System matters and free kriegsspiel

[Aldarc]

Realistic as in Not Pulpy.

I'm not sure if that really helps clarify matters. Also, I don't necessarily why "realism" is something that one would want out of a Cthulhu story. I may as well not be playing a Cthulhu Mythos story at all. If you're playing "worlds not rules," then wouldn't the "world" be the one of the Cthulhu genre?

Ok, then Don't have time is implausible, maybe Don't want to explain them for whatever reason?

See above

Imagine if there was a scenario with a bunch of leading questions where the only plausible answer points to FKR.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Byzantine No, I just meant that sometimes things are just easier done than discussed.

I'm pretty confident that anyone of you folks could Gm such a game easily, in a principled manner with satisfactory results.

I would not, because I do not believe I can do this in a principled manner that provides actual agency for the players. If I wanted to tell them my story, and have them cosplay in it, then, yes, I can do this. I don't find this interesting, though, as there's no game.

I find it very interesting that FKR has managed to wrap around to nearly pure storygame play, just with a single authority rather than conch-passing or roll-for-authority mechanics.

 

[chaochou]

Let's say I'd like to partecipate in a game of shared trust of yours, and you run it tonight for me and some new folk.
You don't have time to prep before, nor to explain rulesets at the table.
Would you run it extemporarily, freeform, free kriegsspiel, Gm-decides, whatever rule you see fit in the moment, aware of your experience and sensibility?

I've run Apocalypse World like this, at a gaming club, with a group I didn't know well and who had never played it (or anything like it - this was in 2010-11, when AW was newly published so before PbtA was a thing).

And we did it how the book says to do it, except we started with joint setting creation. So I encouraged everyone to come up with a vision of post-Apocalyptic life, and then we all talked about what it might look like and where might be good to base our game, and they decided on a sort of gas station, truck stop, service station on a freeway in a generic USA.

So then we added things to a map, everyone getting two or three chances to create stuff in the area around the hardhold and I prompted with questions like 'That's cool, so do you know what's out there at Twisted Pipe?' and then I gave a rundown of the playbook archetypes we did character creation for an Operator, Battlebabe and Savvyhead, did Hx and started following the characters around just like in the book.

 

[Aldarc]

I find it very interesting that FKR has managed to wrap around to nearly pure storygame play, just with a single authority rather than conch-passing or roll-for-authority mechanics.

There may be FKR games with conch-passing and roll-for-authority mechanics. I suspect one issue is that a lot of the FKR is primarily OSR-flavored in its present trajectory. It's presented as a fork in the OSR, and with the OP article, for example, that was FKR as presented and framed by Ben Milton. But when one looks at some of the games or game creators that the FKR movement are inspired by (e.g., John Ross of Risus RPG), it's hard to imagine that these would be labeled as OSR games.

 

[Ovinomancer]

There may be FKR games with conch-passing and roll-for-authority mechanics. I suspect one issue is that a lot of the FKR is primarily OSR-flavored in its present trajectory. It's presented as a fork in the OSR, and with the OP article, for example, that was FKR as presented and framed by Ben Milton. But when one looks at some of the games or game creators that the FKR movement are inspired by (e.g., John Ross of Risus RPG), it's hard to imagine that these would be labeled as OSR games.

To be blunt, it seems like it's a movement to formalize the idea that the GM should just do whatever they want and feel they need to create a 'game,' which has been around for ages, although usually not in positive contexts. The "high trust" moniker especially seems to be claiming that rules known to players and expected to be used is a trust issue (it's not) and that better play can occur if you have more trust. This last is likely true, but the way to do that isn't obviously to get rid of rules and insist on faith in the GM. That doesn't seem "high trust" to me, it seems a leap of faith.

 

[pemerton]

I will admit that I am skeptical with the claim that "FKR uses table-centric design" when it also claims "FKR prioritizes invisible rulebooks over visible rulebooks," especially when in conjunction with the holistic perspective of the GM or players' role in the game. As such, "FKR uses table-centric design" may as well mean that it uses "GM-centric design." They may as well call FKR "the ultimate expression of the Cult of Rule 0 design."

Plus what is really meant by "The rules are the servant, not the master of the game"? From what I can tell, the players are switching one master for another: i.e., the rules for the GM.

An Autocrat is more efficient at governing than a Republic or a Democracy. The laws are kept minimal and are entirely invisible. The citizens should not need to know the laws to immerse themselves in their daily living. The citizens should trust their Autocratic leader to make consistent rulings. It's a high trust system of governance.

