System matters and free kriegsspiel

[Malmuria]

I don't think it equates, but it's a powerful tool for engaging in Trad and Neo-trad play. There's only the claim of impartial referee standing in the way, here, and I already find that claim to be somewhat preposterous given how the GM is creating the adversity and adjudicating it.

OSR games also rely on GM adjudication and are explicitly a reaction against trad play. In an OSR game, the dm can design a scenario (like a dungeon), but has no pre-conceived idea of how the players will navigate it. The players, meanwhile, are not limited to the abilities on their character sheet, but by "tactical infinity" in John Ross' term. The rulings that the dm has to make are in reaction to players trying something out of the box. In trad games, there is a story that needs to be told, and a dm can use rulings or illusionism to keep the story going and get to the next beat (I would argue in trad games, combat is the one place players can have agency by referring to the often extensive rules...thus the combat as sport /as war distinction). So, in terms of dnd specifically, trad and osr share a common lineage with regards to the role of the gm, but to almost opposite effect. The fkr perspective appears to be mostly something advocated by the osr; trad players if anything want more explicit rules and mechanics to cover every aspect of play.

 

[Malmuria]

And in saying this, I am not advocating for any kind of system superiority- different games work for different tables at different points in time. TTRPGs are like the eternal Mounds/Almond Joy War; sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.

Yeah similarly, I'm not necessarily advocating anything in particular. I've played and enjoyed rules lite games (and if I were to run another game of dnd I would go for something rules lite), but I've never actually played something that explicitly conceived of itself as an FKR game. So I'm more FKR-curious than anything else, and what I'm expressing here is not a defense of that style of gaming, but an explanation for why I'm curious to try.

 

[Manbearcat]

It's not trivial in 5e for the simple reason that it's the major abstraction system used in the game for all situations, and that the game also uses a simplified method for resolving competing ad/disads (they cancel each other out, regardless of number).

It's far from trivial; it has a major impact on the game, and it is most certainly part of the system of conflict resolution in 5e! In addition, it also does a lot when people are discussing ways in which 5e can allow players to play to the rules, and not the fiction.



Not necessarily; just pointing out that if you want to learn about FKR in good-faith, there are a lot of good resources for it, and you will learn a lot more by trying to play it in that manner than you will by trying to ask "gotcha" questions.

And in saying this, I am not advocating for any kind of system superiority- different games work for different tables at different points in time. TTRPGs are like the eternal Mounds/Almond Joy War; sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.

Its not the existence of Adv/Disadv that is trivial. Its the deployment of it from first principles is what is trivial (in that its trivially done by gamesmasters and understood by players). Its been used in many game systems. TTRPG designers discovered a cognitive hack and have-reused it (5e isn't close to the first game to use it). The 5e designers didn't have to design Adv/Disadv. Its been done for a good long while and its stuck because it works.

Its trivial because it works trivially.

It is not the same as developing (say) a snowballing action resolution/move structure engine or a combat engine or a conflict resolution engine for things like climbing/journeying/parleying/infil-exfiling/rituals etc. Those things are very different in terms of taxonomically sorting them out and the rigor and effort with which one has to design and iterate.


As to the second part.

Come on man. We don't need to do this. If you feel is someone is sincere you don't lead with "if you truly are curious...do x in good faith" and finish with "you're asking gotcha questions." That is not the language of "I think you're sincere...have this benefit of the doubt!"

You clearly don't think I'm being sincere. That's fine.

If anyone else would like to answer my sincere curiosities (rather than questioning my sincerity and then pointing me at a gigantic pool of essays to suss out my answers), what I'm SINCERELY looking for is answers to the following:

* How are asymmetrical expertise relationships navigated (I do not agree that this only comes up in stray use-cases...my contention is that it is the persistent state of any TTRPG table at all times)?

* How is trust established/nurtured when the dynamics of asymmetrical expertise relationships manifest at the table? There are a lot of ways this can work out in real life (technocracies are governed by experts...but this is not necessarily the best approach) so I'm curious if there is either a default methodology or guiding principles here?

* Humans encode language for conveying/navigating concepts and exchanges in their social systems. You can't get around it. That is our means for communally dealing with each other/the world. Given that, how does the "encoding process" work for FKR? Negotiate and iterate during table time (because this builds trust and protects against the cognitive overload/demands of assimilating a system outside of play - this is my best Steelman and I totally understand this), collectively remember it, and then re-deploy this same usage downstream when this conflict archetype comes up again?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Only if the rules make sense in the world. Take another example. Characters not being able to move through each other’s space. In most D&D games, characters take up a 5ft square, completely blocking anyone else from moving through. So if you have two people abreast in a 10ft hallway, no one’s getting through. That’s nonsense in the real world, makes zero sense in any fantasy world, but it’s the rules of the game.

