System matters and free kriegsspiel

[pemerton]

Cthulhu Dark predates FKR, yet the lite version perfectly encapsulates what an FKR game is, and is frequently mentioned by the handful of people into FKR. And, of course, you had people here dispute that it was an FKR game, because reasons. Which is weird.

Upthread I posted this:

Is Cthuhu Dark a FKR game?

And got no reply.

I've asked whether Wuthering Heights would count as FKR. And likewise have had no reply. I've talked at some length about Classic Traveller, with reference to Christopher Kubasik's location of it within a free kriegsspiel tradition, and have had no response except technical discussion of Traveller editions from a fellow Traveller enthusiast.

This is making it hard for me to orient myself in the conversation, because every time I mention a play experience of mine that looks like it might overlap with the FKR space, I either get told I don't understand FKR, or get no reply.

I'll try again. Here are a series of posts I made last year about a freeform murder mystery that I ran for my family:

A few weeks ago I ran a session like this for my family - one of my daughters wanted to do a murder mystery for her birthday.

I adapted a murder scenario from an old Traveller module, and wrote up some characters (one for each other family member, plus a couple for their entourages, plus a small number of important NPCs whom I played). There was no action resolution in any mechanical sense - the players described what their PCs were doing, and who they were talking to, and I delivered up information as seemed appropriate (eg what they found if they searched a stateroom; what a NPC said if they spoke to him/her; etc).

This is an example of puzzle-solving: the players' goal is to acquire enough information to be able to infer to the hidden bit of my notes (ie whodunnit). It is a different experience from watching an episode of Death in Paradise or The Mentalist, as there is the first-person description element to it. But it doesn't really involve very much more agency.

(One difference from those shows is that they are scripted to try and occlude the audience's access to the relevant information, whereas in our murder mystery I was desperately trying to shovel information out the door. A better comparison might be to reading The Eleventh Hour.)

This was a GM-driven experience. The players' contributions were entirely saying where their PCs went (inside a starship where I as GM had already decided what the floorplan was, what - of interest - was in each stateroom, etc) and speaking as their characters.

We didn't use any mechanics. Predominantly physical actions were resolved via description with me saying yes to the task performed (I return from the Starlight Lounge to my stateroom; I look in the cupboard) and then just describing the upshot (OK, you're in your room; You see that in the cupboard there are two of each set of clothes).

Talking to NPCs happened by the players speaking to me in character, and me deciding what the NPC said in reply and then saying it. For scene-setting this was fine. When it came to interrogation of a key NPC I felt the weakness of this approach. The NPC in question was part of the conspiracy to murder, but the players hadn't worked this out and I wasn't going to have her just confess (thus defusing the mystery and ending the scenario). I am not a terribly good actor, and so performing evasiveness to some appropriate degree was not too easy.

The whole experience was fun enough, but it certainly didn't involve very much player agency! And for me it drew my attention to the limits of GM decides and narrates social interaction.

I ran a freeform murder mystery for my daughter's birthday last year. The answer was pre-authored by me. The setting was a spaceship in jump-space, so like an "Orient Express" or isolated mansion whodunnit - and reinforced by my framing - there were a finite number of suspects in a finite space. (Though the actual solution cheated a little bit in this respect, it was within fair parameters I think.)

The actual play consisted of (i) the set-up, letting the players get the hang of their characters and meeting the NPCs (including the victim) and then (ii) the investigation. This was all just "poking around" Poirot-style.

I think it counted as a game. And it was a RPG - there was shared fiction and the players had their own characters to play, each of which has a motive to be the killer and thus establishing a possible red-herring for the other players (there was no promise in advance that the killer was a NPC; and two of the player positions included associated and also suspect NPCs).

Where it differed from what you (@Campbell) describe in your post was that there were no real stakes, and no player agency over the shared fiction. It was entirely exploration of a situation established, adjudicated and developed by me as referee.

I think that's a fairly full description of what I did. Is it anything like FKR?

Seemingly unrelated, but relevant, question. Does Marvel Heroic have a character creation system?

Yes. It's found on pages OM110 to OM114. Here's the last two posts of mine I can find discussing this:

It's very straightforward to make PCs for Marvel Heroic. I wrote up two (for my kids) in about 10 minutes each yesterday. I've designed characters using the same system for fantasy RPGing too.

