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

[Bacon Bits]

This feels like it's driving back towards, "What is the purpose of the rules?"

I think TTRPGs are one of the most complex games that has been developed. I don't think that's a good thing; I just think that many TTRPGs are games that have developed so many disparate modes of play that complexity has naturally followed them.

But at it's core, TTRPGs are about bringing concord to a blended game of Make Believe and/or Storytelling. That is to say, the rules exist to let the table agree on how they will come to mutual agreement on the outcomes of events in the game world before anything happens in the game world.

Without concord, eventually you get back to:

A: I shot you! You're dead!
B: No you didn't!
A: Yes I did!
B: Well, I have bulletproof armor!
A: No you don't!
B: Yes I do!

And thus the attack roll was born out of need to stop arguments.

FKR seems like creating a nearly minimal set of rules for determining concord and going with them, but I don't think they're uniquely minimal.

Overall, I think what's here reminds me more of Amber Diceless, where concord is determined without dice and is based on bidding, costs, and precedence at the start of the game. I think that actually feels like a more pure form of FKR. Don't bother with dice; the dice are random. They don't know how to play Make Believe or Storytelling. Start with a negotiation for whom gets authority in a given aspect of the game, and then by invoking aspects each player can influence the game world. Like most Storytelling games, you only lose if the story ends. Like most Make Believe games, the idea is to persist the fiction.

A referee is only needed if creating a world that is consistent and independent of observed knowledge is desirable. That is to say, if the world is expected to be able to do things for reasons that none of the characters know about, it can be easiest to create a referee to be the player of the character of the world. In this way, the other players have less susceptibility to having their characters act from the knowledge they should not have. It makes playing the game easier, but it's not needed.

 

[overgeeked]

But at it's core, TTRPGs are about bringing concord to a blended game of Make Believe and/or Storytelling. That is to say, the rules exist to let the table agree on how they will come to mutual agreement on the outcomes of events in the game world before anything happens in the game world.

Right. So that’s all you really need. A rule to cover concord. What happens when there’s a disagreement about what happens? You roll for it.

“I shot you.”

“No you didn’t.”

Resolve that disagreement by rolling.

Now apply that to any disagreements.

If the outcome isn’t obvious from the fiction, and the players cannot agree on what should happen next, roll. This is a really old idea, as far as RPG ideas are old. See the Perfected images from the OP. That RPG was devised in the late 70s.

 

[Bacon Bits]

You roll for it.

Right, and I'm saying even dice aren't necessary. Not because you don't run into a situation where you can't reach concord without some mechanism, just that random chance does not need to be involved in the mechanism at all.

 

[overgeeked]

Right, and I'm saying even dice aren't necessary. Not because you don't run into a situation where you can't reach concord without some mechanism, just that random chance does not need to be involved in the mechanism at all.

So what then? If you have no randomizer and encounter a situation where no agreement is possible, then what?

Either someone has to decide (referee) or some mechanism needs to be in place to resolve it (usually some randomizer).

 

[Bacon Bits]

So what then? If you have no randomizer and encounter a situation where no agreement is possible, then what?

It doesn't matter. You only have to agree upon the mechanism before you need it. Nothing requires that mechanism to be random. That's simply common convention, with all the assumptions and preconceptions we have trapped within. That's why I mentioned Amber Diceless as a "more pure form of FKR." If I bid 420 on Combat, well, I get to decide the results of combat. That means if you want to beat me, you need to do so without combat. It'd be like saying that we're writing a book together, and I get to write all the chapters on Combat, while you get to write all the chapters on, say, Sneaking or Diplomacy.

Let's branch off for a moment. Let's assume that any time an author is writing fiction, they're playing a one-person game of FKR. They are running the world as a character, running each character as a character, and so on. Not all authors write this way -- essentially role-playing their characters in each scene -- but some do.

Randomness doesn't really help a story. A narrative arc generally isn't satisfying because it's random. Quite the opposite. If Luke and Han were on the Death Star, in the detention center to free Leia and they opened the wrong cell and found a Tauntaun doing a can-can, that would certainly be random. Doesn't really progress the story, though. Abject confusion isn't really one of the hero's thousand faces.

Returning to games, randomness doesn't make something a game, either. Plenty of games involve basically no randomness, like Chess or Go or Tic-Tac-Toe. Indeed, the Storytelling Game itself is a game without randomness. Typically it's said that you only lose that game when the story ends.

So there's no reason to assume that randomness, let alone dice, is a necessary or even inherently desirable element to FKR. It seems simple because you can write it down in few words, but it's really only "simple" because we have preconceived notions about what dice are for in games. Once you think about the role of dice, it starts to make less sense.

And, yes, while you need good-faith players for diceless FKR, we already know you still need good-faith players for FKR with dice, too.

 

[DEFCON 1]

And then there is the board game Diplomacy... the ender of friendships, the maker of feelings hard, the backer of stabs, etc.

This board game has "rules" that are very light and has a win condition, but the only way to win is the betrayal of your word given... there is no randomness other than the chaos of "trust."

