the scale of a Micheal Bay film moment, if every moment is like this, they will lose their sense of awesomeness and loses its cohesiveness and will make the more often slower moments will seem boring and players may be less invested with these moments. By definition the concept of railroading is a style of Game Mastering where the GM tends to deny players from having any opportunity to affect change in an adventure or campaign through their character's actions or decisions (though to some players it means any attempt by the GM to introduce a plot or some-how influence the story); whereas Sandboxing is a style of gaming where there is little to no limitations placed on the player and her character, allowing the player character to roam and change the world around them at will, which will often result in player option paralysis. Neither of which is good for any role-playing experience and both of which will die out quickly due to boredom, frustration or arguments. Both are extremes and should be avoid at all costs.
However, if you and your players prefer moving directly from Point A to Point B with little interaction with the world, other than to sell treasure, purchase healing or learning spells, then "railroading" or rather a strict-linear style of play would be perfect for you; or if you are able to and can easily improvise the world around the player characters with enough background filled with NPCs, locations, rumors, side-treks, "find the fun style" and perhaps a main over-reaching plot arc, then perhaps the open-world is perfect for you and your group. A better middle ground could be described as linear-open world. A linear-open world style of play requires you, the GM, to present the players with options concerning the story in such a way that the players never feel as though you are pushing or carrying them through the adventure or scenario. This requires some work on your part. You must prepare a number of pathways, some that might lead back to the original story either through a number of other minor encounters created by your players, while others will be a direct route back to the plot line; through a list of rumors that might be used to redirect the PCs back to the path of the scenario. One of the best ways to create a linear-open world is through the use of various timelines, a schedule of events over the course of the campaign where the PCs will learn of the events as they occur, or if they happen to be in the right spot at the right time to learn about them before they occur giving the PCs a chance to intervene. Players, despite their need to feel a sense of freedom, need to have a sense of structure as well, which means that a game should conform to a strong story pace and most players will, either directly or indirectly, choose a goal and once a goal is chosen the open world blends seamlessly into a linear progression. So long as you are not blatantly driving the players, they will likely never figure out that the path they are on is actually a part of the scenario. Be prepared for the players to go left when the story progression needs them to go right. When this occurs, keep the following in mind: Be Patient (let the players explore and deal with the consequences), Relax (as long as you do not let them see you panic they will likely not even know that they stepped off the chosen path), and place subtle signposts to help guide the lost back toward the desired goals of the campaign. When players feel that they have choices, they are likely to not ruin the campaign. Most players want the structure of a linear story line, whether they know it or not. What is good? What is evil? What is neutrality? The philosophical ideals that we represent in Legends of Kralis are often similar to the tides of the ocean. At one moment a character can be performing an altruistic action (good) and the next doing an act of depravity (evil) while at the same time not taking a stand against anything that does not affect them (neutral).
The questions of what good, evil and neutrality are, is difficult to answer as each rests on the particular perspective of not only the character but also the player. Many times players do not wish to deal with the philosophical questions of good, evil and neutrality. Often that is just fine. However, these are games made to push the limits of a player's point of view to take a different look at what is evil and what is good. It is up to you as the GM to push these boundaries. To make the players think, if just a little bit, about good and evil. Heroes do good, or at least they struggle to do good. Doing good is not always an easy task, it is more often easier to do acts of evil. Doing good is a goal, one that is held aloft, held above struggle and grief to expand a character’s and a player’s point of view. Being good or evil, requires a certain point of view or temperament, ideals that spur the character not to just avoid doing evil acts or good acts, but to actively promote the existence of either. What is good? It is an altruistic view of the world. It is not nice, polite, well mannered,t or self-righteous. It is the power behind the great power of Positive Energy that pushes beings to take on evil and crush it wherever it grows. It is a vision of the just, filled with hope, peace, benevolence and righteousness. Goodness is right understanding, right thoughts, right speech, right action, right effort, and right mindfulness of yourself in the world to prepare for the ultimate attainment of Wisdom and Enlightenment. What is evil? Evil views the world through a self-interest that will only have a direct improvement of the self. It is often characterized by a lack of compassion for anyone, a tendency to enjoy causing harm, and a disregard for wants and needs of others. Evil, more than just being opposed to good, is the great power behind Negative Energy. It is often vile, corrupt and irredeemable. This is not being bad, or naughty, or even not nice. It is dark, cruel, cold, and often utterly malevolent. Evil is more than just not having right thoughts or right actions. It ranges from a deep hatred, to a deep selfishness, to a complete lack of caring for others. Being evil is not always a reign of chaos or lack of control over themselves. It can be very calculating and manipulative, and not all evil is ugly or in your face. Those who are neutral concerning good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral beings are committed to others by personal relationships. Being good or evil can be a conscious choice. For most, though, being good or evil is an attitude that one recognizes but does not choose. Being neutral on the good-evil axis usually represents a lack of commitment one way or the other, but for some, it represents a positive commitment to a balanced view. While acknowledging that good and evil are objective states, not just opinions, these beings maintain that a balance between the two is the proper place for people, or at least for them. Animals and other creatures incapable of moral action are neutral rather than good or evil. Even deadly vipers and tigers that eat people are neutral because they lack the capacity for morally right or wrong behavior. So what is .....??? Good This is an altruistic view of the world and those who live in it, characterized by a concern for dignity, personal sacrifice, respect for others, gentleness with the helpless, weak, down trodden, and a commitment to those in need. Everyone and everything has a right to live in peace and harmony, living by the best version of the “golden rule”: doing to others as they would have done to them. Neutral Neutrality defines the world neither as black and white, nor as only shades of gray, but as a rainbow of all colors where no one color dominates and all are allowed to participate. This view advocates a middle of the road approach that revolves around allowing each his own independent or self-constructive action. This can denote a lack of concern for larger issues, as an indifference to good or evil as “constructions” of society or it can denote a sincere devotion to maintaining a balance of good and evil in the world. Evil This view of the world is based almost entirely on self-interest or interest for a group that will directly improve the self. It is characterized by a lack of compassion for anyone, a tendency to enjoy causing harm, and a disregard for wants and needs of others. It can also be interpreted as a colder approach, meaning that the character believes that predators strengthen the world by eliminating the weak and making themselves stronger. Such a character might believe that to do otherwise is a crime and that it is evil not to do so. In other cases, the killing of innocents, may be considered evil to others, while to those of an evil outlook would justify it as making the world a better place, better suited for those who know what they want. Note that most people who have been regarded as “evil” do not view themselves as such. It is not a chaotic, out of control world view, it can be cold, calculating and manipulative. Being evil is not always ugly or in your face about what it does. Devoted Philosophies Once you obtain enough philosophy points you may begin to feel the pull of the great good that is positive energy of the Omniverse or the vile corruption of evil that is driven by the negative energy of Chaos and the darker places of the Celestial Realms. You may choose to become devoted to either good or evil philosophies. In doing so you have decided to take on specific roles and responsibilities within the world you exist. Those that choose to be devoted to a philosophy tend to be zealots in their philosophical outlook. In either view they never weaver in their outlook or decisions. Characters of a devoted good philosophy tend to follow a path of integrity that exalts mercy, benevolence and tradition. Those of a neutral philosophy tend to follow a path of harmony that exalts conformity, tradition and universalism. Those of an evil philosophy tend to follow a path of supremacy that exalts power, hedonism, and achievement. Those that are devoted gain the following benefits so long as they remain devoted to their philosophical outlook. Those of a neutral philosophy can never be devoted to an outlook of neutrality. It is a modern concept that players always make their skill or attribute checks for their characters. There are two schools of thought on the GM making rolls for the character: its either an intriguing concept that can work well or it is a terrible idea and the GM should never make roles for the players. This predicated by the fact that some GMs are cruel, unfair and play the game not to let the characters be the star of the story but more sinister goals.
There was a time where GMs made checks for nearly all the players skill checks, and while that was insane there are a couple of good reasons for GMs to make the occasional skill check for the player. These skill checks are typically done when the success or failure of the character would not be immediately self-evident. For example, lets say that Aaro is attempting to Stealth past some guards. How well she is hiding may not be immediately self-evident, she may feel confident that she is in the shadows or in the bushes. She cannot see herself from outside herself, and it is possible her body is not in the right position and that mucks up her attempt, but she could not see or know that. Had the player made that roll the player could see that she didn't succeed and may not act accordingly. There is a level of tension provided on some of the checks that make the story more intriguing. As a basic rule the GM shouldn't make these checks for players most of the time, and in the same moment there are times where if the player knows the character was unsuccessful they may not follow through with their next intended action. In role-playing games you tend to have exceptional players: creative, inventive, and outgoing. These tend to be central to the role-playing experience: the difference between the player and the character. However, you wouldn't ask them to role-play their physical skill. You wouldn't want them to get up from the gaming table, drive to a ditch and see if they can jump over it to determine if their character leaps a chasm and escape a ravenous band of goblins. Or ask them to stand up and fight you to determine whether the character is successful in battle against an oku.
Oddly enough, gamers have a bit of a double standard when it comes to mental-based skills. When the PCs are trying to persuade the NPC to give them information, they feel that it would be silly to limit the character's intelligence, charisma or wits based on the player. And yet, role-playing games are a verbal exercise at its core and to boil down the character-based interactions down to a some stats and dice determination success is thought to rob the game of its inherit fun. However, this attitude towards roll-playing skills can create a few unwanted and unnecessary situations. Though a player of normal strength can play a Conan character, and an player of average intelligence can role-play a brilliant mage, or scientist. Many shy or quiet people may have a difficult time playing the smooth-talking con man, or the diplomat. This is because, unlike his mage and fighter companions, the con man’s player actually has to DO his skills, instead of just rolling for success. He has to talk to the NPCs and be convincing. If the player does not have the conversation skills, he may not be as successful as his character’s skill level would indicate. This can be frustrating to these players. Many games mix role-playing with die-based resolution. When a social, knowledge type skill is used, the player role-plays the situation for a while and then the GM adjusts his skill roll accordingly. This gives shier players the ability to succeed at conversation skills due to his character’s skill, while preserving the role-playing aspect of the game. However, what happens when the player gives a great speech and still blows the roll or flubs the speech, but critically succeeds on the roll? What of situations where PC's determine that they are getting nowhere with a particular NPC and in desperation point out that their character has the conversation skill at such-and-such a level and can they make a skill roll? These situations are unsatisfying and can feel contrived. Whenever there is a gap between the role-playing ability and the character statistics, assume that a given PC is about as persuasive, powerful, seductive, intelligent or deceptive as their player makes them out to be, but still call for skill or attribute checks because of this. Keep in mind the wide dichotomy of role-playing and roll-playing, both are a matter of deeply held preferences within the RPG world. When in doubt work with the players to make sure everyone is having fun. In between adventures or quests is where the real life of adventurers happens. They may spend this time pursuing in game character development and personal objectives such as running a business, acquiring various items, crafting items, criminal activities, or even establishing a business.
Downtime is perhaps an essential element in any game that is the most often overlooked or just skimmed over. Downtime is THE engine that will open up and drive your game to more in depth and empower your characters to have an enriching game experience. It gives the players a chance to meet and interact with NPCs and pursue individual goals. It is a chance for more character development and more social activities to add immersion to the game. In its simplest form, it provides time for players to re-supply, conduct research, craft items, pursue relationships with NPC's, as well as each other, and take a break from the hectic life of adventuring. From the GM's perspective, it helps manage the pace of the campaign, stretch out the sequence of events to develop the story more and providing an often much needed breather between the intensity of adventures and serves to lighten the mood. It is also a way for you to seed other adventures and future plots. As the "conduit" between one adventure and another, this time allows the GM to open up your game and allows the characters (and players) to do several things. Downtime can be the engine that opens up our game and empowers characters to pursue individual goals, party goals, secure resources and gather information, join organizations, influence organizations, setup or expand a base of operations. It also grants players and the GM to shine a light on backstories, develop more profound stories and allow for greater collaborative stories. Here is an example of downtime in your gaming session. The characters have finished exploring the ruined temple and found a slaver ring using the rumors of undead to keep people away from their operations. After crippling the operation and freeing the slaves, they come across some information about another organization in another part of the region. Typically, most games and parties will just proceed to the next hot spot of play and adventure. However, this type of play style confines the players to specific scripted plots with little or no storytelling or deeper interplay. Downtime allows for you and the players to have more options and explore the wider world around them. Downtime can take as little time as the group wants or as long as they want; well at least until something comes knocking or objectives start ticking away. During this respite time you and the players can decide on what goals they want to accomplish and establish a length of time they should or can spend in town before moving on to the next objective. It is during this time you work with the players with what they want to do and choose interesting activities. When you first use or begin this deep delving into the "in-between" time, it will feel very mechanical and scripted. There are a great number of activities that players can choose from. This is perfectly natural as they and you get the hang of it and play starts to be more open and natural. So how does this feel like during game time? It will vary from group to group at their tables but it should go something like this: Vlat the chovahian holy warrior of Hadak, likes being prepared. His player decides that Vlat will spend some time looking into the rumors of another slave trade by visiting some closer villages. His aspect and motivation are unflinching and mission which adds to his bounty hunter background and this is a perfect time for him to take a day or two to visit some of the nearby villages to investigate the slaver ring. Mar and Gram are good philosophied characters. Their players feel that they would be worried about slavers attempting to threaten the town of Cold Iron and the place they call home. They decide that when Vlat is gone, they will meet with the town council and the Church of Gishra to raise awareness and make it harder for slavers to establish a foothold in the town. Aza, the only rogue scoundrel in the party, despite working for the sheriff's department as a Ranger, has his eyes on establishing a thieves guild within the town, to take advantage of the news he just learned about the current slavers in town. As stated previously, by engaging the characters and their players in downtime activities, you lengthen your overall campaign. It can allow for days, weeks, or even months to pass as events set in motion in downtime moments play out in the game world. This also helps create a sense of continuity in your game world. Finally, it allows characters to pursue character driven side interests that encourage players and their characters to become more invested in your campaign and, ultimately, your world. There is no end to the types of downtime activities that you and your players can do or come up with. However, it can be helpful to have a guide list on downtime activities. Downtime Role-playing and Merit Role-playing during downtime should be almost a "no-brainer", and you should encourage your players to take advantage of the scenarios and elements that we have laid out for downtime. This can easily be an excellent source for earning merit along side the standard adventuring and exploring that characters will earn. The amount of Merit you should give will range from +100 to +500 per downtime event as you see fit. One of the more difficult things that you will have to deal with at some point is the death of a character. Challenging characters is important. If there is no threat of failure, even if it is a perceived threat, it is hard for the players to feel compelled by the encounter or the story.
