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Post by coffee on Jul 8, 2017 9:07:15 GMT -6
Upon reflection, I guess I do this a lot in D&D combat--having lived with the tables for 35 years, I know pretty much intuitively when you've hit, even if it may be a point or two off. Close enough. Well, that's not quite what Gronan said. He said that there are certain die rolls where you KNOW you hit, or missed. For the other ones, you look at the table. If I'm in your game with a 2nd level fighter, fighting an orc, and I roll an 18, we both KNOW I hit. But what if I roll a 14? If the Orc's AC is 6, then I did; a 2nd level fighter needs a 13 to hit AC 6. Similarly, that same 2nd level fighter needs a 10 to hit AC 9, so anything below 10 is a miss. We don't care how much it missed BY, we just know it's a miss. But if you're "a point or two off," how does that square with the rest of the world? Does it only work for players? Or do monsters get a freebie every now and again, and some player character gets killed by a monster that did NOT, by the actual die roll, hit? This is what is meant by knowing the system and knowing the world. The FKR referee is, in a very real sense, the natural laws of his universe. These laws don't change on a whim. They are enforced just as rigidly and mercilessly as the law of gravity is in our world. They are consistent and they work the same way for everybody. And that's why the players can trust the referee. Gravity has no particular malice toward you; neither does the referee toward your character. His monsters, of course, take a different view. But they have to suffer under the same natural laws, too. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2017 11:14:25 GMT -6
Mmmmm, I think Kesher's example is okay, provided that, as you say, it works that way all the time. If monsters and players both get a little wobble room in the middle, that's kosher. The object is to keep things moving rather than stop and look it up. It's not an absolute line, it's the referee's call when they do or don't look something up. As long as the referee is trying to be fair it's OK.
In your example, if a player, or monster, is to the point one hit will kill them I'm more likely to check the table.
Most importantly, the Free Kriegsspiel Renaissance is an ETHOS, not a set of rules; I really don't want to get into arguments over edge cases and what is or isn't "proper."
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Post by coffee on Jul 8, 2017 12:41:49 GMT -6
As long as the referee is trying to be fair it's OK. I think this sums up the ethos perfectly. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2017 11:57:35 GMT -6
I'm working on a draft of the FKRs Manifesto right now.
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Post by Finarvyn on Dec 16, 2017 10:03:40 GMT -6
Can't wait to see it!  |
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Todd
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Post by Todd on Dec 16, 2017 11:55:43 GMT -6
A friend of mine runs a Marvel supers games along these lines. It works because he, along with his players, have an excellent and shared grasp of the super abilities, how they work, etc. and the world in which they exist.
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Post by korvin0starmast on Feb 28, 2018 13:42:05 GMT -6
As for foul rulings there are countless examples all over the web that point out the folly of DM fiat. The sheer volume of them stands testament to how rulings go wrong. Hi:
Take a look at the analytical problem of counting the hits and ignoring the misses. It's like crime: people don't call the cops to tell them someone isn't breaking into their house.
I have flown in a Fokker (as a passenger, they make commuter planes now) and it appears that I may be a FKR. Hmm.
OK, insofar as FKR in games and in actual wargames used by the US Army.
About 24 years ago, I was working with an Army mMajor on a project regarding the theoretical model for getting out of the attrition based combat model inherent in the National Training Center's set up in Fort Irwin, and in the Miles gunnery system, and in all of the BCTP/CPX training modules for brigade and above staffs. (I'll make an understatement in saying that this was a tough nut to crack, and he was only working on a piece of the answer).
In the meantime, the Army was experimenting with a lot of FRK stuff at the JRTC in Fort Polk: the light infantry folks tended to go there for major exercises, and a lot of the "but there are 40 thousand refugees here, in and around the battlefield, and CNN just showed up with their camera on a bleeding kid" kind of stuff. The heavy divisions headed to NTC in Fort Irwin for a brigade sized rotation.
Bloody Expensive Training.
