System matters and free kriegsspiel
- Thread starter pemerton
- Start date
What sort of game are you playing? Exploration/puzzle-oriented? Is there much conflict resolution?
In his blog, Christopher Kubasik points to some "free kriegssspiel" aspects of Classic Traveller combat resolution:
Following up on Omer Joel’s excellent post about Complexity Creep, Modifier Creep, and Scale Creep, I had some thoughts about Classic Traveller’s very (very) abstract personal combat system and its place in roleplaying game design at the time of its release in 1977. . . .
As with the 1981 edition, it has range bands. What you might not know is in the 1977 edition doesn’t translate the range bands into meters. That is, it’s really abstract.
For RPG play, the very abstract nature of the combat system allowed the game to keep going quickly and allowed the Referee and Players to make up details and bits of tactical business on the fly if desired. The text of the 1977 edition makes it clear that the Range Bands themselves preclude any kind of tactical concerns… which is true as far as goes. But in retrospect I see how tactical details can be introduced without building a full miniatures game.
The Referee put very much in the position of a Referee from a Free Kriegspiel. The original Kriegspiel rules put off many officers who trained with it because of all the page flipping through the rules and the mock combats took so much longer than an actual combat. (I’m using the term “Free Kriegspiel” loosely here, to illustrate the spectrum of play and rules from “The rules have everything” to “The Referee handles a lot.” Admittedly, the Traveller Referee handles a lot. . . .
Rather than sorting out every detail of a particular terrain, every detail of building, and having a rule for every kind of situation, Traveller was originally written for a much more fluid play style. Modifiers and more, based on circumstance, actions, and results are adjudicated on the fly by the Referee. Admittedly, the Referee has to have the real spirit of an impartial Referee to make this work — just as in Kriegspiel. The Players are trusting him to provide challenges, risk, and practical rewards for good thinking — even while adjudicating the environment, tactics, and enemy combatants.
During combat the Players come up with clever ideas, and the Referee adjudicates the actions of the PCs, creates DMs for Throws, checks to see if NPCs fall for the PCs’ plans with Throws he makes up on the spot. All of this, I postulate, should be done in the style of Free Kriegsspiel play, with the Referee not bound to a specific list of DMs and actions, but creating a conversation with the Players, back and forth, creating clever, fun details, tension over the results of attacks, and so on.
My own view is that this style of play can work gangbusters if everyone is onboard. It can create a really loose, fun, imaginative “theater of the mind” combat, with the Referee and Players building on details as they get introduced.
This isn’t to say maps can’t be used. If someone has deck plans and there’s a fight aboard the ship, use them to get a better sense of relative position. For a larger scale environment, a sheet of paper, a white board, or an erasable mat can be used to quickly sketch out terrain details. Not to scale, mind you–there’d be no need to get that precise. But a rough sketch, with players marking where their characters are, erasing them or crossing them off as they move through the terrain would be enough to add an desired clarity. In all these cases, there’s be no need for miniatures. In the spirit of the original rules, one could use markers of some kind (small squares cut from paper), or, as mentioned, marking and erasing as combat rounds ensued.
Of course, not everyone is onboard with this style of play. Nor should everyone be onboard with it. It’s fast, loose and interpretive, built to move on to other aspects of play (exploration, puzzle solving, and more).
Original Traveller is so far toward Free Kriegspiel-like style of play that the pendulum had to swing back the other way. So in a reverse move from Kriegspiel moving to Free Kriegspiel, the abstracted Classic Traveller system moves toward Snapshot, AHL, and Striker over time to make the combats more specifically rules driven.
One thing that Kubasik doesn't mention here is that Classic Traveller has an action economy: move + attack, double move, or evade. And there are rules for how much movement it takes to change range bands, which are defined in terms of distance (but the number of moves required to changes bands doesn't correlate to any particular movement rate).
And independently of that, as an example of FKR this is pretty different from the GM decides what happens. It's about no miniatures (in my case, the only game I've ever used tokens in is 4e D&D - not in B/X, not in AD&D, not in RM, not in any indie game I've played), and GM-adjudicated modifiers. This is pretty different from the vibe I get from FKRers.
hawkeyefan
Legend
I think that’s a poor example.
The idea of an attack of opportunity should absolutely be known to the player because it represents the knowledge that his character would have of the actual situation. The rules in this example correspond directly to in game events and so I can’t see how they interfere in amy way with engaging the fiction.
