You Don’t Have To Leave Wolfy Behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' Your Companions Level Up With You!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Malmuria" data-source="post: 8396524" data-attributes="member: 7030755">I think of the FKR proposition as being something like, "what is the minimal amount of stuff you need to play an rpg."  Like, if a bunch of Lovecraft fans wanted to play 'call of cthulhu,' but they were in the woods, without any technology, and for some reason only brought 4-sided dice with them.  It might not be CoC that they were running exactly, but I'm sure they could figure out how to collaboratively create and play stories in a Lovecraftian setting.  This is a helpful mindset to me because it takes the ethos of "rulings not rules" to the extreme, in the sense that all you really need to play a game is a group that is knowledgeable about genre and has trust in a gm to make fair rulings.There is something similar there to the emphasis on the "conversation" and on genre in more story-oriented games, even though those games like to codify with mechanics the roles of the player and gm in order to empower the former (compared to trad games).I was thinking about this because I'm running blades in the dark, and having a little bit of an issue with my players (who are familiar with dnd mostly) approaching bitd as a dnd game.  That is, instead of treating the dice as an opportunity to resolve a narrative beat, they still think of it in terms of skill and challenge.  This means that a "failed" roll means their character failed to do something, not, here's the next interesting twist in the story.  Thinking about it further, I realized this is an entirely natural way for them to approach the situation, not just because dnd is a challenge-based game, but because it encodes a particular relationship between player and character.  In dnd, the player is responsible for everything to do with the character (the character's psychology, motivations, and aptitudes) while the dm "plays the world."  Whereas I think bitd works better if players take a bit more abstracted or distanced view of things.  It's less like they are 3d Roleplaying their character, and more like they are screenwriters collaborating with everyone on the narrative but maybe more in charge of one particular element of the story (their characters).Caveat: I am still fairly new to "system matters"-derived story games, so it's very possible the above is inaccurate.  I would certainly appreciate thoughts on how other people handle the differences between trad and story games!</blockquote>

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