An Example of FKR (near-)diceless combat (with Cosmic Orrery!)

 
Art by John Blanche

(Right-click: "open in new tab" on the screenshots to be able to read them easy)

EDIT: Just saw I'm nominated for some tRPG blog awards things which gave me some extra visibility - I think my article is fine but y'all should be reading these instead from Roll to Doubt.
Weird Writer's analysis is more eloquant than my ramblings and, despite the title, as close as you can get from an exhaustive reading of the FKR movement.

We are playing using a framework common to Sam Doebel's Skörne, my various home games (Dreamlands, Shadowrun, etc.) and Cosmic Orrery's Pernicious: there are no attack rolls, no damage rolls. Instead, Hits are either traded (ala "trade harm" in PbtA) or used as part of a Dilemma (cf. Hits as Dilemma on Dreaming Dragonslayer, follow the thread of blog posts from there onwards to learn more).

I took the role of the Game Moderator and handle the environment and the Troll.
Cosmic took the role of the Player-Characters: a Fighter, a Thief and a Wizard.

Environment: winter, rock bridge
Troll: 8 Hits, Armored (break to ignore all hits), Hulking (deals 2 damage when trading harm)
Fighter: 3 Hits, Armored, Bec-de-Corbin (+slow)
Thief: 3 Hits, Sneaky & Quick, Dagger
Wizard: 3 Hits, Coward, Dagger, Spells: Magic Hand, Floating Disk and Message

 

Round 1
-Party walks up to the troll in a claw formation, wizard on the left, thief on the right, fighter in the front. -Troll dashes to his right to try and grab the wizard.
-Wizard casts Magic Hand and pokes the troll in the eyes, impairing his attack.

I'd established that the troll deals 2 Hits by default instead of 1, so we discussed for a minute whether that impaired attack should be 0 or 1 Hit, but spending a key ressource (spell) to keep a bad position but avoid harm seemed costly enough, so 0 Hit it is.

-Fighter and Thief attack simultanously.
Since the Thief is backstabbing a distracted foe, I let him do 2 Hits worth of damage, while the Fighter does 1.

-Troll responds by sitting on the Thief. A dilemma! Either the thief is trapped under the troll, or body-slammed as he narrowly escapes but takes 1 Hit. Cosmic picks the latter.

Having all of their bones broken as an alternative to taking a hit was mentioned, though we quickly discarded the notion considering that wouldn't be an interesting choice to make: if paralyzed, you're as good as having no hits left.

Round 2
-Wizard retreats to the bushes, gets evil eye'd by a nasty-looking squirrel.
-Fighter attempts to KNEECAP the troll with the bec-de-corbin's blunt end.

As a GM the player asks me to choose: either the troll takes a Hit or gets a knee smashed.

-Troll wants to throw the Fighter over the bridge (or deal 1 Hit, which Cosmic takes).
-We didn't mention the Thief, I suppose he was just circling the troll.

Round 3
Troll has 5 Hits left.
Fighter and Thief have 2 Hits each, Wizard has 3 Hits.


I rolled 8, she rolled 6. Troll is dim but not that dim. We don't keep a failure at "things don't happen" cause that would be avoiding a great opportunity for organic change on the battlefield, so the troll flies into a rage, turns tomato-red and its skin starts to distort in messy ways. It's like a boss going into Phase 2.


-Thief attempts to cut the troll's hamstring while the Fighter declares a slow action too!

I rule the Thief's action is a gambit: either they make the troll fall prone (and take 1 Hit), setting them up for a killing blow by the Fighter considering the situation, or they get hit by the Troll's attack instead of the Fighter.

I rolled a 7, she rolled a 3, good times was had by all. (CW: description of graphic violence)


-Fighter, nearly faltering in the moment, keeps his composure and charges, dealing 2 Hits...
Which is when I figure "hey I can have the troll break armor to negate hits!" I'm fairly lax with what "armored" means for monsters, and describe how the Troll's guts start moving on their own and make their back inside its guts, a horrifying sight which stops everyone in their track for a moment.
Note the horror of the scene also has a lot of weight with the Troll still being at 5 Hits and the party being just a 2 Hits Fighter and a 3 Hits Wizard with one spell remaining.

-And then Cosmic says the Wizard runs away, cause he's a coward. Love that. We play a lot of these little duet games and here and there we prioritize "unoptimal" moves for the sake of seeing something interesting/funny happen.


Last stretch. First dice is my roll, second is hers.

 

We then moved on the debriefing, which I will summarize in a few points:

-Lots of fun tactics and interactions with both the characters' corporeality (big hulking troll body) and environment (the bridge!)

-Armor negating hits we were not very warm on at first but the example of play helped with it I think.

-Lots of planning from the Player's perspective, I played more reactively and to-the-point like I figure a troll would.

-With lower Hit values, each Hit has more weight. We're using this range right now:

 

Player-Characters: 3 Hits

A Goblin: 2 Hits

A Bandit: 4 Hits (a Knight would also have 4 Hits but be armored)

A Troll: 8 Hits

A Dragon: 16 Hits


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