The ultimate challenge a player will face is avoiding death. Very often, it is also the ultimate failure. The worlds of Legends of Kralis are a dangerous place. Death is always right around the corner. Death is serious business because it means that player can no longer play his character. Because it is serious business, we have built in safeguards for the players. First, true death does not happen until the character has been reduced to their Stamina Score in negative health, which can be done by bleeding out over time or by someone continuing to hack at them when they are down. Character's also have a way of "Self-resurrecting" through the use of heroic luck. Instead of outright killing the character, they fall unconscious until the party can rest and help them awaken. Additionally, you could apply a lasting consequence after awakening. These could be things such as taking on a vicious, permanent looking scar. Perhaps the wound(s) never heal quite right, reducing the total Health Points of the character by 10+d10 points. Perhaps the character is shaken to the core and takes on insanity as listed on page 48. Finally, when there is no other resort to rely on, the character's adventure ends. When this occurs, allow that character, if the story and narrative allow, to choose to survive the death causing wound, but it is their last adventure as the rigors of missions, exploring and adventuring is too much and they retire. This allows the character to become a part of the world. As a secondary end, you could allow the character and player to make their final moments a heroic sacrifice that saves the rest of party. When a character does parish ultimately, the most straightforward response is to allow the character to create a new character. While ideally having them create a 1st rank character is the easiest, it will be more satisfying for the player to create a character at the same rank as the rest of the party. When a player has a new character ready to join, arrange the story and circumstances so that you can bring in the new character most quickly and logically possible. There is a very fine alternative to the death of a character: Mostly Dead: As an alternative instead of the character dying they are critically injured. This allows the PC to teeter on the brink of death but survive. This alternative has the character in a deep coma for some time (typically 24 hours) and is beyond even magical help to revive. The character awakens but is scarred from the near-death experience. This always carry some penalty: • Reduction in Movement • A permanent loss to a Skill, Attribute or even Defense • Social stagnation; Because the character has survived the death others can sense something is wrong with the character. Total Party Kills Total Party Kills, TPKs or Wipes, are often the result of bad rolling, bad player decisions and powerful enemies. TPKs, fortunately, are rare, but they are a constant threat that lurks in the shadows of every combat, and every so often they occur and they threaten your campaign and story as well. Total party kills first and foremost should never happen on a random encounter; when they do occur they should happen on an epic heroic level where the PCs go down fighting to the finish. As the GM, you have the good and bad fortune of seeing it coming because from behind the screen you have got a more complete picture; you are seeing the rolls of the players, you have the stats of the monsters and bad guys. When a TPK does occur the players will feel the impact deeply, they have lost the characters that they have spent that last few ranks building their character into what they want, and suddenly all of this changes. The player's reactions could range from: no worries, let's roll up new characters to demoralization and anger at the lost character. In all these cases, players will turn to you as the GM for what they need to do. As the GM you have the power to "fix" the party without losing any of the sting that a TPK delivers so that the party and the players might be more cautious in the future. Avoiding the TPK No matter what the cause is there are a few ways that you can avoid a TPK. As the GM the ultimate responsibility for the campaign and scenario design is in your corner. While encounters do not have to be balanced necessarily, death still needs to be a real consequence for individual players, you should attempt to make them fair. While you are putting the encounters together, always consider the power of the bad guys vs. your players. The players should always have a reasonable chance to defeat their opponents. Secondly, you have a couple of turns perhaps to the last die roll and the last character falling and you have the ability to enact any of the Dues Ex Machina Rules should you decide not to let things play out. The players also have a bit of responsibility in avoiding a TPK. Unfortunately, they may not know this until its too late, unless you talked about it in session zero; however, you can relay this information to them afterward, hoping that they can use the information to avoid another TPK. Players need to understand that character death is always possible when the dice are thrown during combat. Often, the players do not have a lot say about when a TPK will occur, they do not have any foreknowledge about the encounter, but it does fall to them to try and be prepared. Players should learn when to fight or flee. The encounter may have become tougher than they thought, even with foreshadowing of the danger, and they need to run. No one likes to flee from an encounter, but as the idiom says "discretion is the better part of valor" and slipping out of the encounter before things go from not working well to TPK, is a safe and solid choice. While having the players duck and run may put a damper on the next few sessions of the campaign as you get things put back together, it is better than losing the whole party. Additionally, if they survive or generate new characters, you can instruct the players that they should attempt to be prepared for any encounter that may come their way. Often this means that they make an appropriate selection of abilities and items, perhaps even purchasing magical items. When a TPK does occur, as GM you must make sure that legitimize the death of the party, by making sure it is fair Once the last character drops, and the last die is rolled, you have to go to work. Obviously, you will want consequences with in the game world to matter at the table. However, you also want to make sure that everyone is still having fun and will want them to not stop playing, either in the campaign or in the game. There are a couple of ways to keep everyone happy after the fact, without diluting the meaning of the party's death and the TPK. Campaign Inclusion - The pain of a TPK can be reduced somewhat by allowing the TPK to affect the setting. This allows the players to enjoy seeing their character deaths reflected in the campaign world. This can range from legends arising from their demise. To priests becoming something of a local saint, fighters drifting into myth as their names become the basis for companies or mercenary groups. Memorials of the party begin to appear in the towns or villages that the party used as a base of operations. Next Up - One of the quickest and stereotypical solutions to have everyone generate new characters and then send them back into the foray to either pick up where the previous party left off, either by command/request of a contact or to set off on a mission to discover what happened to the missing party. This helps keep cohesion in the campaign and gives the players the ability to defeat whatever killed the last party and possibly pick up where the first group left off. Powerful Intervention - This route tends to make the sting of a TPK less powerful and less meaningful. However, if new characters will not work with the player's story, this option might work well. There are a couple of twists that you can put into place that will keep the players actively engaged and perhaps create a greater story. Have a powerful entity, preferably a non-deity, such as a powerful demonic lord, a powerful patron, or even a mysterious presence bring the characters back from the brink of death. The resurrecting entity could be on the side of good and understand the need for the characters; on the other hand the intervening entity or power has a more sinister agenda, might demand a tremendous price to be paid or may place the characters into a slavery bond with the entity. Not as bad - If there is a need to keep the players alive because of really bad dice roles or a landslide of really bad decisions, then instead of using lethal damage directly, perhaps that last damage dealt to the players was against their fatigue instead, and instead of being dead the players wake up hours later, captured, stripped of gear and forced to deal with the new situation. Truly the End - Sometimes, when the characters have failed at the climax of a moment, perhaps the story moves on to allow evil or chaos to succeed in its plan. Allow this to affect the campaign world, and let the players see these effects when they generate new characters for a new story line. Once you have the players together and they have been given a reason to be in a party, you need to be able to set the initial scene of your adventure or your campaign. This will help set the tone for the rest of the story and will hopefully get the player characters interested in what is happening and pushing them to want to continue.
This can be combined with the integration of players or used instead of integrating players. Sometimes the opening scenes of an adventure can be difficult to start off. The following are a sample of starting seeds for the adventure: In medias res (Latin: into the middle things): What better way to bring together a disparate group of individuals than to throw them into the middle of the mix. "The oku horde is at the edge of town and people are either fleeing, cowering or looking to you for help!" "The shaldhun barrels into the village swinging its huge maul and smashing everything in sight. People scatter as the monster heads for the center of town." "Suddenly the old spellcaster's shop explodes into flames which quickly spread to other buildings. A call for help echoes in the streets." "Through out town koh-boru as their fir darrig leaders begin to crawl out of the sewers attacking and dragging people back into the dank underground waterways!" There is nothing more immediate and dangerous than a rampaging monster, invaders or even a disaster to suddenly bring together a party. A state of chaos is a very easy way to bring characters together. They do not know each other's capabilities or lack thereof but they will very quickly. Escape or else: One of the more often used (other than "You are in a tavern..") is the shared experience of being captured. A great way to bond a new group together is to put them in a shared trauma for their characters. Being captured and escaping allows players to figure out quickly what everyone can do. You may also start the group as part of a slave group where a number of NPC slaves have been killed in front of the players by the slavers to show who is boss and set a stage of fear where they never know when they may be next. "You wake up with serious knots on your head and your body badly bruised. You are clothed only in tattered and shredded loincloths and are locked in an iron cage!" "You open your only good eye, the other is swollen with bruising. Your hands are chained above you into the walls. As you look around you notice several other species in the same situation." "You wake to the whips and cruel shouts of your ogre captors." "With the crack of a whip you awake to your bleeding hands, your feet chained to the bottom of a boat and surrounded by dozens of other enslaved oarsmen." Mistaken Identity: You have heard it before, "You are a spitting image of.." you shake your head and smile and reply: "I have heard that..." but what would happen if you suddenly found yourself mistaken for the local thief that has been breaking into homes. Or the red cloaked assassin that killed Baron Guthridge. Or that's them the ones that raided the temple the other night. Or that one or more of the players suddenly find themselves the target of an assassins or thieves guild. And suddenly you find yourself defending yourself or fleeing the guards, assassins or the bounty hunters that have come looking for the real perpetrators. A part of the Watch: Very few other ways allow you to bring together a party than to be under the service of the local watch or guardsmen of the village or town. Often you can arrange for the players to be on the same watch time. As part of the same group or two separate groups that are suddenly called upon to investigate a murder, break up a tavern brawl or begin the hunt for a group of thieves that have been breaking into local homes recently. Locked up! Like the escape or else seed, locked up brings the character's from different backgrounds to be thrown into the local dungeon or jail together, each accused of various crimes ranging from brawling to theft to murder to mistaken identity. While in the jail an old NPC tells them about the lost city of or the last treasure of or.... The Wreck: While this is mainly attuned for beginnings with no real story arc in place yet, it can be fun for bonding characters and players together with a in media res sort of way. The players were all passengers on a ship either crossing an ocean, an inner sea or traveling down a river when suddenly they are set upon by a storm that causes the ship to wreck. Each of the players wakes up one by one only to find themselves with short term amnesia from being tossed around and while they have memory of their skills, but they are limited. They may even find themselves castaways on a remote island or surrounded by a wartorn area overrun by hordes of monstrous species. The Leader: There are times when bringing players together can be done through one of the players themselves. With this seed one of the players is told that they are cursed or that they are the recipient (either accidentally or by giving to) of a cursed item that they must destroy or be killed by more powerful beings to get the item. The Caravan: In a similar string of seeds to that of Escape or Else or the Watch, the players are all a part of a caravan arriving into a town or are making their way to a town when they are attacked, they stop to help out another group of travelers that have survived an attack (which might occur again soon) or that they stop as a contingent of riders, knights or guards can be seen blocking the road while soot-covered bodies can be seen on either side of the road while many other guards are running towards a cave with shields and swords drawn. Or perhaps when the caravan stops at a caravansary for the night the players suddenly find themselves in an "escape or else" seed where the entire caravan has been captured and all the travelers are crammed together into iron cages. The Undead: Along the lines of in medias res the players suddenly find themselves and the village they are living in invaded by zombies, skeletons or other undead from the local grave sites. They must escape alive in order to stop the undead threat. Cosmic Threat: While this is more of a plot hook and bears a resemblance of in medias res, the use of a cosmic threat or horror is a great away for players to bond, to stand against the great threat that the region or village is about to experience. In this seed the players have all come to the village from different backgrounds and suddenly find themselves in the middle of a crisis. This can range from: 1) At night a fog appears from out of nowhere to ensnare the region. Purple glowing runes appear on every building within the area and horrid creatures appear out of the darkest corners during this time to attack or drag off victims. 2) Once per month on the same day a horrific-shaped Void ship arrives to the town to demand tribute. Beings in metal clockwork body armor invade the town as this tribute is gathered up into the ship. 3) A portal opens high above the town or region and the body of a huge figure can be seen falling towards the ground, as it gets closer to the surface it shrinks to the size of a normal humanoid. Amongst the more important duties, you will have as a GM is assisting players to create their characters. Chapter 1 of the Legends of Kralis Players Guide provides a 9 step guide for character creation and, when followed, should pave an easy path for a new player to generate a new character. It will also help veterans should they forget a step. Essentially, character creation comes down to the following: Pick a Species (and Subspecies if one is available); Determine Attributes; Pick a Focus; Choose some skills and then Pick a starting ability.
