Knight Realms 2.0

Knight Realms 2.0
In this post I am going to explain several of the major and minor changes that are just around the corner in the new system. We hope to have the core of the rules to show you this friday night, and we hope to have a system for you to begin entering your re-writes by sunday or monday.

The Larp Engine (Adventure when YOU want to)
For the last twenty years we have worked off of a Twelve-hour periodic system; it has been the most basic core engine of the system. While it served us well enough to this point, we have decided to evolve to a better engine. No more will be the days where you wonder if you can go on an adventure earlier in the day because you must save your skills and power for the main mod adventure. No more will be the days where you have blown all your abilities out of sheer need to survive and now with a main adventure coming up you have nothing but your good looks and a feeling of uselessness. Previously you had to sacrifice fun and skip out on content out of a need to conserve your abilities. This often frustrating and not fun aspect of the game is completely eliminated under the new larp engine.

The new engine is one in which all of your abilities refresh after thirty minutes of rest and role-play. A character has less of each ability, but each ability’s value has been increased from being usable once every twelve hours to once every thirty minutes. You can now fully enjoy just about every and any adventure that pops up through the day to the fullest and as you wish.


The Battle System (Less braining, more Role-Play)
The previous system eventually became bogged down with enormously large numbers, hard to follow math and a constant struggle to figure out what defense defends against what attack.

The new system has greatly reduced the numbers, removed the more complicated math and the need to determine on the spot whether one ability is superior to another ability.

All battle related numbers have been equally crunched by about seventy-five percent. This will make the math that you have to do during combat much easier than it has been. Soaks and thresholds have been removed from the game so at no point will you have to do the math of subtracting numbers off of other numbers as they are striking you and then subtracting that final number from your body points. We have removed the concept of superior skills, removing the need to interrupt battle and figure out whether your defense is good enough to stop the attack that was just made.

Success in combat will no longer be a simple matter of who has the most superior skills, instead it will be about how you use the skills that you have. In order for this combat dynamic to be the most satisfying your skill usage must be more easy for you to track. Due to extreme diminishing returns on skill cost, a character will have significantly less uses of each ability per battle making it much easier to keep track of whether or not you have used up your abilities or not. Your choices in battle become far more important and are less about spamming infinite skills and more about having a strategy for how you use them each battle.


Multi-Classing versus Arch type Focusing (Viability under any character build)
Our rules has always been multi-classing friendly but has always been unfriendly to characters who want to stay focused on an arch type. The rules will still be friendly to the multi-classing option but now will also be friendly to those whom are not interested in multi-classing. There are now clear reasons why it would be viable to purchase the same arch type classes and even the same exact class more than once. Among those reasons would be an “Arch type Specialization” Skill, a multi-purchase bonus for repurchasing the same class multiple times and the ability to purchase an additional set of skills that are limited by diminishing return for every specific skill overlap.


Relics and Runes (Interesting but simple)
Having additional numbers added to your card or extra uses of your periodic skills would work against the effectiveness of the new larp engine. Instead the power of your special items is now going to be about interesting effects to be used in a situation. Gone will be the days when you are effectively just adding a small version of your card on top your existing card. The system itself is designed to be simple to explain and easy to remember, cutting back the rules based around them to the fewest number possible. Making relics and runes will be far less complicated and will be the primary domain of support classes.


Support Class Viability (Crafters are people too)
The support classes are: Alchemists, Engineers, Physicians, Scholars and Smiths. They all now have a full range of talents to use and items that they are able to craft. All crafting now works off of a material system, which is universally used for all support classes. Support classes will now have their own master list and so their other higher lists will be in line with all other classes.


Play What You Want
Want to play a Cloth Golem? Go fo it. What to play an Ogre Mage? Go for it. Want to go on main mod and the mod before and after it? Go for it. Want to make up your own cool casting Role-Play? Go for it. There is a common theme that we have been following in this rules overhaul; reduce restrictions, free up options, allow for creative personal role-play.


