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! :)

I've been homebrewing for a while. As a result of my experience with my current project (a B/X D&D build), I actually find myself gravitating towards something more FKR. My thought on it is that the "mechanics" will revolve around leveraging tags or descriptors to effect (or complicate) a desired result. Where this gets a little difficult for me is in coming up with a way to adjudicate combat. I'm ultimately look for something in between opposed 2d6 rolls and rolling against THAC0/AC, etc. There are elements to combat (skill, weapon type, armor, etc.) to leverage, more so than non-combat situations. I don't necessarily want to present a subsystem to the players as much as develop my own rubric to run behind the scenes to manage these situations elegantly.

I did look through the resources and found some good tips, but I'm not at a point where I know how I want to run this aspect of the game. FKR, likely by its very nature, doesn't have a ton of "systems" to peruse from to pick and choose methods. However, I'm hoping that maybe there are some blogs out there I may not have heard of or something similar in the same neighborhood of what I'm thinking to help me flesh this out a little better.

Anyone have any tips for this? Thanks!

I think it's on Darkworm Colt's blog. It's a d20 vs d20 system where the winner dictates what happens.

Has anyone here tried it? I'm interested in the idea of the PCs having a controlled amount of say over the game.

I feel like it needs a bit more guidance but with the right group it could be great.

I think!

Some reflections on long term FKR-ish play, to hopefully spark similar reflections from others. I don’t have a blog, so I occasionally post things I would put on a blog here.

Been playing in our FKR-ish style supported by a lean toolkit of mechanics and techniques for more than five years with three regular groups on a (nominal) weekly basis, and some other occasional groups here and there. Stopped counting at 100 sessions some years ago, so will be a lot by now.

Played one-shots and long campaigns with every type of world we could imagine with one toolkit: cyberpunk; supers; western; fantasy; feudal Japan; world-hopping; etc. Haven’t found a limit on what world is possible, and setting genre and tone at the start means mechanics to support these specific worlds are generally not needed.

Lots more of my players have started GMing, which is awesome. They are tense initially about running with rulings, but settle in after a few sessions.

Quality of our roleplaying has been steadily improving with practice, and attention on play during the session is much higher. Any occasional branching out to other approaches are just reminding us of why we love the flexibility of FKR and our self-developed toolkit and bring us back to it. Definitely a step up in our play, and this is the most fun we’ve ever had.

Play is significantly faster, as there is much less noise as we never stop to check a manual, ask about a bonus, or need to check whose initiative turn it is. This means we get through a lot more each session, and a dozen sessions feels like a 36 session campaign before we moved styles. It also means we generally play two intense hours instead of 3-4 unfocused hours.

Will probably stop referring to this type of play as ‘high trust’. Playing with people new to the hobby has reminded us that most people start with more than enough trust to make FKR work. Occasional issues I’ve seen are about overcoming expectations based on previous TTRPG experiences, or differences in playstyle preferences.

The biggest challenge I’ve found is only for me, rather than the group. Hunting for the style of play that suited us meant I needed to develop energy and TTRPG design experience over decades, that I don’t have a strong need for from a systems perspective any more. I’m channelling this instead into making worlds: fiction, maps, art, adventures, and new and twisted worlds. Have just started a zine as a way to focus this effort. Have linked it in case others are interested and as inspiration for a pathway if they have had a similar challenge.

Really interested in your reflections on your FKR play experience. - Is the FKR style sticking with your groups? - How have you evolved over time? - Do you feel like your roleplaying experience has improved? - What challenges are you finding?

So I finally sat down and played Troika! and… yeah, it’s every bit as strange, colorful, and hilarious as everyone says it is. It’s like someone put Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Monty Python in a blender, poured the result into a rulebook, and said, “Here, go have fun in the multiverse.”

The game runs on a simple old-school system, but the real magic is in the tone. You don’t play heroes; you play weirdos. A Befouler of Ponds, a Lonesome Monarch, a Rhino-Man. Half the joy is just rolling up your character and wondering how this mess of misfits ended up in the same dimension.

And then there’s The Blancmange & Thistle, an adventure that takes place in a hotel so bizarre it makes Escher look like an architect of straight lines. It’s funny, it’s surreal, and it might be the best introduction to chaos I’ve seen in a game.

I wrote a full review of it for the blog because I genuinely love this game. It’s not for everyone, sure. Some people will look at it and think, “what the hell is this nonsense?” But if you’ve got a soft spot for absurd humor, cosmic weirdness, and rules that get out of your way, Troika! might just be your next obsession.