System matters and free kriegsspiel

[overgeeked]

The answer to the vast majority of the persistent questions is: whatever makes sense in the fiction. The caveat is that “fiction” here means both the fiction as the shared delusion of game play and the fiction as the pre-game source material.

What can, would, or could my character do? Whatever makes sense in the fiction.

What tech is available to my character? Whatever makes sense in the fiction.

What are the play loops? Whatever makes sense in the fiction.

These are not and can not be the same in every game. So it depends on the fiction. It’s fiction first applied to both the intrusion of the rules during play and in the establishment of rules prior to play.

 

[overgeeked]

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This is my bookshelf. There are many like it, but this one is mine. There are many sorts of games here. OSR games, Forge games, traditional games. Games with dense setting material. Games with low resolution setting. Games with dense mechanics. Games with a lighter touch. Each provides a unique value and is the result of incredible design effort (which should be respected). Each justifies its existence, not by replacing the experience provided by another, but by providing a different one with its own unique value proposition.

I could have lengthy conversations about each of these games, when I would use them, when I would not. What sort of players are uniquely suited to each. What each brings to the table. The discipline involved in the process of playing or running each.

What I am looking for is a distillation of FKR that shows the unique value it brings. When you would use it instead of something else. When you would not. Something that shows its value as its own thing and not as a superior form of something else. Something that respects the discipline and craft of different forms of play. How do I integrate into my overall understanding of roleplaying games? Where does it fit? Provide me with an integrative understanding that respects the value other games bring to the table. Show me how to do it in a way that is not just 'Do whatever man'.

To me what I'm seeing of the FKR reminds of the "intuitive" training types you see in the strength sports space. People that look at the various disciplines (body building, Olympic lifting, power lifting, strong man) and opt to almost randomly take what they want from each thinking they'll get similar results. Basically they argue that all the thought, experimentation, and practice that athletes in each discipline have put in has no real merit or value. I just lift bro. It's easy.

I hope I am wrong about that. I hope that FKR has something new to offer. That it's experience is different in the same way D&D 5e is different from Blades in the Dark. That it does not put itself up as a replacement for the rest of the hobby.

Seemingly unrelated, but relevant, question. Does Marvel Heroic have a character creation system?

 

[Aldarc]

And I'm honestly curious about what makes FKR FKR. I find knowing more, even about things I may not personally like, helps me do better games. And, I've already run into a game I didn't get that I finally did get and it's one of my favorites. That understanding didn't come from being told its about fun, but about clear descriptions of the methods and principles of play. That, in turn, made my D&D games better, not by copying over but because it helped me identify what's great in 5e and lean hard into that rather than trying to make 5e do things it's not great at.

I don't understand why, if FKR is something you love, it cannot be discussed and the why's and how's of that love extolled. "Fun" is, as noted, a non- answer.

I consider cooking one of my favorite hobbies. "It tastes good" often feels like a filler description about a dish or recipe. I mean, yeah, I hope that this food tastes good. Otherwise, why am I making or eating it? But I'm nevertheless interested in understanding why it tastes good.

What are the ingredients and preparation processes that make the dish work or not. I enjoy, IMHO, to taste a dish that someone else prepared, whether at a restaurant, family gathering, or a friend's place, and try reverse engineering the dish based on taste and appearance. The more that I understand different dishes and recipes, the easier it is for me to improvise and build on those cooking principles. (IME, some people have no taste for food/flavor combinations that work well together.)

I don't think that I'm inherently hostile to FKR. I want to understand how and why other games work the way that they do. I want to understand FKR and what makes it work and where it doesn't. What are the play benefits that FKR bring that I don't get from other games? I enjoy a wide range of games (e.g., D&D, OSR, Fate, Cortex, BitD, PbtA, Fantasy AGE, Cypher, etc) and there are many more that I want to try (e.g., Free League's MY0, The One Ring, Paleomythic, etc.). I have admitted that there are personal issues and red flags that I have with how some people have presented FKR and the language they used. I have stated, for example, that I think that Ben Milton's own heavy involvement in the OSR community likely flavors how he presents FKR and that maybe someone else who came from a different background would likely present it differently.

