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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9024654" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I will say, it's nice to hear a description of FKR that doesn't come across as "everyone can like what they like (but our way is just better.)" This is, I think, the first time I've heard anyone give an example of something FKR doesn't do well, which is useful.More important for me personally, however, was this:Which seems, to me, to indicate that FKR...isn't really trying to be a game anymore. It's trying to be something else--something very like a game, something with a lot in common with what "game" means, but not actually a game. Otherwise, it would have that almost-ineffable " 'gaminess' feeling," as you put it. Or, as I would put it, FKR actively, and almost completely, excludes <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/worlds-of-design-what%E2%80%99s-your-objective.697090/post-9013994" target="_blank">Score & Achievement</a> as a game-(design-)purpose, choosing to focus almost exclusively on Groundedness & Simulation, with just the lightest, faintest dusting of Conceit & Emulation to secure the appropriate setting context (hence references to things like Asimov's Foundation and Empire.)And it's worth noting, despite being a big fan of PbtA, I had feelings much like this--it didn't scratch my itch for "gaminess"-feeling. As I once described to a friend, while the first true game of Dungeon World I ever played was one of my favorite campaigns, combats became mechanically uninteresting very quickly, to the point that I explicitly said "I could write a flowchart that would be able to handle pretty much any combat, ever." Thematically, they were almost always super important and impactful! Mechanically they were very simplistic. I wasn't bored with the story. I was bored with the gameplay. And some of the other players even picked up on that. So--yes, I completely agree that that is one of the reasons I tend to be skeptical of FKR claims, since it's pretty obvious that they would be even less supportive of "gaminess"-feeling than the rock-bottom amount PbtA supports.But there's another bit, from one of your cited references, that bears discussion:See, this fundamentally conflicts with how I understand the rules of literally any game--any TTRPG I've ever played, or even merely read.What the above says is, "Because a rule exists, that rule is the only way to achieve <whatever the rule does.>" And to me, that's a patently foolish way to play...well, anything, apart from board games. Doesn't matter what RPG you're playing. All the existence of a rule tells you is, "this is one established way to do <whatever the rule does.>" You cannot reason from the presence of a rule to the idea that that excludes other ways of doing something. You can't even reason from the absence of a rule to say that something can't be done. The one, and only, thing reason entitles you to conclude is that there is at least one way to do that particular thing.Because guess what? I would, 110%, support my players trying to rehabilitate an abused panther mount and cobble together armor for it from the bashed-up remnants of their fallen foes' armor. I literally couldn't care less whether there is a rule already established for that sort of thing. Now, if said rule exists, perhaps that's the easy way to do it, and the party will have to be a bit more clever or patient first, or expend other resources, or take risks that that rule wouldn't require. That's how you respect the rules that exist, while not doing the draconian (and trivially stupid...) "because you didn't train in Animal Handling, the cool thing you want to do is impossible."Good rules provide you with good established ways to do a lot of things people are already going to want to do, and in a way that will be reliably both entertaining and challenging. They don't rob you of your creativity and agency like some kind of bureaucratic self-appointed hall monitor tattling to the teacher. They support you, for doing many, many things that are commonly done. And they give you good baselines for applying your own judgment, in all the uncommon things that are, collectively, quite frequent.Another bit I find particularly telling (emphasis in original):This sounds genuinely nothing at all like how most people describe FKR and "rulings not rules" etc. to me. Like, almost emphatically the antithesis of how it's usually described. Because the usual description I get has communicated that the players need to fight tooth and nail for every bit of information, for every scrap of understanding. I see lots and lots of pejorative references to "handholding," for example, and to being strongly enthusiastic about players failing to learn stuff because sometimes that happens, them's the breaks, etc. And, perhaps most damning of all, the widespread and pervasive commitment to illusionism and quantum GMing in the minimalist gaming space: the world will change under their feet and actively prevent them from ever finding out, and whatever the GM intends for them to find/do/experience WILL be found/done/experienced, no matter what choices they make, the ogre is there whether they head south into the forest or north toward the plains.The above quote, by comparison, sounds...almost exactly like how I run DW, and how all three of my much-loved 4e DMs ran 4e D&D, and how both of the 13th Age DMs I've had ran 13A, and how I would run 4e if I was running it today.</blockquote>

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