The kronos project: Techniques for streamlining complexity and increasing player immersion in role playing games

• Main Author: McMahan, Uel Jackson, III
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: Ann Arbor ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 2010
• Subjects: Information Technology; Multimedia Communications
• ISBN: 1109774605; 9781109774603

The Kronos Project is an experiment in reducing the formal elements of a classical style role playing game (RPG) in order to get players engaged and immersed in its system as rapidly as possible. Unlike typical pencil and paper RPGs, it eschews dice-rolling, statistics, and lengthy character generation. This is contrary to current tropes about how role-playing games should be experienced.
The experience is manipulated through multimedia and interactivity in general to enhance the level of immersion and engagement of the players. The following techniques are utilized: (1) Statistics Removal (SR): Typical number-generating schemes of the genre have been eliminated in favor of players being the in-game characters themselves with their normal skills. No hit points, no mana. (2) Computerised Visual and Audio Mediation (CVAM): Overhead projections of maps and other important informative devices, including a music delivery system, are used to enhance the ambience. (3) Indoctrination: In the fifteen minute rendition of the game, a game master (GM) spends the first five minutes familiarizing himself/herself with the players in order to enable the procession of the game within the context of the virtual milieu and the players' real abilities. (4) Magic: There is a foot-operated push button device (PBD), hidden from the players, which is used by the GM to control images...and possibly music. This will allow players to focus more on game-play than the GM's mechanisms. In the past, adding music and images to an RPG was done through integrating and swapping media via recording/playing devices (like tape recorders) and drawings on paper. Although it is recognized that producing media changes typically alter game-flow in RPGs, they are generally tolerated by players...to a degree. The PBD is intended to reduce that degree. "Magic" also adds to the mystique of the game and contributes to its eccentric flavor, and hence increases players' immersion and engagement.
By removing the paper and pencil elements from the game, and by coordinating visual and auditory media, an attempt has been made to ameliorate the cognitive loads of the players by diminishing cognitive dissonances, but no formal examinations have been conducted to confirm the efficacy of this strategy.
Also, still with streamlining complexity in mind, the brunt of the context and content of the game is shouldered by the GM, so the players can rapidly learn the rules of, and settle into, the game through a guided balance of simplicity and complexity.