FKR – Non-Exhaustive Analysis

EDIT: This post now serves as a Megapost collecting all my posts on FKR in a link tree for simple reference, updated as new articles are written:

Introduction

FKR (Free Kriegsspiel Revival/Renaissance, unless I’m not up to par with current nomenclature) has featured here a couple times. FKR is still having a moment, I’m somewhat associated with it, and I thought having an extra post people can point towards to newbies as an explanation would be at least an interesting contribution to do over half an hour. However, my interest is also doing an analysis of FKR as a concept, which problematic of play it’s meant to address, if any, and how it gets tangled up in perception with different objects like freeform.

Historical Note

FKR is seen as an offspring from OSR play. To define OSR (Old School Revival/Renaissance) play is a nightmarish exercise in ontology, taxonomy and historiography. For our purposes, the connections between them can be summarized as:

  • FKR is introduced in discourse by referees that were associated in some way with the OSR playstyle and what could charitably be called a community, although to my knowledge it originates from Mike Mornard who did not identify with the OSR in any way.
  • FKR is also an exercise in game archaeology, although I’m unaware of a revisionist (non-pejorative) accusation leveled against it the same way OSR had.
  • FKR is GM-oriented and it’s usually implemented in creative problem-solving games (more on reasons later).

FKR is ostensibly inspired by the reported methods of campaigns that predate the codification and publication of Original Dungeons & Dragons, if we can call that incomprehensible collection of unedited scrolls codified. It’s also called Arnesonian by some, according to reported practices by Dave Arneson, although there are other examples. Its name comes from Free Kriegsspiel, a variant of the Kriegsspiel wargame used to train Prussian officers. The Free variant introduced a referee (an experienced officer called umpire) that could make rulings regarding actual experiences in war and how things would operate in the real world instead of faithful adherence to the rules that could contradict it.

What is FKR?

While “the FKR that can be defined isn’t FKR” is a common saying in communities, there are aspects that must be defined if a productive deliberation is to be had, even if only for people to balk at those definitions. Indeed, I believe that without an investigation of its values, goals and others, the term will be reduced to merely a name for a few Discord communities. Hence the following attempt to reunite what are considered constitutional elements:

  • FKR is GM-oriented play, and centralized towards their final ruling. This usually comes after a discussion with players about context and justification, as adults are wont to do. The GM is called referee. While it’s possible to have co-referees in the same campaign setting, “power” is centralized upon one individual during a specific session, and they oversee negotiations about consequences of PC action. Games with division of authority during the session are not FKR.
  • FKR is not a classification for a game text. Therefore, it’s an oxymoron to sell FKR “games”, or even a rules text declaring itself FKR by nature. This is due both to FKR being a philosophical approach to the moment of play that can’t be codified into rules outside a specific table of players, and its stance towards rule texts in general.
  • FKR is campaign and setting specific, inspired by how pre-D&D campaigns were not based on rules texts, but based on the setting and referee’s deliberations. Which is why calling Blackmoor a D&D campaign is assumed incorrect. Playing Blackmoor was playing Blackmoor.
  • FKR assumes high trust, in which the referee is assumed to act as an adult who is reasonable and capable of justifying and negotiating their decisions, and the players are assumed to act as adults who can state their opinions clearly and follow social dynamics. This is true for any group RPG, but FKR establishes that as the priority to grasping other concepts. FKR is therefore a code of gaming etiquette as well as a mode of reading texts for play.
  • FKR puts in-world coherence ahead of any other concept. This is also generally called “diegetic”, although the term is controversial (including with me), and contrary to assumptions, in-world logic is not incompatible with abstraction which can represent what exists inside the fiction. The way conversational patterns and fluidity of fictional understanding between everyone on the table does not match the concept of diegesis as it is used in film theory (nor Greek drama, for that matter, although that one is also in conflict with film theory). For details, please read this. For those reasons, I will use “in-world” instead of “diegesis”.
  • FKR, as the connection to Free Kriegsspiel implies, relies on the understanding the referee has about a particular subject, although players can suggest based on their own knowledge.

Now, the specifics.

The Referee

The title referee implies the following: the player is there to adjudicate actions PCs take considering world logic (more on this later) and applying procedures as they see fit. That’s their primary function over weaving a particular storyline, whether that’s facilitating the players’ own desired story or their authorial plot mimicking the workings of narrative media.