Character Advancement
Going forward the standard build blanket for attendance will be five build regardless of level or number of events attended. Converting SP for Build for a single event will no longer be an option, but there may be some sort of conversion option for special events such as the Banquet. Special event build blankets will increase as well. Build will still be attainable in all the other ways that it currently is. Character level is going to be calculated in a different manner as well, although this is going to be a purely cosmetic change and will have no actual effect on your character.

Master Lists will be laid out in a simpler and less complicated way. Heroic Lists will have much more flexibility. There will be a final tier of advancement called “Legendary Lists” which will be few but potent skills and encompass the advancement of your characters story instead of just their profession, such as joining a secret society, a renown guild or a famous group. Master Lists will be ready with the release. We expect Heroics to be ready by mid year, and Legendary to be ready by end of year.


Consolidated Abilities and Cleaner Rules
When two or more abilities where practically the same thing we consolidated them together, reducing redundancy and extra unneeded memorization. When an ability was a speed bump or not really needed we dropped it worked it into the base rules. All lists, lower and higher now follow the same precise formula with each of its kind. Each arch type has been carefully balanced against each other. Each smaller rules system within the core of the rules system is designed to be able to be explained fully using the fewest numbers of sentences possible. It was important that things could be explained easily and that complicated details were reduced or eliminated. The end result should ultimately be a cleaner more efficient set of rules.


A Splattering of Details:
Some things we added:
- Spell Sword, Hexer, Shaman, Engineer…
- Gnomes, Fringe Races (Your creative freedom)
- Master support (crafter) list
- Arch type specialization
- Attribute skill

Some things we removed:
- Promo skills (Rolled into master and heroic lists)
- Algorithmic body points
- Crafting points
- Race/Class Restrictions

Some smaller things we fixed:
- Commodity system is simplified
- Far simpler special item system


Perspective in the Game World
Be assured that all monsters including main mod boss style monsters are all scaling equally with the same number crunch and power spread that a PCs are now using. We will also be considering how we feel about quantity of re-spawns and how that all relates to everything. By far, the intention is that the power levels remain the same, but the numbers are more easily managed and better represent the scale of power between characters and the greater world. We will take great care in crafting the new monster cards, and will keep an eye on how well the large fight dynamics are playing out.


The First Few Months
The first several months of this new system we are all going to be learning the rules over again. We will be giving you all a wide girth to make mistakes and get used to the new effect names and dynamics. We may even give greater than normal leeway on any character fatalities during this period. We want you all to do the same for each other. When someone you are interacting with is struggling with any rules, give them a beat to catch their bearings and proceed with the spirit of us all working together to learn the new system.

Because we will want a little bit of time to work out some kinks, a professional hardcopy will not be ready for several months. I will state upfront that we are not likely to make major changes, but we are likely to make small adjustments here and there. We will mostly be interested in loopholes and exploits that we did not foresee. We will be looking to see how things actually play out opposed to how they look on paper. Please keep your feedback calm, polite and courteous.


We Love You and Your Attitude Matters To Us
We are undergoing a major change and several people have sacrificed an unfathomable amount of their personal time to bring you these changes, with the ONLY intent being to benefit you and the rest of the Knight Realms community. Those who worked so hard did so because they care about the gaming experience that we all experience together. We have also used a monumental amount of your feedback in our decisions while fleshing this all out over the course of a year. We hope that you will choose to be kind, open minded and supportive while we unveil and work through these changes. The heart of Knight Realms is the role-play and the stories and no change in the rules is going to effect that. What the change in the rules will do is make for a cleaner, simpler, less confusing, and more smooth gaming experience; one in which we will be able to have our fun more often and with whomever we want regardless of the power gap. We know that change can be difficult, but we will experience it together. We are excited and we want you to be excited with us! This is the rules overhaul that I am proud to have connected to the turn of the twentieth year of Knight Realms. Keep a lookout for our release announcement and we will see you in Travance!