D&D General FKR: How Fewer Rules Can Make D&D Better

[el-remmen]

a normal game [of Diplomacy] is 8-12 hours long.

Whoa! I admittedly I have only ever played Diplomacy at cons and with strangers, but I never played a game that lasted more than 3 or 4 hours! Maybe there was a time limit applied to turns? I don't remember. But I never thought of Diplomacy as being as long as a game like Axis & Allies (of which I have played 14 hour games).

 

[Mannahnin]

As I stated above, I've tried a few very-low-rules games and they're okay but it's not something I want longer term. But then I was thinking it over and realized that's not quite right either, at least not for me. I would have no idea how to run D&D-style-adjacent combat in an FKR game. It seems like it would devolve into "I swing my sword and chop your head off" followed by "I shield it" and then "You can't keep doing that, there has to be a limit!"

...

Does social and exploration tiers occasionally calling for a skill check mean it doesn't qualify for FKR? If I'm using the DMG as an example, I can ask for rolls for pretty much everything or just go by descriptions. But it's still always going to be a game of make-believe with the DM interacting with the players. In any case, I'm not sure I care much but one of the aspects of D&D I enjoy is the mix. Fairly, but not completely, rules restrained combat system. A fairly, but not necessarily completely unrestrained depending on group preference, open social and exploration systems.

And I think that's super common. I suppose one of the virtues of experimenting with FKR is figuring out to what extent you can treat stuff like combat and danger the way you normally treat social and exploration parts of the game. And whether it can be satisfying and liberating to do so. If the players and GM can get sufficiently on the same page, combat ideally could become as immersive as social roleplay often is. No enforced pause to roll and organize initiative, for example. Instead DM narrating with the same flow and sense of urgency as whatever prompted the situation to come to blows in the first place.

Since you've got a designated GM thankfully it can't come down to "I swing my sword and chop your head off" followed by "I shield it" and then "You can't keep doing that, there has to be a limit!" Someone's been entrusted to be the arbiter and narrator. And it's not competitive like our childhood cops & robbers games.

Ben at Mazirian's garden was riffing on some more abstracted simple mechanics for combat a couple of years back. These are still no doubt more formalized and structured than you'd use in FKR, but I think are getting closer.

Injury and the Abstract Combat Round

Let me give a natural description of how combat works in D&D. Each person gets to make (at least one) to hit roll against an enemy per rou...

maziriansgarden.blogspot.com

Maybe I lost the thread here. Is this really about them being "necessary", or just about them being convenient and useful for the job?

I think Bacon Bits was challenging the assumption that they are necessary, or one of only two options. You can see in Overgeeked's responses that he was conceptualizing it as the only two options being "dice" or "GM decides". Which is a totally understandable position to take based on most of our experience with D&D. But Amber Diceless is a counterexample.

 

[Mannahnin]

Whoa! I admittedly I have only ever played Diplomacy at cons and with strangers, but I never played a game that lasted more than 3 or 4 hours! Maybe there was a time limit applied to turns? I don't remember. But I never thought of Diplomacy as being as long as a game like Axis & Allies (of which I have played 14 hour games).

Yeah, I'm sure there are tighter turn/negotiation phase time limits at cons. The first time I remember playing it was like 35 years ago, as a kid with a bunch of adults, and I remember extended negotiation phases, folks going to corners or the next room for little private meetings, etc.

 

[payn]

Whoa! I admittedly I have only ever played Diplomacy at cons and with strangers, but I never played a game that lasted more than 3 or 4 hours! Maybe there was a time limit applied to turns? I don't remember. But I never thought of Diplomacy as being as long as a game like Axis & Allies (of which I have played 14 hour games).

Time limits between turns is a big one for pushing the game along. I like the online 24 hour approach. It seems like a game would take forever, but the communication game is extended so much its quite fun. You really anticipate those turns as well!

 

[Mannahnin]

Time limits between turns is a big one for pushing the game along. I like the online 24 hour approach. It seems like a game would take forever, but the communication game is extended so much its quite fun. You really anticipate those turns as well!

I liked reading in Playing at the World about all the Diplomacy play by mail communities and fanzines which were so common among wargamers in the decade or so prior to D&D. And the bits of roleplaying people tended to do in them.

 

[payn]

I liked reading in Playing at the World about all the Diplomacy play by mail communities and fanzines which were so common among wargamers in the decade or so prior to D&D. And the bits of roleplaying people tended to do in them.

It's true, im amazed at how many alliance names there are. "Elephant and whale" for England and Germany. "Sealion" for France and Germany. From my brief experience all I know is Italy seems to be the most difficult. You are really in a lot of sights and need to up your diplo game if you want to survive!

 

[Voadam]

As I stated above, I've tried a few very-low-rules games and they're okay but it's not something I want longer term. But then I was thinking it over and realized that's not quite right either, at least not for me. I would have no idea how to run D&D-style-adjacent combat in an FKR game. It seems like it would devolve into "I swing my sword and chop your head off" followed by "I shield it" and then "You can't keep doing that, there has to be a limit!"

