FKR & Storygames

I find myself in discussions pretty frequently about the nature of FKR games and storygames, so I thought I would make a short little post elaborating on this. That way I at least have a single place to reference.

So the FKR is a modern “movement” or set of communities devoted around an idea proposed by Mike Monard on the odd74 forums about seven years ago. This idea was that behind many of the classic games was the inspiration of Free Kriegsspiel – Braunstein, Blackmoor, Greyhawk, etc.

He posited that instead of a rules text giving authority, play was a conversation among the table, with players taking the roles of characters in a fictional world, and the referee representing this world, responding to them, and making adjudications. The rules in this style of play are tools for the referee. The referee doesn’t break rules as they aren’t mandate to begin with.

Why this movement is a thing at all is because many of us are enthused about this style of play. We see many games and play styles out in the wild that say the opposite – that the rules text is the be-all-end-all, that you have to play games with some heed to the “designer’s intent”, that you can’t trust anyone to fairly adjudicate even though we all agree to these games and roles by way of free association. The FKR is a contrast to all of this.

Storygames, on the other hand are their own tradition. Like any other niche or acronym in gaming its a little “depends on who you ask”, but usually I mean games that focus on a distribution or complete removal of the more traditional referee role. They can range from the PbtAs which still have a referee, although the assumption of what they do is a little different, and they have players – but those players are often leveraging the system to inject some things that traditionally a referee would do. Or they can go more on the referee-less (or “referee-full”) where no one person occupies that, and instead everyone does.

So I’m always surprised by the large amount of people who imply that you can have an FKR game without a referee, or when utilizing mechanics to distribute referee powers. They’re obviously at odds with each other. You cannot on one hand say you prioritize a style of referee-adjudication-as-entire-system, and then say also say “but yeah, only in the case where the players aren’t spending their fate points or answering a Fortune-in-the-Middle Move or there are no refs.”

This is not a value judgement on storygames – I enjoy quite a few time to time. I think they’re worthwhile games to try out and see if they are for you, and even if they’re not you at least hopefully learned something new, or maybe picked up a technique or two to take into other games. Labels are useful to communicate, and its fine for things to be different – storygames don’t need to be FKR. And you can play one, or both, or neither without that being any fault.

As someone who massively enjoys FKR games I am a little peeved at the amount of discussion by people who either don’t play FKR or outright dislike it trying to “deconstruct” it (in supposedly FKR places, at least). I think it obfuscates the discussion around actually interesting topics FKR brings to the table, like trust, a real examination of authority, setting consistency, subject expertise, etc. I feel it also prevents newcomers from trying out this fantastic style of play.

Anyway, I’m not really going anywhere with this, just felt like I should get it off my chest because I find myself in these discussions more and more frequently. What are your thoughts on the matter?