That's likely a better example. I still don't think it's perfect and is actually addressed in the rules; they actually explain that a person obviously does not take up a 5' square, but that this is the area they control in a conflict. I mean, I'm picturing two guards standing at the entrance to a 10 foot hallway and trying to imagine exactly how I'd be able to get by them if they didn't want me to do so. I'd have to engage them in some way. Knowing this as a player reflects what my character would know. So in that sense, I don't think this is quite as nonsensical as you've painted it.

Why I said this is likely a better example is in how we may adjudicate it. There are rules about shoving a creature, but nothing about diving or rolling through a threatened area as there was in 3.x D&D. So this is an example where there are potentially more modules of rules to deal with in order to represent something that is happening or being attempted in the fiction.

But the GM can just as easily say something like "Roll a Dex-Acrobatics check versus this enemy's Passive Perception score to see if he is ready for the move and can therefore attack you as you try to pass him."

Just because there are rules systems doesn't mean that a GM can't come up with something not specifically codified for a specific situation.

However, I would agree there are likely easier ways for a system to be both visible and flexible enough to be applied in a variety of ways.

Most gamers will dutifully adhere to the rules of the game despite them being nonsense, like the example above. But the FKR mantra “play worlds, not rules” suggest the opposite. The rules of the game must first make sense in the fiction of the played world, if not toss the rules and use ones the don’t break the fantasy, immersion, common sense, etc.

Sure, this is the big benefit that would seem to be offered by FKR. But I think it's also one offered by some OSR games and some narrative games and even, as I just displayed up above, D&D 5e.

This isn't absent in other games. I agree with you that it could be a problem, but I think it can be addressed in other ways than simply removing awareness of the rules.

The post at the top of the page about FKR being the opposite of BITD in this regard is apt.

I don't know if I entirely agree with that verbatim, but I don't know the context of the original quote. I think Blades is very much a fiction first game. However, when it was designed, I do think that there were elements of the world that were crafted to push play in certain ways, and to let groups decide exactly how things work for themselves. Kind of a simultaneous design of rules and setting more than one coming before the other.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm putting these two together because I didn't get an answer that is helpful to me in my understanding. You added some caveats here as Snarf did (maybe in this particular conflict the GM knows something that the player doesn't...maybe this "event isn't what the game is about").

The bottom paragraphs are helpful, however, so thanks for that.

Let me go back to what I was trying to suss out:

1) No caveats. The obstacle is the obstacle and no fundamentally unknowable thing is happening. Beating the obstacle is sufficiently "what the game is about" such that you need rules to resolve it. Its THE CLIMB OF WALL SUCKINGTON TO REACH THE PLACE OF IMPORTANTITUDE.

Whatever the DM decides with absolute deference to the fiction.

You're asking for white room theory about mechanics when the entire point of FKR is to skip over the rules when they get in the way of the fiction. So the only time rules come up is when the situation calls for it. Which is far less than your traditional game. So unless the game is about climbing there's not really a need for rules to adjudicate climbing. Context matters. The caveats you don't want to deal with matter. Is the fiction about climbing? Then there will probably be rules for climbing.

Take two movies as examples. Ghostbusters and Cliffhanger. One is a movie about ghosts...and busting them. The other is an action movie about climbing. If you're playing a Ghostbusters game, climbing rules might be an afterthought at best. If you're playing a Cliffhanger game, climbing rules might be front and center. One FKR mantra is "play worlds, not rules".

Sorry, but your question is missing the forest for the trees.

2) In order for the climbing player to orient themselves to the challenge such that they can navigate a "climbing-coherent decision-point", they need some kind of rules structure to buttress that cognitive loop of orientation > navigation decision-point > act that they are undertaking.

No, they don't. The player does not need to know what the mechanics are in order to make a decision. The player wants to know what the mechanics are when their character would have no idea so that the player can play the game rather than play the world. The climber might have a rough idea of their chances of climbing the wall. The player doesn't want a rough estimate, they want written in stone rules so they can calculate the odds. "My character has a +6 athletics, the highest reasonable DC would be 20, so I have to roll a 14+/1d20 to make it." While the character is thinking "either I can jump far enough to catch that next handhold or I drop 600ft and die." The climber may have done the same or similar 1000 times, but there's still a chance they'd fall. And the weird thing is, real people do that all the time. Free climbing is a thing people do for fun. The have no idea what the odds of any given climb are, yet they do it. Gamers want more concrete info for a game than real climbers risking their lives to climb.