On the other hand, I don't really want a game that tells me how to do social or exploration parts of the game. I want social encounters to be a bit of a mystery as a player because I want NPCs and their organizations the options to have secrets and private agendas of their own. If I have some sort of social encounter point system, as a player I'll be thinking about gaming the system than treating the NPCs as people. I want a few rules here and there to help decide uncertainty. After all dice get lonely if they don't get rolled often enough which makes them grumpy. Nobody likes the results of grumpy dice. Exploration is much the same but in a different way, it's so varied and open to the imagination that as a DM I don't want to be constrained by a set of rules. I can use the structure we have.

Even in combat I'm perfectly okay with people doing things that are not strictly combat because if there's a chandelier, much like Chekov's gun it really should be used at some point. So combat has a bit of openness, social and exploration are a lot closer to FKR and I can throw in a bit of rules here and there for an added bit of spice.

Does social and exploration tiers occasionally calling for a skill check mean it doesn't qualify for FKR? If I'm using the DMG as an example, I can ask for rolls for pretty much everything or just go by descriptions. But it's still always going to be a game of make-believe with the DM interacting with the players. In any case, I'm not sure I care much but one of the aspects of D&D I enjoy is the mix. Fairly, but not completely, rules restrained combat system. A fairly, but not necessarily completely unrestrained depending on group preference, open social and exploration systems.

In the D&D context it does not have to be all or nothing. It is really easy to do rules combat and FKR style other stuff in D&D. Or even mostly FKR social and exploration pillars for the most part, with occasional die rolls depending on the situation.

As a 5e DM I do a lot of FKR non-combat stuff where it is just referee judgment calls or interactive NPC roleplaying but I also do die rolls or 4e skill challenge type of mechanics at times depending on if I want an element of bounded mechanical randomness for an individual action or a group defined mechanical interaction for a big scene involving the whole party.

I really like D&D mechanical combat and I generally am disappointed at narratively handwaiving combats or abstracted skill challenges to resolve a combat.

 

[overgeeked]

I think Bacon Bits was challenging the assumption that they are necessary, or one of only two options. You can see in Overgeeked's responses that he was conceptualizing it as the only two options being "dice" or "GM decides". Which is a totally understandable position to take based on most of our experience with D&D. But Amber Diceless is a counterexample.

Well, I know it’s not the only option, just the standard because it’s easy and requires fewer rules/words to define. “Roll opposed 2d6, higher result wins” is all you’d need compared to however much you’d need to layout how Amber works. To me, that kind of minimalism is the point. Yes, clearly you could have a hundred pages of rules, but by then you’re not playing an FKR game anymore.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Whoa! I admittedly I have only ever played Diplomacy at cons and with strangers, but I never played a game that lasted more than 3 or 4 hours! Maybe there was a time limit applied to turns? I don't remember. But I never thought of Diplomacy as being as long as a game like Axis & Allies (of which I have played 14 hour games).

I'm sure every table is different in how they run their games, so I don't discount your quicker experiences. But I know that in the times I've played that if we try to play a full game that requires the victor to score 18 supply centers, we can't get that done before getting up into Years 1908, 1909, or longer (so we're talking 16, 18 even 20 or more total game turns). Which means with a 30-minute first turn for negotiations and at minimum 20-minutes each additional turn (15 minute negotiations plus at least 5 minutes to write and execute orders, but in truth that ends ends up closer to 10-minutes each turn)... that's 3 turns per hour if you're lucky. So about 6 hours of just game, plus then figuring in bathrooms, eating, and general conversation (which the game does say you aren't "supposed" to do, but really who can't?) 8 hours has been a standard.

That being said... I agree with you that when I've played it at cons the cons regularly constrict the time and end games much quicker (4 hours being a normal place to end). But usually at that point we only have someone at probably up around 8 or 9 supply centers and they get handed the victory (or the top two who are in an alliance are granted the victory but even they combined haven't reach 18 supply centers.)

Now admittedly my experiences could be the anathema, that's entirely possible. Maybe we're just not that good at being efficient.

 

[payn]

I'm sure every table is different in how they run their games, so I don't discount your quicker experiences. But I know that in the times I've played that if we try to play a full game that requires the victor to score 18 supply centers, we can't get that done before getting up into Years 1908, 1909, or longer (so we're talking 16, 18 even 20 or more total game turns). Which means with a 30-minute first turn for negotiations and at minimum 20-minutes each additional turn (15 minute negotiations plus at least 5 minutes to write and execute orders, but in truth that ends ends up closer to 10-minutes each turn)... that's 3 turns per hour if you're lucky. So about 6 hours of just game, plus then figuring in bathrooms, eating, and general conversation (which the game does say you aren't "supposed" to do, but really who can't?) 8 hours has been a standard.

That being said... I agree with you that when I've played it at cons the cons regularly constrict the time and end games much quicker (4 hours being a normal place to end). But usually at that point we only have someone at probably up around 8 or 9 supply centers and they get handed the victory (or the top two who are in an alliance are granted the victory but even they combined haven't reach 18 supply centers.)

Now admittedly my experiences could be the anathema, that's entirely possible. Maybe we're just good at being efficient.

Whoa, you folks get solo victories? Most of my games are 2-4 way stalemates.