This is not an approach.
This is my fucking substance.
This is my fire-spittle.
Hate drivel.
My heavenward spear.
God-piercer.
This is a reaction to a comment i got
Regarding how I write
What FKR is or isn't.
Civil in tone, sure.
But loaded.
And its one of those comments one would have to dissassemble and parralel park out of, all at once.
Words like "approach", linked to "compute", linked to "as i have said before", linked to "nebolous formulations"
By Jove.
It would take more energy to unpack that viciousness
Than unpack it in prose
So that is what i did.
Rare for me to sit with this much vitriol in the belly.
And now it needs out.
No longer privately, but for all to see.
My hill to die on.
My praxis.
Won't bend.
Not a fucking inkling of a notion of an inch.
God I hate when people pack dogma and opposites in innocuous statements.
Teflon coated...
And I feel joy when being this fierce.
Because I am not non-stick.
IT BOILS IN MY EFFIN' BLOOD
IT NEEDS OUT
FOR ALL TO HEAR!
I have heard, as you have said before,
that FKR is “just an approach.”
That it is method, not matter.
Style, not substance.
A set of hands, but not what they touch.
And I say: no.
Not because I want to gatekeep the gatekeepers,
but because I will not bow to anyone who speaks as if naming something gives them dominion over it.
As if they can say what it is, and it becomes that.
No.
FKR is not always crunch, never a church,
but if you build a pulpit and climb into it,
expect an answer, not allegiance.
You said: “I get a headache, like I do with PbtA,”
because the formulations are nebulous.
You said: “I play GURPS. I don’t fear crunch, as long as I understand every step.”
And that is the point.
That is your FKR. Full of crunch.
And that is fine—but it is not my enjoy.
You want every step.
You want rules that walk in straight lines.
You want to choose from paved roads.
You want math that holds your hand.
But math and crunch stick in my throat like glass shards.
And I do not want someone to lord over what is right and wrong—
to make their clarity the only meal at my table.
I do not write instructions.
I do not write a full set.
I write invitations.
I do not build bridges.
I burn them.
I build altars, and knives, and doors.
So others can burn them.
And inhale the incense.
I do not write for clarity.
I write to cast spells.
To be misunderstood—beautifully, fruitfully—until someone at a table says,
yes, of course, that must be it.
FKR is not just approach.
FKR is, to me, also absence, and poise, and unresolved tension.
It is what happens when world and character are allowed to bloom without scaffolds.
It is not just don’t roll unless you must.
It is let the world matter more than the roll.
It is let the character be a spell, made of words—not a statblock.
I,
I believe:
That play should be sculpted in flesh—a moon made of words, not abstracted into fingers that obscure it and modifiers that change nothing.
That poetics are not an obstruction, but a distillation.
That the system should hum, not compute.
That play worlds, not rules.
That I can't play worlds with rules.
I play worlds that are poetic, full of life and characters. Spellbound and spellbinding.
You say: it’s just an approach.
Then I ask—why speak as if you are its priest?
I am not FKR.
I am not PbtA.
I am not OSR.
I am Joy of the Many Dice.
I let my dice-words clatter on the table.
And I do not write with a rubric in mind.
I write like someone throwing meat into the arena.
I write for the tables who bleed and laugh in the same breath.
For the players who fold the paper and cut it again.
For the world that blooms in their head, even when no one asked it to.
So don’t tell me what this is.
Don’t trace a boundary around what you cannot understand.
Don’t climb the mountain and shout “just an approach” from its peak—
and call that generosity, or absolute truth.
Let it breathe.
Your FKR is not my FKR.
My FKR is not your FKR.
(It may not be FKR at all.)
What invites play at one table may silence it at the next.
What makes a spell for me may make a wall for you.
And still: there must be room.
Room to approach differently.
Room to play with what we cannot name.
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