The situation is that the character is in a dangerous situation and is considering fleeing. But, the immediate presence of a foe means that he may open himself to attack to do so. That’s the fictional situation and the rules reflect it just fine.
Player engaging with rules= character interacting with world.
To me, the player not knowing of the possibility of an opportunity attack is an example of not engaging in the fiction because he doesn’t have a full picture of the fiction. If I declare that my PC retreats and then as a result of that, I get attacked…the exact situation I was trying to avoid….that feels very much like a “gotcha” by the GM, and is emblematic of the kind of problems this approach faces. For example, 5E has the Disengage action, which allows a PC to avoid opportunity attacks, but it counts as their action for the round. How can this distinction be made if the players are unaware that it exists?
I’ve yet to meet a GM or read a scenario that is so perfectly described that there are no blanks left in the player’s understanding. The truth is, we as players are always operating with less than 100% knowledge of a situation compared to what the characters would know. Rules can help bridge that gap and make things clearer for the player to accurately and meaningfully engage with the fiction.
There may be other examples that we could come up with where the players are engaging with the game first rather than the fiction. When this happens, and if it’s a problem for any group, I think that it speaks to a problem with that specific rule rather than with the idea of rules overall.
In my games of D&D, I find the impact of Hit Points on the fiction to be rather annoying at times. I think that they very easily can become a game element that dominates the fiction. Others may not think so, and indeed an argument can be made, similar to my reasoning on the opportunity attack, that Hit Points reflect something in the fiction that the PCs can observe and know. I think that’s true up to a point, but that once a certain level/HP total is reached, then the fictional corollary gets pretty wobbly.
But does this indicate that there is a problem with players knowing the rules? I don’t think so, because in games where HP are used but kept to a minimum, or in games that use an alternative to HP, it’s not a problem at all.
“Play worlds, not rules” is not a bad principle to keep in mind when playing. I find it very similar to “fiction first” that comes up in a lot of newer more narrative games. But I think it can be misleading in that it implies a dichotomy that need not exist.
Linking this to my discussion with @Numidius . . .
In a system where the PC build elements are much more straightforward (eg Classic Traveller, or also Prince Valiant, are the first two examples I thought of) then the attempt to disengage can be adjudicated ad hoc - eg as opposed Brawn+Agility in Prince Valiant - without needing to have a defined rule. I'm pretty sure I've done this in Prince Valiant (also using Brawn+Riding for mounted characters), where if the one trying to disengage loses then they suffer injury as normal, but if they succeed then instead of dealing injury, they break out of the fight.
5e D&D - in my view, at least - has far too complex PC build for this sort of approach to be viable.
I know that some of the FKRers talk about PC building. While more of their focus seems to be on the approach to action resolution, I think the PC building might be just as significant.
Right. Advice from FKRers is usually to note in plain language only significant stuff of the pc build, which could be done via PHB standard, e proceed to play.
Regarding the whole action economy in CT, I guess that would be eliminated completely in favor of plain descriptions, discussion, adjudication, with or without rolls involved.
Regarding the whole action economy in CT, I guess that would be eliminated completely in favor of plain descriptions, discussion, adjudication, with or without rolls involved.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
This is a partial solution, at best, though, because it doesn't at all really inform the player what the odds of success are. This doesn't need to be specific, but there the character could probably determine how likely success would be in this action because they have the understanding of their abilities, experience in actual combat situations, and at least a reasonable idea of how skilled their opponent is. So, yes, you can as a GM just leverage these kinds of tests, but this doesn't really root the decision in the fiction when you do so -- the arbitration is not well situated with the understanding the character might have.
This is, of course, an argument for clear stakes and odds, which is something I prefer in games due to what @hawkeyefan points out as the imperfection of understanding in the fiction between GM and player, but also the imperfection of understanding between what a character might know (reification for simplicity) and what the player might know about this situation. And these kinds of clear stakes seem to be exactly what the FKR movement is trying to avoid rather than produce.
If you are asking me, I'd say low prep, high improv, loosely based on a prewritten scenario, very prone to players input & content introduction by fiat or rolls (even without them knowing).
Zooming in and out from task to conflict res as the table feels like, me included.
It usually begins as exploration/puzzle oriented, but soon takes a life of its own.
I tend to refer to 2d6 rolls when in doubt about a situation or npc disposition.
The FKR ref should absolutely leverage player knowledge as input in their adjudicating on a matter (I've been told).
