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<blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8425776" data-attributes="member: 86653"><p>Wow. That's a lot of jargon. If I understand all that, then yes, that looks right to me, save the bolded and italicized bit. Compelling implies deference to story, FKR doesn't do that. Emergant story rather than pushing for story structure, acts, etc. It goes for internal consistency according to genre expectations. So what makes for the most compelling story isn't a factor. Unless it is. Because, again, it's a playstyle not a singular game or system. So it will be different depending on the actual game played and the actual Referee running it. Along with the genre emulated and the players at the table. </p><p></p><p><em><strong>And</strong></em> implies that the rules are on par with the world. Equal stature. As relevant as. They're not. The rules are at the end of the list of things that are important, if that. The goal is to get to character immersion and world immersion. Every time you engage mechanics that breaks immersion, takes you out of the shared delusion of the fiction, etc. So a push for the simplest rules possible, while still having rules, so you can deal with the rules as quickly as possible (minimizing breaking immersion), and move back to actual play (i.e. immersion in character and world).</p><p></p><p>But you do. Your entire life has trained you to expect and accept certain things from a wide but limited list. In real life you wouldn't shrug off seeing a person lift off from the ground, unaided, and simply fly away. Nor would you be blasé about a person breaking off part of a building and throwing it. The "real world" is just as much a genre with genre rules and tropes and expectations as any other.</p><p></p><p>Right. But in real life you don't have an omniscient observer (Referee) to ask questions and no expectation of objective answers. Take the gastank. You can ask the Referee about how much gas is in the tank. You can ask the Referee about how far you'd estimate that car could go with about that much gas. This simulates you looking at your gas gauge and <em>estimating</em> how much gas is there and <em>estimating</em> how far you can go with what you have in the tank. But to gamers, that would drive them up the wall. "Why can't I know exactly how much gas is in the tank?" "Do you stop the car and precisely measure the amount of gas in the tank or are you eyeballing it and guessing?" "Why can't I know exactly how far I can go with what's left in the tank?" "Because you haven't driven it yet. You're estimating distance based on an estimate of gas. And there could be trouble ahead. There's no precision to be had." But that's exactly how it goes in real life. At best you can estimate based on past experience and your list of genre expectations. At no point is there an omniscient observer to tell you precise probabilities. It's an affect/conceit of gaming.</p><p></p><p>And that's the disconnect. In ultralight games, like most FKR games, there's already more rules than you'd expect in real life. There's already "something" there in FKR and ultralight games. It's just not enough for some. Because as gamers, we want more. More widgets to poke at and more buttons to press. Because it's a game. It has rules. But one of the goals of FKR is to shift the focus from game rules onto immersion and verisimilitude by pushing game play towards the "play loop" we use in real life.</p><p></p><p>But we don't need to do that. We don't need to regulate and encode anything beyond the genre expectations and if we can't decide based on the fiction, roll 2d6. If something needs to be encoded, like say the quantity of food a horse eats in a day, instead of looking in a rule book for the answer (D&D5E says it's four pounds, btw) you look to real life as much as possible and then only if it's relevant. Does it matter right now, in this moment, exactly how much food a horse eats? If not, then it doesn't matter. Horses need to eat 1-2% of their body weight in roughage a day, for what it's worth. Unless you're talking about really small breeds of horses, they need more than four pounds of food a day. And that's part of the problem. As gamers we default to the rules rather than reality...when we have objective reality all around us to default back to. (When/if objective reality is a valid reference point, it might not always be...such as space opera, etc.) That creates cognitive dissonance with people who know more about a particular subject than the writers of the rules. It breaks their immersion. So rather than codify a quick but wrong answer in the rules, don't. If it matters enough that you would want to stop the game and take time to look it up in the rule book...take the time to look it up for real. Especially now. Hello internet. If it's about genre, reference the genre. If it's mechanical, roll 2d6. I've been doing this hobby for about 37 years. I have played a lot of games with a lot of gamers across the country in various environments, and I've yet to come across a single rule in any game that is justified in being more complicated than "roll 2d6, higher is better." Genre emulating rules are a bit different. Like Doctor Who's pitch perfect initiative rules. Actions occur in the following order: talkers, movers, doers, fighters. Or Cthulhu Dark's "if you fight monsters, you die."</p><p></p><p>You're not wrong. It's a misalignment of expectations. You expect a lot of mechanical rules you can read prior to play. That's simply not what FKR wants to deliver. FKR points to genre tropes and particular pieces of fiction as the rules to use. If you want to assimilate rules prior to play, find out what the genre or piece of fiction, fact, or history you're playing is...and binge some stuff. So questions like "how do I climb a wall?" aren't answered with "on page 25 you'll find the DCs for climbing various surfaces" instead you'll get "it depends on the genre and circumstances in play at the time you want to climb a wall." How do you climb a wall? You tell the Referee that you climb the wall. They will make a decision based on the relevant circumstances in the moment if it's an automatic success, automatic failure, or you need to roll. If their decision sounds off to you, ask them. They'll explain their reasoning. It's a feature, not a bug.