System matters and free kriegsspiel

[overgeeked]

I'm asking specifically about Cthulhu Dark and about the bit where if a PC engages a mythos creature, that PC will die. Is this something the players are aware of? Or is it something that they are not aware of?

If they've read the rules, they'd be aware of it. If they've read much Cthulhu Mythos fiction, they'd be aware of it.

To me, this is a rule that lets the players know what kind of fiction this will be. It's not pulpy adventure cthulhu or Delta Green where there may be some manner of victory at times.

Exactly. But it's also something that can be picked up on from reading the Cthulhu Mythos stories. It's codified in Cthulhu Dark simply to make the point plain.

FKR ethos, as it seems to be presented, may advocate for removing this codified rule from the game, and instead relying on the GM to make that call.

Not at all. FKR is about minimalist rules, but what rules do exist should support the fiction. So it's a perfectly valid rule to have. You're conflating my preference for players not having knowledge of the rules with what FKR presents. They're not the same, but to me, the logical conclusion of FKR ethos is that the rules should be entirely DM-facing. But that's not something written in stone.

But I have read many of the pages linked in your initial post, and also some of those further linked in those pages. Some I agree with....or if not agree then I can at least understand why they might be appealing. Others I don't agree with. Doesn't mean anyone is wrong. I find the general idea of "play worlds, not rules" to be a good one. But it's coupled so strongly with limiting player awareness and engagement of the rules, which I don't like.

That's due to the tendency of gamers to focus on the rules. So you will inevitably come to a point where the player has to pick between the rules and the fiction. Gamers being gamers, that will come sooner rather than later and they will inevitably pick the rules over the world. Again, the article and video I linked about gamers optimizing the fun out of games. The overlap between video game players and RPG players is significant. The total fan base of RPGs is a rounding error for video games, so I'm more than happy deferring to the data they've collected.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'm asking specifically about Cthulhu Dark and about the bit where if a PC engages a mythos creature, that PC will die. Is this something the players are aware of? Or is it something that they are not aware of?

To me, this is a rule that lets the players know what kind of fiction this will be. It's not pulpy adventure cthulhu or Delta Green where there may be some manner of victory at times.

FKR ethos, as it seems to be presented, may advocate for removing this codified rule from the game, and instead relying on the GM to make that call.

Do you think Cthulhu Dark would work better if that was the case? I'm genuinely asking.

I've quoted the relevant portion of the rules to you- the game allows for different modes of play- you can do it a FKR-style, "DM decides" or as a collaborative-style, player-authoring the fiction.

I think it is unhelpful to ask if it works "better" one way or the other. Instead, it is more productive to look at what works best for the people you play with.

Some people prefer to explore the fiction through the use of "tactical infinity" and players solving problems by engaging the fiction; other prefer to have players in control of some authority and with the ability to have at least some shared control of the fiction. Whatever floats your boat!

Yes, well we're on page 8 of a discussion, and others have been involved and shared their thoughts. You'll forgive me if I don't limit my comments solely to your first post in the thread.

But I have read many of the pages linked in your initial post, and also some of those further linked in those pages. Some I agree with....or if not agree then I can at least understand why they might be appealing. Others I don't agree with. Doesn't mean anyone is wrong. I find the general idea of "play worlds, not rules" to be a good one. But it's coupled so strongly with limiting player awareness and engagement of the rules, which I don't like.

I think you might be misunderstanding two different ideas- I think that there is a preference in FKR for players engaging the fiction, not the rules. That's different that "hiding the ball." Simplified rulesets and "rules lite" means that the players don't have to worry about the rules, and gaming the system. Just the action declarations (for example) that make sense within the fiction.

But yes, if you are a fan of "engagement of the rule," then it's probably not the style of game for you. I don't think it's productive to look at simplified rules (such as 'combat kills you dead" in CD or "opposed 2d6 rolls" in DE) and view that as "player-facing rules meant for player engagement."

I mean, you could ... you can do anything you want! But I'm just not going to board that train with you.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If they've read the rules, they'd be aware of it. If they've read much Cthulhu Mythos fiction, they'd be aware of it.

I think that depends on what fiction, honestly.

Exactly. But it's also something that can be picked up on from reading the Cthulhu Mythos stories. It's codified in Cthulhu Dark simply to make the point plain.

Yes. This is my point. The rule enables understanding of the fiction rather than obscures it.

