but when people talk about FKR, they’re not talking about Powered by the Apocalypse, Wanderhome, or Blades in the Dark.
When we say “play worlds, not rules – players take control of characters in the world, referees adjudicate it, rules are tools” sort of stuff, we don’t mean mechanizing theme or having play structures around delegating authority, and making appeals to the rules text and game designer as something that can mitigate social issues.
This isn’t a value judgment, despite fans of the above games who want to bandwagon onto whatever niche they can for marketing purposes. You can like Wanderhome, and like a “referee is the rules” game of OD&D–.
I think it obvious too. Have people tried to use FKR as a marketing term for some sort of crunchy game?
Not even crunchy, cause a ref can easily use as many rules as they want, so long as it doesn’t distract play from the fiction, but more so games that inherently try to mechanize “authority” due to lack of trust in the table, the idea that one cane use a rulestext to prevent a hypothetical antagonistic GM or player from bad play.
Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification, Justin!
Unfortunately, once a storygamer, always a storygamer.
Here’s to hoping for more play reports btw.