When you begin this, get your players together and walk them through the process, step by step, answering questions that might arise. In order to make this a process smoother, take a moment at the beginning and ask each player what type of character they may want to play: A combat type, a social type, a knowledge type or a stealth type. While the types are generic, this gives you and them an idea of what kind of character they want to play. As you are doing this, you might ask them to eliminate any potential duplicate-like characters and shore up possible weaknesses in the party. While it is often a good thing to have a well rounded party that can handle a wide range of situations and give each player a specialty, there are times where a group may want to take on a specific motif of types. Perhaps they are all part of the Ta' Jahu Secret Security or they are a band of roaming Bhahuul priests, or perhaps they desire to establish themselves as good hearted chovah air-pirates. When the players have finished their characters take a moment to look over them to better understand the player characters and how they will be involved in the adventure and campaign. The important part of this process is to be sure and take down some notes about each character. These notes should be a part of your campaign journal or log. They can range from the character's name, focus type, aspects, motivations, background, any exceptionally high attributes, personal information, or important details such as species information or if they have armor and what type. You may also use the Kralis Character Cards as a way to track characters (download sheets at www.talariusgaming.com) Of particular importance is to take notes about the skills that a character has invested in a lot. Specifically, any skills that are in their focus or any additional skills that they have chosen. This can give you a good idea about what sort of things that player will what her character to excel in or her style of play or what type of adventure you can tailor to suit the skill set. This is also a good time for troubleshooting. Recognizing what skills might be lacking or if a player did not get a correct beginning skill total. If the adventure will call for a lot of Void-flying and the player(s) have vested their skills in Languages or Lore, you might let her know that the player character may not feel very useful during much of the adventure. You may also give players an idea of what type of adventure or campaign they are going to be playing in and help them determine what skills, beyond their focus, that they should take. If a player wants to keep all her skills, but you feel that they should have a specific skill, then grant them the use of the skill. How you choose to deal with this depends on your players and your own personality and style. Integrating the Characters Once you know who the characters are and what their focuses are, you should look at the current story and the adventure (or even the campaign) and decide how to involve the characters. It is important to explain why the characters are together or care enough to begin the adventure at hand. Do not hesitate to throw the characters together for odd or bizarre reasons. Even in the same cliche of "You all meet in the Red Dragon Tavern..." some of the best campaigns have begun with this trope. While cliches can be used to bring a group together, if the players do not feel much compulsion to be in the initial scene, it may be more difficult keep their interest through out the rest of the adventure, let alone a whole campaign. Be careful of what cliche starting tropes that you use, some players may reject it, while others are not bothered by it at all. The following are a number of ways to bring the characters together: The Ties that Bind - This grouping has two concepts: the first is that the player characters have all known each other for many years. These relationships can be anywhere from childhood friends to rowdy bar friends to shopkeepers working with each other in the town, city, or village. They also may be a part of the same guild performing different functions within the guild. Perhaps they are a part of a thespian entertainment group that travels from one location to another. Defenders - Similar to Ties that Bind, Defenders places the characters as part of a local watch, sheriffs, city guards or part of an organization (knights, watchers, crusaders, adventurers guild, etc.). As such they know of each other, though the relationships are weak and loosely affiliated. Yet, they are requested to defend the village, the city, look into the goings on in the sewer complex of the city, stop monsters from raiding the local farmers. They may even be hired as guards of a caravan needing defenders against the wilds of the world. Bounty Hunters - As individuals looking for work, they each locate a bounty for a wanted criminal, a lost item or even to discover the fate of a merchants caravan that has gone missing. In this grouping the character's are all hired by the same individual to perform some task. Fate Intervenes - In this grouping all the characters become involved together when suddenly something terrible occurs. They are forced to work together to solve the problem, defend the village, or track down the murderer of the local constable. Or perhaps they have all been accused of some incident and are rounded up, individually or all at the same time by the local town watch or guards. Perhaps they are in the same caravansary when it suddenly is besieged by monsters or the local thugs. Or perhaps they are all on the same airship, sailing ship, or passengers on a Void Transport Ship, when pirates or raiders suddenly attack them. Or perhaps they are all magically teleported against their wills to a room deep within a prison or dungeon and must work to escape. In the Service of - The PCs all serve a local lord, and similar to Defenders, they may be on the same squad of defenders in the service of the city and have been requested that they escort their nobleman, archmage, etc., to another city, or retrieve an object from a merchant in another city. Perhaps the area they live in is being attacked by a horrible monster or by groups of monsters, and they are ordered to stop them. Religious Order - The characters are all of the same religious order, or most of them are, serving as crusaders, priests, monks, or viziers. The church and the holy order are often called upon to perform quests, tasks, and missions that the religious order deems important. If the entire party is not of the same faith or are not of the faithful, they could then be hired as bounty hunters or mercenaries to serve in the quest. Mercenaries - Like bounty hunters, characters in this group have been gathered together by a powerful patron to accomplish a task, a mission or quest. They will all be paid handsomely if they all should survive and return having accomplished the quest or mission. We Come Together - The characters have all been brought together at the funeral of a mutual friend or connecting relative. They are drawn into discussions because of lingering questions about how the person died, perhaps a couple of the characters are being investigated for their odd connection to the person. Or perhaps during the burial the procession is attacked by a powerful person or creature that escapes with the body and they must retrieve it and investigate what is going on. They are all Targets - This finds that each of the character's have themselves targeted by a group of assassins or killers. Perhaps this occurs at the same inn they are staying in or perhaps right in the middle of the day as the characters are shopping in the local market. Who are We - This assumes a great deal of trust from the players on the GM and willing to move the story along. The party awakes with no exact memory of who they are, they remember their names and they know they have skills (perhaps they get to pick the skills they might have during character creation), but nothing much else. Perhaps they awake on stone slabs, naked as a dark sacrifice ritual is taking place and they are the sacrifice to the Old Gods. Perhaps they awake on the shores of some land all around them are bodies and ruins of some ship. The characters and perhaps a few others are all that have survived and suddenly find themselves on the receiving end of an attack from the locals (monsters or tribesmen). Escape - The characters need to escape they may be prisoners within the city, or the prisoners of a brutal lord and has thrown them into their dungeon to rot. Or they are being tortured for various reasons, most likely because they are wrongly believed to have specific information required by those who have captured them. Or they were sacked by slavers and have been or are being brought to the slave lords keep and are to be sold in short order. Or they all begin in some monster’s lair and must escape before they become food. This may be a dragon, a roc, a giant or some other huge or giant beast that has captured them all. OutCasts -The characters all have been born with a specific mark that the more hostile believers see that they are the sign of doom to city, town or region and have been forced out into the world to fend for themselves either as young adults or bound adults and taken away from the city to be executed or dropped of some cliffs or other high point. In Medias Res - In the same vein as fate intervenes, In Medias Res throws the character's together due to some "apocalyptic" event that causes them to band together for survival, defense or saving the region from the impending doom. This is done by having the characters caught up in the middle of things happening at a pace that they cannot control directly and must make through in the beginning to confront the problem later in a more controlled fashion for the characters. You Too - This grouping relies on the backstories of the players and linking them together as a plot device where they all have separate connections towards a specific goal or target, but are unknown at the start to each other. This may be revenge by one character, recovery of the object for their lord, been hired to destroy or kill the target, one character is out to stop the object or target from destroying another object or target. This can be very tricky and requires you as the GM to "soft-railroad" the players so that at the right moment, the various characters must then determine how to handle the situation when they all find out they are invested in the same goal for different reasons. All of Us -This method allows the players to present a personal and unique opening scene. Ask the players to explain why their characters are together and what motives they have for being a group. Once you have established the opening premise or scene, the players then come up with the reasons why they are at that initial scene. Ask them to think about subplots and past relationships they may have with any NPCs. This method requires a strong group of players that can improvise on the spot, but it is also more rewarding for the players as they have established their motives for being in the adventure and set the future of the campaign. Evil Characters Evil player characters are often refused to be allowed by nearly all GMs, in almost all RPGs, and for very good reasons. Traditionally, campaigns are centered around good characters struggling against the dark, and throwing an evil character into the mix could shatter party cohesiveness and possible in-fighting. Occasionally, a player has an idea to play an anti-hero, or perhaps you have a story-line that requires evil characters to play. Perhaps the players are playing good characters and evil characters in the same game and if you are clever enough both groups on different days could be working against each other until the day you reveal that the players have been playing both groups and now comes the twist of them facing each other in a final, terrible conclusion. Evil characters are more than just vile beings that engage in offensive behavior or homicidal maniacs. Just as good characters do, evil characters do not just do what ever they want, for they also understand that there are repercussions for their actions. The key to allow players to play evil characters is a find a way to align their interests to the story line. Perhaps they are the antithesis of a group of heroes working to stop their dark lord from conquering the region. If a single player wants to play an evil character, you and the player must align the characters interest with those of the good or neutral characters in the party. This is best done through a compelling backstory for the evil character. Perhaps a much more vile or dark being, entity or energy wronged, betrayed or hurt the character in such a way that it has spurred the character to seek revenge and this aligns with some like-minded folks. Still, their plans and the evil character's plans might not be the same, the end goal does. This is what you want with the character and the group: similar goals; moreover, the evil character wants and needs to use the part to achieve their goals. Most players seem only to think that being evil means acting in a genocidal or maniacal way and that they must kill everything in their path. While this sums up the majority or regular players, this type of thinking or gaming is not something that the evil character or party wants to be directly associated with. That type of action tends to draw unwelcome attention, and this will significantly reduce the player's or the group's longevity when people around them find out that they are evil. In the campaign world, most people tend to be neutral in their outlooks; they work the land, rule the kingdoms and tend to be in every nook and cranny. Many will work towards being good and altruistic as much for themselves as for the world itself. Then there are those few within a society that are evil; they are hopelessly out numbered and there is no shortage of good-aligned groups to hunt them down and stop their works and deeds. One of the biggest obstacles for players attempting to play an evil character is understanding when they need to show their dark side, and when to play it close. Their reputation is what they need to protect and make the rest of the population believe that they are good individuals. They need to work in secret, formulate their plans, execute those plans and repeat this every day. This tends to be the difference between good players and those that decide to attempt to play an evil character. Evil characters need to grow to survive, evolve. They will have the most character growth than everyone else in the party. The big question is then, why would a character supposed to be evil bother to be a part of a group of others that are not inherently evil. The following are couple of reasons why they might be together: - They owe a member of the party a life debt - They are attempting to reform one or two of the group - The target wronged them that the party is opposing - The party is looking for the same object you are to bring about their patrons desires. - Their patron or master as ordered them to assassinate the party. - They are actively attempting to reform themselves - They are aware that the party is central to the completion of some ancient prophecy While players are creating their characters, it is crucial for you as the GM to make sure that the characters and their backgrounds somewhat make sense with each other. This is particularly important if the scenario or adventure you are planning on leading the players through is a specific type of location, such as a Void ship, a dungeon, a city, or through the Tav Aeduhn in search of the fir darrig city of Pho-Lhung.
A group of unrelated characters could cripple the party before the game even starts, mostly by a couple of poor choices during character creation. Legends of Kralis offers a significant number of options to the player to be whatever character they wish to be. However, while this grants them a great opportunity, having a lack of party cohesiveness could cause issues. However, with a bit of tweaking during the group's character creation you can help the players produce characters that are both interesting and are mechanically well suited to work together and with the campaign as a whole. During this time of creation, you will want to help the party, and each character to avoid becoming better than the other's. However, you also want to make sure that each character is unique enough and capable enough that the character lives up to the what the player imagines. The first step in creating a well-oiled and cohesive group is defining and determining the campaign goals during the creation process. From a player's point-of-view the goal of creation is to build a unique character with a great background and appropriate game stats. From your perspective as the GM there are several objectives you should consider during the creation process. These objectives revolve around how each character fits into and with the game, the theme, the campaign and setting and the group. The most important goal during the creation process is for the player's to fit together. To do so characters should avoid being incompatible with each other, whether through mechanical means or story. This often means combining characters that compliment each other such as stealth and magic or combat and healers. Secondly, the players should work to unite themselves, perhaps with help from you, in their background (see Integrating the Characters), each of the characters should have some tie to each other on a story level. Mechanically, you will want to ensure that each character has adhered to the rules of creation within the Players Guide. This may be as easy as looking over the dice rolls, the species modifiers to attributes, and assuring that the players have each taken a species ability, their focus ability, and their first ability. During this process be aware of the types of threats that the players may encounter in their first few sessions, and the possible big bad guy(s) they may face throughout the campaign. You may also want to ensure that they have appropriate skills to ensuring that the character will have the future opportunity to get better abilities. During the creation process, you should help assure that each character take consider the trappings of the setting and its themes. Many times this is straight-forward and simple: as Legends of Kralis is a Science-Fantasy setting and this grants the players are wide birth of themes as their characters can range from a wild wandering hunters armed with a long-rifle to a vigilante crusader from Dardura Sheva, the Great Sapphire City, or powerful spellcasting engineer stalking around in her personal steam-powered mecha. It is also important to address the actual theme aspect of the setting. Will the party be facing a horror theme filled with undead, an action theme where they will be chasing down the bad guys, or will they be a part of an investigation theme tracking down criminals. Within the campaign,it is important to have each character have some type of personal attachment to the going ons within the campaign, something important enough that the players or the group won't simply walk away. The most immediate connection that players can have is connected to the main plot or scenario within the campaign. This is often easily done through the character's background or through hooks and tidbits that players write into their background. For example, the campaign you are running is to stop a powerful undead being who is planning to open up a portal to one of the planes of Nheter Khet to conquer the region. Wanting to stop the undead thing and save their region from this dark doom is the most immediate connection to the campaign plot that the players could have. But it is not the only one. If the PCs have generated a background, you can use this to hook the player into the campaign. Should some of the PCs not have written specific backgrounds, be careful in utilizing or creating backgrounds that might effect the PC in a way that the player may not like. Be sure to work with the players if you plan to create a background hook around them. Continuing with stopping the undead being, perhaps one of the PCs relatives has become ill with a sickness directly related to the creeping devastation of the undead being's growing power as it manifests itself within the land, perhaps infesting water sources or even food. The PCs goals of finding a cure are linked with stopping the undead being. "The test (encounter) itself is a cheat isn't it? You programmed (designed) it to be unwinnable.", "Your argument precludes the possibility of a no-win scenario." "I do not believe in no-win scenarios."
