Storytelling

Precipitate provides the tools for players to step into another world as another person. It features equal parts conversation, exploring, and fighting. Guides, references, and clear Character goals help players Roleplay as their Character during these sitations. The game is about the game master presenting a situation, the players working together as their Characters to figure out what to do about it, and the game master narrating the results. Through the course of working together to complete common goals, Characters grow and go through their own personal arcs.

For game masters, session prep is intented to be minimal. The game master improvs along side of the players, unsure of what is going to happen next. While daunting, Precipitate provides guides and techniques to help build the confidence for running games with minimal prep time.

Exploring

Given a short description that highlights the most critical parts of a scene, players ask questions to drive detail where it matters. Character interact with the world in a grounded way. Players describe how their Characters lift a matress to look under it, flip through the pages of a diary, or pinch out a candle's light.

The game master forewarns danger and frames it as a choice rather than suprise. The player will know that something is trapped before they trigger it, but the mechanics of how the trap works and how they might disarm a critical mechanism is up to them to discover.

Fighting

Lethality fuels creativity. The table stays alive with discussions and careful deliberations without downtime. The game master describes what the players observe from their opponents and the players work together to come up with a plan for each of their Characters. The results of the Actions taken from both sides are resolved simultaniously based on simple logic ruled by the game master.

Opponents fight according to their own tactics and behaivors that players need to counter with their own tactics and using the narrative of their actions. Anything that can be done outside of combat, can be done while in combat.

If there is a question, a player describes their intent and the game master describes how they would resolve it. The game master is controlling the world to provide a consistent and believable experience for the narrative. While seemingly adversarial, they are working with the players to tell an interesting story.

Modability

The Guidelines are a raw reference that provides a simple and consistant backbone, regardless of the setting. The Guidelines of Precipitate should be adapted to fit the story your table wants to tell.

A handful of settings will be provided in the future to combine with the Guidelines. The intent is for players to only need a setting guide to create a Character and the game master using the Guidelines as a reference for how to run the game.

If you want to publish content using Precipitate, please review the Fine Print on the Legal page.

Versions

Download the previous versions of Precipitate as PDFs using the links below.

For the current version, see the Guidelines (print to PDF to get a PDF of it).

Basics

Core Loop

1. Game master describes situation
2. Each player declares their Character's intent
3. Game master narrates results

Materials

• Paper
• Pencil
• Four 20-sided die
• Two 8-sided die
• Two 6-sided die
• Three lucky tokens

Aspects

An Aspect is a short phrase that tells us something important about a location, object, Character, or scene. Aspects are open-ended and describe the notable qualities and status of something. They can be created through world and Character interactions.

Aspects can be strengths or weaknesses such has having a good reputation in a town or being in a state of panic. Aspects can be twisted to flip the intended meaning of an Aspect, such as using the good reputation drawing unwanted attention or a panicked Character noticing danger that others overlooked. Characters may twist their own Aspects freely, but must use Luck to twist another Character's Aspect against them.

Aspects are always narratively true and the game master uses Aspects to gauge how skilled a Character is at something when attempting a Challenge.

Challenges

Logic determines outcomes based on Character actions. The game master may call for a Challenge when an outcome is uncertain with clear consequences. A failure may indicate that the core action still succeeded but at some cost. The game master is the final arbiter.

A natural number is the unmodified number shown on a rolled die.

Target Number

The Target Number is determined by the Game Master based on the Character's skill compared to others with the same skill and the situation they are in.

Left to right is situation. Top to bottom is skill.

Luck

Characters can have a maximum of 3 Luck. A Character may spend a Luck to:

• Force a reroll of any single die
  • If trying to harm another Character, give the Luck to them
  • If helping another Character or rerolling their own die, give the Luck to the game master
• Twist an Aspect against another Character
  • Give the Luck to the most negatively affected Character
  • State the intended effect
• Add a reasonable Aspect to the scene
  • Give the Luck to the game master or most negatively affected Character
  • Game master chooses what reasonable means on a case-by-case basis
• Prevent the use of another Character's Luck
  • Give the luck to the affected Character

Luck is restored by accepting harmful Luck use by non-player characters against your Character.

