Chapter Three -- Actions and Resolution
Please note that Players don't need to bother with the following rules for actions and resolving them. For most Players, it is enough to know that the Creators use a fair system to determine results when the outcome is in doubt, and that the rules are designed to encourage clever play, good writing, and creativity. The Creator is the only person to actually roll dice, and the Creator seldom bothers to reveal the actual numbers involved. In order to participate, Players just need to write and describe what their Characters do; Creators respond with natural-language results that tell the story of the ongoing game.
Section One: Acts
Whenever the outcome of a situation is in doubt, the situation is resolved with an Act. In an Act, dice are rolled, modifiers are applied to the result, and the Creator uses the modified result to decide what will happen and then to write results.
Note that common sense will dictate when an Act should and should not be used. Here are a few examples:
A Creator tells a Player that her Character can go upstairs to the cannon emplacements, or go left to the powder magazine. The Creator may not know what the Player will decide, but the outcome is not in doubt -- the Player knows the answer! Acts are not appropriate to resolve Player decisions. If the Player wants to add a degree of randomness to her decision, as by flipping a coin, that is her prerogative -- but it is not an Act.
A Creator has previously detailed a Non-Player Character, a local baron. When the baron hears an explosion rock his keep, the Creator knows exactly how the NPC will react. Acts are not appropriate to resolve Creator decisions -- but if the Creator wants to add a degree of randomness to his decision, that is his prerogative -- but it is also not an Act.
When a Character wants to do something challenging, an Act is often used to determine whether the challenge is met. For example, the Player wants her Character to push a cannon around toward a door. Is the Character strong enough? The outcome is in doubt, so an Act is used to resolve the challenge. If the Character had just wanted to pick up a single cannon ball, there would be no Act needed, because the outcome would not be in doubt -- the Character can pick up a cannon ball easily. Or if the Character had tried to pick up a cannon, the outcome also would not be in doubt -- there is no way the Character could pick up a cannon -- no Act is needed. The Creator might use an Act to determine if the Character pulls a muscle trying, however!
When Characters interact with each other or with NPCs, an Act is often appropriate. The Player Character sees the baron stride into the armory. The Player declares that her Character will attack the baron. The outcome of the attack is very much in doubt, and the Creator uses an Act (or series of Acts) to resolve the situation.
At its simplest, an Act can be described as a question. What happens when Goarga tries to convince the wemic to depart? Does Sharles leap over the chasm? Is the audience moved at Miveo's recital? What profit does the merchant gain? How much does a Character hurt himself trying to lift a cannon?
Section Two: Resolving Acts
To resolve an Act, the Creator rolls two dice and adds them together. Then the Creator applies modifiers. From the point of view of the Player, a resulting high number is good, and a low number is bad.
Rolls
For humans, two ten-sided dice are rolled (abbreviated "2d10") for every Act. A modified result of 20 or more indicates absolute success; a 1 or less indicates utter failure. In between is a continuum of intermediate results; the modified roll indicates degree or quality of the result. A roll of 5 or 6 is generally negative. A roll of 11 is usually inconclusive or neutral. 15 or 16 is generally positive. But there is a lot of room for interpretation by the Creator: even a roll of 3 or 4 could indicate failure with a silver lining or a chance to escape further calamity.
Two dice are rolled in order to generate a bell curve of possible results. This makes extreme success and failure more rare than ambiguous or neutral results; this gives more realistic results.
Modifiers
After dice are rolled to resolve an Act, a number of modifiers can then shift the results towards the positive and the negative. But regardless of all modifiers, a Creator has the option to choose to interpret a natural roll of 20 as a positive result and a natural roll of 2 as a negative result.
The Creator decides which modifiers to apply, as well as the size of the modifiers. The Creator seldom reveals the exact modifiers to the Player, although the Creator usually gives clues in writing Results (see hereafter).
The modifiers that can apply to the die roll are called Skill, Strategy, Writing, Creativity, and Difficulty modifiers.
