The Basics

The Narrator functions as the operator and manager of the role playing game sessions. They are typically responsible for the selection and/or generation of all game content and provide the “interface” that allows for the interactive and collaborative role playing experience of the Altered Realms Systems. They permit all player actions and narrate all results of Player and Non-Player Skill and Attack Rolls. They ultimately decide when and how players level up and are granted XP, as well as the chosen ruleset and constraints of the campaign. Skilled Narrators are adept at keeping track of multiple plot threads and character motivations, moderating player interactions and table discussions and maintaining the flow and progression of the story experience.

You may never feel like you are fully prepared to take on the role of the Narrator. The position of authority and knowledgeability can be intimidating. However, the collection of rules and information on this website is not intended to be memorized, and like everything, the management of the Altered Realms Systems becomes more refined with practice. This website contains all references that you may need to run a game in any setting or genre.

If you feel a drive to create collaborative stories and are at least comfortable and
familiar with the concepts and systems presented on this website, then by all means, start a game. You can’t start gaining experience as a Narrator without spending time in the role. The more time you spend and the more experience you gain the better you will become as a narrator and the better your stories will become.

Sometimes the role of the narrator can be thrust upon you due to an absence or loss of a previous narrator, or the lack of people willing to take on the the job. Whenever you start narrating, remember that it should be fun for you and everyone involved. Nobody wants a unmotivated or sadistic person narrating their escape from the weekly grind.

A familiarity of RPGs and tabletop systems in general will serve the new Narrator well, as Altered Realm’s Systems share a lot of similarities with some of the best Tabletop RPG systems available. More than that, knowing how Role Playing Games function in general can also be extremely helpful when first learning Altered Realms.

Role Playing Game: Any game where you take on a specific role, or play a specific character, and are granted the freedom to make decisions and develop or level up that character, is considered to be an RPG. Any and all familiarity with those types of games, especially turn based systems, will give you at least a fundamental idea of how RPGs, and thus the Altered Realms Systems, function. The more familiar the better, as Altered Realms is capable of adapting to a variety of styles and genres of RPG and encourages mixing and matching to find the kind of playstyle best suited for you and your groups.

Altered Realms is a d20 System. Meaning it uses a 20 sided die to represent the element of random chance and the spectrum of success and failure. Characters who are strong who attempt to do something that requires strength, get bonuses to such actions and so on. It also uses a variety of other dice such as, 12, 10, 8, and 4 sided dice to represent damage and smaller elements of random chance.
Altered Realm’s differs from other d20 systems in its modularity and ability to be
adapted to any Genre or Story concept. It utilizes the Attribute Resource Pool (ARP) system to maintain a balance of cost for powers and abilities. It focuses heavily on conceptual and creative freedom as well as the collaborative storytelling and role playing aspects of tabletop RPGs.

You need people to play this game. Start by finding or forming a game group that can meet semi-regularly, either online or in person. Ideally you will have 3-6 players and 1 Narrator, but that is by no means the only way to play. Balancing can be more difficult with smaller or larger numbers of players. Running a game for 1 or 2 players requires that challenges be very evenly matched since there is very little margin for error with so few players acting. Running games with larger numbers of players requires challenges to be ramped up as an increased number of players allows for more actions and combinations, subsequently broadening the margin for error and decreasing the overall challenge.

You can have spectators. You can have someone help you with elements of narrating the game, you can have more than 1 person play a single character. There are no definitive rules on how many people can play this game and how they must interact with those characters.

If this is your first time running Altered Realms we recommend you start your campaign between levels 1-3. Once everyone has finished their character and the Narrator has completed any world building phases, the Narrator can approve all the characters and the first official session can begin.

Discuss with the group and find out what kind of campaign they would be interested in playing. Try to find a balance between the genres and settings that both you and the players find fun and interesting and choose something everyone involved will enjoy. You can even collaborate with your players in the creation and lore of the setting you choose to play. Once your players have been acquired and your setting has been chosen the real work can begin.

We recommend finding a group of like-minded individuals within a similar age group as the this increases the likelihood that the group will be able to reach consensuses and collaborative playstyles. It can also be difficult to cater content to larger age gaps, as children and people in their 40's typically enjoy very different types of stories. As always, this is a recommendation, not a rule.

Start small, grow big. While it is perfectly fine to build an elaborate and intricate world, cast and story the first time you run an Altered Realms Campaign, it will be significantly easier to start with a simple or localized concept, such as an Island, town or building, then slowly add to the world as you run more games and develop your skill set.