Structured Time

Most of the time, play is unstructured. Players delare what their Character is doing and the game master responds with the outcome ad hoc. However, there are moments where many important things are going on and play needs to slow down to allow everyone to have a fair chance at making critical decisions (such as during combat). This is Structured Time.

While in Structured Time:

1. The game master describes the scene
2. Players freely discuss plans and intents for each of their Characters
3. The game master asks each player to describe and commit to 10 seconds worth of actions for their Character
   • Moving 30 feet and with a series of attacks (represented by 1 Challenge roll) or while casting a spell takes 10 seconds
   • An exhaustive list of actions is impossible to encode as rules, anything can be attempted and the game master will make a ruling
4. The game master then narrates the results as everything is played out by them in a logical, simultaneous, sequence
   • The game master may ask for Challenges to help them decide the outcome of actions
   • Non-player characters each do their own 10 seconds of actions

The game master will announce when play returns to unstructured time.

Hit Points

Hit points represent scrapes, brusies, sore muscles, and stress. These add up as a Character takes damage and impacts the Character's ability to defend themselves.

A Character that loses all their Hit Points suffers an incapacitating blow or a series of strikes that exhausts a Character's defenses leading to a knock out. A Character with no Hit Points must roll Judgement.

Hit Points are restored with Rest. Devastating hits might leave lasting Aspects.

Damage

Melee attacks do d8 damage to the target. Ranged attacks do d6 damage.

Critical successes roll an extra damage die.

The game master might rule for more or less damage depending on the situation.

Rest

After a night of Rest, restore d6+5 Hit Points up to the Character's maximum Hit Points.

A Character can seek a specialized healer or say a Prayer to restore Hit Points, but this requires a cost or favor in exchange.

Judgement

When rolling Judgement, roll in private and do not reveal the result to other players. Another nearby Character may spend 5 seconds to look at the die result and, if the knocked-out Character is still alive, spend 5 seconds to stabilize them.

Each turn while knocked out, the player may optionally recall a memory of their Character to share with the group. A stable but knocked-out Character wakes up after few minutes with d6 Hit Points.

Magic

To cast, reflect on 3 questions:

1. What emotion am I feeling?
   • Positive emotions fuel constructive effects
   • Negative emotions bring out destructive or chaotic effects
   • The specific emotion shapes the spell, and stronger emotions are harder to control
2. What's nearby?
   • Magic manipulates the elements and harmony of the surroundings
   • Spells can only use what is present, better or more materials create stronger effects
   • An area's atmosphere and the emotions of others can be harnessed like any other element
3. What is my intent?
   • Intent gives purpose, the same energy takes different forms
   • Spells can harm, protect, transform, or influence based on the caster's goal
   • Magic follows the caster's purpose, clarity makes it stronger

Everyone has a unique magical signature, a personal flair that influences the manifestation of their magic.

Resolving Magic

Casting spells is a Challenge depending on the caster's intent and their skill using the kind of magic they are invoking.

The same spell might produce different results each time it is cast.

Spellbooks

A caster’s personal notes record past spells and their effects. These are real player notes on paper, treated as notable Equipment.

Scrolls

To create a Scroll, a caster must cast a spell as normal and store the intent and result. This only succeeds if the Challenge result is a critical success or success. On a failure or critical failure, the Scroll is destroyed in the process, no magical effect is produced, and the caster gains a permanent, undesirable, and interesting quirk related to the spell they attempted to store.

Scrolls are used without rolling, treating the user as if they had cast the original spell. Once used, the Scroll is destroyed.

Linked Casting

Spells can target other spells, allowing them to combine or negate each other's effects.

Rituals

Rituals are a powerful, slow, and open form of magic that require clear intent. The more elaborate, detailed, and involved the Ritual, the more powerful and specific the effect.