This is not to cast aspersions on the DIY attitude of the hobby. I think that DIY is great. But I also don't think that this DIY or "high trust" attitude is somehow fundamentally at odds with the rest of the hobby that FKR seemingly frames as antithetical to its own perspective.

It's interesting how this language of government vs individuality keeps finding its way into our discussions of RPGing: authoritarianism, autocracy, democracy, agency, entitlement, etc.(And not just in your post: just upthread in @chaochou's; and many many other posts and threads over the years.) One the one hand, I think there is a big difference between the two contexts; on the other hand, in RPGing we are talking about a (small) group of people trying to create and achieve something collectively, and so I guess this convergence of words and ideas is no surprise. And it marks a difference from, eg, boardgames, which involve collective activity but not that element of collectively agreeing on something to be created (ie the shared fiction). Once we decide which boardgame to play, we're back in a realm of individual decision-making in accordance with the agreed framework - or if some move in the game requires a vote or a consensus, then we would expect the game rules to specify a procedure. Whereas in RPGing the need to establish and maintain and develop the shared conception of the fiction is there at every moment. (Cue pointing to Vincent Baker on RPGing as negotiated imagination.)

Having got that of my chest: that language of rules as "servant, not master" has been around for a long time, and my impression of it is as a reaction to 3E D&D. (I don't ever recall seeing it said about RQ or RM, for instance.) It seems in particular to be a reaction to the fact that, in 3E D&D, fictional positioning frequently plays little or even no role in action resolution, at least once the most basic of framing has taken place, be that overt framing - You meet an angry Orc; cue Diplomancy - or covert framing - The GM's secret notes record the presence of a trap in the place they've just described; the players declare they check for a trap; cue find trap check followed by a check to disable it.

The unexpressed premise of much of the FKR advocacy I've read appears to be that the only way to recover fictional positioning is to hand most or all resolution authority to the GM. If that premise was revised to one way rather than the only way, then I think the rest of it might make a bit more sense.

It's the causal assumption regarding (1) the interaction between realism and rules, (2) that realism should be the "ultimate good" of roleplaying, and (3) giving the DM a lot of authority as the rules is the best way to achieve that. This is again not to mention the final assumption that "a human being is better able to adjudicate a complex situation than an abstract ruleset" or the implication that faster is better.

<snip>

I am curious whether there are two principles that are potentially at odds in this as well: the goal to "increase realism" with "play worlds not rules." Realism and world/genre simulation are not necessarily equivalent. How does one "increase realism" if one were playing the world of Marvel Superheroes?

I find the "worlds not rules" a bit frustrating in the way that it seems to toggle between "genre" and "realism" depending on the current focus of discussion. I think both create easily identifiable risks to "trust": with genre, it's often not clear what the apt outcome is - eg Greg Stafford tells us that character death is typically not important in Prince Valiant play, but he also says that a fall from the highest towers of Camelot will kill anyone. He further treats that outcome as a matter of GM fiat - in Prince Valiant all injury, recovery and death is a matter of GM decision-making, which I guess makes me an ur-FKR!. But his rulebook is full of advice (some better than others) on how to manage conflicts of expectation between players and GM. It does not have the same stridency as the FKR material seems to.

As far as realism is concerned, I reiterate what I said upthread; the relevant principle, then, should not be player-directed - trust that your GM is knowledgeable and fair - but rather GM-directed - be knowledgeable and fair! I like @Manbearcat's suggestions about how to frame advice for the pooling of table expertise. And I think it may have been earlier in this thread that I talked about pulling out an old copy of the Flash, if that would be necessary to adjudicate super-speed in a DC Heroes game.

I don't think that less rules or more rules necessarily says anything about how much players can do. That seems like a somewhat shallow understanding of rules. It says nothing about the content of the rules, what the rules that are present achieve, or how they go about doing that.

<snip>

I'm also skeptical of the claims of "tactical infinity" depending on the nature of the dice resolution system and the fact that so much of this rests on the whims of the GM, particularly when in conjunction with the underlying play principle that the minimalist design is being done to "increase realism." So the "tactical infinity" seems bound to the GM's idiomatic sense of reality.

Yes on both points. As I said above, I think the FKR critique of rules appears to be directed at one particular ruleset, namely, 3E D&D. There are criticism to be made of (eg) Rolemaster's rules, but a lack of tactical infinity is not one of them. And my question upthread about how to adjudicate a prayer for divine intervention was intended to illustrate that realism (as mediated through the GM's sense of it) does not necessarily provide easy answers to all adjudication questions.

 

[Fenris-77]

I do love me some @pemerton when he's on a roll. Preach it brother.