The only issue with Diplomacy is that too often people step up to play without really understanding on a fundamental level what the game is about, and what "stabs" are meant to do. And it also doesn't help the situation that a normal game is 8-12 hours long.

There are plenty of games where people get "stabbed"-- any of the Werewolf / Assassin / Secret Hitler / Coup type games are all about that-- pretending to be one thing although actually another, all in an effort to win. But when one of those games only lasts for 30 minutes... then the truth is revealed, the betrayer wins or doesn't win, and then you immediately play again and wipe the results of that previous game away... each player usually comes to grips with the state of gameplay and accepts it for what it is.

But because Diplomacy takes so fricking long, and you don't tend to play that game that often... the bad taste in a person's mouth WHEN they've been stabbed stays with them for a long, long, loooooooooonnnnng time. And the odds of getting that person back to the table to try and "cleanse" their palate over the last game is pretty goddamn long. It ends up being that only the most masochistic of us are able to accept being kicked in the groin over a massive Diplomacy stab, lose horribly, and then turn around and say "Thank you sir, may I have another?" And then set up and play the next 10-hour Diplomacy game whenever it happens to be some time in the future.

I personally LOVE Diplomacy, even knowing full well I'm going to have my heart broken usually 6 out of every 7 games. Because the journey to get that broken heart is just so damn cool. It ain't for everyone... but for those for whom it is, the game is amazing.

 

[payn]

The only issue with Diplomacy is that too often people step up to play without really understanding on a fundamental level what the game is about, and what "stabs" are meant to do. And it also doesn't help the situation that a normal game is 8-12 hours long.

There are plenty of games where people get "stabbed"-- any of the Werewolf / Assassin / Secret Hitler / Coup type games are all about that-- pretending to be one thing although actually another, all in an effort to win. But when one of those games only lasts for 30 minutes... then the truth is revealed, the betrayer wins or doesn't win, and then you immediately play again and wipe the results of that previous game away... each player usually comes to grips with the state of gameplay and accepts it for what it is.

But because Diplomacy takes so fricking long, and you don't tend to play that game that often... the bad taste in a person's mouth WHEN they've been stabbed stays with them for a long, long, loooooooooonnnnng time. And the odds of getting that person back to the table to try and "cleanse" their palate over the last game is pretty goddamn long. It ends up being that only the most masochistic of us are able to accept being kicked in the groin over a massive Diplomacy stab, lose horribly, and then turn around and say "Thank you sir, may I have another?" And then set up and play the next 10-hour Diplomacy game whenever it happens to be some time in the future.

I personally LOVE Diplomacy, even knowing full well I'm going to have my heart broken usually 6 out of every 7 games. Because the journey to get that broken heart is just so damn cool. It ain't for everyone... but for those for whom it is, the game is amazing.

The best way to play Diplomacy is online with 24 hours between turns. Oh I’ve had some doozies

 

[clearstream]

I will say, it's nice to hear a description of FKR that doesn't come across as "everyone can like what they like (but our way is just better.)" This is, I think, the first time I've heard anyone give an example of something FKR doesn't do well, which is useful.

More important for me personally, however, was this:

Which seems, to me, to indicate that FKR...isn't really trying to be a game anymore. It's trying to be something else--something very like a game, something with a lot in common with what "game" means, but not actually a game. Otherwise, it would have that almost-ineffable " 'gaminess' feeling," as you put it. Or, as I would put it, FKR actively, and almost completely, excludes Score & Achievement as a game-(design-)purpose, choosing to focus almost exclusively on Groundedness & Simulation, with just the lightest, faintest dusting of Conceit & Emulation to secure the appropriate setting context (hence references to things like Asimov's Foundation and Empire.)

And it's worth noting, despite being a big fan of PbtA, I had feelings much like this--it didn't scratch my itch for "gaminess"-feeling. As I once described to a friend, while the first true game of Dungeon World I ever played was one of my favorite campaigns, combats became mechanically uninteresting very quickly, to the point that I explicitly said "I could write a flowchart that would be able to handle pretty much any combat, ever." Thematically, they were almost always super important and impactful! Mechanically they were very simplistic. I wasn't bored with the story. I was bored with the gameplay. And some of the other players even picked up on that. So--yes, I completely agree that that is one of the reasons I tend to be skeptical of FKR claims, since it's pretty obvious that they would be even less supportive of "gaminess"-feeling than the rock-bottom amount PbtA supports.

But there's another bit, from one of your cited references, that bears discussion:

See, this fundamentally conflicts with how I understand the rules of literally any game--any TTRPG I've ever played, or even merely read.

What the above says is, "Because a rule exists, that rule is the only way to achieve <whatever the rule does.>" And to me, that's a patently foolish way to play...well, anything, apart from board games. Doesn't matter what RPG you're playing. All the existence of a rule tells you is, "this is one established way to do <whatever the rule does.>" You cannot reason from the presence of a rule to the idea that that excludes other ways of doing something. You can't even reason from the absence of a rule to say that something can't be done. The one, and only, thing reason entitles you to conclude is that there is at least one way to do that particular thing.