Prayers

Prayers are freeform, delayed, and fueled by the Favor of a higher patron. To say a Prayer, set a clear intent and give 1 to 3 Favor dice to the game master based on the magnitude of the plea. At a future time, the game master rolls the Favor dice together and takes the highest result to use as a Challenge roll to determine if and how the Prayer is answered. The Character or patron may propose additional bargains beyond Favor.

Favor

A Character can hold up to 3 Favor dice, which are 20-sided die. Favor is earned by acting in alignment with a patron and can be lost through negative actions. If a Character loses too much Favor, their patron may begin ignoring future Prayers.

Patrons

Patrons have different likes and dislikes for their followers to respect. They grant Prayers relevant to their cause and goals. Patrons require the complete devotion of a Character to answer their Prayers.

Equipment

Characters have the Equipment that would reasonably carry for their situation. Only unique and notable Equipment are tracked. The game master highlights scarcity and encumbrance as an Aspect when relevant.

A normal sword isn't interesting enough to record, it can be assumed that your adventuring character has one. But the Guard Captin's Sword with a Ruby in its Hilt is unique and interesting. There may be interesting world and Character reactions towards a Character carrying such a sword.

Equipment, weapons, and armor may play into how the game master rules how favorable or not a situation is during Challenges.

Wealth

Wealth is narrative and untracked. If something seems expensive, it is, and acquiring it requires specific effort. Characters have enough money to keep their items stocked with some pocket money left over.

Travel

Travel is handled narratively by offering choices with different consequences or other peculiarities. One route might be safe, but be relatively slow and is patrolled by the guards that are looking for the players' Characters. Another might be through the haunted woods and without roads, meaning the players' Characters would need to leave their wagon behind until they return. Of course, the players can come up with any other routes or way to get to where they're going.

Not every destination needs something interesting. When not critical, travel is mundane and often handwaved.

Squads

Squads from a group of goblins to the armies of nations can be modeled as a Character. The primary difference being the narration and scaling the actions being performed to represent the group. A Squad of enemies might do extra damage to a single Character, normal damage to another Squad, and have no chance of doing anything against an army in a straight-up fight.

A Squad that is losing Hit Points can be thought of as actual loses of some of their members or the gradual loss of morale until the Squad breaks up and flees. The game master will narrate it depending on the situation.

Vehicles

Vehicles are modeled as Characters but, like Squads, have a different narration and scaling. They can be anything from a horse, a single-seater fighter jet, to a massive capital ship in space.

Vehicles might have different crew stations that Characters can operate. If using a vehicle with multiple crew stations for an extended period of time, each crew station should have interesting decisions and valuable contributions to make.

In a large enough vehicle, Characters may move around and perform Actions like they normally would inside of or on the vehicle itself.

Finding a Destiny

You may roll a d20 on the table below, choose the Destiny that best aligns with your Character, or work with the game master to create a custom Destiny for your Character.

Developer Note: This is all very rough and not representive of the final list or the options that might be available. The format will change dramatically throughout the development.

The Eternal Wanderer

You are an endless traveler, guided by curiosity, fate, or an unsatiable wanderlust. Your journey isn't about reaching a destination but understanding yourself and your values through experiences along the road.

Consider how your travels affect your understading of freedom, attachment, and solitude. Reflect on whether you value experiences over possessions, how yoiu balance the call of the unknown with the comfort of the familiar, and how encounters with diverse peoples and places influence your trust, openness, and sens of belonging. Each step on your journey shapes your perspective. Embrace these moments as essential reflections of your past.

The Burdened Flame

You carry within you a power, a duty, or a truth that is too great to ignore. Wheather it was chosen or forced upon you, it shapes every step you take. Your journey is about how you bear that burden. Will it define you, break you, or become something greater?

Weigh responsibility against person desire. Ask yourself how your burden isolates or connects you to others, and whether you hide it, wield it, or seek to be free of it. Are your choices shaped more by fear of failure, sense of duty, or hope for redemption?

The Hollow Crown

You did not seek power or leadership, but it found you. Whether through bloodline, circumstance, or fate, others look to you for guidance. Will you embrace this role or cast it off entirely?

As an unwilling leader, reflect on how you handle responsibility, influence, and the expectations of others. Between public obligation and private self, how does leadership reshape your identity?

