General Chat

Special color coding would call for special dice rules, we can add that if we really want. But this should not be the focus of the game.

We can mention the 'DC' or 'TN' or whatever we want to call it in the Reason field, but more important is to put the reason for the roll in that field so we know what the roll is for. We will settle on something that works for us as we play.

Totally agree. I was actually trying to test with the > and DC. I added all those rolls because of what you mentioned in the (now deleted) post you did using ">" in the dice

I saw that =)

A wise GM [ref] once told me: "people have read it" = "as soon as you have posted." =))

"I did that on purpose... um ... to illustrate the point... yeah... um ... whoops."

[quote="Balthazar"]... a lot of reading to do to catch up in this game ...[quote]

Let us know if you need a summary to catch you up.

(Despite being 3 pages of RP, a summary should be quick (this is always the case, summarising 'in our previous session' (which was 5 hours!) takes 30 seconds if there are no 'ums and ers':).)

In big games/treads, I have started to use google notebook LM to read through everything, and give me a summary
If the game is private, then I'll show all treads (click X of X) and copy/paste everything to a text file and upload that into notebook

No thank you. LLMs get it wrong too often for me to rely on them to summarise things, even though 'summarise' is one area where they are strong.

The act of writing a summary is immensely useful. As the saying goes: "If you want to really learn a subject, teach it." Or: "If you can't teach (summarise) it, you don't really know it."

I received a PM from @Balthazar, they are stepping out of a few games due to time constraints.

We are sorry to see them go and wish them well. I think their hand is doing OK.

We can say Ka'el chose to go their own way when you entered the vents, and you don't need to worry about them.

I like my fellow players.
I like our characters.
I like the general plot we are on to.

But I'm not happy with this very loss system we are using. I thought I would, but I miss the constraints, whom within could express my character without the worry of overstepping.

What do you feel about our game so far?

This is true. Constraints force creativity. There is the constant worry about overstepping, but that should not be much different from other games, but the bigger downside can be the lack of apparent stakes and lack of defined limits.

FKR relies a lot on trusting the GM to keep things 'balanced', like, for instance, recently, you found a ship that is 'well suited to your needs' which could be considered a possible 'overstep' or 'easy solution', so I added booby-traps, limited features, and unknowns, as a counter; I thought about being explicit and spelling that out (I prefer to be open about what the GM is doing), but some expressed a lack of desire to talk about 'mechanics' (though these are mainly expressed in the fiction). We can find the right level.

Before that, finding the vents and escaping 'so easily' felt a little anti-climactic, but I was letting the players direct what scope and scale of difficulties they wanted to see, and it seemed there was a desire to get it done without rolling, all rolling there would have done would be to slow down your getting to the hangar and a ship and forcing an almost-inevitable confrontation with the clones (an NPC mouthpiece did express worry about ignoring the clones and what they were doing to the innocents of the station, as both a reminder and and opportunity to 'do the right thing' but the risks were deemed too high (the players did not take the potential-plot-point, there a always many, and only the plots the players engage with stick around)). Rolling to see if a tech specialist could 'do a tech thing' (overriding the pod launch controls) seemed boring enough and the player added their own cost, which can now be a possible risk when we do need to roll, or another obstacle that needs to be overcome going forward.

• If we want more mechanical intrusion, we can do that.
• If we all want to define and limit the characters a bit more, so as to provide boundaries we can push against, we can do that too.

Let me know. We can introduce a light and flexible 'system'.

Myself, I came to experience FKR, not a rules light home-brew. I'm happy to make more problems for myself that force rolls, but I know that some players find that annoying, especially when my problems become their problems too!

I'm open to what the group wants. I know @vagueGM said that FKR relies on a lot of trust in the GM, but it seems to me that it also relies on a lot of trust in the other players, as well as a shared vision of what it is we are doing here.

So what do I want? I would like to tell a story in this world with these characters. I want us to choose challenges that are interesting but possibly dangerous. I want to see what happens when we fail and when we succeed. I want to be surprised by other players' narrative choices; I want to be challenged by the GM's rulings. You know, the usual! :)

I would like to know more. What constraints are you missing, so we can put them back? =)

I liked the rule about refueling the ship.[ref] I don't think I would like generic dice rules, though, that apply to all risky situations. Not in this game, specifically. The lack of general rules for risky situations is what I am looking for in this game.
+1. I'm not against limits and boundaries for our narrative choices. If we all decide that a player can write and describe this and that, but only the GM (or the dice) can say if it's X or Y... whatever boundaries we need... That's fine by me =)

I am thinking on an answer for you, and if I find it I will tell you :)

There are those who excels in the freeform, but I never really got it and I might be to set in my ways to change.
If I cant find a way to have fun within the FRK, then I think I should step out of this game

This is always a risk in these situations. If one joins a game of DnD (?e), or Vampire, or Savage World, or Masks, one has a pretty good idea of what one is in for. A term like 'Fate' or 'PbtA' is much less useful and we have to rely on the specific game to judge (Dresden or Bulldogs), but we do have a rulebook we can look at to get a feel for what we might see in the game.

'FKR' means different things to different people. The only real through-line is that it cares more about the story than about the rules, that players should be thinking about story first and only think about mechanics as an afterthought. This does not mean that it can't have a strong ruleset, or strongly defined characters and sheets, just that they should not be the primary lens we look at the game through. FKR is a mindset not a ruleset. But I do get that, as soon as we have a sheet with things our character can do, we can devolve to 'looking at the sheet for what to do'.

It seems most of this group would prefer to keep it as freeform as possible. @owlbeer, what are your thoughts on this?

I am not wanting this to be a 'story game', or 'shared storytelling experience', this is still an RPG, but I think we are still (even if just barely) in RPG territory due our 'resolution mechanics'. The characters are a little freeform and ended a little more 'chosen one' than I intended, but nothing egregious or that we can not address in play. A little more structure during character creation may have been a benefit, but that draws the focus to that structure.

@runekyndig I would hate to lose Voss, you have made a very interesting character whose story I would like to see. What do you think it would take to make you more comfortable? Perhaps we can accommodate you while not spoiling it for the others. If you decide to leave, don't feel bad, this bleeding edge of 'freeform' won't work for everybody.

The last thing I want to do is to disrupt this game and story. And Voss'es story is definitely one that I want to explore -
But, in a more structured game system. And as another star wars game is dawning, I am going to withdraw from this game.

I apologise for the disruption this may cause.

No problem. I hope your FFG game gives you what you want.

I am happy to keep this going with 3 players. Let's see what's up with Owlbeer if/when they return, if we are down to 2 players we can talk about recruiting more, but I don't want to disrupt things more.