So part of the conceit of Free Kriegsspiel is that the Referee depends on their experience and knowledge of the world to drive the game. That’s great and all, but what about magic? There’s no way to have live experience with that, so there’s only one way out of that. You have to know something about the world you’re running.  Magic! How hard can it be? Image by GraphicMama , used with permission. A typical corollary question of “how do you do magic?” is “how do you handle damage?” which is also a question that keeps popping up. Many newcomers to the FKR way are often already familiar with roleplaying games that quantify damage, and will likely try to find a one-to-one heuristic to deal with that. To help answer this question, I typically ask another question: “What’s the in-world answer to this?”  Many fantasy worlds already present magic systems of various kinds, such as the channeling in Wheel of Time to the element bending featured in Avatar: The Last Airbender. These worlds typical

Seasonal greetings to you! Like the last year, this year was also strange. It’s the second year in a pandemic and right now things are closing down again. I wish you all warmth, love and safety.     The year in review This year I concluded the Star Wars campaign I ran this year. Now we’ve moved on to play a new campaign set in a universe inspired by the Witcher and Norse mythology. Playing over Discord has become the norm, and I’ve gotten to play lots of exciting games in different mini-campaigns, from Orbital Decay and troika! to OZR. I’ve also played an open table Cyberpunk game inspired by Cyberpunk 2077. Lots of good RPG times this year. I’m happy to report that I’m also making great strides with my small-time rpg publications. I’ve been working on a few different projects. Netherlight is a sword-and-planet setting I’m planning to release soon, inspired by the Warhammer universes and the movie Treasure Planet. I’ve previewed some of the art on this blog already, made by the fantast

So, I had a little idea the other day. I call it "Dungeon World" just to cause confusion. But it's also literally a world of dungeons 😏 . No, literally . There is no natural landscape in this world. It's all dungeons.  Picture by Rudy and Peter Skitterians , used with permission. It was originally built by unknowable creators in some unknowable time in the past. Since then, mages from various planes of existence discovered the place and decided to add their own touches. Many peoples live here. To them, the thought of a world not made by the Makers is just freaking weird. Mountains of just solid rock? Preposterous. Only the great edifices of the Makers or the Mage-Kings that followed should reach towards the skies. Food is something you get from the Garden-Cemeteries of Ceres. Or maybe you hunt it in the Underworld.  Picture by 132369 , used with permission.  Journey deep enough and you find the Columns That Hold The World. Great hexagonal pillars made of a substance

In the last 12 or so months, I’ve been delving deep into the FKR rabbit hole. It has thoroughly changed the way I play and let me focus more on adventures than ever before. For example, writing things like stat blocks and looking up rules are now a thing of the past. But there are some issues that I think also need to be addressed. In this post I’m going to talk about something I call the “Owl Problem”. How hard can it be? Okay, what’s the deal with bringing owls into this? Well, it’s inspired by the meme above, but related to running rules-light games. In my experience, newcomers to the hobby have almost no issue in joining a session and playing as a PC. However, as a newcomer to running a session, most rules-light games offer little to no guidance.  One central idea to free kriegsspiel is that the referee can just dispense with rules and dice in favor of relying on their experience. This worked out a lot for prussian officers, but a beginner in the ttrpg world doesn't have the sa

 Last week I wrote about how I run games , but I felt I had more to say on the prep part, so here we are. A more detailed example of how I prep. I decided I wanted to run a sci-fi game, after finding some inspiration from recently watching Cowboy Bebop and playing the new Guardians of the Galaxy game. Since it’s December, I decided I wanted a christmas theme to it and keep it to a one-shot. I just wanted a sci-fi hit again. So I started thinking about what I wanted for this one-shot. The requirements were that it should be playable in 2 hours and feel satisfactory as a one-shot. Matt Colville once said in a video that you could roughly fit 5 encounters in a session - he was talking about 5e and probably a longer session. I think 5 encounters works for 2 hours if you’re doing it free kriegsspiel style. So with that in mind, I figured salvaging a small ship could be a neat little mission. For laughs, I decided to theme it as a sci-fi version of Santa’s sled - except it’s a spaceship. Th