Monsters

• Monsters may have special conditions like skeletons being immune to piercing -- and skeletons needing to be smashed to bits to break their magic binds or something to stop them from re-animating them. monsters should be more than just some numbers on a page, each has unique world interactions and ways of working to encourage players to interact with them on a deeper and more interesting level and to help players start to work outside of the box.
• fighting straight up engagements is reckless, but being prepared and creative tool use should trivialize encounters monsters should have counters, like beeswax in ears to ignore a siren’s call

Character Creation

Before you begin, come up with a Character concept. Draw inspiration from anywhere, including other games. Work with the game master to shape the key Aspects of your Character while ensuring they fit within the world the group wants to play in.

1. Start with d6+10 Hit Points
2. Distribute 3 points between choice of Luck & Favor to set their starting values
3. Write a phrase that explains why the Character is an adventurer
4. Write a core belief the Character holds true
5. Write the first trait a stranger would notice during their first interaction with the Character
6. Write the Character's greatest fear or vulnerability
7. Come up with a signature quirk or habit
8. Create a secret wish that would change how someone perceives you if they knew it
9. Choose or create a patron to answer your Prayers if the Character has one and record their likes & dislikes
10. Design a unique magical signature (see Casting Magic)
11. Come up with a name & description of what someone would note if they looked at the Character for a few seconds
12. Choose a Destiny from the list of Destinies or create your own with the game master

Character Sheet Usage

Data is auto-saved locally to your browser as you type.

• Your data is not uploaded and others cannot read it. See Legal.
• Export your data to back it up between sessions and import it as needed
• Use export/import to maintain multiple characters
• Use ctrl+z to undo changes in an input field

Example Characters

Coming soon.

Character Sheet Controls

Export character

Character Sheet

Character Image

Character Name (pronouns)

Character Description

Stats

Notable Equipment Spellbook (reference: Casting Magic, Scrolls, Linked Casting, Rituals) Patron (for Prayers)

Notebook

Notes are personal. This is one of many ways to get started with taking notes if you don't know where to start.

• Start by only using the scratch section
• Use the other sections if they become helpful
• Find what works for you, including other digital tools or a physical notebook instead of using this

Fine Print

Precipitate is by John Dylan Boronkas.

The text content of Precipitate's following pages are each licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/):

• Guidelines
• Destinies
• Player Guide
• Game Master Guide

Precipitate's art, theme, style, code, scripts, and all other content not otherwise listed on this page are © 2023-2025 John Dylan Boronkas. All rights reserved.

Previous versions of Precipitate have their own Legal section contained within them that apply to those versions of the game and not the current version that is hosted on https://precipitaterpg.com.

Credits

Typefaces

• Gorilla
  • Gorilla is by Dieter Steffmann licensed under the 1001Fonts Free For Commercial Use License (FFC)
• Dosis
  • Dosis is by Pablo Impallari licensed under the SIL Open Font License (OFL)
• Dicier
  • Dicier is by Speak the Sky licensed under CC BY 4.0

Technology

• Marked
  • Licensed under MIT
• Pico CSS
  • Licensed under MIT

Privacy Policy

Who I Am

This website's address is https://precipitaterpg.com.

It is owned and managed by John Dylan Boronkas.

Your Data

• This website does not collect analytics (not even anonymous analytics) about visitors
• This website does not create or access cookies
• This website does not feature accounts or user content uploads
• Data entered into the website does not leave the local browser

Your data is yours.

Session Reports

These describe my process for running games from start to finish including theory and examples from the actual session.

• Running Like A FKR (27 May 2025)
  • What is the FKR and how I prep and play in the FKR style

Free Kriegspiel Renaissance

• Abstract the system from the players
• Immerse into the shared fiction
• Play worlds, not rules

Worlds before rules states that the setting and how it works is the most important. In the world, how do things work? What kinds of stories are told in it? What are the common themes and feelings? A shared understanding between everyone allows the mechanical rules to fade to the background as everyone brings the fiction alive.