Not at all. FKR is about minimalist rules, but what rules do exist should support the fiction. So it's a perfectly valid rule to have. You're conflating my preference for players not having knowledge of the rules with what FKR presents. They're not the same, but to me, the logical conclusion of FKR ethos is that the rules should be entirely DM-facing. But that's not something written in stone.

Oh, I'm not taking anything as written in stone. I don't think that's even possible. I'm just discussing.

And I appreciate that making all rules to be GM-facing may be your preference, but I don't think you're alone in that. Having read through many of the links that have been shared, I've seen that sentiment come up enough.

That's due to the tendency of gamers to focus on the rules. So you will inevitably come to a point where the player has to pick between the rules and the fiction. Gamers being gamers, that will come sooner rather than later and they will inevitably pick the rules over the world. Again, the article and video I linked about gamers optimizing the fun out of games. The overlap between video game players and RPG players is significant. The total fan base of RPGs is a rounding error for video games, so I'm more than happy deferring to the data they've collected.

Oh, I don't disagree that it can happen. I just think there are other ways it can be addressed. But I understand what you're saying, for sure.

 

[overgeeked]

I think that depends on what fiction, honestly.

I tend to stick with HPL's stuff and ignore the rest. So that's my frame of reference. I'm not a fan of the pulp-action Cthulhu stuff or the modern guns & ammo versions of Cthulhu stories.

Yes. This is my point. The rule enables understanding of the fiction rather than obscures it.

Because of the kind of rule it is. It's a short, declarative if, then statement. There's no wiggle room. Nothing players can latch onto to try to fiddle with, bend, or break. "If you fight the monsters, you will die." It's a rule that informs the players of the kind of fiction the game will be about. That's wildly different than say...16 pages of skills and their use. Lists of skills vaguely point at the kind of game it will be. "If you fight the monsters, you will die" is very much an explicit "this is what the game is about" kind of rule. Most rules aren't that good, straightforward, and simple.

And I appreciate that making all rules to be GM-facing may be your preference, but I don't think you're alone in that. Having read through many of the links that have been shared, I've seen that sentiment come up enough.

Yeah. Like I said, I think it's a logical conclusion, but it's not core.

Oh, I don't disagree that it can happen.

I think that's where we disagree, then. In my experience it's inevitable. It's a foregone conclusion. This is supported by my nearly 40 years playing and running RPGs, along with the article and video I linked.

I just think there are other ways it can be addressed.

Gamers being gamers...they will inevitably exploit whatever system you put in front of them. No matter how absurd the action, how out of genre the action, or how utterly dumb the action...they will push. "Sure, you can fire an arrow into the sun from the surface of the earth if you roll six 100s in a row on 1d100." Insert "so you're telling me there's a chance" meme here.

The only ways to address it are to remove the temptation (i.e. remove the system from their side of the screen), remove the gamers (i.e. solo DM play), or to create a rules set so simple that it cannot be exploited (i.e. rules ultra-light games such as presented in Dark Empires or Over the Edge 3rd Edition or Cthulhu Dark).

 

[hawkeyefan]

I've quoted the relevant portion of the rules to you- the game allows for different modes of play- you can do it a FKR-style, "DM decides" or as a collaborative-style, player-authoring the fiction.

I think it is unhelpful to ask if it works "better" one way or the other. Instead, it is more productive to look at what works best for the people you play with.

Some people prefer to explore the fiction through the use of "tactical infinity" and players solving problems by engaging the fiction; other prefer to have players in control of some authority and with the ability to have at least some shared control of the fiction. Whatever floats your boat!

Yeah, I get it....I'm just asking you what floats your boat.

I think you might be misunderstanding two different ideas- I think that there is a preference in FKR for players engaging the fiction, not the rules. That's different that "hiding the ball."

Nope, I understand the distinction. But the two often go hand in hand. @overgeeked certainly seems to make that connection, and plenty of other folks seem to as well, based on the links you posted, and in other sources I've seen.

Simplified rulesets and "rules lite" means that the players don't have to worry about the rules, and gaming the system. Just the action declarations (for example) that make sense within the fiction.

But yes, if you are a fan of "engagement of the rule," then it's probably not the style of game for you. I don't think it's productive to look at simplified rules (such as 'combat kills you dead" in CD or "opposed 2d6 rolls" in DE) and view that as "player-facing rules meant for player engagement."