This is exactly the problem with rules. Players put the rules first. So the rules get in the way of play. Lots of players won't make a decision until they know the rules covering it. Regardless of whether their character would have any idea. Yet people in the real world with no real knowledge of their odds do things that risk their lives every day. Real people risking real life and limb are less risk adverse to gamers playing an elfgame.

If the FKR GM composes a rules structure that fails to buttress (or perhaps actually does the opposite), what happens? Does the climber player say "how about x, y, z?" Is that an episode of "the edifice of trust being established through conversation" or is that an episode of "the situation is fraught and the trust is broken?"

Yes, in FKR games the players are free to make suggestions about modifiers to rolls, when/if rolls are used and if the DM thinks the argument is reasonable.

Assuming CLIMBS OF WALL SUCKINGTON isn't an aberration and is sufficiently common (maybe once a session-ish?), does whatever spins out of this instantiation of climbing rules now get enshrined as "go to" climbing rules? It seems your answer is either:

* "negative, next time we encounter a climbing obstacle of consequence we instantiate something else and potentially have another trust establishing/eroding conversation with the climber because there is no encoding of rules in FKR."

or

* "play has now encoded these rules for future use through the negotiation with climber person and trust has been established/preserved/grown."


Is it the former or the latter (I feel like maybe the latter?)?

Whatever the DM wants to do. The point isn't to make concrete rules that are collated and eventually cover everything. The point is that context matters more than rules. The fiction matters more than rules. So the circumstances in this session's climb might be wildly different than the circumstances in next session's climb. So rather than be tied to the "rules" established last time, the DM is free to establish "rules" that apply this time. Setting rules in concrete removes the freedom of the DM to take context and circumstance into account and will inevitably elicit the argument "but last time it was X, now it's Y". Yeah. Because this time is different than last time.

You have two options: rules light / DM adjudication that covers everything or an accumulation of rules that eventually lead to massive tomes of rules that try to cover everything. The FKR opts for the former because they recognize that the latter is detrimental. As mentioned, this is a constant tug of war. The FKR simply lets go of the rope, plants its flag in the rules light camp, and refuses to pick up the rope again.

A fairly common "rule set" FKR people use is "if the outcome is uncertain and interesting either way, roll 2d6". That's the whole thing right there. Opposed rolls when necessary, higher roll wins. Climbing, combat, lifting a rock, whatever.

You ask about climbing rules. Roll 2d6. Higher is better; lower is worse. Is your character an expert climber? Maybe roll 3d6 instead of 2d6.

FKR is kind of the extreme end of rules light, fiction first, and DM control. But the DM and players explicitly defer to the fiction. If it doesn't make sense in the fiction, it doesn't matter what the rules say. Throw out those rules that contradict with the fiction. But someone (the DM) has to be the final authority to keep the game moving and not devolve into "I shot you!" "No you didn't!" "Yes I did!"

If it makes sense that the smartest young witch of her age could easily slap a curse on the dumbest young wizard of her age, then she does. You don't need rules for that. You don't need to roll for that. A lot of the FKR is about expanding those automatic success rules some games have. You don't need a rule or a roll about walking across a street or opening an unlocked and well-oiled door. Likewise, you don't need rules about climbing unless that's really, really important to the fiction.

Do you remember when Fate and Apocalypse World / Dungeon World were new? Do you remember all the D&D players trying to figure out what these games were about and the endless threads asking questions and demanding answers. And them just not getting it because they couldn't wrap their brains around the shift in perspective? It mostly came down to traditional gamers not grokking the new style. Over time some people did. But not all. FKR is kinda like that. It requires a paradigm shift to really get it. Not everyone is willing or able to make that shift. And that's fine. But demanding trad answers of a non-trad game style isn't going to be very productive.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

If anyone else would like to answer my sincere curiosities (rather than questioning my sincerity and then pointing me at a gigantic pool of essays to suss out my answers), what I'm SINCERELY looking for is answers to the following:

Since you're sincerely asking other people, I'll let them answer you! I always find it helpful to look at what people who are proponents of the game are saying and doing and engage on those terms (and then, if I use a different framework, try to translate it into my framework instead of demanding that other people use my preferred framework); YMMV.

 

[Ovinomancer]

OSR games also rely on GM adjudication and are explicitly a reaction against trad play. In an OSR game, the dm can design a scenario (like a dungeon), but has no pre-conceived idea of how the players will navigate it. The players, meanwhile, are not limited to the abilities on their character sheet, but by "tactical infinity" in John Ross' term. The rulings that the dm has to make are in reaction to players trying something out of the box. In trad games, there is a story that needs to be told, and a dm can use rulings or illusionism to keep the story going and get to the next beat (I would argue in trad games, combat is the one place players can have agency by referring to the often extensive rules...thus the combat as sport /as war distinction). So, in terms of dnd specifically, trad and osr share a common lineage with regards to the role of the gm, but to almost opposite effect. The fkr perspective appears to be mostly something advocated by the osr; trad players if anything want more explicit rules and mechanics to cover every aspect of play.

