Principled Freeform and FKR

(My sincere thanks to Jonathan, Justin and Ven)

You end up seeing Principled Freeform referenced in some communities, but receiving a definition involves jumping from old forum thread to old forum thread and picking up the pieces. How to proceed? It’s particularly interesting to me because as a FKR person, the discussion about “GMless FKR” (an oxymoron) is recurrent and Principled Freeform is cited as the already existing definition for the non-FKR proposal, so it would be useful for everyone to have a clear post about it (Procedural Freeform and the difference will also be explained). Besides, Principled Freeform is very rewarding to play and deserves wider attention.

The term and definition will point towards Meguey and Vincent Baker (the authors of Apocalypse World) and Emily Care Boss (among many other things, the coiner of the term “bleed”), due to their development and naming of this process (their game using this framework ran from 1998 to 2005), although surely it was already practiced by other people before them. I’d like to leave a preemptive apology to them if I skipped some important point in those threads, as I don’t mean to distort your words or diminish your research. All the pulled quotes in this post are sic.

In writing this, I took care to define it through the information presented on threads and supplementary information and made the decision of not utilizing old theory jargon that is either outdated or that can’t be explained for our purposes in simpler manner. Stopping to define terms, especially outdated ones like GNS, could only muddle the conversation in 2023.

What Is It

Here’s to start: designing a game means changing people’s normal social system.

Luke and Jared call it mind control. When you design a game, you do it to supplant the normal, natural interactions, relationships and considerations of its players with new, unnatural, designed interactions, relationships and considerations.

(…) You can change people’s normal social system with content. “Your character is the captain of a space ship; mine is her first mate.”

You can change people’s normal social system with principles. “Your right to say what your character does ends at my character’s skin. You can say your character punches mine, but I get to say how it affects my character.”

You can change people’s normal social system with procedural cues. “We roll dice. If you have the highest sum, you get to say what happens.” Procedural cues tell you how to interact, without reference to the content of the fiction you’re creating.

You can change people’s normal social system with mediating cues (popularly, mechanics). “When your character does something that would expose her to danger, stop! Roll dice for her ‘I’m craven.’ If the high die is 1-3, she’s too craven to do it.”

Vincent Baker

Vincent thankfully left this reference for us to understand the conception of freeform used here. While each person may agree or balk at these definitions, I will operate from them to explain Principled Freeform and how it’s different from FKR.

So then, freeform:

“Freeform” VS “non-freeform” means no mediating cues VS mediating cues.

“Freeform” VS “structured freeform” means content only VS content plus principles, procedural cues or both.

“Principled freeform” VS “structured freeform” – hereafter, “procedural freeform” – means content plus principles VS content plus procedural cues, with principles optional.

So “principled freeform” would mean a game – or a subsystem of a game – that changes its players’ social system by using only content and principles. “Procedural freeform” goes one further, using formal structures like narration trading, time limits, counters, non-representational pieces on a board, improv games, and who-knows-what-else, but never crossing that line into mechanical mediation.

Vincent Baker

Before we unpack this, I’d like to define another term coined by Vincent Baker and Emily Care Boss that supplements this, the Lumpley Principle (also called Baker-Care or Baker-Boss): the most popular definition is that system is how the group agrees to imaginary events. This includes the choice of written ruleset, conversational patterns, agreed play objectives, and such. Incidentally, the Lumpley Principle is what “System Matters” is supposed to mean, but crosswire conversation leads to System Matters being “Written (and possibly Commercial) Ruleset Matters”, and that’s the position people are arguing in favor or against in pretty much every conversation about System Matters. The Lumpley Principle will eventually be invoked, but only after one of the sides feel like they started to “lose” and want to redefine the agreed definition until that point.

Let’s look at that definition of Principled Freeform, or freeform that uses content (the fictional world and premise) and the laws of engagement the players agree. You may notice that it doesn’t mention a GM figure as requirement, nor for it or freeform at large. The play reports of the Ars Magica-based freeform campaign that the Bakers and Care played indicate that GMing, more exactly the roles associated with GMing, was a shared function during play, ever shifting during the session, without centralization of authority regarding the world or rulings to uncertain situations beyond the players deliberating among themselves and occasional use of the dice as oracular suggestions to be interpreted.

I’d add a caveat that it is wrong to say that people who search for “GMless FKR” are necessarily searching only for Principled Freeform. I think they may also be interested in Procedural Freeform as Vincent defines it, depending on their preferences for how to negotiate the fiction. What those share for our purposes ends up being unnecessity, and according to play reports a preference for the absence, of a central referee figure during play. Which is the exact opposite of FKR.

FKR vs Principled/Procedural Freeform, and Why the Confusion

Well, let’s make something clear that is in fact the reason of this blogpost: finding the definitions and play reports and such through the many forum threads Vincent collected in the “a background in Principled Freeform” post is quite the endeavor, besides the term falling in some obscurity compared to the present moment of FKR in certain communities. There’s that as one origin of the confusion.

Second, although we are defining system for our purposes under the Lumpley Principle, we can all agree that in common parlay we think system as “written ruleset”. So, it seems like freeform, Principled or not, is the same as FKR regarding relationship to written rulesets. Not quite. The freeform presented in the play reports is concerned to some extent with the relationship between all the players and a written ruleset (or the absence of it), which is different from the FKR preoccupation with the relationship between the ruleset and specifically the referee. Freeform and FKR have productive dialogue with each other but are not the same.