Their other priority is keeping the players as tied to the fiction as a tangible thing, using as much in-world logic as possible. Some do it through players not knowing any abstract mechanical resolution that the referee applies, and the reputation of FKR as “minimalistic” (impractical term as it is) comes partially from it. This also leads to FKR being associated with freeform gaming, although it is not so, and I consider a strict separation between both essential for a shared understanding of FKR. FKR is not beholden to freeform or “ultralight mechanics”, since it’s an application of table culture.

It’s certainly a sort of consensus in the community to keep abstract mechanics, if they exist, the less player-facing as possible. On the other hand, the referee is expected to be generous with information about the world.

The relation to OSR play can be tied to this posture over GMing duties, which leads to creative problem-solving as a likely focus of play that better meshes with such attitude (together with taking GM fiat and “rulings, not rules” to the extreme, although the rulings slogan is itself controversial). It isn’t the only focus possible in a table, of course. No reason why the principles of traditional storyline gaming or more modern iterations can’t be played under FKR philosophy, if the referee is central to defining the world and adjudicating events.

A common criticism of FKR is the high power the referee has, understandably influenced by previous experience with power-mad teenagers and whoever kept that mental age in their older years. While it’s perfectly fine not wanting to play in these circumstances, we can agree this is not inherently a bug as much as feature for many. I’ve played in FKR games and did not suffer any experience of power abuse. A factor in it is recognizing the referee doesn’t carry the divine right of royalty but is in fact a democratically elected player to hold the position in the group.

The referee’s being the one to determine which procedures are used is criticized as preventing the presence of rules for containing them, which I answer: anyone who believes game mechanics to curb bad behavior may be interested in buying my scripture for the Statue of Liberty.

The other complaint is that it demands high skill on the part of the referee. Again, assuming that’s true, it’s not a bug; I don’t see why roleplaying couldn’t have highly demanding games. However, that is indeed merely assumption, because we have reports of people who never GMed before running rather successful FKR sessions, by remembering it’s just a game, that they can be honest with players about their analysis of the situation and hear other ideas, and that they can write down rulings they did as reference for future cases.

Play Worlds, Not Rules

The first half of the famous slogan refers to FKR’s understanding of the world as the primary source of play, rulings and interaction. Therefore, the world and its characteristics, and what’s logically possible there, are what the table should focus over anything else. Well-defined settings and assumptions are the bedrock of FKR play and it’s reasonable to assume that a vague understanding of setting will be the source of problems under this framework. All the world’s not merely a stage but the play, the thing, itself.

The second half is the trickier one, and it depends on understanding the above. The world “rule” is the most charged one in roleplaying communities, so it’s necessary to define the term related to context, like in a philosophy paper. “Rule” in this slogan concerns mechanical abstractions that don’t model the world 1:1 but instead ask that the world be understood through their assumptions, and the setting be adjusted for their use. It can also refer to the same mechanics intruding on the negotiation between referee and players regarding outcomes, again by imposing themselves over the world. Consequently, it rejects that a rules text must be selected for play experience and be the lens that will adjust the setting until it fits what it can mechanize, instead asking that a new collection of rules be created for every setting and every table playing in that setting, or that at least any selected rules text be read exclusively for the purpose of what can be used in it to simulate the world effectively.

The system proposed is one where:

  • Abstraction that would contradict or supersede in-world logic is minimal and ideally absent (hence the low or null use of numbers in many tables, although that is not obligatory and presuming so again leads to misleading).
  • Rules of engagement are built along the campaign (the reason so many use 2d6 vs 2d6 or a coin flip is because it’s effective for disagreements until more specific procedures or principles arrive).
  • Rules and conversational patterns are tied as much as possible to the facts of the world (which ends up, together with the act of noting down rulings, creating a sizable rulebook for the referee, even if only a coin flip or such is the apparent mechanic in common terminology).

The last element especially is another factor as to why there’s a confusion that FKR games are by nature ultralight or freeform. Their highly specific rules exist in assumptions, conversational patterns, consistent rulings, and worldbuilding facts, instead of what is generally understood as “actual rules”. Indeed, a FKR referee may use as many complex and numerical procedures from any game as they want (as did Dave Arneson), if those rules adequately simulate something about the setting that won’t contradict it nor can more effectively be solved by direct language and negotiation. One plays the world and creates rules.

Naturally, mechanics that share authorial functions between players or simulate the specifics of media are rejected. Nothing stops players from suggesting ideas about the world, or some aspect of the world following expectations from media, of course.