I'm not a fan of "engagement of the rule" so much as I like clear rules that enable play instead of complicate it. But at the same time, this totally depends on the rule and/or the game.

I was citing the "combat kills you dead" from Cthulhu Dark as an example of that. Here is a rule that does not limit a player's understanding of the fiction but rather it makes their understanding of it absolute. It's a rule, but it can't be gamed or subverted or applied in a way that conflicts with the fiction.

 

[pemerton]

the provocation of FKR is to say, wait, you are trying to play a peaky blinders game...why not just start and end there, at least on the player side.

Maybe because I don't want to play a game which is mostly finding out what the GM thinks about Peaky Blinders?

You're presenting the question as if it's an obviously rhetorical one, but why should it be? I mean, even the earliest OSR-ish versions of D&D have combat mechanics. They don't just start and end with the GM deciding whether or not the Orcs beat the PCs when they meet one another in the dungeon.

I'm not saying that there's anything inherently wrong with GM decides as a resolution method. But I think there are obvious reasons why people adopt other methods too. It's not that "GM decides" has never occurred to them!

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.

I think this is an oversimplification, and in oversimplifying it obscures.

For instance: what happens, in an OSR game, if a player has his/her PC pray for divine intervention? If the GM just decides whether or not the gods listen, we are in the same general territory as "rocks fall" - it's just GM storytelling. Which is fine, but doesn't seem all that OSR-ish. (And if the GM says that you can't just get help by praying, then "tactical infinity" is gone. Or to put it another way: it's all very well to tell players to play the fiction, but if only the GM truly knows the fiction, and is free to make it up in the moment of adjudication, then what are the players really playing. @chaochou and @Ovinomancer have both pushed this point.)

If the GM calls for a check, what should it be? How should it compare to the abilities of the cleric PCs?

Similar questions arise in other domains: should a MU with 18 STR have the same chance to plough through the phalanx with a charge as the fighter with 18 STR? Or does the fighter get to have their fighting ability matter?

These are the sorts of practical questions that have been at the forefront of D&D adjudication since 1974. Gygax made up answers, wrote some of them down, and published some of that in his AD&D rulebooks. His suite of answers perhaps wasn't the best - in particular the needless proliferation of baroque subsystems - but the reasons behind them are easy enough to see.

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.

I've played Cthulhu Dark. I have an active Classic Traveller campaign. These both seem to get mentioned as FKR games or FKR-adjacent games but neither of them uses "GM decides" as the main form of resolution.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I tend to stick with HPL's stuff and ignore the rest. So that's my frame of reference. I'm not a fan of the pulp-action Cthulhu stuff or the modern guns & ammo versions of Cthulhu stories.

I can't blame you there. I like some tangential stuff along the lines of like "Lovecraft Country" and the like, but as far as what I consider to be mythos and as it relates to what I'd expect an RPG to be, yeah, the original material is where it's at.

I only meant that not all will share that sentiment. Some folks may think they can or maybe even should engage with some of the mythos creatures....especially the ones that are smaller in scope than Cthulhu and the like.

Because of the kind of rule it is. It's a short, declarative if, then statement. There's no wiggle room. Nothing players can latch onto to try to fiddle with, bend, or break. "If you fight the monsters, you will die." It's a rule that informs the players of the kind of fiction the game will be about. That's wildly different than say...16 pages of skills and their use. Lists of skills vaguely point at the kind of game it will be. "If you fight the monsters, you will die" is very much an explicit "this is what the game is about" kind of rule. Most rules aren't that good, straightforward, and simple.

Yeah, it's very straightforward, which is why I like it. There's no doubt left for the player.

Now, it's not a rule that the players evoke or anything, so that's simpler to pull off, but even the core mechanic of Cthulhu Dark is easily understood and flexible. It is one that the players evoke and have to consider, but I don't know if you would say they could game it.

Yeah. Like I said, I think it's a logical conclusion, but it's not core.

I think that's where we disagree, then. In my experience it's inevitable. It's a foregone conclusion. This is supported by my nearly 40 years playing and running RPGs, along with the article and video I linked.

Gamers being gamers...they will inevitably exploit whatever system you put in front of them. No matter how absurd the action, how out of genre the action, or how utterly dumb the action...they will push. "Sure, you can fire an arrow into the sun from the surface of the earth if you roll six 100s in a row on 1d100." Insert "so you're telling me there's a chance" meme here.