You just work out what the character is able to do, and assign appropriate traits and abilities.

I've played quite a bit of MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, and built characters for it. The only balance concerns I've had, and they certainly weren't enough to break the game, were Wolverine being perhaps a little too good in a straightforward supers game, and Gandalf being perhaps a little too good in my LotR game.

I'm also pretty familiar with RPGs that use free descriptors for PC building (Over the Edge; Maelstrom Storytelling/Story Bones; HeroWars/Quest; Cthulhu Dark; the background system in 13th Age; just to name a few).

Is OtE an example of proto-FKR?

 

[innerdude]

In Illusionist play the player choices have no influence on the outcomes, which are pre-determined. I think you're saying you suspect your GM is doing this?

I refer to it as "principled illusionism" in the sense that the GM at least gives some thought to the player inputs and resulting outputs, compares it against the fiction state, and then resolves the action declaration . . . but would it matter either way?

There's a million ways an FKR GM / GM of Exceptional Force could modify the player inputs and/or resulting outputs to fit what they prefer without ever revealing the thought process or constraints to the player.

There's a mountain of "hidden backstory" in our current Tiny Frontiers game that only the GM is privy to. How much of that is influencing each and every action declaration and throw of the dice? I have know way of knowing. It's pure illusionism, but I can only hope it's principled.

 

[pemerton]

They're resolved the same as any other game. As we've said. A dozen times.

Huh? There are many different ways for the GM to decide the content of the fiction.

Just to set out some of them:

In the freeform murder mystery I just posted about upthread, I as GM wrote all the backstory in advance, and used that to support the framing, so that the players could solve the mystery.

When GMing Burning Wheel, some of the most important decisions about backstory are made by the players in the build of their PCs, and I as GM am expected to have regard to those matters in framing.

When I've run Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights I've started the game by asking the players what their PCs are doing and where they are, and have woven those answers together to get the action going.

Which of the above is FKR-ish, if any?

 

[pemerton]

One interesting note, is that the Wuthering Heights game that @pemerton has linked to and recommended appears to be a recreation of the game the Bronte siblings played, using the rules from an 18thc French game that they probably had access to. But afaik, we don't know for sure what, if any, rules the siblings used for their "game." It appears to be some part collaborative worldbuilding, and then telling stories and inhabiting characters within that world. Whatever it is, it sounds like great fun!]

I don't think this is correct; but the author of Rene/Wuthering Heights sometimes posts on these boards - @Philippe Tromeur1 - and so may be able to clarify.

I think that the only well-known game with a system similar to Wuthering Heights is Pendragon (Traits and Passions) but Wuthering Heights takes it further. And, most importantly, requires that every PC have something which flutters in the breeze!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Upthread I posted this:

And got no reply.

I've asked whether Wuthering Heights would count as FKR.

I apologize- I thought my position was clear!

While I am not the defender of FKR purity, just a dabbler in the form for now, I would say yes, CD (esp. the lite pdf) most certainly is.

Wuthering Heights (at least, the version I downloaded and checked out) would be a closer call. But arguably has too many mechanics. Again, FKR’s boundaries are nebulous, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. It‘s not a hot dog nor a sandwich, but more of a taco-wrap.

 

[pemerton]

My investment in FKR over the few threads we've had on it recently amounts to, "hey, I found this blog post with some interesting and provocative ideas." I'm experiencing the collective response to be something like, "No! That blog post is objectively uninteresting!!

I spend much of my time on ENworld responding to posts that tell me that my RPGing either doesn't exist (because non-GM-driven play is impossible; because it was impossible that anyone might have enjoyed 4e D&D as a fiction-first, "story now" RPG; that Apocalypse World can't be used to play a mystery) or is irrelevant (because it does not turn up on the Roll20 stats or the ICv2 sales charts).

Then I encounter some posts telling me that my RPG life will be changed if only I lean into Cthulhu Dark - a game which as far as I know I was the first on these boards to play and to post about.

I have read a number of FKR blogs, forums etc, and am trying to locate them within the framework of RPGs I'm familiar with. For instance, is Risus a FKR game? I have a version (Risus15) that I downloaded in 2006. It is - as is openly acknowledged - heavily derivative of Over the Edge, though it uses a different (death spiral) framework for conflict resolution (which is actually not too dissimilar to Prince Valiant, although that game is not noted as an influence).

