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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8396859" data-attributes="member: 71699">The linked write up was helpful and confirmed where this seemed to be landing for me. The author used terms such as "ultralight", "diceless", and "systemless systems" to describe what they were doing. Decades ago I ran the first game of this type my large university RP group had seen. It was called Masters of Luck and Death and brought together ideas from Zelazny and a few others. Others in our group invented their own games inspired by it. Likely it was some of the best DMing I've done, albeit the burden of running it was so high I could sustain it for only one or two players each session. They ran very long, those sessions. The linked example notes a variant the author labels "improv", noting that by contrast the author still does a lot of prep. My game was in the improv category. I still have the two pages of notes that were our whole ruleset.So I know this type of play. In no particular order -<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It is not rules free. Rather it is rules light. The rules don't have to be written down, but they often will be - in the form of notes players make about their characters, and notes a DM makes that establish some minimum of consistency.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The most valuable rules to have are who the characters are and what they might do. What I found happens is that the play spins out from a few seeds in the form of statements about the characters that we've jotted down. That also allowed us to pick play back up again and continue in subsequent sessions. My two pages ranked some of the key powers in the world (the eponymous masters and mistresses) and what-beats-what, and each of my players kept one to several pages of notes about their character.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You could run a wargame this way, but in the RP context it's not a wargame.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It's less realistic and accurate than a game that has extensive rules. I don't know why people have the opposite conceit. What it gains is that everyone can immerse themselves fully in the emergent narrative. There's almost nothing coming between declaration and resolution. The play is flowing and enthralling. Given you have a great DM and group simpatico.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ideally, you have a thematic that you are really into. Probably true of all RP, but doubly true here. Your brain has to become a machine for spinning out the world. It feels a bit like writing.</li> </ul>Is it worth trying? I think so. It unfetters your self-expression. The group can enter a state of flow. In hindsight, the quality of your narrative isn't any higher than other forms of RP. Only you suspend disbelief a bit more profoundly.I want to dispel one misconception. Ultralight, diceless or "systemless" RP doesn't pivot on if there are or are not rules. There are rules. Let's just get that out of the way. Those rules do serious work. More work than the individual rules of more extensive systems. Any noted down rules are seeds for spinning out the game world and will connect with an ever-shifting lattice of rules in your brain. Your game will perforce be unique, although it will share features with other games. (I assume such features is what the OP is interested in.)5th edition has a radically different purpose and usefulness from diceless games. What D&D gave diceless games is simply the idea of defining characters who will live in an imaginary world, and we will play them. And that points to the breathtaking misapplication of "FK" to this movement. Kriegspiel and its free variant had no interest whatsoever in playing an imaginary character in an imaginary world.</blockquote>

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