Kahriptic Knights Publishing

Picture this. At some time in the past, the moon vanished. No one knows why. And for the next thousand years, all the races huddled in their respective homelands, scared of the unknown. Meanwhile, the landscape around them underwent traumatic changes mountains moved, lakes disappeared from here and reappeared there. When the races finally surfaced, they discover that 80 percent of their world has changed. In the spring of 2008, John Carnathan and Jerry Murphy expect to change another world just as dramatically the world of gaming. Since 1978, the world of tabletop fantasy role-playing games has been dominated by one game, Dungeons and Dragons (DnD). Now, Carnathan and Murphy plan to "totally twist the gaming art and turn the gaming industry on its head" with the release of Deliverance, their new role-playing game. "We're looking at a whole new avenue of the way games have been for the last 12 years since the OGL [the Open Game License]," said Carnathan. Carnathan and Murphy think it is time for a change, a change that gamers will welcome, a change from the "old school" of gaming. "The old school has always been three-to-five players. DnD holds the market with a single die called the d20. But there have been many other game companies that have come into and left the market. It's hard to deal with Dungeons and Dragons because it is an institution," said Murphy. After almost 20 years of a single game dominating the market, Carnathan and Murphy believe gamers want something new; they want fresh ideas. "They want something that totally goes off in other directions," said Murphy. Carnathan and Murphy are partners in Kahriptic Knights, a publishing company that produces various games for the entertainment industry, concentrating in the role playing game market for traditional pen and paper games. Housed in the Student Business Incubator affiliated with STCC, they are longtime friends. Carnathan is a U.S. Navy veteran pursuing a bachelor's degree in business management. Murphy is a U.S. Army veteran pursuing an associate's of arts degree. Over the last decade, Carnathan said the market has been flooded with games that are only variations on a theme. Game developers are, [in his words,] "pretty much taking one [gamers'] notebook, changing the name of it, making a couple of revisions and sending out into the market. It is pretty much all the same stuff. The first thing we wanted to do is to break conceptions." Carnathan and Murphy contend that "Deliverance" will be the first game to incorporate three distinct genres: entertainment via the role playing experience, education via a comprehensive program of characterization drawing on historically-based models; and finally, music, through an affiliation with Lodi, a Finland-based heavy metal band whose members perform in elaborate monster-like costumes. The band won the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest. The members of Lordi will be the game's signature characters, special monsters to be called upon during the game as a story line develops, similar to guest stars on a television show. If the Lordi-derived characters are "real," the characters Carnathan and Murphy created are grounded in historical reality. Here are two examples. "Historically in folklore and in gaming, elves are happy, cheerful, and polite think Lord of the Rings," said Carnathan. "For 'Deliverance,' our elves, called Tzassarcs, are based on actual Mongolian society and they follow Hammurabi's Code." Similarly, orcs are usually depicted as dirty, grimy, and grungy. "Our orcs called Procians are based on the Romans, Greeks, and the Athenian states, but they have a king and queen and they are considered the noblest of races with a strong heritage. So we have twisted those two conceptions," he said. Under the game master's guidance, players live, work, play and slay in their roles as characters intentionally unlike the 20- year-old industry stereotypes. The characters have personalities, and their race's norms and rules not only guide their behavior but also educate the players in the process. For example, The Procians view murder as wrong, whereas to the Bromats, another "Deliverance" character, human sacrifice is a way of life. If members of the two races meet, any negotiation or resolution is up to the players to role play and resolve according to their character's beliefs. It adds a social as well as an educational aspect to the game. The players "learn from each other" said Murphy and "maybe [the characters] come to blows, maybe they don't, but that is up to the players." What the races do have in common is a language (called Tradespeak). Carnathan and Murphy have worked closely with the staff of SCORE, which is located in the same complex. "We are finishing up the system rules and completing a Beta play test," they told Business to Business. The anticipated publication date for 'Deliverance' is in January, 2008. For an introduction to Kahriptic Knights Publishing, a flash teaser on 'Deliverance' and contact information, visit online at www.kahriptic.com.