Hey y'all

I have been interested in for for more than a year and now I will FINALLY run a short campaign with it.

It will be a medival campaign inspired by game of thrones using old ham rules as it's system.

While I am very excited I am also kinda stressed to find out how to do it properly and how to go about the unique aspects of this style of play. Do you have any tips that might help ?

I am not certain if it qualifies as FKR, but the idea was "how far can you simplify but still keep the most basic D&D mechanics intact". You could technically run a TSR-era module with this concept.

Celebrating Arneson's Day, brief thoughts about his famous Black Box and its influence on FKR.

(Just hope Substack translator works!)

Salut les gars,

On m'a récemment parlé du FKR, après quelques recherches voilà ce que je comprends:

Pas de règles, on peut en inventer au fur et à mesure

Le MJ = les règles car il se base sur le contexte fictif

Et.. c'est tout ?

Du coup je comprends pas comment ça marche en terme de déroulé du jeu: est ce que c'est comme un OSR où le MJ lance des rumeurs ou propose des aventures aux PJ et ils choisissent ce qu'ils veulent ? Ce qui serait compensé par une grosse improvisation ou tables aléatoires j'imagine

Est-ce qu'on tombe pas dans la règle du cool comme dans les pbta mais sans la granularité des résultats des dés et les moves ?

Est ce qu'il y a toujours des enjeux ? Est ce que cela ne devient pas qu'une conversation au bon vouloir du MJ et de ce qu'il trouve cool ?

Bref j'ai besoin de détails pour comprendre la proposition car de mon côté cela ressemble à de l'OSR mais sans aucune excitation vu que les règles sont le MJ

It uses a coin-flip core resolution roll (but you can use a d6) and Stamina Points which acts as HP but also you can spend it to give you advantage to the roll (an extra dice or coin). Everything else is in the hands of the player and the world.

What are your thoughts? What would you like to see in the future? If you have questions, reviews, opinions, please let me hear them! You can find the system here: https://chinchudo.itch.io/retro-praxis

I created a super rules-lite system inspired by FKR-style of play. It's called the Pulp Engine, and it's powered by the Dice Ladder.
I introduce the system in my game "Swashbuckler!"
Here's a link to the free quick start guide.
https://unclegregsbasement.substack.com/p/swashbuckler-player-quickstart

Is the FKR Discord still around? I used to be on it and I think I left it during a server purge. I'm getting back into running games at my LGS and would like an invite link if it's still around

https://scrtgm.blogspot.com/2026/05/trust-goes-both-ways.html?m=1

Cross-posting here in case anyone in this sub is interested!

Will probably run 6-10 weeks. Only 1 post and 1 reply per week required.

Looking for two more players in a PBP matrix game!

Another article by Horia? So soon? Well, I guess we are spoiled.

This time something that in retrospective sits somewhat closer to home than I anticipated when he first sent me the draft for editing. Some musings on creating your own system, the challenges and process of doing that. Also, FKR is involved, we are talking about Horia afterall!

To be more precise, in Horia's case, we are talking about trying to create a generic version of oWoD's Storyteller system for a cyberpunk game.

And before you say it, we're well aware of The Future World of Darkness, but sometimes Eris hits you with that sweet creative chaos and you have to ride the wave and build your own stuff.

I am genuinely curious to see if you tried anything similar to this, if you tried making your own system and how that whole endeavor went. Till next time, remember, ride that wave!

A post from my blog, highlighting its principles (play worlds, not rules, and what we could name play to find out).

I think I drank some water after Horia with this article...

FKR is his schtick, but I guess it can't hurt if I also take a crack at it. I was discussing Cairn a couple of days ago and thinking about a future campaign I wanna run a campaign with it. I was also thinking how as of late I have been liking minimalist systems more and more. I am running a Realms of Peril campaign and I had a streak of some really good sessions, with some really interesting and outside the box designed encounters. And I really was curious why I can't manage to enter that sort of mental space and design similar things for D&D or other more traditional and crunchy TTRPGs.

And so I started to read a bit more into FKR, cause that is the proverbial freedom holy grail in TTRPG design space, so if I were to find an answer it would probably be there. I was also interested to see where these minimalist systems fall into the whole D&D - FKR scale. And while I was at it, I thought that all of this is quite interesting and with a bit of polish it might be worth sharing with you all. Cause I do think that part of why minimalist systems such as RoP or the examples I stuck by for this article, Knave and Cairn work as well as they do, is due to their FKR-esque tendencies. So yeah, I do hope you will enjoy this piece. And as I said in the article, please do share your experiences with minimalist systems, with FKR and anything in between!

Hey ya'll. In the process of starting prep for a new campaign and could really use advice on handling magic. Both mechanically, and how to explain it in world.

In the past I actually just stripped the magic system from Maze Rats (has a very free-form, kinda tag based system). It worked well, but I had trouble explaining how a character would discover these spells. I find scribing spell books, and scrolls to be insanely boring and basic.

