VI·VIII·X KUP RPG

I am well aware of the fact that I have already posted here my thoughts on the explanation of D&D alignments by Gygax in “The Strategic Review” issue 6 (February 1976). I feel however not to be enough complete in my explanation, moreover, I think I should get more in detail about the contents of Gygax’s article and the concept of Morality in VI·VIII·X. I think it’d be wise to start from a comparison of the two “morality maps”: the D&D one on the left and the one of VI·VIII·X on the right side. One important detail for the reader: the graph on the left here below is not exactly the same of the one in the article, I changed the order of display the axes of the graph to make it comparable to the one I built. The framework is nearly the same, the main differences are the definitions and the fifth concept of “neutrality”. With reference to the later, I don’t support positions where a never-ending balance is the main driver for any decision; this is, in my view, neutrality: trying to...

I think I have already written more than once that I was almost sure that my idea was not original and it was nearly impossible that no one had already come to my conlcusion! What is surprising is that this happened nearly 50 years ago, more exactly in April 1975! The fundamental concept underlying the KUP model has already been discussed by Sandy Eisen with Gygax himself! That is absolutely outstanding! Ok, let's explain this with more details and order. On the RPGGeek boards, Chris B (kudos to Chris!) pointed me out that this is not the first time someone has though about a game 'veiled' to the players. He kindly provided me with the post of a fellow who is working on a game with rules completely hidden to the players (if I understood correctly). I have left him a request to get in touch with me and exchange our opinions about this 'model'. Mine is definitely a less radical view than his one (at least from what I got reading his post...) but I believe we have the...

During the summer break I wanted to analyse the aspect of the Alignments in D&D in order to understand what has been the rationale in the definition by the D&D authors. I started finding this very interesting post : in here I got the confirmation that beyond any different definition/label, the concept of morality was aiming to profile a character's sense of ethic. I'd like to outline that this sense is not only focusing towards third parties but even towards ourselves.  Or, this is at least my interpretation and rationale for the Morality concept and game mechanics. I was so intrigued by this topic that I started a discussion on the DF boards here : I wanted to enlarge the discussion to old gamers so that they could address me to other interesting readings or topics. I was hopefully right: I just wondered why this feature in an RPG had been always treated in a subtle way... It has never been approached in a "strong" way with clear and crisp game mechanics...  ...

Once it is clear the background, my vision and the main idea, let us try to figure out some more details of the KUP model. The first main feature is that the rules are for GMs only. They need to learn and use them: I wrote "use" and not "apply"; despite the fact that in the majority of the traditional RPGs the "rule 0" is invoked (i.e. the rules in the book are subject to changes upon decision of the GM), I have tried to leave the rules open to the application of the GM (whenever it is possible of course). Therefore the GM has to learn the rules and then define how he wants to use them. The players do not need (or better have not to) read the rules, in particular those referred to the game mechanics. The second main feature is that some rules work on pieces of information that are known to the GM only; among these you can find that even some PC stats are not known to the players, they do not need to know these info (I called these unknown stats US, the acr...

As promised, let us focus on an oustanding detail of my project: the KUP RPG.  Several years ago I started thinking of a game model where only the GM uses the dice and makes any action required to determine the events of the game. I talked about this idea with a friend who convinced me that this would have been a failure for sure in terms of interest and playability. I must admit that the discussion didn't last so much: the explanation he gave was solid... Gamers want to toss dice and ideally make 20! That's one of the keys for the success of the RPGs! I then set aside this idea and tried to elaborate something different which brings to the same result and found a solution that now I call KUP: Keep Uneducated Players. Before any further detail I need to explain the reasons that led me to rethink the current game model: one (and it is not the only!) aspect I dislike is the complete disclosure of any detail of the game mechanics to the players. First of all if you look at a moder...