I'm also curious about the context that FKR comes about. If someone says that FKR is a reaction to massively over-complicated rules, then I'm curious what the FKR community has in mind, especially if the present bulk of the FKR community comes out of the OSR sphere of thought. I'm curious because it seems counter-intuitive to me based upon what I see as a fantastic decade of elegant and intentional game design that is often incredibly considerate about being new-player friendly.

 

[overgeeked]

I consider cooking one of my favorite hobbies. "It tastes good" often feels like a filler description about a dish or recipe. I mean, yeah, I hope that this food tastes good. Otherwise, why am I making or eating it? But I'm nevertheless interested in understanding why it tastes good.

What are the ingredients and preparation processes that make the dish work or not. I enjoy, IMHO, to taste a dish that someone else prepared, whether at a restaurant, family gathering, or a friend's place, and try reverse engineering the dish based on taste and appearance. The more that I understand different dishes and recipes, the easier it is for me to improvise and build on those cooking principles. (IME, some people have no taste for food/flavor combinations that work well together.)

I don't think that I'm inherently hostile to FKR. I want to understand how and why other games work the way that they do. I want to understand FKR and what makes it work and where it doesn't. What are the play benefits that FKR bring that I don't get from other games? I enjoy a wide range of games (e.g., D&D, OSR, Fate, Cortex, BitD, PbtA, Fantasy AGE, Cypher, etc) and there are many more that I want to try (e.g., Free League's MY0, The One Ring, Paleomythic, etc.). I have admitted that there are personal issues and red flags that I have with how some people have presented FKR and the language they used. I have stated, for example, that I think that Ben Milton's own heavy involvement in the OSR community likely flavors how he presents FKR and that maybe someone else who came from a different background would likely present it differently.

I'm also curious about the context that FKR comes about. If someone says that FKR is a reaction to massively over-complicated rules, then I'm curious what the FKR community has in mind, especially if the present bulk of the FKR community comes out of the OSR sphere of thought. I'm curious because it seems counter-intuitive to me based upon what I see as a fantastic decade of elegant and intentional game design that is often incredibly considerate about being new-player friendly.

Another seemingly unrelated, but relevant, question. What’s your opinion on finding recipes from food blogs?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I hope I am wrong about that. I hope that FKR has something new to offer. That it's experience is different in the same way D&D 5e is different from Blades in the Dark. That it does not put itself up as a replacement for the rest of the hobby.

I don't know that this framing is helpful. Should someone say, "Fiction first must be rubbished because it presents itself as a replacement for the entire hobby."

When you turn the interpretive lens around, it seems like a strange statement, right? D&D (and D&D-type systems) is, quite literally, the 800lb gorilla in the hobby. If you add Call of Cthulhu as a relatively "rules heavy" system, you're looking at the vast and overwhelming majority of the market.

...and yet, while games that we often discuss (like BiTD and other PbTA games, for example) are not even rounding errors compared to D&D/CoC, they still dwarf FKR. Heck, OSR clones dwarf it.

So ... a replacement for the hobby? A replacement for the wall of books that you have? No. Not even close.

It's just a small group of people playing (and occasionally putting out) indie games with miniscule rule-sets.

As for what it brings to the hobby? Diversity of gaming experiences. A multiplicity of approaching minimialist rulesets. An attempt to approach RPGs as genre exercises first. And finally, the concept of an iterative table-centric approach to rules.

No one is saying that this should be something you like; again, this doesn't even rise to the level of a rounding error within the hobby. I'm not even saying it's that new- most of it is incorporating different concepts and rules that have already been used (past is prologue). But it's usually at the margins that we get the ferment that eventually translates into more mainstream games.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't think 'invisible rulebook' is a helpful concept for you in understanding FK. The person who came up with it, as a metaphor, did not mean anything like rulebook as you understand the term. From reading her essay, she meant a sort of headcanon guide book to genre/setting norms. I think it would be best if you forgot about 'invisible rulebooks' completely.

I don't think you can just declare me to not be able to use an idea. You need to present a case.

The issue I'm having with the invisible rulebooks, and that is part of that article, is where authority interacts with them. In the article, it's clear that these invisible rulebooks are open for consensus seeking -- it's explicitly said in the article that comparison and getting on the same page are very important. But, there's an undercurrent in the article that it's the GM's ideas that are the ones that matter, that the purpose of the GM's invisible rulebooks (which are really genre emulations but rather a conception of how things should play out and can disagree wildly on what's important in a given moment -- as mentioned by the article) is to be the heuristic by which the game is governed. And you've explicitly said this just a few posts back -- that consensus seeking is not the point; it's the GM's game.