Roleplay at this level is like passing a notebook around the table, taking turns to write the next few lines of the story, while everyone shouts ideas for what might happen next. This immersive hivemind style of storytelling is what keeps me coming back to the hobby.

FKR is conflated with no-rules, almost make believe, play. Where the game master has all the pressure to figure out how to rule different character actions using their own knowledge and experience. The system being ran is in the head of the game master.

Instead, we select or craft game mechanics to reinforce the world. We use it to create a layer of shared understanding. Discuss how something might be ruled and provide a consistent ruling. Conversation to figure out how something might resolve is important, but too much takes us out of the fiction. Mechanics allow scenes to flow.

Any system can be used, even something as heavy as 5e. But lighter systems are simple to understand and are easier to meld into the background during play. They leave room to tinker with and pull in mechanics from other systems to model whatever is important for the world and fiction.

The rules are guidelines. The game master has final say on how to rule something. Abstracting the system from the players facilitates this. Not the entirety of the system, players should at least know how resolutions work, but any intricate details and edge cases should be handwaved and left to the game master. However, this requires trust between the players and the game master. The game is about coming together to tell an interesting story.

The Free Kriegspiel Renaissance is a style of play that can be applied to any roleplaying game. It is not a genre of games.

Session Prep

Following the core FKR principles, improv play is the heart of roleplay. The game master is a player and shares in the real-time creation of the fiction. They do not write it all alone and wait for the players to ruin their plans. They understand the world and note the interesting details. They trust themselves that knowing the world will let them fill in the blanks on the fly. They trust that players will ask questions to inject what is interesting to them.

A believable world is a reactive one. It responds to the actions of the characters. Having too much written down or spending hours in session prep makes it harder to be flexible in the moment.

Treating the game master as a player permits them the same freedoms as players. The game master can ask for a minute to think, use a random table for a spark of inspiration, or say "I don't know, what do you all think would happen?"

FKR Session Report

This is my approach and commentary for a virtual Discord session I ran on 22 May 2025, from inception to key highlights from play. An application of the FKR ideas for running a session.

My primary campaign fell through the night before. But a last minute Discord ping to my wider play group allowed us to pull together enough people for a one-shot.

However, we're scheduled to start playing in 3 hours and I estimated having only 15 minutes of real prep time at my computer to put together the 2 hour session. We land on running a spooky surreal modern game. Yikes. Lets dive in.

Creating Pine Hill

Prep comes in 2 stages. Stage One is the mess of physical and digital notes with inspirational media. Stage Two is the shut up and sit down phase where we pull everything into what we need to run the game.

For refined work, the 3rd stage is editing, but we can do that in the moment. A large volume of raw content provides flexibility.

Stage One

Normally, Stage One takes place over days, weeks, or even months. These are all the little ideas that are drempt up and worked on in the background of our everyday tasks. These are the things that keep us awake during dry work meetings and far into the night. Our unconscious mind iterates on the ideas for us.

I had 2 hours.

But, we do have some massive advantages. Modern games are great because we're living the world we're trying to model. The shared understanding is 80% there. It's not some made up fantasy world with dungeons and dragons in them. We were also gifted the Quinns Quest Review of Delta Green 2 weeks ago that is still fresh in my mind. It had some solid surreal horror ideas in it that left me inspired.

Deadlines force prioritization and keep us focused on producing something that's good enough for what is required. Given our timeline, where do we put our focus?

1. The World
2. Feelings
3. Scenes

It's easy to improv when we're intimate with the surrounding material and the kind of game we want to experience. Focus on preparing what you need to improv well instead of session content. The answer will be different for everyone. Players should do this too, a handful of improv notes on their character sheet goes a long way towards roleplaying the character. The scenes are for if we still have time without going overboard. A few bullet points about the purpose of the scene and what the players are trying to get. A brainstorm to reference for how to invoke the feelings we're going for.

Lets invoke some fear and uneasiness. I'll start with the system since I have a staple go-to when I'm in a crunch like this. Knowing my players, they all have multiple years of experience with 5e. Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton is an easy choice. Same general mechanics, just simplified. Light enough for us to twist to fit our needs. Someone who knows 5e knows what 11 AC and 10 HP with just a pocket knife as a weapon in a world with guns. The system's mechanics play into the fear.