I had thoughts to have spell books basically be instruction manuals for rituals. Basically if someone wanted to cast a spell, they would have to perform this long ritual. These rituals would have material cost as well. But this still feels clunky, and I fear it will make having a magic user in a party undesirable.

Anyways, I would appreciate some thoughts or advice from others!!

A long awaited updated regarding Secrets of Arn.

Maybe it's a dumb/pointless question, but I'm curious on peoples thoughts. As I've been working on my own game I have realized how many rules I really don't need as a GM.

Aside from basic rules for task resolution, I really only need procedures. Basic ones, for stuff like running travel, and tracking time etc. I don't care how much gold someone has, what their save DC is, and honestly even the difference in damage between a dagger and a sword doesn't matter much to me.

Anyways, thanks. Looking forward to seeing some other folks thoughts.

I've made hobbyist systems ranging the full spectrum from GURPS maximalist simulationism to PbtA/BitD style story games. More and more over the last few years I've been finding that game mechanics got in the way more than they helped foster the type of experience I was interested in. It was always chasing one more rule, or one better rule, like some sort of sisyphean pursuit.

I guess I still consider myself a game "theorist", but I'm hanging up my designer hat in terms of wanting to publish an actual "system". I'm more interested in manifestos and building the game at the table during play.

Ultimately my interest these days is playing a game with no numerical abstractions, where dice rolls exist purely to modify the fictional truths of the game and that's all that matters. No more points, no more attributes, no more clocks.

I'm not wasting another second trying to come up with the system that makes everything feel just right all of the time. I'm too busy playing pretend with my friends and exploring the worlds we build together.

This is me making fun of myself and my former game design efforts, it isn't a personal attack, it's just self-harm.

I added the FKR logo to the back of this book and had a couple of people ask about it conventions. It just came out a couple of weeks ago.

It's 20 pages, and the heart of the book is tables to help inspire the making of weird monsters. There's 18 tables of different traits that define and characterize your monster. You can pick or roll.

There's also sections of advice for building worlds in FKR style, and keeping things narrow. We then follow our own advice with example monters, and campaign setting sketch.

Want to make weird monsters? How about a unique fantasy setting? I wrote a book for that! You can get a copy of Monsters Unleashed! here (either the printed by me version or in PDF)

https://composedreamgames.com/marketplace/monsters-unleashed

Thanks all!

Is there a list of FKR games anywhere? I've had a quick search but didn't find much at all.

SEEKING GLORY AND FORTUNE returns to the dawn of the hobby. It is a lightweight roleplaying game inspired by the Free Kriegsspiel Revolution and the original fantasy pamphlets of the 1970s. This system strips away modern mechanics to focus on player ingenuity rather than character statistics.

There are no ability scores to roll and no skills to manage. Characters are defined by brief descriptors and their Archetype—be it a Fighting Man, a Mage, or a Chaplain. The game relies on a tactical 2d6 system where weapon reach and speed determine the victor, not just hit point attrition. Magic remains a rare and dangerous miracle, not a reliable tool.

This text is built on the philosophy of rulings, not rules. It is designed for the Referee who values common sense over complex subsystems, and for players who wish to solve problems through fiction rather than mechanics.

"The dungeon does not care for your level. It only cares for your mistakes."

Product Details This is a FREE 20-page PDF document in A4 format. To play, you will need two six-sided dice, paper, pencils, and 2+ participants.

After a year of testing, mulling over and refining, I have finally released Plot Armor, a TTRPG rule system distilled from my own home brew game that I've run to and fro for my local gaming group.

I'm releasing Plot Armor's text as Creative Commons Attributions (you can redistribute, including commercially, as long as you give attribution), and the PDF is Free/pay-what-you-want. :) 

Plot Armor is influenced by the FKR movement, but have slightly more rules than pure FKR. The main element is that most rulings are primarily based on the Referee's common sense. 

Dice rolls involve the Referee and Player each proposing an outcome and rolling small pools of dice to see which one happens.

PCs (like any story protagonists) have Plot Armor, a single resource combining HP, health, luck, fate etc in one - it measures their ability to avoid the (serious) consequences of their actions. But unlike such systems in other games, the Players don't know exactly how much Plot Armor they have left at any moment!

When they role play dangerously, fails a dangerous roll, or want to introduce a new element to the story, the Players draw a Plot Armor card to determine if they are "out of Plot Armor". The odds of this varies from 1/6 to 1/2 but it's never guaranteed; in game play-testing this has turned out be quite intense! Plot Armor permeates the system, and is also used by NPCs and other entities in the game world.

PCs are built around how they "Approach" problems (like Fate Accelerated, but more free-form). I've found these approaches act as role-play guides more than abstract numbers or skills.

The PDF rule book gathers the full rules in two pages. The rule book has additional 12 pages elaborating the rules with more explanations, followed by 30+ pages of Referee hints and examples of play.

The book also includes a starter game world (cops solving mysteries in a corrupt little town), and a starter adventure with 5 pre-made characters along with some design commentary. All art by me (no AI)! 

Hope you find it interesting! :)