Skill mods
For every given act, the Creator determines whether the Character has any relevant Skill. If so, the Skill's Rank is a direct modifier. A Character leaping from rooftop to rooftop who has Jumping Skill at Rank 4 gains a +4 bonus to the roll. Since Skills cannot exceed Rank 10, the greatest skill modifier is +10.
If the Character does not have any relevant skill, then the Creator may rule that the outcome is not in doubt: there may be no chance to succeed. For example, an untrained Character finds a magic book and reads from it aloud -- the Creator may decide there is no chance of success at all. Alternately, if the Creator rules that the outcome is in doubt despite the Character's lack of relevant Skill, then only one die is rolled -- not two -- to resolve the Act. For example, a Character with no swimming Skill is plunged into deep water. The Creator rules that a single die (1d10) is rolled to determine the result, which will almost surely be negative.
If a Character has more than one relevant Skill, the highest Rank is used as the modifier -- and only one Skill can be used.
Strategy mods
If the Character uses a clever or apt strategy (beyond the minimum the Act demands), the Creator may assign a bonus of up to +3. For example, the jumping Character is careful to leap from a high point on the launch roof to a lower point on the target roof, so the Creator assigns a +1 strategy bonus. If the Character is foolish or stupid, the Creator may impose a strategy penalty, not to exceed -3. For example, the jumping Character is trying to leap in a long tight formal dress, so the Creator assigns a strategy penalty of -2. If the Creator assigns multiple strategy penalties, they stack cumulatively, but the total must still end up in the -3 to +3 range.
Writing mods
Kingdoms and Honor rewards Players who write well, and a Creator can assign a modifier in the -3 to +3 range based on the quality of what the Player writes. A Player submission that reads in its entirety "I leep a cross." gets a -3; a submission that reads "Emerging onto the rooftop, Joselle quickly looks around, scanning for possible escapes. She sees an adjaecent rooftop, and hearing the clatter of boots on the stairs behind her, decides that she has no choice but to leap. She gathers herself, ran, and flies across the gap." The Creator gives Joselle a +1 writing bonus for this. It could have been +2, but it is a little short, Joselle's Player misspelled "adjacent," he put the comma in the wrong place in the penultimate sentence, and he switched tense in the last sentence.
Creativity mods
The Creator can also apply a creative modifier, though in practice these mods are rare. This modifier, also in the -3 to +3 range, rewards a Player who actually adds to the game world, or penalizes a Player who degrades or destroys it. Players who compose songs (especially if the player actually writes a decent poem), build houses, establish settlements, invent devices, or in some other way enriches the world for other players receive this adjustment as a bonus. On the other hand, players who try to destroy the work of other players, or who impoverish the game, receive a penalty. For example, a Character attempting a leap sees the opportunity as a fine chance to use her previously prepared but never field-tested "Lightweight Alar Contraption," a sort of artificial collapsable wing used to assist leaps and slow falls. The attempt garners a +2 creativity bonus from the Creator. Note that creativity modifiers are granted only for the first instance of creativity; after that, it is repetitive, not creative!
Difficulty mods
Depending on how easy or hard an Act is, the Creator may assign an appropriate bonus or penalty -- with no limit on the magnitude of the modifier. There are no tables or lists of difficulty modifications: each modification is assigned by the Creator on a case by case basis. However, Creators should keep their own records of the modifiers they assign, so that they can be consistent from adventure to adventure. And Creators should share their lists with each other, to guide and to help keep play consistent from Land to Land. For example, a Creator decides that a running jump incurs a difficulty penalty of -1 for every two feet of distance after 12 feet. The Character wants to jump 16 feet, so that's -2. It is also raining lightly, so the Creator assigns an extra -1. The total is a -3 modifier.
