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Message: <blockquote data-quote="darjr" data-source="post: 9097132" data-attributes="member: 52905">[MEDIA=youtube]d4lvrC3ZBzM[/MEDIA]Transcript in the spoiler tag.[spoiler]kriegspiel as it was called by itsprussian inventors had become so complexthat hardly anybody played it the gamewas originally designed as a trainingtool for young officers but at thispoint finding senior officers withbattlefield experience willing to put inthe time to learn the rules and refereethe game had become nearly impossiblelieutenant wilhelm jacob meckle wasdissatisfied with the situation andidentified a number of problems with thegame as it stood first of all the rulesof the game limited the referee areferee in creek's bill was expected tobe an experienced battlefield officerwhose job was to take the orders sent tohim by the players and then translatethat into action on the game battlefieldhowever the strictness of the rules ofthe game often prevented them from usingthat real world experience indetermining the resultssecondly he pointed out that the rulesof the game could not even in theoryaccurately model the conditions of areal battlefield the world is infinitelycomplex and cannot be reduced down tojust a series of rules players wouldalways be trying things that wereoutside of the rules and situationswould be cropping up that the rulesdidn't coverthirdly the detailed calculations thatthe game required were often tediousthey slowed the game down and theydidn't make that much of a differenceanyway occasionally you would run intothese absurd situations where theplaying of the creek spiel the war gamewould take longer than fighting theactual battle in real life to resolvethis mecca proposed eliminating most ofthe rules of the game and insteadrelying much more heavily on thebattlefield experience of the refereerather than consulting a lot of chartsand graphs to resolve a situation thereferee would examine what was going onmake a quick ruling based on what theythought was the most likely outcome andthe game would quickly move on fromthereso this would make the game a lot fasterit would make it a lot more accessibleand hopefully make it more realistic aswell this form of war gaming becameknown as free kriegspiel as opposed tothe older version which became known asrigid creek spiel all of this isrelevant to dungeons and dragons becausethere is a similar movement brewing inrpg spaces right now it's at times beencalled ancient school role playing orarnazonian style based on the play styleof dave arneson who invented the firstfantasy role-playing game but morerecently it's been called free creekspill renaissance or free creeks buildrevival in these fkr role-playing gamesimmersion and minimalism reign supremeso a character sheet can be as simple asjust a few lines of description plusmaybe a list of equipment and playersoften don't need to know many or any ofthe rules at all they simply describewhat they want to do to the dm and thedm tells them results using any rulesthat they want to use or perhaps justtheir best judgment you can think of itas a kind of fork of the osr but witheven less of a loyalty to the rules ofearly dungeons and dragons like the osrthe fkr movement doesn't have one singledefinition but more of a cluster ofrelated principles and priorities so oneof the really big ones is that itfocuses strongly on encouraging playersto interact directly with the campaignworld without the intermediary of rulesor abilities on your character sheet inthe way this is one of the reasons whyplayers don't need to know much or anyof the rules the refrain you hear in alot of fkr circles is play worlds notrules when david wesley or dave arnesonwere running one of their fantasycampaigns in this style they weren'trunning a set of rules they were runninga place bronstein or blackmorerespectively if you were a player allyou had to do was imagine that you werethere and then act accordingly the fkralso frequently encourages diegeticcharacter progression so what that wouldmean is that instead ofcharacter advancement coming fromabstract experience points it's done ina very concrete way so if you want toget more powerful you collect more magicitems you find powerful npcs to allyyourself to you build a stronghold youget more powerful in the world ratherthan through this you know artificiallayer put on top of the game you want tobecome more powerful and influentialthen figure out how you would do that inthe real world and then do that in thegame now despite its minimalistictendencies and fkr game isn't reallyrules free rather rules are just seen asa kind of tool that the dm can take upand then set aside when they don't needthem anymore rather than as a strict setof procedures that they have to followit's the game world that's really thefocus of any campaign opposed 2d6 rolesare pretty common mostly because thosedice are just easy to find and there's anice bell curve there but there's nonecessary reason that you have to usethat you could easily use a d20 one d6you could use a dice pool or reallywhatever you wanted when an uncertainsituation comes up the game master wouldsimply decide what dice are going to beused how they're going to be modifiedthey would resolve the situation andthen move on the point is that rules areused as the situation calls for them andserve the unique needs of that campaignand the people playing you could saythat the fkr uses a table-centricphilosophy of design you can see the osrprinciple of rulings not rules at workhere but it's taken even further thanwhat you typically see in the osrbecause even osr games often haveparticular procedures that they usepretty consistently in certainsituations whereas in fkr that wouldn'tnecessarily be the case wait but as thedm i like having those rules and thatstructure in place running an fkr gameis not for everybody it simultaneouslydemands far more and far less than whatyou would usually see in a role-playinggame on the one hand you no longer haveto master complex rules keep track ofencounter balance teach players how toplay or any of that but on the otherhand you're required to have a strongsense of the internal logic of a gameworld you're required to have enough ofa sense of game design you can improviserules on the fly you got to be able tothink on your feet to make rulingsconsistently and that's not easy foreverybody but without printed rules howdo i know that the gm is playing fairfkr is a high trust play style requiresthat everyone at the table trusts the gmto be knowledgeable even-handed andinvested in everyone at the tableenjoying the game if that's not true forthe group that you're playing in fkrjust isn't going to work ah but a gamewith more fully fleshed out well-roundedrules makes the world more realistic oneof the goals of playing in an fkr styleis to increase realism not decrease itas mekel pointed out more than 100 yearsbefore dundas and dragons no rule systemcan cover a system as complex as acomplete world so fkr replaces all ofthat with a human being who can makejudgment calls that match humanintuition this prevents rules fromcreating absurd situations and it coversall the edge cases that rules can't butas a player the rules remind me of whatmy character can do and how to do itthere's a real trade-off here strictrules for players allow them to overcomechallenges using a kind of chess-liketactical sense which a lot of peoplereally enjoy but fkr just throws thatout the window by not giving players alot of rules they're forced to engagewith the world without using the lens oftheir character sheet they have to dealwith each situation as it is and come upwith out of the box strategies somepeople really like that some peopledon't in the end the fkr style exists atthe extreme end of one spectrum and justisn't going to be for everybody likeanything else in rpgs there's going tobe trade-offs when you adopt oneapproach over another even i don't rungames in a full fkr style although ihave adopted some elements of it in mygames if you're interested in learningmore about the style of play i wouldcheck out the free creek spillrevolution discord channel i'll put alink to that in the description belowthey're really friendly and they'llanswer a lot of questions for you iwould also check out john peterson'smasterwork playing at the world if youwant to learn more about these earlyfantasy campaigns that were played inthis style i would also check out thedocumentary secrets of blackmore if youwant to see a lot of interviews with thepeople who played with dave arneson andwho first experienced this kind offantasy role playing all right everyonethat's it for today remember to hit thelike subscribe and bell icons if youwant to be notified when questing beastreleases new videos thanks for watchingand i'll see you next time[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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