I'm not seeing where FKR is being limited to constrained set pieces like dungeons that are generated before play agnostic to the characters, but rather as an approach to places where story intrudes. Like the idea of the sandbox actually being neutral, which I still find somewhat confusing in concept. If you're stepping outside the confines of a constrained set, then you've diluting the effectiveness of a neutral umpire concept because now the umpire is being forced to generate and adapt setting elements on the fly in response to the action. Given that one person is now responsible not just for the creation of adversity, but also it's resolution, we've arrived at a Czerge Principle violation from the GM side. The only thing standing in the way is this claim of neutrality, which breaks down the further you move away from a fully keyed dungeon-style prep.

 

[Malmuria]

Its not the existence of Adv/Disadv that is trivial. Its the deployment of it from first principles is what is trivial (in that its trivially done by gamesmasters and understood by players). Its been used in many game systems. TTRPG designers discovered a cognitive hack and have-reused it (5e isn't close to the first game to use it). The 5e designers didn't have to design Adv/Disadv. Its been done for a good long while and its stuck because it works.

Its trivial because it works trivially.

It is not the same as developing (say) a snowballing action resolution/move structure engine or a combat engine or a conflict resolution engine for things like climbing/journeying/parleying/infil-exfiling/rituals etc. Those things are very different in terms of taxonomically sorting them out and the rigor and effort with which one has to design and iterate.


As to the second part.

Come on man. We don't need to do this. If you feel is someone is sincere you don't lead with "if you truly are curious...do x in good faith" and finish with "you're asking gotcha questions." That is not the language of "I think you're sincere...have this benefit of the doubt!"

You clearly don't think I'm being sincere. That's fine.

If anyone else would like to answer my sincere curiosities (rather than questioning my sincerity and then pointing me at a gigantic pool of essays to suss out my answers), what I'm SINCERELY looking for is answers to the following:

* How are asymmetrical expertise relationships navigated (I do not agree that this only comes up in stray use-cases...my contention is that it is the persistent state of any TTRPG table at all times)?

* How is trust established/nurtured when the dynamics of asymmetrical expertise relationships manifest at the table? There are a lot of ways this can work out in real life (technocracies are governed by experts...but this is not necessarily the best approach) so I'm curious if there is either a default methodology or guiding principles here?

* Humans encode language for conveying/navigating concepts and exchanges in their social systems. You can't get around it. That is our means for communally dealing with each other/the world. Given that, how does the "encoding process" work for FKR? Negotiate and iterate during table time (because this builds trust and protects against the cognitive overload/demands of assimilating a system outside of play - this is my best Steelman and I totally understand this), collectively remember it, and then re-deploy this same usage downstream when this conflict archetype comes up again?

I don't know the answer to this, in terms of FKR, because I don't know enough about those games other than some things I've read and listened to on the internet. But I think these questions pertain to OSR games also, in that OSR games rely on gm adjudication and rulings over rules. So if you are trying to climb a wall...roll your thief % dice? Roll a 4-6 on a d6? Roll under dexterity? Maybe gm decides to do it one way during a session in March, and another way in a session in August. I would hazard that the FKR-inspired question would be less about what resolution mechanic you use or whether that resolution mechanic is consistent over multiple sessions, and more, does it matter? OSR blogs are filled with random subsystems, mechanics, and minigames, and I don't think the point is to use all of them, but kind of take and leave them as needed. On the other hand, these games are not concerned with the gm being able to "disclaim authority" or necessarily with consistency, so if those elements are important, I don't think an OSR (and perhaps by extension, FKR) system would work.

 

[overgeeked]

That's likely a better example. I still don't think it's perfect and is actually addressed in the rules; they actually explain that a person obviously does not take up a 5' square, but that this is the area they control in a conflict. I mean, I'm picturing two guards standing at the entrance to a 10 foot hallway and trying to imagine exactly how I'd be able to get by them if they didn't want me to do so. I'd have to engage them in some way. Knowing this as a player reflects what my character would know. So in that sense, I don't think this is quite as nonsensical as you've painted it.

Nothing is ever perfect. Waiting for a perfect example is deciding to dismiss the conversation.