The only ways to address it are to remove the temptation (i.e. remove the system from their side of the screen), remove the gamers (i.e. solo DM play), or to create a rules set so simple that it cannot be exploited (i.e. rules ultra-light games such as presented in Dark Empires or Over the Edge 3rd Edition or Cthulhu Dark).

I think how foregone a conclusion it may be will very much depend on the specific game/system and the specific group of players. Or perhaps I should say how problematic it may be will depend.

And you've listed three possible ways to address it (of which the third is the one I most prefer), but I think there are more.

 

[pemerton]

What do you guys think of Cthulhu Dark? It was included on one of the lists of games identified as FKR.

Have you played the game at all?

I've played it.

To take one element of the game, there's the bit where if you get into a confrontation with a mythos creature, you die. This was something that made my group pause, but I convinced them to try the game anyway.

I'm asking specifically about Cthulhu Dark and about the bit where if a PC engages a mythos creature, that PC will die. Is this something the players are aware of? Or is it something that they are not aware of?

I'm guessing I mentioned it when we played. I don't think it ever really came up. In one of our sessions an invisible shoggoth went past the PCs, and I think I described a rushing wind. But no one tried to fight it!

I don't see that rule as a big part of the system, so I'm struck that it gave your group pause.

I found it light enough that I think it qualifies as FKR in that sense. But I don’t think it makes any attempt to hide anything from the players.

I get that the core mechanic is light enough to be applied in a variety of ways....it works for just about any action declaration that a player may make for a character.....so in that sense, it feels like it fits into the idea of "play worlds, not rules". But the mechanics are entirely player facing, which seems against some of the comments posed in this thread.

Yeah, I don't see how to reconcile Cthulhu Dark with the idea that the GM decides based on experience, or the GM calls for a roll based on what they know about the setting.

The highest result in the pool tells us how well the PC did, and if a die was rolled for opposition, tells us whether or not the PC succeeded or failed. The GM doesn't get to set a target number or call for some boutique roll or anything like that. And as far as "playing worlds" is concerned, what counts as a sufficiently well-formed action declaration, and what range of consequences are permissible, are not discussed in the rulebook. The group has to bring that from some other RPGing experience. I used BW-style intent-and-task.

EDIT:

even the core mechanic of Cthulhu Dark is easily understood and flexible. It is one that the players evoke and have to consider, but I don't know if you would say they could game it.

I think how foregone a conclusion it may be will very much depend on the specific game/system and the specific group of players. Or perhaps I should say how problematic it may be will depend.

I don't even know what it would mean to "game" the Cthulhu Dark system.

Or what it would mean to "game" most of the RPGs I play, to be honest.

This is part of my puzzle with FKR. To the extent that it means fictional positioning is a necessary prerequisite to action declaration, then the only RPGing it seems to be in disagreement with is a certain sort of approach to D&D play that probably peaked during the 3E era.

 

[Malmuria]

For instance: what happens, in an OSR game, if a player has his/her PC pray for divine intervention? If the GM just decides whether or not the gods listen, we are in the same general territory as "rocks fall" - it's just GM storytelling. Which is fine, but doesn't seem all that OSR-ish. (And if the GM says that you can't just get help by praying, then "tactical infinity" is gone. Or to put it another way: it's all very well to tell players to play the fiction, but if only the GM truly knows the fiction, and is free to make it up in the moment of adjudication, then what are the players really playing. @chaochou and @Ovinomancer have both pushed this point.)

If the GM calls for a check, what should it be? How should it compare to the abilities of the cleric PCs?

Whatever point you are trying to make here, it would apply to any version of dnd. It's actually a quite good example of how rules fail, because it's something that cannot be resolved without a fair amount of gm adjudication and decision.

In 5e, it is resolved thusly:

"Divine Intervention​

Beginning at 10th level, you can call on your deity to intervene on your behalf when your need is great.

Imploring your deity's aid requires you to use your action. Describe the assistance you seek, and roll percentile dice. If you roll a number equal to or lower than your Cleric level, your deity intervenes. The DM chooses the Nature of the intervention; the Effect of any Cleric spell or Cleric domain spell would be appropriate. If your deity intervenes, you can't use this feature again for 7 days. Otherwise, you can use it again after you finish a Long Rest."