If you are anything like me and are a huge Star Trek fan, or even if you are not. You have likely heard the term Kobayashi Maru. This a training exercise for Star Trek cadets that offered a no-win scenario (a scenario where the players have choices, but no choice will lead to a net gain or success). It is used to test one's character or a solution that involves re-defining the problem, or to change the conditions of the test or encounter. This is a concept in encounter design that essentially states that game balance between players and opponents does not matter. In Legends of Kralis we believe that every encounter has a way out and as you design the encounter do not worry so much about how the characters are going to make it. While you want to preserve the life of the characters and the party, it's no fun to TPK or lose your players but there is something to be said about not caring about "balanced" encounters. It is half the fun to watch the players challenge your Kobayashi Maru and change the conditions of the test through their planning, skills, abilities and actions. They can change the whole battlefield within moments and take advantage of it turning the encounter on its head. As a GM I fundamentally do not believe in balanced encounters, its a harsh, dark, mean world out there and players whether they know it or not, want to feel heroic and often that should come at a cost. I am a big believer of stacking the deck against the players and making them feel overwhelmed. Every player wants to get their assess kicked but they want to win in the end with that feeling of their victory being earned. That means the bad guys have to be overwhelming often very powerful and have the ability to end the character right there and right then. As the storyteller you need to give the players a feeling of despair that they cannot do it, and when they pull out that victory by the slimmest thread the players will remember that and feel like heroes. But there is a line that you need to be careful not to cross and this takes time to develop you cannot throw a 10th rank monster at a 3rd rank party, that is not a Kobayashi Maru that is you being a bad sport and a "dick". Having really high level bad guys is a great opportunity to show players the kind of cool things that they are going to be able to do or replicate, it also helps show that they, while being heroic legends, should be afraid. Remember the bad guys do not think in terms of balance, they think in terms of the Kobayashi Maru. It's up to the players to get it, and use good intelligence so that they do not walk into a scenario where they will get smoked. One of the most essential things about GMing that you should care about is Character Choice and Agency. To begin, your players must have the freedom to react to the situations or world around them free of your influence as a GM. The characters belong to the players, not you. Do not control what they do. That would be very boring and defeat the game's purpose. They must have the agency to react and deal with what you throw at them however they want. This is the basis of the social gaming contract between you and the Players.
Railroading is when the GM ignores that player's input for no reason other than that's not what you want the players to do. But there is often confusion among players as well as new GMs. Because role-playing games can be more open world than even the best video games, there are times that a linear adventure allows the GM to direct the players. Players assume that if you limit player choice that you are railroading the characters into doing what you want to do. Limiting players agency is railroading, but limiting player choice is normally good because the more you limit player's choice the easier it is for the players to get involved in the game. It also allows helps us to be better Game Masters, limiting choice means you can focus on the content of the game and campaign. To avoid railroading your players, you need to entertain any reasonable idea they come up with to solve a situation they face. Most of the time, players are convinced that there is always a SINGLE solution when in fact, if they stop to think about it, they can change the test conditions. Sooner or later, your players may feel that they are being railroaded by you when they are just not thinking outside of the box or tried one idea and it didn't work making them give up or become frustrated with the outcome. Never shoot down clever, fun, or interesting ideas unless they are unreasonable. Allow the players to get in over their heads, do not try to force an outcome. That is railroading. Of course, if players acting on their agency can come up with some very radical ideas that you cannot easily improvise, does not mean you need to say no. Take a small break think about what they want to do and figure out a way to allow it happen reasonably. All your games are essentially sandbox games when you all any reasonable idea occur. Railroading happens when you do not permit reasonable ideas. There is an important and subtle distinction between railroading and herding your players toward the content that you have prepared for them to play. While creating a world for your players to enjoy or bringing the Worlds of Kralis to life, you need to know and understand your players. Understanding how they will respond to different situations, your GMing style, what scenarios and adventures they like, and how they may interact with each other is important because they make or break a game or a whole campaign.
There are no actual tips or shortcuts for getting to know a group. Starting a new group at your local friendly game store is different from starting the same game with your friends and family. The best ways to figure out what type of group you are GMing for is to use some of the basic or more common types of adventure tropes (town in need, NPC in need, Rescuing an item, etc.). Save the more complex concepts and ideas for your campaign plots for when you have gotten to know your group better. Player Types Having discussed the various, though limited types of GameMasters, you need to understand your players, their desires and what makes them tick. There are a number of great resources out in the world-wide-web, that can give you a doctoral thesis on every player type you might encounter in your gaming experience. As a standard, most players will be attracted to GMs that are most like them in their playstyle, however; this does not mean that alike-attracts-alike, because, for every 3 players that fit your style, you will find one or two that have a specific style that you will have to accommodate. There are typically four types of players, but the following is does not mean that a player fits into only one type, but they tend to lean towards one more than the others: Analysts, Diplomats, Protectors, and Explorers. Analysts. These player types focus on the use of the rules within the game. They are the ones that will want to tweak, modify or "hack" the rules for the simple joy of rule-breaking. These players want all the options available to them, even the slightest, insignificant detail is important to them and their desire to modify their characters. They tend to take their roles as characters quite seriously, often seeking a way for them build their character that has effects for the character as well as the world around them. They tend to either be aggressive attackers (extroverted players) or powerful, passive support (introverted players). Analysts enjoy solving puzzles, prefer to engage in an action based adventure and open-sandbox worlds where they must engage everything. These players enjoy boosting their odds for greater success and will often want to roll the dice just to roll the dice. They are smart, imaginative, strategic thinkers that love to innovate new solutions for the situations (both physical and intellectual). They have bold plans that will always find a way or will make one. Analysts make up the majority of power gamers and tacticians in a game. They take on characters such as spellcasters, technophytes, engineers, illusionists, and prefer the more standard types of species like ta' jahu, ha'vatu, humans, and chovah. Diplomats. Diplomats, despite their name, are drawn to a game and gaming for their artistic and unique narratives. Driven by the need to tell a story, and not just any story, it must have meaning and depth. They will buck at the smallest scent of a railroading, and while they prefer to drive a campaign with their PCs story. They do not want to play in a sandbox without any direction, while an open world appeals to them and it can spark their imagination. They will balk at a railroading plot, but they are often willing to help author and drive an interesting story. They are more attracted to supporting roles such as spellcasters and clerics. Though if they choose to be a fighter-type they are likely to take on roles based on pure strength and close-range fighting. Diplomat type characters are those players that are romantic and passionate types. They are often quiet, altruistic and creative players with a great deal of charisma to create great backgrounds for their characters. They love to have their characters involved in the stories more directly than other player types while they wander an open-world where they can embrace the freedom of non-linear missions and goals. Diplomats have a keen sense of morals and principles. They will likely not play characters whose behavior would be frowned upon in real life such as trickery or stealing, eliminating most rogue types of characters. Diplomats tend to lean towards acting and storyteller types of players. These players are attracted to playing priests, rogues, or bards and lean towards non-standard species such as acires, aelwyn, ba-liyan, and syliphs. Protectors. Of all the player types, the protectors make up a large group of players that look at the game as a place where they are able to bring their dedication to both the game and the players within the game. They are social players that are more attracted to gaming as a group, and being the leader of that group, than going on individual side-quests by themselves. Protectors are dedicated and defined by their reliability, integrity, practical logic and charisma. They tend to understand the situation that their character or the party is in and design the best plan. These players often are the leader of the party and enjoy bringing everyone into focus. They are straight-forward and never give up on their beliefs. These players tend to make up power gamers and those that specialize in specific character types. They are likely to take on characters such as knights, monks, crusaders, or jinhuur and tend to pick species such as bhahuul, jakara, kanus, or trolls. Explorers. Explorers tend to be what are best known as the butt-kickers seeing adventures and scenarios as something really fun and exciting, but always needing to have more to do than other players. They prefer to jump into a game and get going right away once the game has begun. Explorers are drawn to fast-paced and free from lasting consequences within a game. They are attracted to situations where they are constantly challenged and where the dice are continually rolling. They enjoy stealth-based scenarios where the tension can be cranked up to high and left there; and where they often must make split-second decisions and decide when and where to peek around the corner. These players can drive a GM mad as they tend to split the party and go off on their own for a bit. Where other players may only make a move after taking some time to observe the patrols or the coming and goings within a base, they have already entered the area and moved through the compound, having taken a few chances along the way. Most will focus on the craft of the play, challenging the timing of action in a changing environment to make victory. Explorers tend to pick either stealth based characters or be in the center of the action where life and death hang in the balance. They often create rangers, jinhuurs, mage-fighters or summoners and tend to choose unusual species such as the acires, aelwyn, jakara, kanus, manax or trolls. Types of Disruptive Players As a gamer myself I try not to think badly of others. However, there are problem and toxic players out in the world. Disruptive players come in a few broad categories. Understanding these types of players can help you deal with them when they arise. As the GM, the first thing that you must look at when dealing with disruptive players is to understand that the root of these issues may actually lie in how you the GM view your role in the playing group and how you conduct yourself and the game you are in. Bluntly, if you as the GM appear to be willing to let your players get away with actions and types of behaviors that may hurt the game, then the player that might be naturally inclined to towards disruptive behaviors and will likely take advantage of this opportunity. As the GM you are there to enforce the rules, mediate the game itself and provide a safe place for all players. Sometimes disruptive players are not even aware that they have become a disruptive player or "that player". Dealing with them should be taken from the perspective that it could be nothing more than a communication issue, a misunderstanding or someone having a bad day. Should the player continue to cause issues from game to game, you might have a problem player on your hands. When you come across a disruptive player you should discuss the issue with them and not penalize their character for an out of game player disruption. Depending on the severity of the transgression you should probably talk to them after the game or during a break. Be direct about the situation, tell them what they may have done in a calm tone, try to keep it friendly and be understanding. If two or more players are involved you must become the true judge, listen to both sides, and help them come to a good resolution. Sometimes if there is an issue between two players and they are mature enough, it might be a good idea to move on and rely on their maturity to realize that they were both in the wrong and they will naturally apologize to each other. At no time during these types of a situation should you or other players gang up on the offending player, though perhaps a group discussion will help alleviate issues. In the real world of life, beyond the game, you have no real authority so avoid bullying or intimidating a player. Your only job as the GM in these situations is to talk it out with the disruptive player and hopefully get them to see the situation and help them alter this in game behavior. One of the hard and unchanging rules for any game is this: NO BULLYING and NO GATEKEEPING. There is never a need for anyone ever to be made to feel that they are not playing the game in a "right" way. No one should ever be coerced or pushed into doing something that they do not want or are willing to do in the game. Under most circumstances, people tend to want to adhere to the group social contract, which tends to state that we are here for fun and a certain level of maturity is required. However, those less mature players, perhaps due to age, will need to be shown the error of their ways. Most of this can be discovered and taken care of during session zero as you get to know the players. Following are a few types of disruptive players that you might encounter (and not a definitive list on them), along with some information on how to work with them and help adjust this disruptiveness. The Aggressor or Griefer. These types of players are fortunately very rare, but they are the worst sort of players as their attitudes are often the reason why so many fantastic potential players flee the hobby and never return. These players tend to create characters that cannot function in any type of adventure or scenario, fantasy games or otherwise. The aggressor type of player is different than a bully but is part of the bully umbrella. They are often a combination of an insecure cheat and a bully. They often do not care what the group is doing or is about and are often motivated by getting others