Add in the sequence of actions to the mix and make it mostly friendly characters taking up space. According to the rules, you can't have characters shuffle positions. Until there's an unoccupied square to move into, a character cannot move into that square. But two people could easily switch spots in the real world. You and I on line at the movies (wearing masks of course). We can switch spots. We don't have to move 5ft out of line, wait while the other steps into the now unoccupied square, and then move into the new unoccupied square. Put two D&D characters into a 5ft wide, 10ft long space, and they're permanently stuck there. One cannot move into the other's square. But we both know 5ft x 10ft is more than enough room for two people to move around each other. Some apartment kitchens are smaller than that. Yet two people can be in the same kitchen moving around each other freely. It might be cramped, sure. But it's physically possible. But not according to D&D.

Why I said this is likely a better example is in how we may adjudicate it. There are rules about shoving a creature, but nothing about diving or rolling through a threatened area as there was in 3.x D&D. So this is an example where there are potentially more modules of rules to deal with in order to represent something that is happening or being attempted in the fiction.

Halflings can move through threatened squares, but not end there. But the DMG has rules for climbing onto other creatures. So apparently our 5ft squares only present when we're on the ground.

But the GM can just as easily say something like "Roll a Dex-Acrobatics check versus this enemy's Passive Perception score to see if he is ready for the move and can therefore attack you as you try to pass him."

Sure. But why? Why would it need to be that complex? Why have a rule about it at all? Unless you're talking about a square body, bodies don't take up 5ft of space and prevent others from entering that space. The rules contradict reality so we have to make a choice. Which is more important: adherence to nonsensical rules or not contradicting reality? The FKR player / DM would say not contradicting reality or the fiction of the game. Rules be damned.

Just because there are rules systems doesn't mean that a GM can't come up with something not specifically codified for a specific situation.

Right. So since you trust the DM enough to come up with some rules, why not trust the DM to come up with the other rules? I mean, you already trust them enough to not say "rocks fall, everyone dies" so why not trust them to be fair with making the rules. Again, you already trust them to do this?

However, I would agree there are likely easier ways for a system to be both visible and flexible enough to be applied in a variety of ways.

System doesn't need to be visible. Players want it to be visible. Those are not the same. Besides, "roll 2d6, higher is better; use opposed rolls when appropriate" is perfectly visible and flexible. So why do we need anything more complex than that?

Sure, this is the big benefit that would seem to be offered by FKR. But I think it's also one offered by some OSR games and some narrative games and even, as I just displayed up above, D&D 5e.

Not really.

This isn't absent in other games. I agree with you that it could be a problem, but I think it can be addressed in other ways than simply removing awareness of the rules.

Ockham's razor. The simplest solution is the best one. It's simpler to obscure the rules from the players. It's also really freeing as a DM. You should try it. You can run whatever rules you want, you don't have to worry about whether the system is popular or not, or whether the players have bought in or could even understand the system...it doesn't even need to exist in a language the players can read. It's infinitely easier to tell the players to roll the appropriate dice when they need to rather than explain the hodgepodge mess of house rules and variants you're using to get the style of game you want to play.

I don't know if I entirely agree with that verbatim, but I don't know the context of the original quote. I think Blades is very much a fiction first game. However, when it was designed, I do think that there were elements of the world that were crafted to push play in certain ways, and to let groups decide exactly how things work for themselves. Kind of a simultaneous design of rules and setting more than one coming before the other.

I haven't played or read much of BITD, so I wouldn't know. I do know enough about FKR to say that the opposite is certainly true of the FKR. Play worlds, not rules.

 

[chaochou]

OSR games also rely on GM adjudication and are explicitly a reaction against trad play. In an OSR game, the dm can design a scenario (like a dungeon), but has no pre-conceived idea of how the players will navigate it. The players, meanwhile, are not limited to the abilities on their character sheet, but by "tactical infinity" in John Ross' term. The rulings that the dm has to make are in reaction to players trying something out of the box.

The term 'adjudication' is used here, but I think you mean 'invention' The GM invents stuff.

In the original Free Kriegspiel, the referee used their own battle experience to determine how far troops might move, how quickly guns might unlimber, which troops might deploy into line and how far from the enemy. Which might need to form square on their own initiative. These were adjudications based on actual experience.

What actual experience is in play when we need to know how far through a mapped dungeon the sound travels when my flying character hammers a piton into the ceiling? What actual experience is in play to determine what comes to investigate the noise, in what numbers, how quickly, how aggressively?

The answer is none. There's no reference to real experience, there's no basis in fact, or deliberation. Providing answers is just making stuff up, invention, authorship.

Privileging only the GM to do this is what pretty much every D&D game and D&D clone has done since 1974. I don't see the need to give it a new - and fundamentally inaccurate - name.