Because guess what? I would, 110%, support my players trying to rehabilitate an abused panther mount and cobble together armor for it from the bashed-up remnants of their fallen foes' armor. I literally couldn't care less whether there is a rule already established for that sort of thing. Now, if said rule exists, perhaps that's the easy way to do it, and the party will have to be a bit more clever or patient first, or expend other resources, or take risks that that rule wouldn't require. That's how you respect the rules that exist, while not doing the draconian (and trivially stupid...) "because you didn't train in Animal Handling, the cool thing you want to do is impossible."

Good rules provide you with good established ways to do a lot of things people are already going to want to do, and in a way that will be reliably both entertaining and challenging. They don't rob you of your creativity and agency like some kind of bureaucratic self-appointed hall monitor tattling to the teacher. They support you, for doing many, many things that are commonly done. And they give you good baselines for applying your own judgment, in all the uncommon things that are, collectively, quite frequent.

Regarding the question of FKR as game, I might sketch it out like this -

So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C. Rules supersede pre-existing norms, and extend beyond them. During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm/rule that explicitly states or implies that C. As much as there are rules that supersede or extend norms for mappings from descriptions (Ds) to consequences (Cs), there are those that invite (rule-in) or exclude (rule-out) some Ds.

So rules have a normative effect on play (what normally counts as activity of the kind that constitutes the game.) FKR strips rules out. The reason a referee then becomes important to FKR is because normative means are still required. A referee is just one solution to that.

FKR is a game, because games do not rely on written rules to be played. A game is a mechanism. Game texts are tools that fabricate that mechanism via the process of interpretation, but games can be fabricated by any means with normative effect. (Contrast with computer games, in which the software/hardware overtly fabricates the mechanism and renders it visible, audible and interactable.) On the other side, to engage in gameplay is to adopt playful purposes, accept the means in view of those purposes, and sustain the attitude of playfulness and acceptance throughout the play. FKR satisfies these requirements.

The gamist feel that you describe (and which I share) is for another job rules do, which is to form an analogic and symbolic mechanism that simulates whatever it is we're interested in playing. Domain expertise and skilful translation of domain essentials into gamist systems with engaging tempo and balance yields play that is distinct in ways you outline from play in the absence of those rules.

Another bit I find particularly telling (emphasis in original):

This sounds genuinely nothing at all like how most people describe FKR and "rulings not rules" etc. to me. Like, almost emphatically the antithesis of how it's usually described. Because the usual description I get has communicated that the players need to fight tooth and nail for every bit of information, for every scrap of understanding. I see lots and lots of pejorative references to "handholding," for example, and to being strongly enthusiastic about players failing to learn stuff because sometimes that happens, them's the breaks, etc. And, perhaps most damning of all, the widespread and pervasive commitment to illusionism and quantum GMing in the minimalist gaming space: the world will change under their feet and actively prevent them from ever finding out, and whatever the GM intends for them to find/do/experience WILL be found/done/experienced, no matter what choices they make, the ogre is there whether they head south into the forest or north toward the plains.

This is genuinely suprising. It's the first time I've ever heard about information paucity as the way "most people" describe FKR. It sounds tangential: it has nothing to do with whether the game play is/is-not FKR. The piece you quoted seemed far more representative.

Perhaps what it is, is that when thinking about character in world, folk think about what that character could know. The group might be revelling in circumstances where the knowledge-economy matters.

 

[Oofta]

As I stated above, I've tried a few very-low-rules games and they're okay but it's not something I want longer term. But then I was thinking it over and realized that's not quite right either, at least not for me. I would have no idea how to run D&D-style-adjacent combat in an FKR game. It seems like it would devolve into "I swing my sword and chop your head off" followed by "I shield it" and then "You can't keep doing that, there has to be a limit!"

On the other hand, I don't really want a game that tells me how to do social or exploration parts of the game. I want social encounters to be a bit of a mystery as a player because I want NPCs and their organizations the options to have secrets and private agendas of their own. If I have some sort of social encounter point system, as a player I'll be thinking about gaming the system than treating the NPCs as people. I want a few rules here and there to help decide uncertainty. After all dice get lonely if they don't get rolled often enough which makes them grumpy. Nobody likes the results of grumpy dice. Exploration is much the same but in a different way, it's so varied and open to the imagination that as a DM I don't want to be constrained by a set of rules. I can use the structure we have.

Even in combat I'm perfectly okay with people doing things that are not strictly combat because if there's a chandelier, much like Chekov's gun it really should be used at some point. So combat has a bit of openness, social and exploration are a lot closer to FKR and I can throw in a bit of rules here and there for an added bit of spice.

Does social and exploration tiers occasionally calling for a skill check mean it doesn't qualify for FKR? If I'm using the DMG as an example, I can ask for rolls for pretty much everything or just go by descriptions. But it's still always going to be a game of make-believe with the DM interacting with the players. In any case, I'm not sure I care much but one of the aspects of D&D I enjoy is the mix. Fairly, but not completely, rules restrained combat system. A fairly, but not necessarily completely unrestrained depending on group preference, open social and exploration systems.

 

[Umbran]

Right, and I'm saying even dice aren't necessary.

Maybe I lost the thread here. Is this really about them being "necessary", or just about them being convenient and useful for the job?