Using improvised system, our group engages in a lot of exploration of system.  Hitting walls like that one give us the clue that we need to use a different technique.  And if the next one we try doesn’t work, we modify it or use another, until we are satisfied that the ball is nicely pumped. We don’t have a pre-constructed structure for our drama, but instead develop system elements as we find we need them.

Emily Care

Emily’s comment here emphasizes the difference (lack of referee) but also points out a similarity between the usual practice of FKR and Principled (and others) Freeform: the development of system as a campaign progresses. However, FKR does not demand that, as explained in previous essays, although it can easily cause confusion to see the same procedure of emerging codified techniques in both styles.

I use the term “primary character” because there are technically no “non-player” character–we all gm and we all play.  IMO the closest thing we have to npc’s are characters who we use to help protagonize others either by helping or being an obstacle etc.

Emily Care

Another example of the referee-player fluid structure. While I commented on the possibility of multiple referees in a FKR campaign (sharing the world and running sessions in different parts of it), in no case the same structure emerges. Also notice the shared vision of characters described in one of the threads, instead of characters being the sole purview a regular FKR player has in the world and they don’t define other characters as well since they are not in a GMing roles rotation during single play.

As system, that took us longer to let go of. We did start out with classic AM. Or rather using a homebrew version that Vincent pretty much cooked up. At least that’s how I recall it. And we slowly moved away from using particular mechanics that we’d been using, through to using description and discussion to figuring things out (which is still our primary resolution system) to now suggesting dice and other mechanics on the fly or using ones we’ve found useful in the past.

Emily Care

The rebellion against rulesets as primary source of play and the employment of a technology heavily associated with FKR (description and logic to figure things out) suggests association, as well as resolution procedures on the fly, but in FKR that’s the purview of the referee.

When we played with the Ennead (our Bohemian days indeed) the GMs (Kip, then Sarah, while I was playing) did the same, but to GURPS.  Maybe Kip used GURPS dice and Sarah didn’t even; I think she mostly just rolled 2d6, low bad high good, and interepreted them to the characters and situation.  We had GURPS character sheets we never referred to.  I’ll call that the “Isrillion” game. As I look back, that game was far more collaborative than anybody acknowledged.  The GM had yay-or-nay authority, but the social dynamic was such that a “nay” would’ve been outrageous.  Generally, each player had domains of authority, and the GM would rubber-stamp whatever we said within our domains.  As a newcomer, my personal domains didn’t extend much past my characters.

Vincent Baker

While this refers to a game that predates the Ars Magica campaign, it was mentioned, and it is brought again here, because its description of collaboration (through a social dynamic that minimizes the GM) predates it. However, it is interesting to notice the lack of reference to sheets and Sarah’s use of that oracular dice as things associated with FKR, and very common, but diminishing the role of the referee under the dynamics in a way that indicates the future definitions of freeform.

As for collaborative play, I think it was probably connected to the Isrillien game, and the multiple GMs there that was my first real exposure to joint GMing. I’d run a AM game (Caer Mearabourne) in college that was pretty standard GM-Players division. In the Isrillien game, there were so many people playing that the GM wasn’t always privy to the discussions of all the characters. It was common for the GM to be dealing with an interaction on one side of the room while on the other side two players sat, totally in character, having important IC discussions, that then would get summed up for the GM when it was convenient. This was wild and wooly at the time, because shouldn’t the GM know all? The idea that characters didn’t need to freeze until the GM got back to them was huge, natural, and lead directly to collaborative play/co-GMing.

Meguey Baker

Not conceivable in FKR.

However, though we do have a strong commitment to consistency/verisimilitude, it’s a flexible one. It is defined by what we find to be pleasing rather than by some (projected) external standard of what “should” be true/consistent/realistic etc. For example, we are simultaneously commited to world consistency, active authoring  and openess to retroactive change.

Emily Care

Here’s the biggest departure besides lack of a referee. Despite Emily mentioning the commitment to world consistency, and obviously from past quotes using the world as reference to what goes next, this and other quotes indicate that consistency is pursued if it doesn’t contradict what is pleasing now, and what the play reports indicate as most pleasing is “narrative” play. I’m not saying that retroactive change can’t happen in FKR (the referee is not infallible, come on) and that interests can’t change, but there’s a difference of priorities that organize play between FKR and the play reports.

And just a comment about the dice mechanic: I see the dice we rolled as giving us more material to work with, rather than being used to determine resolution.  As you said Vincent, we knew they weren’t going to bite it. What a waste that would have been.  But it made it easier for us to come up with a believable (to us, anyway) sequence of actions since we had the dice results to interpret.  The numbers we rolled on the dice gave us a structure, or put the players in some kind of relative ranking. We had to made sense of the differences, and we did so in ways that gave us ideas for the plot/character development etc. Make sense?

Emily Care

This is just a complement regarding the use of oracular dice that also matches FKR practices, and another possible source of confusion.

Conclusion

The many types of Freeform here established and FKR don’t have compatibility, but they do meet at points, and someone who is unaware of these types but finds common technologies may believe that GMless FKR and other things are possible. They are possible, but they are not FKR. They are also great. Principled/Procedural Freeform is a blast, it’s amazingly fun for people who have a taste for it, and I highly recommend you try it if appeals to you. It appeals to me, personally. I just wanted to make the difference clear without sending people in a wild goose chase (same intent of my FKR posts) and introduce them to a style that may interest them. It’s also meant to conclude a few terminology discussions that are unproductive.

Bibliography

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Author: Weird Writer

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

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