This is a non-exhaustive tour of how I run games. I might make more posts like this in the future. I don’t think of this as a practical guide, but more of a reflection of how I think I run games.  Me, preparing for a session. Illustration by Bert ! Prep If I’m preparing for a session with new players that I don’t know well, I typically start out with some safety talk. Lines and veils, X Cards and such are features I make available. These are great to prevent uncomfortable or harmful experiences in play.  I think things through. Usually I do this whenever my brain has idle time. I might be in the shower or on a hike. What I think about are where the players might want to go, what kind of encounters there might be,  and what other events might influence the session. Thinking through these things once makes it easier for me to recall and run in sessions later.  I also map out places by making node graphs. I think they are more flexible and useful than gridded maps. I do make more high fid

In this post, I’m going to outline some ideas for how to handle campaigns when it’s difficult to get the same players at the table consistently. You have probably seen the memes. Maybe experienced it first hand yourself how hard it can be to schedule a game.  What I offer is by no means a silver bullet, but it may make things easier to run. And of course, none of this is necessary if just one of your players will miss the session. This is more relevant for those who have several players missing. The first thing to tackle is… Linearity For many it is a foregone conclusion that whatever follows in the next session should be in continuation from the last session. But is that really necessary? In my mind, it isn’t. It may be at odds with consistency, but it hasn’t surfaced often as a problem in my games. Put a pin in that - One Shot Mentality What benefits are there to non-linearity? Let’s say you have a group that is crawling through the tomb in Winter’s Daughter and your group stops roug

Centuries ago, on the eve of Winter Solstice, the city of Rabenstadt was swallowed in its entirety and placed in the Nether. The unfortunate citizens were completely oblivious to this event, damned to relive the same day and night in perpetuity.  A day and night of a merciless blizzard, bloody riots, strange rituals and a secret revealed deep underground.  In this city, Baron Tiberius of House Hirschberg schemes to enchant the Count’s son through vampiric means. The Third Eye , a secret cult, works to complete a ritual to conjure an otherworldly material. In the shadows, devout servants from the Order of Saint Vidar hunt their sworn enemies - vampires and sorcerers.  Inspiration: Neuschwanstein Castle . Source: Pixabay . The City There are four crucial locations in Rabenstadt. In the Castle , the nobility gather for their annual Winter Ball. The wealthy citizens in the Upper District have engaged the army to keep angry protesters out. At the University , rumors have it the staff is

 

I’ve cooked up a setting recently, which I’ve called Netherlight. Prime sources of inspiration are Treasure Planet and Warhammer (both fantasy and 40k). I want to call it “pulse rifle fantasy” in a nod to “flintlock fantasy”. I’ve been playing Netherlight using a modification of 24XX . 24XX, the SRD of the 2400 micro games by Jason Tocci, is an absolute gem of a game. What I like about it is how easy it is to run, especially with a FKR mindset. No wonder I want to adopt it as a framework for my Netherlight project. Incidentally, I stumbled on an issue when it came to making an item list for my setting. Here’s how 2400 describes its weapons: PISTOL: Upgrade with auto, DNA-lock, flechette-firing, call-to-hand, self-destruct, silenced. RIFLE: Bulky, accurate at longer ranges than pistol. Upgrade with anti-materiel, auto, collapsible, DNA-lock, flechette-firing, grenade attachment, identify friend/foe, scope. Keep in mind, 2400 is a cyberpunk setting, so it’s pretty easy to imagine how a

So we’re well into 2021 and I decided it could be interesting to look a bit at the developments in the FKR. There’s been some coverage on Questing Beast’s Glatisant, but the mentions are brief and few. I decided I wanted to highlight a bit what’s going on, starting out with the Itch.io FKR tag .    I’ll go through each product and briefly describe them. In this post, I’ll go over 25 of them.  The order is basically “as is” on the page, so “Popular”. Note that the order will likely change over time, so I just took it “as it was” when I wrote it. Cosmogony  Gnarled Monster’s Cosmogony  is a Free Kriegsspiel wargame that deals with the creation of a world. Become gods, build civilizations and bring it all crashing down afterwards. It’s a nice pamphlet game and if you’re into games like Microscope, then this might be something for you.  24XX System Reference Documents Jason Tocci made a “killer app” when it comes to rules ultralight roleplaying games. His 2400 microgames are excellent and