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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8397803" data-attributes="member: 42582">On playing worlds, not rules I would reiterate what I posted in the other thread: this is about adjudication by way of direct application of fictional positioning. There is a lot of this in classic, dungeoneering D&D play. Conversely, it is a principle of Burning Wheel that if anything is at stake then the dice must be rolled - ie there is a deliberate rule that fictional positioning is never determinative when something is at stake. A correlate to this principle in BW is that the narration of failure focuses on intent (which is intimately related to what is at stake) rather than task - eg if something is at stake, but the fictional positioning is such that the task is trivial, then the Obstacle will be 1, and if the check nevertheless fails the GM will narrate some complication which probably involves introducing a new fictional element into the situation.Apocalypse World also differs from free kriegsspiel-esque adjudication, because if you do it, you do it and the move has to be resolved. And if the check fails then the MC is not constrained by the current fictional position in narrating failure, because s/he is at liberty to (eg) establish signs of impending badness, or to introduce some new element into the fiction that separates the PCs, or whatever.These examples (BW, AW, and of course they could be multiplied) show that play worlds, not rules is a thing - but it's a thing that (as per my OP) will deliver a particular sort of RPG experience. These examples also show that the "high trust" idea is a red herring best ignored: no system requires more trust (of the GM/MC as well as fellow players) than BW or AW.There is some discussion of FKR on this OD&D forum thread: <a href="https://odd74.proboards.com/thread/11146/fkr" target="_blank">BE A FKR! | Original D&D Discussion</a>When I read it, I found two things that were noteworthy:* There is this quote on the second page: The GM must know the setting inside and out, must know how that setting works the same way, and must be able to rule instantly and consistently so that the players know how the setting works and that the GM is working within the reality of that setting. This is consistent with what I posted in reply to [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] not too far upthread, about the importance of prep and holding that rock-steady in play. It also makes clear some of the well-known limitations of adjudication based on prep and fictional positioning: as soon as the fiction reaches a certain (pretty low) threshold of complexity, the possibility of this sort of adjudication breaks down. Eg we're playing a FKR-version of Traveller, and my PC is in a city and needs to get over a wall, fast. Is there any junk around to climb up onto? No referee can detail all the junk in even one city block, and so prep-and-fictional positioning won't help here. We need a way to work out the content of the setting. Classic Traveller doesn't discuss this in relation to junk that might help climb a wall, but already has subsystems for Law Level, Bribery, Streetwise etc that respond to the issue by adopting resolution frameworks that look more like Burning Wheel than they do like free kriegsspiel.* There is surprisingly little recognition of the role of expertise in free kriegsspiel refereeing, until at the end of the second page there is a bizarre detour into a discussion of a GM who has memorised the charts and so does not have to look them up every time. That sort of memorisation has zero to do with free kriegsspiel, which is all about the referee being an expert in respect of the fictional subject matter (eg the effect that terrain has on troop movements). As you ([USER=5142]@Aldarc[/USER]) note in the post to which I'm replying, any serious discussion of free kriegsspiel refereeing and its application to RPGing has to grapple with this issue. It only becomes compounded when questions of subject matter expertise interact with questions of the complexity of the setting - I've played in games which weren't meant to be silly or frustrating but became so because the referee was making free kriegsspiel-type rulings that were based on ignorance of physics and technology in context that were already implausibly austere given the sci-fi genre of the game.</blockquote>

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