Rules are preferably modular simple statements about the world or logical consequences, often not requiring any randomizer. Cthulhu Dark’s “if you fight a monster, you die” is an example of what’s aimed at. Blunt weapons are effective against skeletons not due to extra damage rolls, but because they break bones. A spell needs such and such component. Heavy armor makes you sink.

This generally extends to character creation, which popularly uses Tags (simple words that define capabilities and operate best outside of a scale) or a short paragraph as some Olde House Rules games propose, those rulebooks being fondly seem by many FKR proponents (although the games themselves are not FKR, since that’s impossible).

Any rulebook can be pillaged and have its meat enjoyed as the skeleton rots in the sun, however a FKR referee will only consume whatever agrees with the world. A referee’s binder of pillaged rules, in fact, will often be hyper-specific and non-unified, without any relation to each other and meant to rule over one aspect of the setting/session and absolutely nothing else. Non-unification of rules is also a part of the FKR ethos as I recognize it, though not by obligation as much as practice.

Those with a bigger familiarity with OSR esoterica may find similarities between the FKR ethos of setting specificity and the attitude found in the GLoG (Goblin Laws of Gaming) community. GLoGs can be highly attuned to a specific setting the referee created, through classes and procedures. The similarities stop there, to my understanding.

FKR’s ethos maximizes breaking down the nonsense of “fluff vs crunch” in a hobby that is based entirely on interacting with fiction as source of enjoyment. To see methods of resolution and conversation as divorced from the table culture and their understanding of the fictional world is to see flying pigs, and FKR makes this clear by rejecting the dichotomy in the most extreme fashion.

Why the Confusion?

My honest guess is two points.

The first one is the usual case of things being tied to the FKR without consideration of its basic tenants, which dilutes the meaning (and may contribute to the perception of FKR being about hyper-minimalistic rules), and that breakdown of communication results in things like FKR rulebooks being produced. At worst case, it can be seen as the use of a convenient bandwagon to tie oneself to.

The second one is more tied to the main appeal of the FKR. That ties to fundamental issues of problematics. Generally, when we search for a procedure or mindset that goes beyond idle speculation, we are deliberating towards alternatives to solve a specific problem of play, a core material issue we want to address. Confusion arrives over what problem FKR is meant to solve, and the search for a unified answer (that can also be easily sold) is fruitless because the problem can be summarized thus:

“How do I play in this setting?”

This problem can be shared between two groups who wish to play in the same setting, sure, with a productive discussion, but ultimately this problem is too particular to one specific campaign. There’s no wide procedural approach as it was theorized for problems like “how do we maximize player agency in problem-solving”, “how do we best mechanize the tropes of a genre to guarantee a similar emotional arc”, “how do we share control over the narrative and setting among all players” and such. Therefore, the nature of FKR as a philosophical approach to table-specific gaming, the actual core of the hobby (auteur theories and such strongly rejected), which is more difficult to explain and define easily. Hence “the FKR that can be defined isn’t FKR” is true, but not in the sense I presume many use the phrase.

All its aspects flow to that problematic: a centralized figure to make final decisions over the setting to facilitate consensus over how to approach it, search for hyper-specific procedures and principles for that specific group play, the setting being the game etc. The development of the principle behind rules being simple fixed concepts expressed through words and conversational patterns instead of numerical abstraction is very much the most immediately applicable technology between different tables.

The Point

FKR is a high-trust GM-focused approach to roleplaying meant to hyperfocus on the inner workings of the setting. It often follows an erasure of abstractions, despite abstractions not necessarily contradicting the world. A FKR rulebook or game can’t be written or sold due to its status as an approach towards a text instead of a quality inherent to the text, although a well-made setting book could likely be created with an eye towards suggesting principles and facts that can be used for rulings based on its internal logic. It’s useful to those who want to play in a specific setting and don’t feel any pre-established framework is satisfying for what they search. Generally employed for games focused on creative problem-solving and exploration within that setting but can be employed for any game with a traditional leaning of relationships between players and referee.

If any of the above solves a specific issue you have, and if you want to play in a setting but can’t find a satisfying approach with your usual methods, FKR is worth investigation.

As a last note: FKR enthusiasts do not generally refer to themselves as FucKeRs. Common misunderstanding.

Further Reading

While not defined by the author as a FKR-adjacent philosophy, New Simulationism may be of interest.

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Author: Weird Writer

He/him. Brazilian, so excuse my French, I mean, my English.

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