Is it enough to produce clear stakes for the players and/or characters, in your opinion?
Given that this sprang from this thread-
D&D General - D&D's Evolution: Rulings, Rules, and "System Matters"
Late last night, I ran across an interesting and excellent post by @Malmuria which helped crystalize some thoughts I had been having recently about D&D's evolution. Just to make this clear- you can blame Malmuria for this short essay. Repeat- you can blame Malmuria. Unless you really like what...
www.enworld.org
I thought I'd comment briefly. But I would note the very small footnote at the bottom of the other post; there is a reason I mostly don't choose to engage.
An issue that people have is that there can be too much argument about terms; we see this all the time. For example, it's hard to have a discussion about the playstyle most people refer to as "skilled play" if you end up with a bunch of people that immediately say, "But wait, other types of play are skilled too!" When using a defined term, you're trying to be helpful by defining, not be creating implied dichotomies. A similar issue arose here when trying to discuss FKR- immediately, you had people (many of whom apparently googled Free Kriegsspiel for the first time) simply argue, "Hey, did you know that there is a difference between the conventions of the 19th century Prussian Army and a roleplaying game? Let me expound upon the ways in which they are different, because that's super helpful!"
At the most basic, FKR is just another in a long iteration in an eternal battle- more rules, or less rules. Trying to assert that one way is "better" or "worse" does little good- it's enough to point out that there tends to be a near-constant oscillation between the two. Rules- and by rules, I mean a published system of play, known to the participants, that provides a consistent method of adjudication ... has many advantages. But rules (and the increasing complexity of rules systems) also have disadvantages.
This is somewhat orthogonal to another, slightly-related issue. And that's the issue of the creation of fiction and the decision-maker. FKR will fall on the "referee" (GM) mode, while other systems will tend to fall on the more "consensual" or "player-driven" mode. This doesn't tend to be a dichotomy, so much as a spectrum. Most FKR systems tend to be "high-trust" not just in terms of the player --> GM, but also GM --> player, and player --> player. Which means that while the GM has final authority, it is almost always within the scope of player-empowering heuristics. By the same token, rules-lite systems that are more collaborative still have the GM in a position that is different or separate from the players in terms of the fiction (with possible exceptions such as Fiasco, which is neither here nor there).
To use an example that has been bandied about for a while, the rule-lite version of Cthulhu Dark makes this continuum explicit (here, "Keeper" = GM)-
Who decides when to roll Insanity? Who decides when it’s interesting to know how well you do something? Who decides when something disturbs your PC? Who decides whether you might fail?
Decide the answers with your group. Make reasonable assumptions. For example, some groups will let the Keeper decide everything. Others will share the decisions.
These rules are designed to play prewritten scenarios, run by a Keeper. If you try improvising scenarios or playing without a Keeper, let me know.
Empower the Keeper, and this runs like FKR. Disempower the Keeper and make it more collaborative (or have additional rules regarding the fiction), and it might seem like a Fiction First system. Are they actually that different?
Finally, and as an aside to Pemerton- I would bring up exactly what I wrote about Cthulhu Dark again:
.... but for it {Cthulhu Dark} to work, it presupposes a number of things- that the table (the whole table) have a working knowledge of the Lovecraft/Cthulhu mythos, that everyone at the table is familiar with RPGs and how they work, and that everyone at the table have a level of comfort with a specific type of narrative-oriented RPG.
This is the same point that others are making about FKR; simply put, that the referee (GM) has to have a working knowledge of the "world" or "genre" or "trope" that is being played, and that the table is comfortable and familiar with the game. It is inescapable that this is the exact same thing others say about the knowledge required to run any kind of game; of course, we are not Prussian military officers running other Prussian military officers in campaigns (or in the military at all, as was Major David Wesley), just as we have never been to Ry’leh, where Cthulhu sleeps.
I think that therein lies the tension between more and less rules that we continually oscillate between; you have a minimalist rule set, and then graft on rules to settle disputes or because you want standardization or because players want to be able to rely on something or because you need an exception to the prior rule or because someone wants the game to be more realistic or for all sorts of other reasons, until you get to the point of having an overly-complicated ruleset, and then someone says, "Hey, we could make this simpler if we just get rid of all these rules!" and the whole process repeats.
Again, all this IMO, YMMV, etc. I will bow out now, as I tend to find these conversations not overly productive.
@Snarf Zagyg
I missed that thread!
I missed that thread!
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