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="overgeeked, post: 8425776, member: 86653"] Wow. That's a lot of jargon. If I understand all that, then yes, that looks right to me, save the bolded and italicized bit. Compelling implies deference to story, FKR doesn't do that. Emergant story rather than pushing for story structure, acts, etc. It goes for internal consistency according to genre expectations. So what makes for the most compelling story isn't a factor. Unless it is. Because, again, it's a playstyle not a singular game or system. So it will be different depending on the actual game played and the actual Referee running it. Along with the genre emulated and the players at the table. [I][B]And[/B][/I] implies that the rules are on par with the world. Equal stature. As relevant as. They're not. The rules are at the end of the list of things that are important, if that. The goal is to get to character immersion and world immersion. Every time you engage mechanics that breaks immersion, takes you out of the shared delusion of the fiction, etc. So a push for the simplest rules possible, while still having rules, so you can deal with the rules as quickly as possible (minimizing breaking immersion), and move back to actual play (i.e. immersion in character and world). But you do. Your entire life has trained you to expect and accept certain things from a wide but limited list. In real life you wouldn't shrug off seeing a person lift off from the ground, unaided, and simply fly away. Nor would you be blasé about a person breaking off part of a building and throwing it. The "real world" is just as much a genre with genre rules and tropes and expectations as any other. Right. But in real life you don't have an omniscient observer (Referee) to ask questions and no expectation of objective answers. Take the gastank. You can ask the Referee about how much gas is in the tank. You can ask the Referee about how far you'd estimate that car could go with about that much gas. This simulates you looking at your gas gauge and [I]estimating[/I] how much gas is there and [I]estimating[/I] how far you can go with what you have in the tank. But to gamers, that would drive them up the wall. "Why can't I know exactly how much gas is in the tank?" "Do you stop the car and precisely measure the amount of gas in the tank or are you eyeballing it and guessing?" "Why can't I know exactly how far I can go with what's left in the tank?" "Because you haven't driven it yet. You're estimating distance based on an estimate of gas. And there could be trouble ahead. There's no precision to be had." But that's exactly how it goes in real life. At best you can estimate based on past experience and your list of genre expectations. At no point is there an omniscient observer to tell you precise probabilities. It's an affect/conceit of gaming. And that's the disconnect. In ultralight games, like most FKR games, there's already more rules than you'd expect in real life. There's already "something" there in FKR and ultralight games. It's just not enough for some. Because as gamers, we want more. More widgets to poke at and more buttons to press. Because it's a game. It has rules. But one of the goals of FKR is to shift the focus from game rules onto immersion and verisimilitude by pushing game play towards the "play loop" we use in real life. But we don't need to do that. We don't need to regulate and encode anything beyond the genre expectations and if we can't decide based on the fiction, roll 2d6. If something needs to be encoded, like say the quantity of food a horse eats in a day, instead of looking in a rule book for the answer (D&D5E says it's four pounds, btw) you look to real life as much as possible and then only if it's relevant. Does it matter right now, in this moment, exactly how much food a horse eats? If not, then it doesn't matter. Horses need to eat 1-2% of their body weight in roughage a day, for what it's worth. Unless you're talking about really small breeds of horses, they need more than four pounds of food a day. And that's part of the problem. As gamers we default to the rules rather than reality...when we have objective reality all around us to default back to. (When/if objective reality is a valid reference point, it might not always be...such as space opera, etc.) That creates cognitive dissonance with people who know more about a particular subject than the writers of the rules. It breaks their immersion. So rather than codify a quick but wrong answer in the rules, don't. If it matters enough that you would want to stop the game and take time to look it up in the rule book...take the time to look it up for real. Especially now. Hello internet. If it's about genre, reference the genre. If it's mechanical, roll 2d6. I've been doing this hobby for about 37 years. I have played a lot of games with a lot of gamers across the country in various environments, and I've yet to come across a single rule in any game that is justified in being more complicated than "roll 2d6, higher is better." Genre emulating rules are a bit different. Like Doctor Who's pitch perfect initiative rules. Actions occur in the following order: talkers, movers, doers, fighters. Or Cthulhu Dark's "if you fight monsters, you die." You're not wrong. It's a misalignment of expectations. You expect a lot of mechanical rules you can read prior to play. That's simply not what FKR wants to deliver. FKR points to genre tropes and particular pieces of fiction as the rules to use. If you want to assimilate rules prior to play, find out what the genre or piece of fiction, fact, or history you're playing is...and binge some stuff. So questions like "how do I climb a wall?" aren't answered with "on page 25 you'll find the DCs for climbing various surfaces" instead you'll get "it depends on the genre and circumstances in play at the time you want to climb a wall." How do you climb a wall? You tell the Referee that you climb the wall. They will make a decision based on the relevant circumstances in the moment if it's an automatic success, automatic failure, or you need to roll. If their decision sounds off to you, ask them. They'll explain their reasoning. It's a feature, not a bug. [/QUOTE]
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