What is not really discussed in Risus, and what I don't see discussed on the FKR blogs, are principles to determine consequence narration and how that then feeds into subsequent framing. (Cthulhu Dark does not really have this either. When I've run it, I use BW-style Intent and Task and Let it Ride.) I don't think attention to these things is especially precious or outrageous.

 

[pemerton]

I guess I could as, is Prince Valiant FKR? Or FKR-adjacent?

 

[hawkeyefan]

No, but they are telling us what our options for resolving them are. Is Batman going to get Catwoman to permanently give up crime? Nope. Never happen. Is Batman going to convince the Joker to not murder people? Nope. Never happen.

Sure, the previous fiction informs the situation and offers potential outcomes. It doesn’t decide the outcome.

“Never happen” seems like a bad way to play a game! We’re not trying to perpetuate a status quo to maintain a profitable IP. We’re trying to playa game and see what happens.

You're putting the tension in the wrong spot to make a point. The tension in those scenes isn't whether Catwoman will go straight or whether Joker drops the chemicals. It's how long she'll be straight, what kind of team ups she and Batman have in the mean time, and what will finally make her go back on her word and start stealing again. It's in how Batman manages to save the people from death despite the Joker devising a super devious but utterly insane death trap.

I don’t think it’s a matter of the tension being misplaced. But it all depends on what the fictional positioning is; the point at which the GM says “what do you do?”

I know you hate it, but it depends on the fiction. If Batman says the right things, Catwoman will go straight for a time. No roll required. And no matter what Batman says, Joker will always drop the chemicals. No roll required. Batman only talks to Joker to stall and to hear the jokes to try on Alfred back home.

These all seem like the GM deciding. Why? No roll required doesn’t sound like a game to me. This is my area of concern when it comes to not having a known resolution system in place, which the players can rely on.

Maybe the GM thinks something’s a foregone conclusion, but a player thinks there’s a chance one way or the other.

For me, that’s what rules and processes are for. So that players can make informed decisions rather than trying to read the GM’s take on things.

Generally the Referee. Some FKR games have shared authority but most are strong Referee authority.

Right, this is the actual answer. The fiction cannot decide anything, it can only inform the decision. The GM decides. He decides if something is impossible, or if it’s trivial, or of we need to use dice (or whatever randomization method) to determine the outcome. This isn’t true of all FKR games, I imagine….I saw a couple that didn’t function this way. But it seems a common default.

Could we change that to the players deciding? What happens then?

 

[pemerton]

While I am not the defender of FKR purity, just a dabbler in the form for now, I would say yes, CD (esp. the lite pdf) most certainly is.

OK. As per my post not far upthread, you can see that I think Cthulhu Dark is not a complete system. It's close, but it doesn't specify what principles govern how consequences are to be determined, nor how binding they are. I think if someone was using it to run a CoC module that wouldn't matter, because the module structure would do all the heavy lifting.

When using it to play more freeform/improv, as I have, then principles of this sort are needed. As I said, I just used Burning Wheel intent+task and Let it Ride. Those are very portable principles for a lot of RPGing, in my view. (Not universal, though. Apocalypse World uses different ones.)

 

[pemerton]

These all seem like the GM deciding. Why? No roll required doesn’t sound like a game to me. This is my area of concern when it comes to not having a known resolution system in place, which the players can rely on.

Maybe the GM thinks something’s a foregone conclusion, but a player thinks there’s a chance one way or the other.

This relates to @S'mon's post upthread about running the Congress of Vienna via freeform RP.

When I ran my freeform murder mystery last year, I adjudicated the NPCs freeform. But they were either mere ciphers (the steward, the captain) or were plot devices (the NPC who was murdered) or were antagonists with fairly clear (pre-defined by me) backstories and character traits that suggested natural pathways to answer the sorts of questions that would be posed during interrogation by the PCs.

Had things gone sideways - eg the PCs started using threats against family members, or torture or the threat thereof - then the game would have fallen apart, as I had no resources in my GM notes to respond to that sort of thing.

Likewise there was no scope, in the scenario as written by me, for an antagonist NPC to fall in love with a PC and confess, hoping they would be reunited once a prison term was served.

When should there be a chance, one way or the other? That in itself is a question of game design.