If two Characters are in a direct contest, the Creator may choose to use each Character's highest relevant Skill Rank as the difficulty modifier. For example, Teodeus (with Rapier 5) and Cercinius (with Dagger 3 and Parry 6) exchange blows: Cercinius has an Act roll to hurt Teodeus with skill mod +3 and difficulty mod -5; Teodeus has an Act roll with skill mod +5 and difficulty mod -6.
Here is an example of Act Resolution.
Dice for Non-Humans
Only humans roll 2d10 for every action roll. Other species roll dice with differing numbers of sides. Every Act has a relevant Skill and associated Trait. Depending on the Trait, different creatures roll different dice. [At Irony.com you can use their Web dice roller to get odd-sized "dice," such as d3, d5, d13, and d18.]
The assignation of dice to a given Trait is based entirely on the intuition of the Creator; however, Creators are encouraged to share their creatures with each other, just as they are encouraged to share typical modifiers. If a Trait is not specified, the dice for the parent Trait is used.
For example, here is how you could describe horses and housecats in K&H:
Horse
- Body: 2d13
- Strength: 2d18
- Form: 2d13
- Agility: 2d6
- Mind: 2d5
- Psyche: 2d6
Housecat
- Body: 2d4
- Strength: 2d3
- Form: 2d3
- Agility: 2d6
- Mind: 2d6
- Psyche: 2d7
In general, a Creator need only detail the species resolution dice that he or she needs. For normal animals, usually only Body, Mind, and Psyche are needed, perhaps with Body broken down as shown above. Sometimes it may be useful to determine other Trait-associated dice: a stallion might need a Leadership-affiliated roll to control the herd; a bloodhound might need a Perception-affiliated roll to track down prey. But such details (like specific dice used) can be invented by Creators as needed.
Keep the common sense rule in mind when considering acts for different species. If an elephant and a human both want to lift up a particular log, the event would be an act for the human, but not for the elephant. The outcome is not in doubt if an elephant wants to pick up a log.
Section Three: Writing Orders and Results
At the heart of the game, Players write their orders and Creators respond with results. The best way to get a feel for this is to browse through old posts on the message board. But there are a few suggestions for Players writing orders.
When you are writing orders, keep in mind that your job is to tell what your Character does and says. Make the difference between words and deeds easy to understand by putting your Character's words in quotation marks.
Some Players write in the first person, others in the third. Both are fine so long as you make clear who is acting. If there are several Player Characters in the same adventure, make it clear in your orders that it is you.
The Creator's job is to describe the scene and the actions of NPCs. Don't try to write orders for Characters you don't control.
The heart of your orders is writing your Character's words and deeds, but sometimes you need to write out of character, by asking the Creator a question or obtaining a clarification. Be sure to mark clearly what is in character and what is out of character in your orders.
And here are a few suggestions for Creators writing results.
Most importantly, be an inspiration to your Players. Set a high standard of writing quality by example. Make no grammatical mistakes. Write engagingly and in detail. Evoke emotions and senses. Reply quickly and frequently. Be creative and fair.
Sometimes be subtle in your results: use them to drop clues, offer hints, nudge the plot, and set up for future scenes. Other times be blunt and powerful -- it is fine to provoke fear or awe.
Use the roll result as a skeleton, not a straightjacket in creating your results. Be open to the idea that the dice, used knowingly, can help direct the flow of play by making you "explain" why things turn out the way they do.
Keep track of the effect of modifiers. If a Character succeeds as a result of a Skill mod, emphasize the Character's skill in writing the result; if a strategy mod made the difference, emphasize the Character's strategy. In this way the roll can help explain why an Act turned out well or badly.
Try not to set up failure = death results. A Character should not die as a result of a single unexpected roll of the dice, unless the Character deliberately risks danger. If the Character chooses to plays Russian Roulette, if a Character chooses a clearly hazardous course of action, then the Character's choice may end in death. But death should not come because a failed Riding Act means falling and breaking one's neck. Even a successful assassination attempt (launched by an NPC, presumably) should offer the Character some possibility of a hair-raising escape.