 

[pemerton]

My goal, reached running a realistic Cthulhian campaign, but still work in progress in my OSR, is to have exactly the above kind of exchange at the table, without any rule or dice roll (ok, maybe one at the end sometimes).

I guess I wonder how you, as GM, decide whether or not the first blow from the axe kills the sleeping PC.

Let's say I'd like to partecipate in a game of shared trust of yours, and you run it tonight for me and some new folk.
You don't have time to prep before, nor to explain rulesets at the table.
Would you run it extemporarily, freeform, free kriegsspiel, Gm-decides, whatever rule you see fit in the moment, aware of your experience and sensibility?

Well, in real life when this has happened I've used the rules and explained or just applied them as we go along: I'm thinking of Cthulhu Dark, Wuthering Heights, The Green Knight, Agon 2nd ed and Classic Traveller.

I also thought of, in principle, AW as a possibility - and then read @chaochou's post above which confirmed that.

Cthulhu Dark, The Green Knight, Agon and Wuthering Heights are so simple that it doesn't take experienced RPGers long to work out the rules and adapt to them. Classic Traveller less so, however - my self-copied/edited version (which incorporates basically all of Books 1 through 7, plus Supplement 4, with the exception of a few skills that I think are redundant ant the complex PC gen systems of Books 4 through 7, plus a few rules of my own adapted from White Dwarf, MegaTraveller, or my own crazed imagination) runs to 98 two-column pages. When I call for checks, I generally explain how I am arriving at the throw required, but at least one player regularly says that he never understands why the target number is what it is - but he throws nevertheless and the fiction proceeds as a result.

For my part, I feel that my ruleset does what Marc Miller says is an important part of its job (and in this respect I think he anticipates by over 30 years what Luke Crane says in his Adventure Burner about the setting of obstacles): it creates the consistent feel of the imagined world by establishing a consistent set of obstacles - both when checks are called for, and what the difficulties are. If this is a manifestation of FKR ethos, then I have to say I think Miller and Crane have articulated it more clearly.

 

[aramis erak]

What sort of game are you playing? Exploration/puzzle-oriented? Is there much conflict resolution?

In his blog, Christopher Kubasik points to some "free kriegssspiel" aspects of Classic Traveller combat resolution:

Following up on Omer Joel’s excellent post about Complexity Creep, Modifier Creep, and Scale Creep, I had some thoughts about Classic Traveller’s very (very) abstract personal combat system and its place in roleplaying game design at the time of its release in 1977. . . .​

​

As with the 1981 edition, it has range bands. What you might not know is in the 1977 edition doesn’t translate the range bands into meters. That is, it’s really abstract.​

​

​

And Kubasik is wrong on that point. Which tends to drop his credibility severely.

CT 77 Bk 1 p 28 has...

For reference purposes, the distance equivalents of the ranges given are:

Close— in physical contact; touching.
Short— at sword or polearm point, 1 to 5 meters.
Medium— at pistol range, 6 to 50 meters.
Long— at rifle range, 51 to 250 meters.
Very Long— at extreme range, 251 to 500 meters.

Note that, like FFG Star Wars, the movement rules are in fact more abstract, as the band width does NOT correlate well to the ranges listed. But Kubasik ignores one in
favor of the other, rather than being intellectually honest and pointing out the discontinuity. And people have pointed it out to him in the past.

The range bands used in movement are...
Close: same movement band (range 0)
Short: adjacent movement band (range 1)
Medium 2-5 bands
Long 6-9 bands
VLong 10-14
Distant 15+
Walking gets 1 movement band/turn, running 2. (Some animals up to 4)

Note that the proportions are not the same. This leads the literal minded to reject the game as broken, not see it as an opportunity, If I'd been confronted with CT-77, instead of CT-81, I'd have quit Traveller within the year...

Marc rationalized it to 25m movement bands in 2E... but the CT character-scale games with grids (AHL and Snapshot) use 1.5m grids...

 

[Numidius]

Re: Axes in the Night, how comes the PC is not killed in that example? because the player says it...

Imagine a back and forth conversational combat/conflict like Dogs, but without dice. Simple as that.
Genre enforcing/situation clarifying discussions instead of mechanics, and if a partecipant at the table raises a brow, revise a bit the declaration.

Gm still has tools to adjudicate, like basic Gumshoe resolution of D6 roll high and skill points expenditure, but after some time them were needed less and less.

So I fostered point spending towards players content introduction.
Not to change the backstory, the whoddunnit, anyway.

Realistic like: This is not Indiana Jones, if you fire a gun and start a firefight consequences will ensue, not only combat related, but political in town (because Premise of scenario)