EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
You don't actually need a "no rules" system to do this though. This is how Dungeon World works, for example. In its most basic sense, you have a conversation about the events that are going on ("the fiction") until someone does something that is uncertain in outcome and where there are interesting consequences for both success and failure.*I hope this isn't completely off topic because I dont really know much about FKR. But I have been interested more and more as I age, in less and less rules. I find myself interested in ways to structure play without them, and I find the concept of FKR interesting. On that note, a couple of years ago I found a set of "non mechanical resolution" tools that I want to share.
1) Say Yes. The character succeeds. Keep play moving
2) Offer a precondition: “You can try but first you’ll need to…”
3) Offer at a cost: “You can do it, but it will cost you this…”
4) Impossible: “It’s too hard, but maybe you can…(offer other ideas)”
The full blog post can be found here
I've enjoyed this, and deployed it, in almost any game I play. I've even toyed with the idea of just playing with these rules. But I haven't gone off that cliff yet. Because I like rules. I like being able to lean into mechanical resolution as a way to structure the game. To pace the session. And honestly its just plain nice to let the rules do the work. But these bridge for me the divide between no rules and lots of rules. They are easy to use, and require no mastery.
And to bring it to the current heading of the dialogue here: it minimizes negotiation. As a GM I want as little of that in the game as possible, unless it IS the game. And most of the time my RPGs are not about negotiating.
At this point, you make a move. Believe it or not, several moves in DW have shockingly similar structure to exactly what you described there. They just have one key difference:
It's not all up to the GM whether things succeed or not.
That's sort of the critical problem here. In absolutely pure negotiation land, 100% of the negative consequences, the failures, the falling-just-short, comes from the GM deciding that the players simply don't succeed. There is no possibility for the GM to believe that both success and failure could occur, unless they are simply being completely arbitrary in their decisions.
More importantly, I have no idea what you mean by "it minimizes negotiation." That structure IS negotiation! That's literally what it is. You are offering "a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice," and figuring out what the player will accept. You are rejecting proposals, but offering alternatives. Etc. It is very literally the process of negotiation, making offers and counter-offers until a deal is struck.
*Which does not mean every failure directly leads to high octane action. Just means when you fail, it costs something important (resources, time, allies, etc.), or hurts you in a meaningful way (damage, separation, kidnapping, dead hostages, etc.), or empowers your opposition (the guards know there are intruders, the ritual is completed, the bad guys you were chasing escape, etc.), or some other interesting Bad Thing happens.