The Army's leadership was concerned that their Fulda Gap assumptions and training systems to support them were not going to serve the OOTW world very well. (See peace keeping, peace enforcement, Somalia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, and much more. )
Trying to get a rule set to encode the moral and morale effect on friendlies and enemies was a complete bugger. There was some theoretical work done by Dr James Schneider on the mental/moral/cybernetic domain in battle (those non linear effects and the tendency of a bad tactical situation to snowball into an utter mess or a rout) that were related to the attempt at an answer. How to put that into a BCTP was a bugger, since each exercise is graded and "what we need more training on" was a critical output. Metagaming to win -knowing the gaming system and explointing loopholes -- , when found, often a cause for alarm and ass-chewings. (The point is training, ultimately).
A piece of the proposal I provided to him was to use more human judges/referees to make rulings on the spot, as was already resident in any exercises white cell in Army and in Joint training exercises. I don't know if his piece ever got through unscathed, but the Colonel who reviewed our piece of that project before I was moved to another project made a simple criticism: the Army is cutting down its billets, not increasing them(mid 90's). Any proposal that increases the amount of people, rather than the allegedly a more cost effective computer, was unlikely to see the light of day in the offices higher up the chain.
As far as I know, JRTC in Fort Polk still uses a lot of FKR principles in their training. Been out of that loop for over 15 years, so I wonder what became of that project ... if anyting.
FKR: it has real world application in at least one place that I know of. It's also a good way to run a D&D game. As chirinebakal pointed out upthread, there needs to be a trust relationship at the table for it to work.
That's a people thing, not a game system thing.
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Post by captainjapan on Nov 1, 2020 7:22:39 GMT -6
I am not now, nor have I ever been, part of the "Old School Renaissance." This is because I've simply never stopped playing the game the way I always have. No rebirth involved. However, one of the bases of Braunstein, then Blackmoor, then Greyhawk, was the concept of "Free Kriegspiel," where the referee's judgement is the supreme authority, not a set of written rules. This fine tradition has all but died out. It needs desperately to be brought back. Therefore I hereby announce the launch of the "Free Kriegspiel Renaissance," or FKR. And yeah, it's pronounced exactly the way you think. So come on, let's be a bunch of FKRs! There's a way to do this, you know: Just, don't invite anyone to play, who also owns the rules e.g., the Players Handbook. Then, you can make up whatever rulings you like. Of course, if you go this route, you'll be attracting new players on the strength of your reputation as a referee (with no help from dungeons & dragons, since how would anyone be sure that's what you were actually refereeing?!) Maybe, you're THAT good!. I wouldn't take your word for it, though. That's for the players to say. You won't be doing the industry any favors by disallowing books at your table, but so what. |
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Post by tombowings on Nov 1, 2020 7:31:15 GMT -6
I am not now, nor have I ever been, part of the "Old School Renaissance." This is because I've simply never stopped playing the game the way I always have. No rebirth involved. However, one of the bases of Braunstein, then Blackmoor, then Greyhawk, was the concept of "Free Kriegspiel," where the referee's judgement is the supreme authority, not a set of written rules. This fine tradition has all but died out. It needs desperately to be brought back. Therefore I hereby announce the launch of the "Free Kriegspiel Renaissance," or FKR. And yeah, it's pronounced exactly the way you think. So come on, let's be a bunch of FKRs! There's a way to do this, you know: Just, don't invite anyone to play, who also owns the rules e.g., the Players Handbook. Then, you can make up whatever rulings you like. Of course, if you go this route, you'll be attracting new players on the strength of your reputation as a referee (with no help from dungeons & dragons, since how would anyone be sure that's what you were actually refereeing?!) Maybe, you're THAT good!. I wouldn't take your word for it, though. That's for the players to say. You won't be doing the industry any favors by disallowing books at your table, but so what. That's what I've always done, and I've never had trouble finding players. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2020 14:36:22 GMT -6
I've participated in fkr for about a year now and it's definitely more of a niche audience than osr in general. There's a lot of interesting ideas and even a zine or two out, one of which I've written for. Questing Beast has written about the concept and that makes it more visible to the wider community. Though Mr. Mornard no longer posts here, this post has definitely made a ripple in Gaming.
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Post by verhaden on Jun 25, 2021 19:50:47 GMT -6
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