Building Bhakashal – The Quantum Bandit

The concept of a “quantum ogre” in a TTRPG is an encounter that will happen no matter which of two paths the PCs pick. The DM doesn’t decide which side the ogre will be on, if the players go down the right side, the ogre is there, if they go down the left side, the ogre is there.

The idea is that the PCs picking a path creates the encounter, sort of like observing a particle collapses the wave form and kills the cat in Schrodinger’s famous experiment.

Bhakashal has it’s own version of this; I’ll call it the quantum bandit after the event’s of today’s game. It is a crucial part of sandbox play.

In AD&D1e there are encounter reaction rolls. They are to be made when two potentially hostile parties approach each other. So, for example, think of a group of PCs marching through the forest when they come upon a bandit camp. In AD&D if the party engages in parley with the bandits then the referee has to roll an encounter reaction roll.

If the PCs did not engage in parley, the bandits could just attack or not attack at the DMs preference. But if they do, if they communicate and the bandits can understand them, you roll to see how they react, anything from immediate violence to extremely friendly.

Bhakashal generalizes this to ANY encounter between two groups, whether they can speak and communicate or not. It also includes monsters and animals. Monsters and animals have some heavy negative modifiers to encourage violence. But regular NPCs have more modest modifiers.

In my experience, many DMs decide what NPCs do to react to the party’s actions or appearance. They don’t let the dice decide, as this may produce an anomalous result that “doesn’t fit”.

The thing is, the result only “doesn’t fit” because the referee has a story to tell, an expectation about what will happen based on what they want the party to achieve in the session. When the referee chooses the result all the time, they get predictable, and the players start to be able to guess how NPCs will react. The referee will often make similar decisions to keep consistent, or to avoid being “too easy” on the players, or whatever.

Everyone thinks they are spontaneous and creative, but the reality is that many refs fall into patterns that make the game dull and predictable, and thus much easier. Sometimes, when you know what’s going to happen, it’s less of a challenge.

When the roll is made in Bhakashal the referees job is to interpret it, embodying the principle of RRTEI, Roll Randomly Then Explain It. Of course, the referee can add modifiers of their own based on context.

There are several advantages to rolling encounter reactions rather than deciding:

1.        It surprises the referee too. Since the reaction is rolled in play, the referee will be surprised by the results too, which really adds to immersion, its like the game world is a separate entity from the referee and the players, making it feel more real.

2.        It makes NPCs tactically opaque; it is harder to predict what they will do. Rather than NPCs being automatically hostile or friendly, each situation is different.

3.        For a significant portion of NPCs in the game, there is no extensive backstory or context for them. In a sandbox game where you pivot a lot, you don’t always have NPCs fully fleshed out. As a result, PCs regularly run into NPCs whose sum total information is, “Bandit, 0-level, broadsword and mace, AC 7”. Some will just be “bandit”. When the referee practices RRTEI, they immediately populate the NPCs background and create their context when explaining the result.

Sandbox games do not do as much prep for the general denizens of the game world as there are too many of them. Big NPCs sure, but there are so many more NPCs that are not part of the main focus of the party’s activities that they nonetheless encounter. By leaving this to a dice roll and encounter reaction table, the referee is doing the work on the spot. This works perfectly for a sandbox ref.

And it ends up adding immensely to the game.

Take an example from today’s game.

The party were on the hunt for the hideout of the Slave Lords. They found the town of Suderham, and were in a tavern asking around to find out more about the Slave Lords. Nothing specific, just general gossip and basic information. Suderham in Bhakashal is a hidden city where ne’r do well’s gather and hide from the law.

I told them the tavern was filled with sailors, fishermen and bandits/mercenaries. I added that there were probably a few adventurers around in the mix as well, and of course likely some thieves.

Now, one particular PC is a human fighter (in Bhakashal he is referred to as an Emberi Mercenary), and he’s very big and very strong. He looks like a tank. He’s been with the party for 3 years now, the PC is 8^th level and has a lot of scars. He carries himself like a seasoned fighter.

He saunters over to a table of bandits and announces that he wants to sell his sword arm.

Plausible, simple and direct.

How do the bandits react?

Bhakashal’s encounter reaction system kicks in. The PCs are not in Bhakashal, so many of the modifiers don’t work here, no one in the Inn knows these chuckleheads are Bhakashal lords. They just see a tough looking warrior.

The roll can lead to a number of reactions:

Violence

Hostility

Unfriendly Indifference

Indifference

Friendly Indifference

Friendly

Friendly and curious

Friendly and helpful

Friendly and very helpful

Today I rolled “friendly and helpful”

So why would a group of bandits/mercenaries be friendly and helpful with an outsider who is looking to make some coin?

My job as a referee is to interpret this result.

What I know is that this is a hidden city where bad people go to hide, do nefarious business, trade contraband, buy and sell slaves, and recruit malcontents.

A low roll could have meant they saw him as competition and wanted to take him out, or that one of them had recently been beaten badly and wanted to take out some random guy to show they still had the juice.

But this was a high, positive roll.

I decided that these bandits/mercenaries worked in a group and sold their services to various employers, and they spent a lot of time in Suderham. There are three powerful warlock’s that live in the city and rotate duty on city watch along with a patrol of soldiers and some Yeth hounds.

There’s Hephonal the Ghanite, a 7^th level Yalan (snake folk) Warlock who travels with a pair of charmed wererats, Seu Yirra, a Chitin  (insect folk) Thaumaturge (thief/magic-user) who uses poison and has a Ring of Reptilian Regeneration, and Bowbrak Wikal the Shunned, a 8^th level Togmu (frog folk) Theurgist (fighter/illusionist) with a pet Maroon Dragon.

They are all on call if a serious strike force ever showed up at the city.

One of them, Hephonal the Ghanite, doesn’t like the mercenaries and has hassled them consistently when they are in the city. The bandits see this as the perfect opportunity to either have Hephonal killed without having to do it themselves or at least give him a bloody nose. They can’t confront him directly as he has the authority of the Slave Lords behind him and knows the bandits and their proxies well.

But the PC is a perfect tool.

This one roll has led to:

1.        A new task for the party to fulfill, if they are successful the NPC bandits will share information about the Slave Lords, specifically a secret entrance to their estate that goes underground (essentially A4)

2.        A background for these NPCs, they are sell-swords that run afoul of the city authorities regularly

3.        The party now knows that there are people in the city who are not aligned with the Slave Lords, so they have potential allies they can find and recruit or pump for information.

4.        They have formed an alliance, thus thrusting them into the middle of a factionalized environment and given them new enemies and new allies instantly.

5.        The environment becomes more layered and real, and because this encounter wasn’t planned or forced, they feel like they are discovering something about the game world, rather than being railroaded into finding the Slave Lords and fighting them.

I find this immensely fun, and here’s the best part. When they set out I had NO IDEA how they were going to find and slay the Slave Lords, they planned to find a pirate ship and follow it back to the aerie of the Slave Lords and go from there. Because I didn’t know (and they didn’t know) how they were going to proceed, we discovered it together, in an emergent way.

It didn’t feel like a story being told, it felt like a world being explored.

Using encounter reaction tables and RRTEI, the referee, the dice and the players co-create the game world as they play. Every time this happens I feel a frisson of excitement, it’s an act of spontaneous creation, it feels visceral.

This is the heady wine of table top role playing, it’s exciting, it’s spontaneous, it’s unpredictable, and its immersive.

It’s also adaptive and allows the referee to move forward with minimal prep, building the environment as play occurs.

Bloody awesome.