to react to their antics; getting their kicks by seeing how far they can push a group before there is a breakdown. Usually, they are thoughtless persons, the worst type of sin in an RPG, that cannot be reasoned with or changed. Their bully personality is often delighted to see that others do not confront them about this disruptive behavior. When confronted, they become "that player" that we all dread and will have a plan. Often they will begin with deflecting their behavior by blaming the scenario or the GM for allowing them to act a specific way. If this fails, in some extreme cases, this may come from them shouting opponents down. These players, when they first join a group, are difficult to spot. Unless they announce it, they will be hard to see right off the bat. Soon after though, their true behavior cannot be kept quite for long. They will soon raise their voice to challenge other players, act aggressively towards others while in game and begin to challenge another's decision on how to play their character. They will argue and be disruptive, might refuse to participate in the current scenario and will generally try to spoil the fun for everyone else. When this occurs, it is your job as the GM to immediately take charge of the situation and tell the offending player that they have crossed a line in no uncertain words. It is doubtful that such players will change their motivations for playing in the game and allowing such a player to remain in the game is a horrible decision, no matter what connection they have to you or the group. There is absolutely no reason to continue to allow the player to remain in the game. You will only validate their behavior by allowing them to stay in the game. You must firmly but politely ask the player to leave the game; otherwise, you will threaten the campaign's life at best and cause new players to quit the hobby in disgust at worst. The Fourth Wall Player. Often referred to as the Metagamer, which is a misnomer in a sense (for a great argument about Metagaming see (http://theangrygm.com/dear-gms-metagaming-is-your-fault), these players take actions within the game that might be outside of the current knowledge of the character using information that they have gathered from the GM or their player knowledge of the rules. It is possible to use outside-of-game knowledge in a positive way. Most of the time these types of players use it to help their character succeed rather than helping the immersion of the game for themselves and the players involved. Too often it is used to break the groups suspension of disbelieve in the campaign or current scenario. These types of players tend to know the weaknesses of most of the popular monsters or they instantly become suspicious of non-player characters when their ill intent is talked about out-of-game. They are troublesome because the Fourth Wall Player can wreak havoc on stories, plots, and campaign because it is nearly impossible for humans to "strike from the record" any information that they learn from their minds. Fourth Wall Players can make the scenarios less risky or take the challenge out of the encounter that would otherwise be filled with tension and excitement. This type of player waters down the overall gaming experience. Calls attention to the mechanics of the game, such as knowing the weakness of a particular monster, or that the weapon that the major Bad Guy does X and Y, rather than enjoying the experience of the story. Dealing with the Fourth Wall Player(s) is often verily easy to deal with. There are a couple of lines of thought on this: first, reduce their knowledge, which is far more difficult than it sounds. How do you reduce the actual knowledge of players outside of the game. Perhaps if they are new players ask them not to read through the Talarius Bestiaries, or ask veterans of your game not to reveal details to the new players; Second, increase your requests for specific checks such as Alertness skill, and Perception Attribute checks; When the players are wandering around the region or moving from point A to B ask randomly for these types of checks. If they ask what do they spot or see, base your answer on non-game impacting things like: you see a shadow of a large creature flying high above them cross the road in front of them, or a large flock of birds take to wing as you spook them from their hiding. This way when you need them to make these checks to determine if they notice the oku's hiding in the brush along the road or notice the scent of decay in the air around them, they won't necessarily become suspicious. Third, with foreshadowing, the players gain a bit of background knowledge about specific things within the region that they are adventuring in. When a character is first created, perhaps the player decides that as part of the character's backstory was once an archivist for the Guild of Sages in Dardura Sheva and knows a little about a lot of things. Perhaps their parents are well known airship pilots from the Duchy of Harr and have spent sometime learning how to pilot various vehicles, including a legendary mecha while visiting the Islands of Caznak. Perhaps, when the player does use their knowledge, ask them how does their character know this. This gives the player the opportunity to tell you more about their character, which can also result in them giving you hooks into the player. Which is more fun than spending wasted minutes arguing with the player about why their character should not or cannot know this. Unless of course there is no way they know about the life cycle of the native red worm of Ghul Ghul island. And fourth, when describing non-player characters including monsters, leave out specific details or add more flourishing details about them. Over the last few adventures you have been on a faemabrey kick and the players have come to easily recognize them. In a new adventure with some new characters, you want them to discover a faemabrey in the depths of the Mines of Kholar. But instead of describing them in the following way: Proto faemabrey are white in coloration and stand approximately 4' in height and weigh approximately 120-pounds. Perhaps describe them as thin and lanky creatures whose flesh is albino in coloration with striations of red across their body. The Rules Lawyer - Power Player. While often construed as two distinct types of players, they are more often the same type of player than not. On the one hand you have a player who knows the ins and outs of the game system, they know the rules, and where to break the rules when they need to and how to manipulate the rules when they want. On the other hand, well there is no on other hand, in both cases the player knows the rules, perhaps better then the GM and can manipulate them and argue them to a very fine detail. These players view the game, the adventure and the whole campaign as a technical strategy game that they want to "win". They have very intimate knowledge of all the mechanics of the system. Can use the mechanics to argue their point about why they should be able to cast both a Summon Animal/Beast and Firebolt in the same action turn. Or to use the rules to build characters that take advantage of very specific sets of abilities for their character type as well as "min-maxing" the system. They engage the game system as a series of rules to follow and exploit instead of rolling with the game's flow and creating interesting characters. Or constantly pick at the rulings by the GM, perhaps even attempting to ignore your judgment. Often they have memorized every word of the rules, even those found in online discussions or splatbook expansions and will use this as an arsenal to get their way and build the most powerful character that they can. In both cases, they are true Rules as Written players and will expect you to follow the rules exactly as they are written, policing you and your judgment, and will likely overshadow other players. Should they fail at this, they will likely be bitter and feel put out. Despite the disruption of the game, these types of players make a great resource for the GM in helping to remember a specific rule, or knowing exactly where to look up the rule. Unfortunately, this will likely limit your ability as the GM to use the rules in an artistic way or as the Rules as Intended (the spirit of the game and rules). They often do not recognize your word as GM as the law. Put simply, these types of players must be stopped quickly. Your aim in dealing with these types it not to be a stickler and spoil their fun, but to make sure that these players understand that you are the GM and your rulings are final. Try to avoid the knee-jerk reaction of automatic dismissal that they have to say, but do not let them direct the game's flow. When contested, give them a brief explanation. Make it clear that objections are allowed, perhaps even welcomed; however, if this is not sufficient, tell them that is your decision and that you will discuss it in greater detail outside of the game. But in the end, remind them that the GM's word IS law. Should you find yourself at the table with this type of player consider the following concepts to pull them towards helping them to be a better player which is advantageous for all the players and yourself: • When creating characters have them help and assist other players come up with solid concepts. • During game play, instead of taking a moment to look up a specific rule, ask them if the know it and how it might affect the game. • Use them to help you teach the game system so long as they do so without ego or attitude. The Lone Wolf. You set out the adventure, get the party together and in the middle of the action or story, this player decides to run off to do something completely unrelated to the story, the adventure or what everyone else in the party is doing. These types of players, the lone wolves, can often throw monkey wrenches into the game and can be very disruptive during play. While the lone wolf wants to play in a cooperative table top RPG, they would likely be happier if they played a single player or online MMO. They want an audience and the spotlight. Despite their best attempts to be the lone, dark and brooding character type, they have yet to figure out how to shine within a group. These types of players tend to think that they are better off without the group, they purposely create characters and backgrounds that place them on the fringes of group dynamics which ultimately disrupts the game and the group. The lone wolf tends to have little to no regard for group play or cohesion, and they will seize any moment to go off alone, regardless of how it may affect the other players. They split the party on purpose. Most often this happens when they are bored during times where the rest of the group is either discussing how to proceed, during resting periods or in the middle of tense conflicts such as combat. While stealthy characters do this as well, stealthy players do so for a good reason: advance scouting; and only doing it when the party thinks is a good idea for everyone involved. As with all other disruptive players, except the aggressor-griefer, you may want to work with the loner, helping them become a supportive part of the group. The most direct way is to tell the lone wolfer that you will get back to their character in a bit, and let them sit there and stew, and if the loner gets tired enough of simply sitting out while action is occurring around them they could find themselves engaging more with the rest of the group. You could also turn the loners tendencies of wandering off against them. Perhaps in allowing the lone wolf to wander off you can introduce more information and plot hooks about the current scenario or perhaps even the campaign as a whole. Or if you wish to teach them not to split the party is to put them into harms way. Perhaps in their wanderings, the set off a trap or two, or come upon a wandering group of monsters that was going to attack the party a bit later and now the lone wolf must face them alone. Then perhaps they won't be as likely to wander off again. You could also use their wanderings to set off events that may not have immediate affects. Perhaps this allows you to explain how the bandits located the group. The goal with these effects is not to punish the lone wolf, per say, but to use the opportunity of their wanderings to increase greater in-game tension and fun. The Disengaged. Do not confuse these types of players, with players that are not interested in your campaign, these are players that show up, maybe, when they decide to show up after stating that they would be there. These players are the ones that find the glare of their phone, tablet, or laptop more appealing than what is happening to Suzy's spellcasting acires. They are also the players that frequently miss games, zone out when its not their turn, are easily distracted and love to show off their social media pictures to other players, during the worst moments. They may even drift off, either by getting up and wandering away or falling asleep at the table. They tend not to know what is occurring in the game and when they do get involved you often have to bring them up to speed. This is not to say that from time to time some players will get "starry eyed" or get caught up in a conversation with other players about what is going and they miss you stating something. This player is disruptive because they are not paying attention. This disruption comes as you or other players constantly catch them up on what is going when it is their turn. The best way to help cure this disruption is to actively engage the player at regular intervals. This type of behavior could often result from not feeling personally engaged in the story or the scene or scenario. Engage them out of the game and find out what things they would like to see in the game, especially when it comes to their character. If this does not work, then put them to work. Ask them to track something specific within the game: Turn Number, Initiative Order, Spell Durations, Party Character's Conditions; this should cause them to become engaged at this point. This could have a unique result with this player type creating the Game Scribe where they begin to keep details about the campaign: NPCs, locations, party treasure, and important campaign notes. In Legends of Kralis, there is no true concept of "balance." While we have included ranks within the bestiary to make it easy for you as a GM to figure out what not to use to avoid killing the entire party. We have also included a discussion on how to determine difficulty levels so you have an idea of what would be a challenge or not be a challenge for characters at a specific rank.
We have attempted to balance the game, but in the end, there is no actual balance within the game, simply because there exists the random factor of dice rolls. The system will allow for a low-ranking character the chance to take out a much higher ranking character, and while shocking to some who might see this as a bad thing, it adds a layer of danger, while remote, still implies that even the lowliest of creatures are still a threat. No formula that indicates that N number of Rank X creatures is a good match for Rank Y characters. Every monster and task should be challenging for players through out their entire "life". Try not to focus on game balance, which is inherently a fuzzy concept and term, rather focus on everyone having fun. But be aware of challenges both as too easy or too difficult. All of this, however, does depend on the situation at hand. If the PCs are worn down from previous encounters or have the right combination of abilities, all balance can go right out the window. Which is why there is no exact system for balancing encounters. Character death is unlikely, but there is always the risk that a character could die if they are worn out, alone or do not have the right abilities or equipment. As with all things for the GM, creating and running a campaign is the most lengthy process that you will work on and in some cases the most difficult. While the rule book is meant to be played within the World of Kralis, it can be used to in any world that you create.