So, with all of this, we're back to the fact that, as it's being used by you, the only invisible rulebook that matters is the GM's, which takes this somewhat out of genre emulation because the GM's ideas may not match the genre or there may be a difference in understanding as to which genre is at play. This can be good, I mean Coen brothers movies are pretty much all about dissonance in genres. But it's not clear that there's a pathway that leads to this via principles of play.

Re arbitrariness, if I as GM am operating within the internal aspect of an NPC, their actions do not feel arbitrary at all. Their actions result from their motivations, hopes, fears, grudges, loyalties etc etc. I know some people don't/can't get their head around this, cannot take on the internal aspect of another character (possibly not even their own PC), and don't think other people can, either. In which case they should not GM a character based FK/free-roleplay game IMO, and if they don't trust the process they should not play in one, either.

Edit: Another way of putting it: when GMing FK style, I as GM am normally in 'actor* stance' playing NPCs, and in 'neutral referee' or 'world stance' when adjudicating. I am never in 'author** stance', except in a very residual sense that when GMing in a particular setting/genre my refereeing necessarily takes account of the original setting authors' - the rules they made for the world.

*In the Ron Edwards sense of internal-aspect method acting.
**In the Ron Edwards sense of story-creation, what would make a good story.

This isn't coherent, and borrowing (poorly) Forge stances doesn't aid the argument. For one, your conception of a character is not the only possible or even best conception of a character. There's no causal process here, it's more about what you're thinking than actually inhabiting the character. The dig that some people can't do this is very poor manners -- I've been doing this for years and have lots of fun inhabiting a character. What I don't do is confuse my fun for an actual, independent, causal process. I am still making decisions -- the character is a figment of my imagination. So, when faced with a dilemma, what happens is I decide on a course of action and then filter it through my character. The character does not direct anything at all, because, again, imaginary. This means that a choice you're making about the fiction is arbitrary and not actually better than a mechanically driven choice that is then roleplayed out. It's different, sure, the process is different, and you're never faced with having a choice be confusing or upsetting to you because you're always making the choices. This doesn't present a better model of people, or how real people react, though, because everyone is often confused, surprised, or upset by the choices others make, and we generally don't have the ability to predict individual responses all that well.

What makes either method -- you acting or using mechanics -- work well are principles of play and how those work. These are what I'm trying to get from FKR.

 

[Aldarc]

Another seemingly unrelated, but relevant, question. What’s your opinion on finding recipes from food blogs?

Would you mind being a little more specific here? I'm not sure how to answer this without further specificity here. For example, is this a question asking whether or not it's okay to find recipes from food blogs?

 

[Campbell]

Seemingly unrelated, but relevant, question. Does Marvel Heroic have a character creation system?

It does have guidelines for designing new characters, but not in the way most people expect. Characters are not created from a pool of points or options you pick. There are more detailed instructions, but you design the powersets that fit the character you want to play. Characters are not designed with balance in mind. Instead the game is designed so that if you are playing Ant Man you should have an impact even if Thor has a superior power set.

 

[overgeeked]

Would you mind being a little more specific here? I'm not sure how to answer this without further specificity here. For example, is this a question asking whether or not it's okay to find recipes from food blogs?

Do you enjoy searching the internet for recipes? What is your opinion/experience of using recipes specifically from non-professional food blogs?

 

[Ovinomancer]

The answer to the vast majority of the persistent questions is: whatever makes sense in the fiction. The caveat is that “fiction” here means both the fiction as the shared delusion of game play and the fiction as the pre-game source material.

What can, would, or could my character do? Whatever makes sense in the fiction.

What tech is available to my character? Whatever makes sense in the fiction.

What are the play loops? Whatever makes sense in the fiction.

These are not and can not be the same in every game. So it depends on the fiction. It’s fiction first applied to both the intrusion of the rules during play and in the establishment of rules prior to play.

But, this isn't strictly correct, is it? It's whatever the GM thinks makes sense in the fiction. I, as a player, have no ability to make this call, correct?