karmicknight

he/him

5.0

(9)

Timezone

America/new York

Language

English

Identity

Streamer

Podcaster

Game Designer

About karmicknight

I have been playing tabletop RPGs for over a decade, and running the games I’ve played for nearly as long. I was introduced to gaming working at a ren faire as street cast, and the connection between the two has always been a part of my gaming. What that means is that I try to run games as a collaborative storytelling experience, working with the players to build a character driven narrative using my decade of improv experience. The result of this is a game and a story that is reactive to player actions. And despite my kind of auteur and philosophical approach, my instincts are sort of pure comedy and b-movie. I look to create entertaining setpieces and offer wild characters and story beats. Because in the end, I am just trying to have fun.

At a glance

3 years on StartPlaying

190 games hosted

Highly rated for: Creativity, Knows the Rules, World Builder

Average response time: 8 hours

Response rate: 100%

Featured Prompts

My 3 systems I'd bring to a desert island would be

+ GURPS: Love a generic 3d6 system that can be used to do most anything. + Pathinder 2e: Sometimes you just want to do a really basic dungeon crawling game and for that you need a system born from it, Pathfinder 2e does it better. + BURPS, I would have time to refine my personally designed system.

My favorite books are

The 90s X-Wing novels by Aaron Allston and Michael Stackpole. These books were formative in my appreciation of humor in an adventure/action series. Particularly, the way Allston's Wraith Squadron sub-series of books really sold the inherent comedy of improvised planning.

My favorite shows/movies are

My favorite television series are Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Whose Line has been a big part of my life in that it led to me spending a decade doing improvisation theater at a Ren Faire, and MST3K has completely ruined my ability to watch movies passively.

How karmicknight runs games

+ I am a fan of the players and want to see the characters do rad shit. I am constantly looking for ways to make cool shit happen and also feel earned within a narrative or setting. + I am a big fan specifically of character work, and try to match the level of character work happening. + I create set-pieces for characters to create scenes in rather than creating scenes and narratives in a linear fashion. + I frequently make snap decisions and reorganize things within an encounter based on changing situation. I do a lot of improv. + I am extremely rules streamlined, finding ways to incorporate mechanics that have more crunch and paperwork attached to them and pulling out guts to make it fit within the flow of a game. + I love making odd or impractical visual aids. + I love cutting deals. Both as Faust and the Devil.

Featured Prompts

I once ran a session...

Wherein my players designed a Hell House to mentally destroy Darth Vader using personal connections the players had to him. They succeeded in driving him so far that he actually just surrendered in the end.

I prep by

Reading setting notes I have and doing a bit of meditation to center myself to run the game mostly through improv. If I have a set piece in mind from a previous session, I will also go over my notes related to that set piece and construct any visual aids I had planned.

Rules are...

A useful framework for restricting the wide open play of improv. Rules can be tweaked and reinterpreted as befitting a situation, but they provide a sense of stability for the player and the GM to keep things from being pure improv.