So the rules, instead of the gm, decide that you "can't just get help by praying" unless you are at least 10th level. Why is that better than the gm just making a reasonable decision and possibly allowing a roll, even at 1st level? Further, the rule here ultimately is that the "dm decides" what the intervention looks like.

If we are playing b/x, there is no specific rule related to divine intervention (at least that I can find in a quick search of my OSE books). As a gm, I might decide that a player has a 1% chance, and as gm, would still decide what that intervention looks like should it be successful. One can imagine a scenario in which a player says, "wait, that's not fair! It should be at least 5%." But if that's the hill your player is going to die on, then you do not have a high trust game. But maybe given the specific circumstance of the roll, it's not just the cleric calling out for intervention, but a cleric that is seeking to reclaim a temple of their god, overrun by undead. Maybe in that case the gm decides it's more than a 1% chance.

Do you really want a rule that says "divine intervention is a 1% chance, unless the cleric is in the midst of reclaiming a lost temple in which case it is 5%, and if they've done at least 10 good deeds over the previous month that increases to 11%..." and so on? To me, this seems like the exact situation that calls for "ruling not rules." The rules cannot cover every edge case.

 

[pemerton]

Whatever point you are trying to make here, it would apply to any version of dnd.

<snip>

So the rules, instead of the gm, decide that you "can't just get help by praying" unless you are at least 10th level.

Like you, I assume that the answer in 5e D&D is no, you can't successfully pray for divine intervention unless you're a cleric - because otherwise the cleric class ability would be pointless.

Conversely, in 4e D&D it might be the inclusion of Religion in a skill challenge. We saw that quite a bit in our game.

So I don't think my point applies to any version of D&D. That's why I expressly called out an OSR game. I also had in mind that Gygax's DMG has a rule that formalises the chance for divine intervention, and I can guess exactly where that rule came from! It's Gygax writing down some version of the procedure that he, or someone else he gamed with, came up with in order to resolve that sort of situation, which is highly forseeable in a fantasy game with active gods, especially among players who have read Elric stories.

Why is that better than the gm just making a reasonable decision and possibly allowing a roll, even at 1st level?

Well, as I posted upthread - I think in reply to you - I've got no view on whether it's better or worse. (As far as preferences go among versions of D&D, I prefer 4e.)

My point is what I posted:

I'm not saying that there's anything inherently wrong with GM decides as a resolution method. But I think there are obvious reasons why people adopt other methods too. It's not that "GM decides" has never occurred to them!

<snip discussions of various situations like divine intervention and charging through a line of soldiers>

These are the sorts of practical questions that have been at the forefront of D&D adjudication since 1974. Gygax made up answers, wrote some of them down, and published some of that in his AD&D rulebooks. His suite of answers perhaps wasn't the best - in particular the needless proliferation of baroque subsystems - but the reasons behind them are easy enough to see.

In other words, what explains the subsystem proliferation in Gygax's DMG is not just a fetish for rules! Is that the same situations come up, and he's worked out ideas for resolving them, and then he is sharing that with future GMs: it's like an extended, one-person OSR blog.

Consistently with my own preference for 4e among D&D versions, I think there are better ways to approach these issues than Gygax's. Of classic games my favourite is Classic Traveller, in part because I think it has a better suite of solutions to these issues.

If we are playing b/x, there is no specific rule related to divine intervention (at least that I can find in a quick search of my OSE books). As a gm, I might decide that a player has a 1% chance, and as gm, would still decide what that intervention looks like should it be successful. One can imagine a scenario in which a player says, "wait, that's not fair! It should be at least 5%." But if that's the hill your player is going to die on, then you do not have a high trust game.

I think trust here is an absolute red herring. Why is a player not entitled to die on that hill? - eg if they are playing a paladin who has been exemplary in honour and alignment and is on a holy mission that will fail unless the divinity intervenes here and now!

I mean, if you're playing B/X what hill do you think a player is more entitled to die on? That their MU PC is allowed to cast spells? That their fighter gets to roll a d8 for hit points? That the GM not have red dragons on the 1st level wandering monster charts?

I don't see why the divine intervention chance is a special case for any general principle of trust in the GM to make things up.

To me, this seems like the exact situation that calls for "ruling not rules." The rules cannot cover every edge case.

I don't see why divine intervention is any different from shooting an arrow at an Orc, or trying to get a good price on a bardiche from the local polearm shop.