2023-01-27 Adventures and Children
We’re in the mountains, cross-country skiing. The region here, and my wife reading the book *Walliser Totentanz* by Werner Ryser, is what made me wonder about an Alpine hex map generator and running adventures in Switzerland ca. 1500.
I’ve been writing more pages for Knives. I think the game ends up having five pages for players and the rest is just stuff for the referee. I guess I’m trying to show the reader how I would run the game. I wonder if this is succeeding. Right now I feel that I still have topics to cover and at the same time this needs more examples, a kind of Replay where we see a referee prepping for the game, runs sessions, makes decisions. The idea being that you could learn the game by reading the book without having to watch videos online or have friends teach you.
Knives
I feel pretty old saying that, given that so many people feel like watching videos instead of reading a book. We’ll see how that works out.
We had 3 pages for 2023-01-22 Advice for running a long campaign (”Campaigns”), we had 3 pages for 2023-01-20 The power of questions (”Running the game”), now we have 3 pages for adventures.
2023-01-22 Advice for running a long campaign
2023-01-20 The power of questions
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The thing to foster at the table is mutual entertainment and player agency. These are player needs that must be met.
- Player needs come first*. The character needs are only of interest in so far as consistency increases our willingness to believe in the fantasy world and therefore it entertains us. If the actions of characters hurt a player, then it’s time for them to go. Let the player make a new character who’s a better fit. If the adventure bores the table, then it’s time to change track. Move the characters into a different situation.
- Mutual entertainment*. This means that we must care for the other players at the table. Lift each other up. Engage with each other and the situation. If one character is a morose pyromaniac or a secret devil worshipper, try to be a good friend to them and see where that tension takes you. If one character is a lighthearted religious fighter, try to be a serious religious fanatic, a serious atheist. If one characters is a fighting machine, call upon them to solve problems with violence, treat them like a thug. Or try to educate them and lift them up. The point is to pick something in your friends’ characters that you can engage with, and do it. Don’t make their lives miserable – look for just the right level of banter between the characters. Something to say to each other during the game.
- Player agency*. In a game that takes place in our imagination, the greatest asset we have is the freedom of it all. We can make decisions and the imaginary world reacts. We can try things we don’t usually, be the people we don’t usually are. This is why decision making is essential. Skip the long monologues, the long descriptions, the long transitions – move quickly until the game needs players to make a decision. “What do you do?” These can be big decisions or small decisions. Do you join the court of Etzel? Do you fight the dragon? Do you support the dwarves? Do you taunt the mermaids? Are you courteous to the librarian? Do you flirt with the mercenary? Don’t invalidate choice by asking for a decision that has no weight.
- Risk taking*. Making a decision is exciting when there’s something at risk. It’s like betting. A character stays in the fight because the player is betting on them winning that last exchange. A character flirts with the mercenary betting to win them over without a fight. Emphasise the danger and highlight the reward until it’s a hard decision to make. The risks must always be worth it. Some players like to play it safer than others. Encourage them with non-player characters, help them control the risk, don’t push them too hard. Aim for those butterflies.
- Community building*. When villagers are grateful, when prisoners are rescued, when the downtrodden are lifted up, there’s your opportunity to get into community building. This is an example of goals players can set themselves. Encourage this by having non-player characters suggest it. Have the grateful ruler present a character with a land grant. Once community building begins, the community members have needs that must be met. Use these as inspiration for future adventures.
- Buildings*. Buildings can house your community or they can act as signs of power and influence. Build a castle to house retainers. Build a ditch, a palisade or a wall to protect the village. Build a fortified bridge to defend against pirates raiding inland on their ships. Have non-player characters suggest and organise it so that you can take their needs into account when thinking about future adventures.
Usually nobody at the table knows what exactly is required for buildings. Assume that everything is handled by the builder with a few exceptions. It’s these exceptions that turn into adventures: These are building blocks that the builder could not organise. Organising them involves an adventure.
- Family*. Encourage characters to raise a family. You can look at it as a particular way of building community, but it also plays into our expectations. Let players play the relatives and children of their deceased character. This encourages other players to raise a family. Finding a partner and rising in status to find a good match provides more ideas for adventures.
- Status*. Each Status score qualifies a character for certain events that raise their status even further. In marriage proposals and in the choice of boons granted by superiors, the current status of a character is essential. Families do not consent to a child’s marriage below their station. Lord and ladies don’t grant land to orphans.
The following table reflects a society of nobles and warriors where an intellectual is always inferior to a warrior and a warrior is always inferior to a noble. The last column provides ideas for future adventures. By succeeding in an appropriate adventure, player characters get the option of increasing their Status by 1 that year, in addition to rolling for a talent increase.
+--------+--------------------------+--------------------------------+
| Status | Examples | Qualifies for… |
+--------+--------------------------+--------------------------------+
| 2 | orphan, beggar | a job |
| 3 | worker, peasant, artisan | confidence, secret plans |
| 4 | citizen of good standing | secret society membership |
| 5 | member of society | public office, public works |
| 6 | officer | a position to teach |
| 7 | magister | a position as an advisor at |
| | | court |
| 8 | warrior | being knighted, a land grant |
| 9 | knight, lady | building a castle |
| 10 | baron, baroness | leading an army |
| 11 | duke, duchess | being crowned, winning a war |
| 12 | royalty | empire, conquest |
| 13 | emperor | eternal life and undeath |
+--------+--------------------------+--------------------------------+
- Education*. By succeeding in an appropriate adventure, player characters get the option of increasing their Education by 1 that year, in addition to rolling for a talent increase. What are appropriate adventures? Diplomatic missions, expeditions to foreign lands, time spent in other realms, library adventures.
- Growing old*. People work the fields in spring, go on adventure in summer, bring in the harvest in autumn, cut wood, raise a barn, study. They grow old. When characters or their companions are 36 years old, and every four years after that, they need to check for physical decline. If an attribute falls to zero, the character dies.
+-----+-----------------+
| 1d6 | Aging Table |
+-----+-----------------+
| 1 | Strength -1 |
| 2 | Dexterity -1 |
| 3 | Endurance -1 |
| 4 | Intelligence -1 |
| 5 | Lucky! |
| 6 | Lucky! |
+-----+-----------------+
After a certain number of years, the health of animals starts to decline as well. Horses start to lose 1 Life per year after 20 years of service. Dogs start to lose 1 Life per year after 10 years of service.
- Death*. When a character dies, their land, buildings, animals, and weapons are divided fairly between surviving partners and children.
- Children*. Raising a child as your own, allows it to inherit Education and Status up to 7 when it reaches 16 years of age. Children raised by more than one parent get to chose which Education and Status they inherit.
This game doesn’t care about the dangers of child birth, of disease, the difficulty of raising a family, the sanctity of marriage, the sex lives of characters. Run the game you want and let players experiment with leading different lives.
#RPG #Knives