System matters and free kriegsspiel

[Campbell]

Skilled use of fictional positioning is a very important to OSR play, but so is skill at playing the specific game (and fundamentally viewing it as a game to be played well). Most of the FKR material I have seen reminds me more of like the Amber Diceless crowd who largely do not seem to value the fact that they are playing a game. In fact the game of it all almost seems beneath their notice.

 

[overgeeked]

Skilled use of fictional positioning is a very important to OSR play, but so is skill at playing the specific game (and fundamentally viewing it as a game to be played well). Most of the FKR material I have seen reminds me more of like the Amber Diceless crowd who largely do not seem to value the fact that they are playing a game. In fact the game of it all almost seems beneath their notice.

In so far as the mechanics of the game don't accurately emulate the world, yes. FKR tends to reject mechanics that push or focus play away from emulating the world.

 

[overgeeked]

Not sure, though I get the sense that it's more an extension of certain aspects of the osr than a rejection of the osr. For example, extending "rulings not rules" such that that principle is the entire game.

Yeah. Another way to put it is the dichotomy of combat as war vs combat as sport. FKR takes that and turns it up to 11. The goal is to engage with the world, not the game's mechanics. If you want to make something easier, have your character do things that will stack the odds in their favor in the world...don't go hunting for +1s in the rulebook then decide to do all those things to get the +1s. If you want to pick a lock, tell the Referee and describe your character picking the lock. The Referee then makes a determination about whether it's auto success, auto failure, or needs a roll. And you move on from there.

Also, as I mentioned as some point, part of the OSR focuses a lot on rules and systems, even in the context of rules-lite games. Hence the endless number of retroclones that are house-ruled versions of b/x, or modern rules-lite games that have slightly different ways of handling inventory. This can inadvertently lead to a situation where players are looking to their character sheet for answers or GMs who spend time converting stat blocks, whereas the impulse of the osr was for players to focus on being in the world and for gms to present the world. Hence, play worlds not rules. That's my speculation. And for a lot of people (myself included) it's at the level of 'interesting thought experiment' at the moment.

For what it's worth, that sounds right to me.

 

[Numidius]

I don’t recall anyone answering a question that I had earlier. If they did, maybe it got lost in the shuffle, but…

What elements of OSR are dissatisfying to some prior OSR adherents such that FKR is seen as an improvement? Why migrate?

This year we wanted to play an old module and I picked up Lost caverns of Tsojcant. Didn't really care about 1e, so I chose OSE with the advanced options. Then it became a streamlining process from the procedures of B/X, to a loose framework of proficiency/advantage/stances dice added to D20 to beat TN, criticals on 1 and 20 even for casting spells, etc. After speaking to FKR bloggers, I opted for a Braunstein-like session and let players run the various NPC factions, monsters and personas, against each other. In the aftermath we returned to the PC party, and continued playing FKR style.
I made custom character sheets to suit that.

I frame scenes as encounters, not much of backstory, and improvise as we go as players declare actions and intentions, not really "map & key", so original procedures felt clunky and disconnected. I also prefer diegetic, fiction first narrations, and FKR relies on that, since numbers are gone. I can also push, put pressure, on players as I see fit; they can rebut, ultimately agree for partial success, success at a cost, or fail forward, without adhering to rules, numbers, or adding meta stuff to achieve that.
Pacing, also, it's up to us, if we want to describe blow by blow, talk entire conversations, or resolve quickly a conflict with an opposed roll.

At the moment it is working just fine. Players who used to argue with me about rules or rulings, now they argue about the fiction, instead, and I'm fine. From game stoppers, they became game movers.