I start them off with a random amount of pocket cash, lets say 2d100. I'll have them roll on the d100 background table and I'll modernize whatever they roll. I cut out the item slots and all the fantasy elements. Nothing takes you out of the horror like looking at your spreadsheet of items and figuring out logistics. Since there are no item slots, I give them 10+CON HP. I go with my standard d6 ranged damage and d8 melee damage for any weapon (d4 unarmed), but guns are guns so they will do 2d6 instead. A gunshot should be scary and a firefight lethal.

The system took a few minutes to think about so we have the majority of the time to think about the story. Keeping it simple, a bunch of 20-something year olds get together for a weekend roadtrip to the beach. On the way, they stop at a small town to camp. Making up the high-level details, the players started a fire 12 years ago that killed a supposed cult leader. The players don't remember. The town buried the event. Maybe we can give them some flashback scenes, like they go to the camp site to sleep and everything is pretty much normal, but when they wake up they find out the campsite was burned down and abandoned and they are trespassing. I jot down these high-level ideas. We'll figure out the specifics during play.

I like doing async information between players. Beyond just having players with Knave 2e backgrounds, lets give them each a role to jump into the story with. Like a camper/climber that initiated the camping part of the trip, a driver that owns the car they are all in, and lets have a druggie that is the planner and leader of the group that organized the overall trip.

The last piece I have time for is the opening scene to set the tone for the session. It throws the players into the world and says "Go have fun!". I landed on having a cop pulling them over for no reason. Have the cop be creepy, pushy, and searching for a reason to lock them up. This works well with the druggie in the car with hidden drugs that the others don't know about. To lay it on, we should have the locals start to gather and stare at the traffic stop. We'll see where the players take it.

For my opening scenes, the players didn't choose to get into the siutation. So I try to take an easy on them and use them for world establishment. Sure, they can mess up and end up in jail or a firefight, but the intent is to show them what the town is about and to establish that unsettling mood. As soon as they pull away from the stop, the gloves come off.

Stage Two

An hour before the session, I have 15 minutes to pull all of my notes together into a 2 hour session.

I start with tlDraw and create a private game master board and a public table board to use as my virtual tabletop. I like the chaotic whiteboard layout for pulling my notes together instead of text documents. I write down some location ideas as stickynotes in tlDraw and come up with the name Pine Hill for the town. This takes about 5 minutes.

For the next 5 minutes, I start looking for some location images to see how easy it would be and turns out Pine Hill is a real place in New Jersey. I start going around in Google Maps picking out locations and images from the area. Images and other media are great for setting the tone and feel for the game. I rework my locations based on what I found and place them in tlDraw to make a map. I put the locations where I want them, not where they are in real life, then use the real roads as inspiration for drawing a few lines to represent the roads and where the campsite is.

I spend the rest of my time looking up techniques cops use to pressure people into letting them search their car and how to catch lies. I write down a few ideas to reference for when my players fight back.

I have enough to start the session, I'll have a few minutes while they create characters to jot down any other ideas that come to mind.

Playing Pine Hill

At the start of the session, I send out the link to tlDraw and type out the character creation instructions so they can be self-sufficient. As they develop their character details, I create a sticky note for each player to put near their face on Discord. I like having critical player details right next to the players' faces as they talk, especially their name and how to pronounce it so I can refer to them as their character naturally during play.

During character creation, one of my players rolled a fortune teller. She started asking questions and fishing for world details related to it. She decides on being a Tarot card reader and asks if her character's visions are real. I deadpan say "Yes, they're real." while I side message my other players on Discord saying that their friend believes the readings are real, but they haven't seen any proof despite their claims. But they support them because they're friends. Again, I don't have any of this prepared and I haven't even thought about it until I was asked. I'm playing into the details the players are interested in.

I'll spare you, perhaps more so myself, the details of the entire session.

