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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8426211" data-attributes="member: 42582">On the thread: I think it's a success! Look at the title. And what are we discussing 500 posts in? We're discussing system - ie (<a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/2/" target="_blank">to quote Ron Edwards</a>) a means by which in-game events are determined to occur - and how free kriegsspiel works as a system, and also what the FKR has to say about system.On whether my description of FKR's relationship to Arneson, Gygax etc is painting FKR as play = playtesting/game design. Mabye?But here's another thought - once again, <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">it's Edwards</a>, under the heading "Pitfalls of Narrativist game design":Karaoke. This is a serious problem that arises from the need to sell thick books rather than to teach and develop powerful role-playing. Let's say you have a game that consists of some Premise-heavy characters and a few notes about Situation, and through play, the group generates a hellacious cool Setting as well as theme(s) regarding those characters. Then, publishing your great game, you present that very setting and theme in the text, in detail. <snip most of Edwards' quote from Over the Edge, which finishes with the following - the quoted "I" is Jonathan Tweet:> The first time I played OTE, I had a few pages of notes on the background and nothing on the specifics. I made it all up on the spot. Not having anything written as a guide (or crutch), I let my imagination loose. You have the mixed blessing of having many pages of background prepared for you. If you use the information in this book as a springboard for your own wild dreams, then it is a blessing. If you limit yourself to what I've dreamed up, it's a curse. All I (Edwards] see, I'm afraid, is the curse. The isolated phrases "mixed blessing" and "(or crutch)" don't hold a lot of water compared to the preceding 152 extraordinarily detailed pages of canonical setting. I'm not saying that improvisation is better or more Narrativist than non-improvisational play. I am saying, however, that if playing this particular game worked so wonderfully to free the participants into wildly successful brainstorming during play ... and since the players were a core source during this event, as evident in the game's Dedication and in various examples of play ... then why present the results of the play-experience as the material for another person's experience?I love this passage from Edwards, and have often referred to it before. One thing I loved about 4e D&D is that it dropped so much of the accreted karaoke of D&D - how exactly does a Sepia Snake Sigil work (compare the rules text in Unearthed Arcana to the 2nd ed AD&D PHB to the 3E PHB to see this build up of someone else's play experience as the material for our play)? What happens if I blast a fireball into a small space? Can my character jump across the wild spaces of the Elemental Chaos and grapple Ygorl? In its place it substituted crisp resolution mechanics in the form of DCs-by-level, page 42, the uniform player-side resource economy, the combat action economy, and the skill challenge framework.My understanding of at least some of the FKRers - not the one's playing Cthulhu Dark, and frankly not Dark Empires either, but the ones who want to "play like they were playing with Gary in Greyhawk" is that they are sick of the karaoke of system to some pretty fundamental degree. They want to experience the creation of it for themselvesThat's not a passion of mine - I don't want Sage Advice-style karaoke of adjudication but am happy to take useful and versatile systems off the shelf - but I'm not going to fault  that passion in others.</blockquote>

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