What are the rules for?

[mmadsen]

I think many of us on this hobby have gone through phases of studying rules and wanting more detailed rules for more elements of the game and then swinging the pendulum back the other way as we found the rules largely got on the way of playing the game and getting reasonable results. This is not a new phenomenon.

Paddy Griffith wrote about this in another context:

The nineteenth-century Prussian game started life with a rigid structure and copious formal rules. The two sides were each placed in a separate room with a model of the terrain or a map. The umpires moved from one room to another collecting orders from the players, and then retired to a third room to consult the rules and find the results of combat. A great deal of their time was consumed in leafing through voluminous sets of rules, consulting tables and giving rulings on fine legal points. By about 1870, however, this rigid system was starting to be thought rather clumsy and time-consuming. Quite apart from the many defects and loopholes in the rules themselves, it reduced the umpires, who were often very senior officers, to the role of mere clerks and office boys. clearly, such a state of affairs was intolerable.​

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It was General von verdy du Vernois who finally broke with this system, and abolished the rule book altogether. His approach to the wargame was the free kriegspiel, in which the umpire had a totally free hand to decide the result of moves and combats. He did not do this according to any set of written rules, but just on his own military knowledge and experience. He would collect the players’ moves in exactly the same way as before; but he would then simply give a considered professional opinion on the outcome. This speeded up the game a very great deal, and ensured that there was always a well thought-out reason for everything that happened. This was a great help in the debrief after the game, and it allowed players to learn by their mistakes very quickly.​

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The free kriegspiel using maps can offer many advantages for modern wargamers provided that the umpire has a reasonable background in wargaming, and a bit of common sense. If this condition is met, the game immediately becomes faster and less pedantic than if it had been tied down to a set of rules. The umpire can always think of more factors to incorporate in his decisions than could ever be true in a formal or rigid game. He can therefore spread a greater atmosphere of realism about the game.​

 

[Deset Gled]

Free kiegspiel in no way whatsoever means the game has no rules. It's just a different way of communicating and adjudicating the rules.

Personally, I play with rules because rules are fun. I like some a lot more than others, both on the individual level and the group level.

 

[payn]

Oh yeah @Snarf Zagyg wrote a lot about FKR.

 

[Deset Gled]

Oh yeah @Snarf Zagyg wrote a lot about FKR.

Thread:

D&D General Thread 'FKR: How Fewer Rules Can Make D&D Better'

May 17, 2023

A lot of the time, I fail my own wisdom saving throw. I sometimes will refer to FKR with the assumption that people will know what I'm talking about, given that I've written about it in the past. However, as @Micah Sweet recently reminded me, that is not the case. So, since it has been a while since I've gone into this, I thought I'd post some collected thoughts on the subject, and end with a conclusion as to how, even if you do not choose to play FKR games, some of the concepts can be used in your own D&D game.


1. What is FKR?
Despite being the stuff of nightmares...

• Snarf Zagyg
• Replies: 189
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

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So, big question for the OP: Do you want to talk about why games have rules, or about FKR? Because those are two different discussions.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To me tabletop roleplaying is a mash-up of two very different hobbies:

• A hacked tabletop wargame where you get to try anything and subvert the rules
• A form of improv storytelling where you have better continuity and minor characters

The point of the rules for the hacked tabletop wargame is to be the wargame rules you are subverting and to provide something to push against to create the world.

The point of the rules in the improv storytelling is to allow you to have conflict and conflict resolution in ways improv fails to. Improv always wants "Yes and" because if you create a conflict you are blocking, but yes-but stories are more interesting. Meanwhile having rules lets you roll the dice to decide which way to go and move on with everyone having been listened to. It also helps pin down your continuity and what you consider important.

And in both cases rules add random elements and are an aid to the shared visualisation.

 

[mmadsen]

Free kiegspiel in no way whatsoever means the game has no rules.

Perhaps you could expand on what you mean by that, because it does literally mean that you rely on the DM’s judgment, rather than rules.

Personally, I play with rules because rules are fun. I like some a lot more than others, both on the individual level and the group level.

This came up in another thread. I think many of us on this hobby enjoy reading and thinking about rules — but the best rules for reading, which seem to make perfect sense on the page, don’t always make for a good game at the table or yield reasonable results.

 

[500 Toads]

I find a well-written, detailed set of rules important for ensuring a solid baseline of shared, internally consistent expectations regarding how the in-game world works (*). Essentially, the base rules plus any declared house rules and revisions serve to reduce the risk of misunderstandings where two or more participants have substantially different opinions on how something should work; and should allow more time spent playing the game, rather than arguing about the game.

A side benefit is that having detailed rules with objective, clear means of resolving a wide range of situations makes it easier for a GM to act as a neutral arbiter and referee; but I personally lean towards simulation, rather than prioritizing drama.

(*) Provided that the players are willing to actually read the rules, or at least their core mechanics, of course...