How you begin, a campaign depends on how you decide to run the game. Typically, campaigns is a series of adventures linked either by the characters moving from one story to another or by over-arcing plots. The heart of the campaign is the adventures, and the spirit of an adventure are the encounters that characters overcome. Even though you will be basing your adventures in the World of Kralis, it is still your campaign. You should alter things and stress specific parts of the world that are important to your current campaign. The critical component in running a successful Legends of Kralis campaign is consistency. This requires you to make sure that the NPCs they met in the Town of Coldiron before they ventured into the Halls of the Mountain King are still around (for the most part) when the party returns to Baleos' Supplies to resupply. Or that when they return to Khagon Asteroid base, Phuldan's Outriggers is still supplying much needed Void gear. This will allow the players to feel that they are adventuring in a living world. Creating Adventures Adventures are the stories that make up a campaign. You can think of them as chapters in a book or a whole book in a multiple volume series. They can be stand alone events with no interconnection, or they can be a part of several adventures over many game sessions that are part of a plot. Creating an adventure can be as simple as you wish or as in depth as you want. In either case, an adventure is made up of a number of encounters that help you define the challenge of the adventure, which then lends itself to creating the overall plot or plots and then end with the finale. This structure, beginning, middle, and ending should be woven together in a neat package that allows you and your players to craft a fantastic story or series of stories. Your story can be either location based or event based. Location-Based Adventures Location based adventures are often set in a specific location: ancient dungeon, remote starbase, the interior of a void ship, or in a remote Wildlands location. These are often the basis for some of the most incredible adventures in the RPG world. These adventures can be devised from a couple of steps and concepts that inspire you. You should decide what is going to be the goal of the party and the location. Is the party searching for a long lost dungeon, investigate a remote star base that has gone dark, escaping captivity on a ship, or rescuing a captive being held by a band of oku. Perhaps they are requested to escort an NPC, find an object lost in the Void, investigate an unnatural disaster. Once you have identified the goal for the party, you should also identify the essential NPCs that will be met or interacted with either at the location, before the location or along the way to the location. These are your villains and your PC allies. Your villains can range from a monstrosity guarding the ancient dungeon to a powerful undead beings agenda to cultists bent on sacrificing their captives to the fiend in the center of the starbase. Next, you should take some time to flesh out the location, draw a map, add important location descriptions, and know who and what are in and around the location. Next and perhaps most importantly, you need to determine the ideal hook and introduction to the adventure. These hooks can set the tenor and tempo of the adventure. Some sample hooks can look like: • A town or village needs some volunteers to go to the location. • A wealthy merchant needs an escort from one location to another location. • One of the PC's inherits a map from their recently deceased relatives that leads them to the location. • While flying through the Void, the PCs come across an abandoned derelict void ship lost in the vastness. • The PC's are ordered to go to the location by their superiors. These are just some of the many, many hooks that you can use to grab the attention of the PC's to head to the location. Finally, the climactic ending is something that you should at least consider. How it all ends is really up to how the PC's handle the adventure location. So how should the ending and climax go? It could end with a bloody confrontation with the main villain. The PC's actions result in a cataclysmic event that they must now escape. Or a trusted ally betrays them at the crucial moment of victory or achievement of their goal. Event-Based Adventures Event based adventures focus on the interactions and events between characters and villains. Event based adventures are more about the how and why instead of the where or when. These adventures require a great deal of work, and like with location based adventures they can be done with a few carefully considered steps. The most important aspect of these adventures is the major acting NPC, whether the villain or an ally of the party. Be sure to spend a great amount of care into creating this prominent actor. They will play a pivotal role in advancing the adventure. Once you have fleshed out the main NPC, you should spend some time thinking about their motivations and the actions she will take to accomplish her goals. Does she seek revenge? Does she seek the down fall of a particular group or individual? Does she want to locate a lost artifact? Does she want to prevent or be responsible for the advancement of a specific event? Will the NPC plan her activities to occur during a singular event or will she commit actions that will grow bolder over time or will they commit actions in a series? Or is she pursuing her goals through specific actions in a sequence? Finally, you must determine what the goals of the players should be? Are they to bring the NPC to justice? Help the NPC make good on her goal? The party's goal could change based on the events that they interact with or hear that have occurred. What is an Encounter? While the adventure is the heart of the campaign, and as interesting as they are, the soul of the adventure, is the encounter. Encounters are best described as individual scenes which are linked to building your adventure. Like the adventure, the encounter should have fun, drama and excitement for the players and be easy for you to run and place. Encounters tend to have a straightforward objective and should have connections to a degree to the larger story of your campaign. All encounters are meant to be overcome by players in some fashion, both to further the story and plot and further the characters' growth. There are, by definition, a multitude of encounters, however, the most common are: Combat, Environmental (puzzle, trap, or environment) and Social. Encounters will have three outcomes for the party: Success, Partial Success or Failure. Each outcome must have consequences, both good and bad depending on the encounter, so that the players feel that their successes and failures matter. Combat Encounters The most common type of encounter is the Combat Encounter. They are often difficult to design, but they are the most important. This represents the most dangerous time for players as their character's lives are on the line. Combat encounters are the obstacle that the players must overcome to reach the next encounter, and there is no right or wrong way for the players to overcome this. There is the possibility to sneak past foes, convince them to surrender, or let the players pass. Combat encounters will predominately have the players fighting opponents, whether they are monsters or villainous NPCs. Combats within Legends of Kralis should more often than not be about something. There must be something at stake for the character's. "Avoiding death," while interesting and often the point, it should not be the only one. Combat should be fun and exciting, and while there will be many dice rolls to determine specific outcomes of attacks and defenses, finding a creative way to end combat or beat the big bad boss quickly should be encouraged. Designing a combat encounter for play within Legends of Kralis is based on the approximate rank value of players vs. the opponents. This can be averaged, ran equally, or increased, depending on what difficulty you determine the encounter should be. As a general rule, most monsters are built approximately in the same fashion as players (with abilities, skills and attribute scores). Putting characters up against equally ranked monsters or villains is perfectly acceptable. When designing these types of encounters, you may want to drop in ten oku. While that is a pretty straightforward encounter, you can make it memorable and epic by flavoring it with a "mini-ecosystem" whereby the oku encounter now has three guard dogs on leashes. The air is filled with buzzing, stinging insects that get into the players' eyes, nose and ears that annoy them and might have combat effects. Now you have an encounter that is not just a whole bunch of one thing, but a mix of elements that take the combat encounter from straight forward to now we have to think and move in such a way as to get better tactically to defeat the encounter. Social Encounters Social Encounters are often challenging to design and can be tricky for you as a GM if you have difficulty with making things up on the fly. But with time you will get better with doing things on the fly. Unlike combat encounter design or environmental encounter design, designing a social encounter in the Legends of Kralis is built upon interaction with NPCs. Social encounters should be roleplayed out with the players, if you feel that there is a significant challenge involved. If the goal is merely to meet an important NPC or find out a particular piece of information while hanging out at a bar, than a little bit of role-playing may be all that’s required. However, if the goal is more complex and if there are consequences for failing, then a skill checks are going to be the best way to adjudicate the encounter. Having NPCs skill checks in the use of Convince, Skepticism, Gaming, Leadership, Etiquette, Haggle or Interrogate set the Target Success challenge for your player's characters and vise versa if the goal is more complex and if there are going to be consequences for failing. The amount of work you need to put into building a social encounter will depend upon your group's style of playing. For those that prefer to bash monsters or even explore dungeons, caves, voidstations or new worlds, then social encounter will likely just be filler for them. However, if your group enjoys the deeper role-playing side of things, a social encounter presents your players with ways to challenge their characters, develop them and use social skills more heavily. When you are creating social encounters, draw on your own real-life experience. After all, this is one of the few areas of gaming where you can apply things from your life to the situations that PCs might be facing. The key to any successful encounter is preparation. If you are prepared then the encounter runs smoothly, and everyone has a good time. To help with you designing social encounters here are a couple of tips: • NPC Agendas - Always give your NPCs an agenda, from the lowly street urchin to the Emperor. Just like the PCs knowing what your NPCs want or desire will help determine how they react. Avoid having grand agendas. Though villains may have a grand scheme in play, most agendas have simpler steps. • Focus the conversations - Never allow yourself to let your NPCs have conversations with each other without directly engaging the PCs. If this has to happen, it is better for you to narrate this conversation than actually go through it. Such as the guards arguing with captain about why the arrested the PCs, or chancellor arguing with the ambassador over the protection of the nation. Describe that interaction, avoid narrating this NPC-to-NPC discussion without integrating the PCS. • What do you need to tell the Players - Social encounters are not always life or death situations, like combat or environmental encounters. Social encounters are often designed to deliver information to the players in an engaging way. When done this way, be sure to have an idea about the information you want to pass on or even have it written out in notes. You also need to have a clear understanding of whether it is okay if the players miss out on this information. If it is not, you may want to consider having that information available to the PCs through numerous sources in one form or another. Environmental Encounters Environmental Encounters can easily be overlooked and even underused as an encounter type, and can easily swing wildly from too simple to too complex. Yet, these encounters can be the easiest to implement and included in the previous two encounter types. In most cases, environmental encounters are based on the difficulty of the encounter you want the PCs to come across. Similar in fashion to combat encounter difficulties that are set by the monster's rank, in this case you can create an encounter based on either how difficult you wish to make it in terms of Target successes or create the encounter and set the TS based on it. In creating and setting these environmental encounters here are some tips for designing these encounter types. • Puzzles - Are one of the greatest and funnest environmental encounters you can create, but they can also become impossible, impassable roadblocks that choke the player's creativity and drive up frustration if the player's are unable to figure out the encounter. As the creator of these puzzles you know the answer, see the outs, but the players, unless master detectives themselves, may not see the answers. When you create puzzles, give them multiple correct solutions or even answers, place hints to the answer around, or even answer before the puzzle. You could even allow the PCs to bypass the puzzle in some other way. • Don't Oversimplify - When you present the players with a non-puzzle environmental encounter, it is essential to ensure that it offers a complex challenge. Any challenge that can be overcome with a single skill check or attribute check is far too simple. Layering checks to by-pass the encounter can raise the average encounter to one that stands out in the players minds and can make for some great stories beyond the campaign. • Reactive Environment - In a universe where magic and technology go hand in hand, it is not beyond the idea that the land itself could be active or even sentient. But not ever place the players travel is sentient, but it can all be active and work against the players. But this type of encounter takes planning and will require you to think about the environment in a very specific way: an old forest has trees that could collapse suddenly, a valley could suddenly be filled with a flash flood, the plains suddenly are engulfed with a wildfire, the voidship is hit with micro-meteors ripping holes through the shielding, or a voidflare sweeps through the region. As first discussed previously in The Story of the Campaign, crafting the story will be your biggest job as the GM. Many times these stories can arise out of gameplay, but the majority of them begin with you. You are responsible for providing the story seed and present the events of the game as they unfold as a reaction to both the actions of the PC and the NPCs.
Crafting a good story is not easy. But it can be made easier by encouraging the players to describe the action their characters take, not the mechanics involved. The description of the action is more important than what mechanic is being used (though knowing what mechanic is used makes for a faster resolution to the action.) There are a number of ideas that you can use at your table to help craft better stories that involve everyone but must start with you as the GM. • Learn what motivates your players. Are they explorers? Combatants? Do they love good puzzles? Interaction with the NPCs? • Learn what motivates the player's characters. What do the players want for their characters? What do they seek in the world? • Empower your players. Give them the power to make meaningful choices. Player characters do not need to be all powerful, but their decisions need to be important. Let the players fall in love with the story more than you. • Entice your players. Create the stories to involve the PCs as directly as possible. Give the players a reason to strive to be involved. Let the world affect them as much as it affects everyone else. • Avoid the untouchables. Avoid putting the PCs up against odds that they can do nothing about. Sure, you can drop in a high ranking monster or even put up such high Target Success that makes the players actions irrelevant. Challenge your players, but ensure that the challenge gives the players hope that they can overcome it. • Remember your co-authors. Remember to include the player's desires, their characters, and allow them to help you write the sub-context of the story. • Vary the encounters and stories. Vary your stories and the encounters. After a heavy combat encounter, drop in an intriguing mystery encounter. Break up the story or encounter, even in the middle of combat there is the opportunity for a mystery or even a moment of exploration for some players. • Don't over explain. This is Legends of Kralis, a science-fantasy where things are not always going to makes sense to the players or their character's. It's a weird world and the Omniverse is full of secrets. • The world matters. The players need to feel the effects of the world and that the world acknowledges the players. This can be found in many forms: news, bardic songs, tales, locals offering them things. Where it is possible to let the world spread the legend of the characters. Pacing and Flow Perhaps the most crucial aspect of creating story's is pacing and flow. Pacing is not how quickly actions get resolved. It is the rhythm of the story, the event, the encounter, the adventure and to a greater extent the overall campaign. The story's pace is the rate at which the story problems establish and relieve tension and how exciting and fun that is for the players. Pacing is not as simple as the faster the better, or else throwing non-stop life or death situations at the players would be the only way to conduct a great story. It is easy to describe pacing, but it is not easy to understand or implement. Pacing really has two streams in it: fast and slow. A fast paced scene draws you in, makes you lean into the scene, makes your heart beat faster. When there is a lot happening in a very short period of time, players get excited, anxious and our heart races. A fast paced scene is about excitement, tension, and strong emotion. Details matter less in this situation. A slow paced scene, does not necessarily mean it is any less exciting. Players get engaged in differently. They become more attentive, their brains engage more with the scene, there is a sense of tension, but it is not a fast paced one, more emotional. Slow paced scenes can do a lot of things. They are great for imparting information, raising emotional content, drilling into character information. Because players are paying more attention slow scenes are where they can get important, complicated stuff. However, this does not mean that slow scenes have to be loaded with emotion or information. They can have a single thing occurring, working on the emphasis of the event. They can build anticipation, anxiousness, and its own type of tension. As the GM your job is to guide the story and generate situations for players to overcome to build tension. To build tension you need to keep things moving, do not let the action get bogged down by the indecisiveness of players, rules arguments, or irrelevant topics. Do not let encounters drag on, if the PCs have fought a dozen of oku and only a handful are left, its perfectly okay to let those few left to run away, surrender or let the PCs easily dispatch them. One of the hardest and trickiest aspects of pacing is deciding what is important and what is not. You could decide to describe a scene with elaborate detail, but a simple, straightforward description is best unless there is a reason to have such detail. If there is no compelling reason for detail, advance through it quickly. The problem with pacing in an RPG is that its flow can get thrown out of whack. Between the pace of action and the players exists the layer of rules and mechanics that need to be dealt with. The game rules are important as they represent how the players interface with the world around them. While there is a battle going on, or chase scene occurring, or a sneaking attempt happening, and the tension and excitement are turned up, there is a layer of game mechanics that add to this excitement, uncertainty, and tension that empower the players to make decisions and feel like they have some control over the results. Flow is concerned about keeping the game moving forward, no matter what. Bad flow is an obstacle. Anything that breaks the flow gets in the way of good pacing. Unfortunately, flow is always broken in role playing. The flow stops we get bogged down in looking up rules, or rolling a die. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it allows for the players to have a say in the flow through the rules interface, they can change the tide of the flow or change the pacing of the story because they have engaged the rules. Your job as the GM is to minimize the breaking of the flow, which unfortunately occurs more often when players are not engaged. Flow ultimately is about running games. It is about keeping players engaged and keeping the action moving. It is about minimizing distractions while speeding up resolutions within an encounter or event. The main speed control you have over pacing and flow within the game is your narration. When you slow down your talking, and become wordy your narration slows the scene and you are signaling to the players to pay more attention to the details. When you are quick in your words you begin driving your players to get their guts engaged, getting them excited about the outcome and not worrying about the details. Painting with Description Similar to location, location, location, for locating a great place to live description, description, description is at the core of great roleplaying sessions. When you paint the scene with precise and concise descriptions, you create a depth of, where the players can be caught up in the action of their imagination. Describing the scene creates immersion, and for immersion to work well, you must give great descriptions. Through description, you paint the world around the players. Instead of simply saying "a large room" consider saying "a cavernous room, its edges disappear into the darkness beyond your light source." But while you are descriptive, you must also be concise too long of a description and minds will wander. Encourage the players to describe what their characters are doing, be creative in what they do and how they do it whether this involves describing how they attack, or how they will slip into the shadows to give themselves the best chance to make a sneak attack. Or how they kill an opponent. While the description is important, do not get caught in the trap of too long or too many descriptions, some times the best way to serve pacing and flow is to state what occurred and keep things moving. In combat this might be to just state how many successes your attack obtained and how much damage you deal and move on. Describing the World of Kralis The world of Kralis and the Omniverse in which it sits is a weird place where technology and magic blend together. Where void ships rift-jump through the wilds of the Void, where characters can jump on their levitation bikes or horses to out run the mecha or dragon that has just came over the hill. Where-ever possible, your description of the world around the characters, stress the unique, weird and bizarre. But do not be precise and exhaustive in your descriptive detail. Even if that is needed to describe the creature, the character, the device, the locale, or the phenomenon. Leave the players guessing with an impression rather than a detailed description. Give them a partially developed picture. Let it be weird and evocative. Be aware of how you describe things in a shorthand way as well. If you describe something the PCs see coming at them with the words "sort of" they will fill in the blanks with what they want to see. But instead, if you are descriptive in gray shades of specifics, you can put more of an evocative and weird image in their heads. It is better to be vague. When attempting to describe how a Void vehicle works try not to use jarring terms, be wary of the cliches of both science fiction and fantasy. To keep the weirdness factor up use more obscure words to describe something: • Say clockwork instead of robot or android • Say machine intelligence instead of artificial intelligence or computer intelligence. • Say energy pistol instead of blaster or laser gun • Use beam or ray instead of laser. • Avoid using radar or spaceship • Say world not planet • Say realm, dimension or universe instead of plane • Say slugthower, pistol or rifle not gun or revolver As a GM, you have many responsibilities, from refereeing to adjudicating rules to describing the world as the campaign, and the players move along. While they are all important, describing the world and the player's interactions is what drives the campaign and story in each session.