During the initial traffic stop, the officer taps the trunk of the car to ensure it's closed. Standard procedure. The officer has nothing, so I start spewing some nonsense about an out of state car with a bunch of teens in it going to a small town camping site. Just want to make sure you're all safe for the weekend. Then the officer starts to ask about anything dangerous in the car that he should know about. Any drinks or drugs?

The driver asks about the body cam. I didn't even think about body cams when preping. On the spot, I tell the players that he has one, and that the driver doesn't see the recording light on. The driver asks in character and the officer lies, saying that it is recording.

Questions drive detail. The scene, world, and game grows towards what is interesting to the table. The rest is glossed over.

My druggie player starts coaching the driver, telling her that she doesn't need to answer details about whats in the car. I use that as a point of escalation: "Execuse me, I'm talking to the driver right now. Ma'am, you have nothing to hide, right? Just step out and let me have a quick peek and we won't bother you for the rest of the weekend."

A subtle threat, but enough to get the druggie to make sure the driver doesn't get out. He speaks up again. The officer grabs the license and registration, calls for backup while there, then walks back to his car. This gives the players more time to chat about what to do next and for me to think about what to do to them.

As the game master, it's my job to facilitate and guide the session to allow the players to play their characters. The story, like any creative work, takes a form of its own that we all contribute to.

I wait for the players to start to get into a deeper conversation about planning what to say and do. That's when I have the 2nd cop pull up and the 1st get out of his car again. I disrupt their conversation to set the timer as the officer approaches. This gives the players a rushed few seconds to get their ideas out to each other.

I describe the officer touching the trunk again to ensure its closed. The druggie player's face lights up and I see him write something down in his notes. I make a mental note that the cop just planted an AirTag on the back of their car. I didn't have this idea during prep. I'm just playing off of what my players are giving me and the world and feelings we're trying to invoke. Having surreal stories and ideas at the top of my mind helps me improv things like the AirTag on the fly. Time spent immersed in the world is valuable prep time.

I don't do this every time. Sometimes I have something planned and the player is wrong, sometimes there is nothing to find, and sometimes I steal or augment an idea based on what the players are talking about.

After the traffic stop, the druggie tells the driver to pull into the next parking lot so they can see what the officer did. They don't need to roll to search the back of their car, they just find the AirTag. I only ask for a roll when there is risk and uncertainty.

From here the session continues on. The druggie wants to go to the police station to file a report based on the traffic stop, the driver calls her dad to rant and ask for advice, and the fortune teller decides to go with the druggie. They happen to be a 3 minute walk to the police station. They do what every good party should do, split it. The driver stays behind to talk to their dad. As the others reach the police station, I have the cop return and park across the parking lot from the driver and the session starts to write itself from there.

Aftermath

This post blew up because I wanted to share my current understanding of FKR play and what I think it means. I started running games with a prep-heavy workload and needing to have all the branching paths in front of me. But as I ran more games over the years, I've been drifting closer towards what I describe in this post. Discussions with other roleplay game designers and the FKR community pushed me off the cliff and lead to me running this one-shot using these techniques to see how it went. This ended up being one of my top 5 sessions.

Two weeks before this session, I ran a different one-shot in my safe style of almost over-prepared. It was my first time playing with a few of the players and I was not ready for their level of chaos. In a panic to hold control of the game, I stuck to the script I had prepared and the game failed. The players had a blast roleplaying together, but I know that I let it go off the rails. I didn't have the world react to their actions enough, so they were left to impose their will and we generated a lackluster story because of it.

The FKR is about reactive play.

• Prep for improv, not content
• Live in the world
• Trust yourself

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Characteristics

Character Name (pronouns)

Character Image

Description

Backstory

Stats

Critical Injuries

Character Inventory

Available Magic

This section is automatically populated and sorted based on the aspects in your inventory.

Magic Catalysts

The effect on the spell itself

Magic Intents

The effect on the subject

Magic Subjects

The target of the spell

Character Spellbook

Horse Inventory

Horse Name

Wagon Inventory

Stored Items

Use this area as free text to organize and store coins & items at other locations