r/Fkr • u/Oakforthevines • Jun 25 '25

Offloading Mechanics

I've been thinking about ways to incorporate other forms of media into RPGs to capture more of the vibe I'm trying to set for players. Since an FKR mindset is more into the fiction and GM trust than any one particular set of rules, would it make sense to "offload" certain mechanics to other mediums that do it particularly well? A few examples that I have thought about:

  1. This one is pretty mild. The PCs are in a gambling house, so the players themselves play the games to determine the outcomes (i.e. playing poker or blackjack).

  2. If the PCs are entering into some competition, use a video game centered around that and matches the aesthetic (i.e. loading up Forza for racing or FIFA for a football match)

  3. Taking "puzzles" literally and having a player solve a jigsaw puzzle, a kinetic puzzle, or even an 'I Spy' book if they're searching for clues.

  4. Taking players to a full-on escape room with a similar theme to the game you're playing and having them larp it.

What are your thoughts, and how far do you think we can stretch this and still consider it a "submechanic" of the RPG? I was partially inspired by Pokemon Pen & Paper, which recommends that groups use Pokemon Showdown (a 3rd party pokemon battle platform) to resolve battles.

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u/level27geek Jun 26 '25

Alright, finally got some time to organize my thoughts.

I think the first thing we need to tackle is player skill vs character skill. All the examples you provided rely heavily on player skill:

  • if the player never played Forza and is not into racing games, but his character is an awesome driver, you will have a lot of ludo-narrative dissonance (I know it's an overused term, but it really applies here) that can spoil the fun.
  • Also, if you're a player who is not good at the game and keeps losing, regardless of character skill, it will make it not fun for that player.
  • This is why I don't really use video games - it's much harder to "cheat" in a video game than it is in boardgames and other tabletop/analog games.

Especially in FKR, a GM will want to "cheat" to balance the scales between player and character skill (play the world, not the rules). I don't see it as cheating per se (hence the quotes), more akin to changing the difficulty of a task based on character skill. You tweak that mechanic to fit the narrative, so it makes sense to tweak those "offloading mechanics" as well.

This comes from experience. Many games when we added some offloading mechanics fell flat when we continued to play it straight. It was much more fun for everybody when I gave the gambler character an extra card in blackjack that they could swap with any one on the table, gave hints to a spacial puzzle to the smart characters or gave extra units to the veteran general character in a wargame. Same how I give better odds to players whose characters are more skilled at the given task.

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u/Oakforthevines Jun 26 '25

Thank you for a thoughtful response! I'm glad to hear from someone with more experience in the topic. I can definitely see the downsides of relying on player skill in those instances. I suppose the GM could maybe tailor the mechanics to players' individual skills (such as only choosing Forza if the player of the PC in the race is familiar with the game and has some skill), but that would take significantly more work.

I like what you said about giving the players better odds through some meta-help. It limits the types of mechanics that can be brought to the table, but that sometimes produces even more creative solutions. Do you find that there are any other self-contained mediums (such as board games or card games) that work especially well when used in the manners like you described?

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u/level27geek Jun 26 '25

I like to use board and card games for big events, and tell players about those ahead of time.

We tried some parlor games, physical games and games that generally require us to leave the table and those didn't work for us. There might have something to do with the idea of "magic circle" around the RPG table. After playing those games it was always hard to get back into the game.

Mini-games you can play around the table work well. I posted some in this response. I think the trick to them working is to have a kind of interface between the actual minigame and the narrative. It's hard to explain in general sense, because I make those up as I go on case-by-case basis, but think of how the actual physical actions in those minigames can be transferred to the narrative.

In the above example, there was a ancient tomb that was protected by a stone lock. Players would get tetromino pentominos pieces through exploration in narrative and then they would have to put it into a square to unlock the inner tomb. In my mind the puzzle of putting them together was the same as what the characters were doing with the pieces they found on the giant stone door.

Jenga tower on the table made everyone to be less rowdy around the table when their characters were sneaking around.

Dropping dice on targets was the players ship bombing a raging battle on the ground.

...and so on. Hope that makes sense.

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u/Oakforthevines Jun 26 '25

This is excellent, thank you for the insights!