While at first, it seems evident that pulling in player’s characters through interaction and description is what is meant by “roleplaying” it may fall by the wayside as you focus on the adjudicating of rules. What then, exactly, does roleplaying entail? Of most importance is the description of the immediate situation in which the players are interacting. Telling the players what the situation their characters are in, with concrete terms, is how you get a session started, get things back on track from breaks, etc. Like all good stories, your use of details and senses can draw characters in. It’s not “the dragon attacks,” it’s “the dragon rears its head back, its massive wings unfurling to cast a dark shadow on you, as it unleashes a hellish storm of fire at you." It is also the lack of information to create sense of tension, “A soft scraping, like bone on stone, echoes around you.” The situations occurring around the players is rarely smooth or uneventful. They exist in a world where magic and burgeoning technology exist, where the undead rise from their graves and horrific monsters exist just outside their torchlight. They need to have something to react to, and often. When describing a scene or situation always end with an open-ended question: “What do you do?”; “How are you acting?”; “Where are you going?”; “Who is doing what?” Invoke situations that demand the players act and respond. Everything that occurs in the world around the players occurs because of you as the GM and Storyteller. Your NPC's actions and scenario descriptions should aim to do the following: Portray a world of adventure, fill the character’s lives with that adventure, and play out what happens. Legends of Kralis is about facing down the hordes of monsters, surviving the darkness and braving the chaos that whirls around the players. It’s meant for player characters who have decided to step outside the safety of cities and towns in hopes of earning fame and glorious reward. One of your jobs as the GM is to bring to life a world where the players can find adventure. To portray a world of the fantastic and horrific. To show the players the wonders of the world that they live in and push them to live in it, to interact with it and to react to all that is occurring around them. This is done by working with the players and their characters to create a world that engages them, one that is dynamic and one that catches them in some threatening danger and fosters a game of action and tension. The story never presumes to know player's actions and Legends of Kralis is a tool meant to portray a grand setting that is in perpetual motion. With situations filled with conflict where the players will clash with the world and its inhabitants, it is up to you to portray the repercussions of that action in the world around them. You need to bring the players fully into the sense of the story. By addressing the characters instead of the players you create a world that flows and keeps the players engaged in the fantasy-fiction you are developing. This helps you as the GM stay focused on the story first instead of the gameplay mechanics. It also allows you to focus on the details of the story and what moves the characters and their interaction with the situation and the world at large. While the world and the game have stats to determine the mechanical resolution of affects and effects, it is your job to bring these stats to life. The world that the characters move in is filled with fantastic creatures with own motives, desires and traits. It is your job to give the characters descriptive details of each creature, bringing it to life through smells, sights and sounds. You are every other person in the world from the lowliest peasant to the greatest of kings and gods. You are the non-player character personified and anyone that interacts with the characters has their backstory, you may not have it fully developed for every interaction, but they all have a name. The rest will fall into place as the players will indicate to you who they feel is important to them. Part of being a great GM is playing the parts of the world in order to find out what happens to the characters after you have setup the scenario. Whenever you have made an action as an NPC in the world; or created a situation that requires action by the characters - it is always best to ask “What do you do?” As with all games, Legends of Kralis has rules, and it is your job as the GM to interpret these rules to determine an outcome during play. This means that you need to know the rules, you are not required to memorize the rulebook, but you should have a good picture of the rules so that when a situation comes up that requires a ruling, you have an idea of where to look in the rules.
Often situations will arise that are not explicitly covered by the rules. When this occurs, it is your job to guide how it should be interpreted and resolved. Look to any similar situations covered by the rules; if you have to make something up, stick with it as a house rule. When there is a doubt, remember that granting a +10 to +20 bonus (or +1 or +2 successes) is considered favorable and unfavorable conditions result in penalizing rolls by the same amount. So long as you remember Rule #1 during your interpretation of the rules, then your decisions about the rules, the rules questions by players and the decisions you make in the implementation of these rules should be pretty straightforward. The rules provide the structure of how Legends of Kralis interprets the real world, sometimes very effectively, other times not so much, and they cannot cover every possible action or outcome, though they try. As the GM you must be familiar with these rules and be ready to make the call when the players go left and you expected them to go right. And players will do just that. As the referee your job is to make sure that the rules are applied fairly and equally. The Game While the Legends of Kralis Players Guide is centered on rules for players on skills, spells, abilities, species and character creation, there are certain rules left out of that book that you as a GM need to be able to access to adjudicate the game itself. Some events and circumstances arise that will require you to think about and resolve before they become too disruptive or bog the game down with “Why?” questions. There are some basic rules as a GM you should adhere to: 1. You are the Game Master and the Final Judge of what happens in your campaign. You have the right exercise common sense and are permitted to supersede the rules and the players when either would ruin enjoyment and fair play. But remember, do not excessively overuse this basic rule. 2. If the rules of the game are getting in the way of your enjoyment – change them. These rules are nothing more than guidelines. It is suggested that you follow them, but you don’t really need to. There are no rules. 3. Cheat. (but remember FUN is more important than any rule) While most issues can be resolved easily in the rules by applying the above-listed guidelines, there are several that need to be addressed directly. Secret Rolls Throughout the game, it will be a good idea to make certain checks and tests in secret, away from the player's eyes, so that they do not necessarily know the results. A hidden roll can help preserve the mystery of what is happening, or you don't want the player to know how good or bad the check was. These rolls are done for any sort of roll or check where the character(s) does not immediately know if they succeeded. Most often, these tests are black and white, succeed or fail. Other times failure, does not necessarily mean they failed outright (See Soft Failures). One of the best ways to make these types of checks, other than rolling dice (which can have its effect on the players) have a list of random rolls pre-generated in advance. So when you need to make a secret check roll you can mark off one of the results, this way the players do not even know that you just made a secret check for them. Dues Ex Machina Rules Terrible things can happen in a game simply because of a bad dice roll. Things start great, the players are holding their own, and the next turn, all hell breaks loose, half of the party is down and the other half may not make it through to save their friends. If everyone dies the campaign will end right there. While death of a character is going to happen, it should happen in a fair way. So do you cheat? The real answer is that the GM cannot really cheat. As the rules judge and umpire what you say goes. As such you are within your right to sway things to keep players happy or keep things running smoothly. It's no fun to lose a long-term hero because of poor dice; however, death is not off the table if he or she was doing something stupid within the game world.. Fudging the Dice: It will happen more often than not. A situation will arise where the dice have rolled badly for the character or characters, and while many players will accept the fate of the “merciless dice” or the hard facts of the dice, it may be a situation where the dice result will ultimately ruin the story or the fun. While it is your job as a judge to be impartial and fair, there are these times where the single roll of the dice would result in an unfair ending to your campaign or result in the death of a character despite them taking all the proper precautions or doing everything right. Should you need to fudge a roll, do not tell your players that you did and rob them of the magic of roll. Keep this information to yourself, as it could make the players feel that their actions in the game do not matter. The Talarius Gaming System has a built-in “Cheat System”: Heroic Luck. In these situations, players can use these to alter the situation somewhat, including ignoring bad dice or giving a bonus to their own dice attempts. However, this still does not solve the entire problem. As a GM you are not bound by the rules, and like a judge in a courtroom, your ruling is the final law. Do not feel bound by the exact rules or the dice if either get in the way of fun or the continuation of the plot. Adjust the results or creatively interrupt the results. Intervention: Perhaps the most disastrous event to occur in a game session is to have a “divine intervention”. It is catastrophic in the idea that it renders the actions of the characters meaningless. These interventions occur when the party or characters are faced with an impossible situation that you as the GM have created, either by accident or by purpose. You must change the situation so that it doesn't render the suspension of disbelief moot. Yet, the use of interventions can be used as a campaign tool. After all, having to repay a divine being can be an adventure in itself. As a general rule, it is often best to avoid situations where divine intervention is needed or, worse, even relied upon. Fiats: As the GM, your rule as a judge is final and is the law. There are many rules within the game, and many house rules that will be created to deal with specific situations within your group. It is easy to get hung up on arguments and debates within a game about a specific rule. Most issues will arise from interpretations of a rule and how it applies to the situation. To not bog down the game, quickly review the rule in question or listen to the player's interpretation and make your decision. Generally, it is best to decide in favor of a way that helps the story move along. If a problem arises from a bonus or penalty issue, you may wish to grant a +10 or -10 bonus to any roll. This is roughly equal to giving a +1 success bonus or penalty. PC Death: Inevitably, a character is going to die. This occurs through bad luck, poor choices, or even a failed dice roll. Unless the player has Heroic Luck or you intervene or fudge the dice, the character is dead. (For more information, see Character Death) When a player character dies, the player no longer has any say in what occurs within the game until they creates a new character and you can introduce that character in a way that does not interrupt the flow or feel of the game. When this event occurs, there are two ways you can handle this: 1) have the player create a new character during the gaming session, and you may be able to introduce them then or 2) have the player create a new character before the next session on their off-time and meet with you before the next game to go over the new character and make any adjustments as you see fit. When the character is created they must be created within three ranks below the current party ranks, if the average party rank is 5th, the lowest the new character rank should be 2nd, but it is preferable to be 4th or 5th. See Character Death for more information. Dice Rolling: Most of the time, you will want to keep your dice rolling results secret from the players just in case you need to fudge the rolls for or against the players. Other times, you may not care if they see the result of an attack, but you must always keep rolls that surround information gathering attempts or secret rolls that only NPC’s would need to know about, such as locating a player or hiding from a player, etc. Some GMs prefer to setup a pre-rolled sheet of dice rolls to easily refer to in a game and mark them off as they use them. As a GM, you may wish to permit your players to pre-roll dice and write them down (if you trust them) or have them roll traditionally. Rules and Reasoning Running a game of Legends of Kralis requires a lot of logic rather than a full understanding of the rules for every situation or possible situation. There is a lot to the rules of the game. But using your reasoning more than always relying on the rules will help keep the players in a suspension of disbelief. There are only two times when your use of reasoning over rules will be the wrong way to go: 1. Breaking of Disbelief. When your answer (or the rules) breaks the players' suspension of disbelief, your reasoning is wrong. If an ability grants protection from fire, it would follow, unless it is expressly written, that the same protection would apply to heat as well. 2. Inconsistency. When your reasoning for the same concept varies from application to application, the answer also breaks the players' suspension of disbelief. If players cannot rely on your consistency with your reasoning, then they might not trust you with the rules. While Legends of Kralis has a number of rules, the game is written with the assumption that the GM does not need to fall back on to the rules all the time. However, in case she needs to back up her thoughts, these rules are there for her, and they also give plenty of options. There are no rules that indicate that a player could wear a full plate mail with larkev armor to get double protection, but it makes no sense. This is where your reasoning comes into play. Using your reason in most situations frees you as the GM to make more judgment calls of what appears to be appropriate and makes sense. Hence you can focus on the narrative elements of an adventure more than the true mechanical portions. With this thinking, you can be more improvisational with the story. As it might be painfully obvious, the GM is the GameMaster. And that is putting lightly. The GM is more than just the one that sets up the game, runs the game, or even adjudicates the game's rules. The GM has at least five functions that the she has which intrinsically connects them to the game itself: Driving Force, Creator, Designer, Arbiter, Director, and Referee. The GM is also the Narrator, the Force of Nature, the Non-Player Character and the "Supernatural" power of the game.
The GM should be the power behind initiating and sustaining the play of the game by inspiring, encouraging and maintaining the creative energy within the game. As the driving force she alone is responsible for the vitality of the game, its continuation and revitalization to avoid the stagnation of the game. As creator the GM is responsible for creating a realism and interest in the game and the campaign. Even within published worlds and games systems, the GM has to create the life within those worlds and systems. She is responsible for creating and re-creating the tenor and the excitement of the game. Like the role of creator, the role of the designer is an aspect of the GM that requires that she must be the most knowledgeable of the game they a running which allows them to re-design or design new rules to cover the exceptions that the rules themselves do not cover. The human imagination is far too expansive for any rule set to cover every possible element that players will come up with. As a superior GM she will need to devise and design new material to cover what is lacking in the rules. Perhaps the one of the more challenging jobs the GM has is as an arbiter. Here a GM needs to interpret the spirit, the system of rules and the game laws correctly. She must be able to answer questions more ably than any other person at the game table. Some players will consider that as a group that they must determine the interpretation of the rules, and in some cases this player input is necessary. Ultimately it is up to her to be the final authority. Playing in an RPG is often described as "theater of the mind", and while this is an understatement, it is true. A theater requires a director, someone who can help direct and inform the players of how their interactions with the rules and game world have affected it. At the very least, the GM gives cures that the players may follow and interact with. It is her responsibility as the GM to direct so well that the whole tenor of the game is raised to epic proportions, whether this is dramatic, tragic, or comedic. As director, she must help set the scene, give the descriptions of the senses and then direct how the Non-Player Characters interact with how the players respond. Finally, as referee the GM focuses on her interactions with the players as individuals while maintaining the integrity of the game. This role is not a biased one, she is neither personally for or against the players. As GM, only she can know the motives, thoughts, plans, actions or reactions of the entire world from animals to the foul lords of death. She must serve, as indicated throughout the above, as the sole decision maker concerning the actions within a set up, a combat and whatever else occurs where the activity would require a determination of results of interactions and the various dice rolls called for by the rules or the activity. She also determines the rewards that the player characters receive for their activities in a scenario, represented by merit points. Giving too many can upset the game's growth, too few and the game begins to falter. So who is a GM, she is the power above all other powers in the game, the sole and final arbiter and referee of the rules. She is everything else in the entire Omniverse of the world. She is the principal force that motivates all other interactions in the gaming experience, she builds dramatic realism, and she actively participates in the course of the game. Yet, she must by pure definition of Game Master is to remain a disinterested party within the game. But this is not meant for her to be aloof or uninterested in the plot, the scenarios, or the play of the characters. She is the one who performs all the functions listed above in a manner that brings the maximum excitement and enjoyment to her group as well as to herself. What kind of GM are you? So now you have to ask yourself what kind of a GM you are going to be? From the five functions of a GM, each GM is going to approach their job differently. Deciding what kind of GM or style of GMing you are going to take on is not meant to pigeonhole you into one style. There is often a great deal of overlap between the various "styles". Understanding or having an idea of what style you tend to lean can help you keep away from trouble with your players and the game itself. Most GMs are a bit of each of the styles. The following is by no means the end-all of GMing styles. There are dozens of gaming articles and many books that help give you a sense of your GMing style. In the end, the best GM knows when it is best to sit back, shut up, and let the players do what they do so well: Play! The Adversary While the name and the title have the connotation of an opponent, it is not meant that way in the sense of your GMing style. This style often is labeled as the "Killer GM" who by the way actually sets up the game and herself as the hostile entity playing against the players. As a style rather, the adversarial GM places the party and the PCs in strong stories where the conflict, whether it is combat or social intrigue, pushes the PCs to their character's limits. They portray NPCs and foes designed to test the abilities of the character's, sometimes with ruthless efficiency. They GM very much by the book, often sticking with the Rules as Written. While players are in complete control of their character's and their actions which may affect the adventures, the world around them changes little because of their actions, and the world moves on. The adventures and campaign are set to high, and the encounters are arranged to put the PC's at risk with every turn, and total party kills occur a great deal. The sense of danger and risk is increased, making the Players feel more accomplished than most. This is not a GM vs. Players mentality, or at least it shouldn't be. Rather, this is a GM that implies real-serious and harsh conditions of a world meant to challenge the PCs. The thought that a GM would want to “defeat” players through any possible means is silly—the GM would always win, and the players would likely walk away and not want to play again. The Adversary's goal is to run the bad guys (or the situation) as realistically as it is reasonable. It's not you, the GM trying to kill or harm the PCs, it's the trap or the oku attempting to harm them. Though some players will perceive it that way because you are running all the other creatures, and characters in the world, some just happen to be against the PCs. Remember the bad guys want to win as much as the PCs. The adventures that you design as an Adversarial GM must be within the power level of the players. Pitting a group of 5th rank players against a 30th rank Baal-Rog, is unfair. However, making your scenarios dangerous is perfectly fine, but they should grow into that level of danger. Those party's that decide to head over the hill to take on the earth dragon or taken on the Ocolot Demon Void Armada have set their fate into play. Still if those same monsters or scenario appears out of nowhere and attacks, that is reasonably unfair and should be avoided. Those GMs that are adversarial in this way must be careful not to rub players the wrong way, not to appear like a bully. These types of GMs must use their "god-like" abilities to heighten the excitement of the scenario for the players. This type of GM must be aware that their players might be more interested in a good story than the constant risk of their characters dying. The Author The author is perhaps the most dangerous of the various styles you could take on as the GM. Not because you are looking to tell a story. The danger lies in the fact that this style of GMing tends to lean towards you plotting a story arc around the PCs through the use of GameMaster controlled characters. Which become more important to the story you are telling than creating the story arc through the PCs. This author style can often lead to railroading the players into the story instead developing naturally around the PCs. All GMs are authors. However, when the story becomes more important than the players participating in the story, then you have overstepped the correct style of author GMing. This style must be aware of stopping or taking away the player's ability to interact with the story and their desire to help build the story. In this style be careful that you do not force the game to follow your pre-designed story, rather work towards influencing the direction of the story within the story by using appropriate and meaningful scenarios. But do not hesitate to allow the world around the Players to continue to move forward. Allow any consequences occur to the Players as much as the rest of the world. If the Barons daughter is set to be killed at dawn and the PCs decide that they are going to explore in another region instead of a heroic rescue. Then, the Players might have to face down the consequences of an angry and vengeful Baron with a great deal of resources. A good author style GM tends to plan out, in the loosest sense, a plot of the story of where the story plays around the Player Characters are the heroes, creating the setting, populating the region with well-rounded villains and other NPCs with established backgrounds, motivations, plans and resources. Remember, as the author it is your responsibility to make the PCs the center of the story, so write the story around the players' actions, and background. You can still plan out the Ruins of Zulthag around the players without overriding their interaction within the world, their character's desires, and letting them have a meaningful impact to the campaign. The Benevolent One A benevolent style of GMing is almost the direct opposite of the adversarial style. Instead of challenging the PCs with fair but dangerous conflicts or scenarios, this style attempts to try to make everything fun and fair, but without the more significant challenges that the adversarial style will use. This style tends to modify the mechanical rules to more benefit the players, even ignoring rules if they conflict with the logic of the scenario, sometimes these exceptions are made to further the story. This style, if done well, helps produce fun flexible games. However, this style is can fall into a series of attempts to keep the players alive, despite their actions, bending rules one time but not bending the same rule under a different circumstance. At its worst, it can lead a campaign into devolving, dead-end quests with aimless wanderings. While a benevolent GM is attempting to keep the players happy with being fair to the PCs, they slowly begin to allow the players to take advantage of the rules and the GM, appealing to your desire to please the players, despite the scenario or the campaign story. This style can often lead to a monty haul campaign. The players end up with staggering amounts of treasure and can cherry-pick which magical or powerful technological items they want to keep because had so many to choose from. Players often deplore this part of the style and it is highly discouraged. So while you attempt to be fair, keep the players alive and create a story, be sure not to be so kind as to forget that being fair does not include being a push over. The Director As with all campaigns, there tends to be a specific "right" path or course of action. While it does not have to be directly followed by the players, most stories have check points that move the story along. The Director Style of GMing is often motivated to get her players to act in given situations and stories. Similar to the Author Style, this style becomes more about directing the PCs towards the specified goal of the adventure, or scenario, than on writing a compelling adventure. The director style becomes more concerned about the outcome of the story, rather than the story itself. This can limit the freedom of choice of the players and their opportunity to have fun. This style can also lead to railroading by encroaching into areas where the players should feel able to make their own decisions for their characters. It can be abusing attempts to keep the plot moving forward. This style of GMing can often penalize players who take reasonable actions that do not fit the campaign plot. However, a proper director can guide players through a scenario and campaign with input and useful bits, helping to mold player's outcomes with subtle direction, much like a movie director does with her actors in a film. They do this through strong scenario themes, and elaborate plots. She also is very involved in PC generation, helping to develop a strong group of PCs. She knows how to build an adventure and provide appropriate hooks within the story for each player. She also knows how to keep the players on track without limiting their characters actions. The Improviser (The Free-Former) This style is perhaps the style that most GMs hope to be able to perform, but it is also the most difficult and can create a great deal of issues for the campaign and the players, and for you as a GM. The improviser or free-former tends to prepare almost nothing before game time. They are an energetic lot and enjoy thinking on the move, and tend to relish being in this position. However, they rarely go into a game session with anything more than a thought or perhaps a couple of notes and a rough concept of what the PCs will encounter. This style hangs on the concept of the GM having a vague idea of how the story should proceed and pushing the players to approach their style from any angle to further improvise the story. This style can be a lot of fun, flying by the seat of their pants this GM allows the players to truly control their own stories and destinies and attempt anything they want in the world. However, this style is hazardous unless the GM keeps notes outside of the game that they can reference between sessions, as the GM can forget important details or paint themselves into a corner that they cannot get out of or be able to wrap up all the loose ends within the scenario or adventure. While note taking and a careful eye for detail will help keep the overall flow of the campaign going, this style can easily devolve into a game and campaign that has a lack of goals, missing details, a loss of focus and overall sense of going no-where fast and ending in confusion and disappointment. The Manager The manager style of GMing is concerned with managing every aspect of the campaign. She is concerned with making sure that all the bases are covered from the right type of characters; is there a main fighter type, does the party have a healer, can they sneak or open locks easily, casting of spells, or using jinhu. Can the party pilot the correct vehicles, do they have the right skills, etc. This style manifests itself when the adventure is a published adventure module rather than her design. She has carefully read and understands the rules of the game. She is concerned that the rules are being properly used. If she decides something is not allowed, she will have particular reasons for why. This style is concerned with balancing issues within the game, and players do not have to worry about them facing impossible challenges. This style also tends to have the GM prepare their games in a variety of ways. She will have read, noted, and understood the adventure well ahead of time. She will have gathered the appropriate miniatures, props, printed out maps and handouts, and have a list of notes so that they can run a game smoothly. She will have a contingency for most everything and focus on resolving issues as quickly and precisely as possible. While this style appears to be strong, well purposed and in control, this style tends to be to focused on keeping the status quo of the game, not adding new elements to the game, playing the Rules as Written, and playing to the group rather than individual stories or plots. This style can often lead to rough ridding over players and their desire to explore new and exciting character concepts preferring to stick to only what is written in the core rules. She is also in danger of over-prepping and becoming attached to this prep work so that if the players decide to go off the path, she will not feel in control of the game. Player-GM Trust Trust within the game is essential, both from the player's side and the GMs side. Your players should trust you. This kind of trust can be gained over time with you being consistent in your use of the rules, not taking sides between players, and making it clear that you are not vindictive towards the players or their characters when they easily defeat your big boss in a final fight; and that you are not forcing players to do or play in specific ways (this is railroading). The players should trust that you will make fair calls and will soon learn not to question or second-guess you. This way, players can focus their attention on playing and having fun, and they will trust you to do whatever you can to make sure that they are enjoying themselves playing their characters. What's under the hood?
A long time ago, in a galax.....well not really so long ago, and actually just in the Southwest U.S.. I began creating a really, bad, horrible attempt to create a homebrew set of rules that I wanted to use in place of AD&D, I guess that was a long time ago. I was not happy really with the rules or the mechanics. I was also influenced by playing in a friends homebrew rule system that was based on the Basic Role Playing game d100%. I enjoyed the flexibility of not needing classes and the choices that we had for skills. We also were able to create our own skills, and develop our own unique abilities, but this often took time away from exploring the "Prison". I have been playing Table Top RPGs (TTRPGS for those who are new to the term) since 1977 with the white box, I was a hobbit for many of the adventures that were run by my best friends older brother. I still have the white box. From there we moved to the Red, Blue and Gold boxes, then 1st Edition AD&D. Then I moved. I was 15 when I started 2nd edition, and I loved it!!! I was also a player of Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, and Middle Earth RPG by I.C.E. So I cut my teeth on both THAC0 and D100% and loved them both. Yet, there was something that I felt was lacking in both systems. So when I started playing Curtis Maddy's home-brew game, I was enthralled with the classless, skill focused system based on BRP. The rules, however, were to fluid not set and changed, while this was irritating, we took it all in stride, we never felt that the GM was railroading us or that we lacked "player agency" (I might explore that concept at a later date, and will likely make a lot of fellow gamers very angry....) As with all good players, I decided that I wanted to take a shot at developing my own game system. I thought basing it on the d100% system was a great idea. So I took to writing the rules...I began my 1st Homebrew. What's This Blog About? In the spirit of the title, this blog is going to be where I share my thoughts, tips, tricks and concepts in developing Legends of Kralis, and ultimately the Talarius Gaming d100 System. I will branch out to discuss other mechanics and how they compare to what the TGS does. I hope to invite guest bloggers to input their thoughts about design mechanics as well as their concepts from their own designs. We are going to get "greasy", crunchy and look into the hows, whats, and whys of RPG Game Design, specifically within the TGS. And Just Who The Hell Are You? Why should you listen to me or even read this blog? You shouldn't, I would like you too, but ultimately this blog is for me to share my thoughts, a under the hood look at what drove and drives me to design the Talarius Gaming System. My name is Levi Davis and I am a designer, or more like a indy designer. I am also a very avid role playing gamer, a GM, and I have contributed to a few projects as a writer and designer ( I am by no means an artist), these are my thoughts and opinions on design mechanics in Role Playing Games, mostly about the TGS, that I have both loved and hated. Creating and designing a game system, from scratch has not been easy. It is often frustrating, and cumbersome, but to quote Ricky Gervais "It's better to create something that others criticise than to create nothing & criticise others. Go create! Have fun :)" And I have. |
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