Clarity in Combat

The GM does not "run" combat.
The GM listens to it unfold,
and names what breaks or bleeds. 

Sixgilis

FKR... FK-aint. Joy-style combat is what is up here.
There is only the world in motion, and you—poised to watch it rear, and strike correctly to see it yield.

The dice are not the primary signifier of harm. When they clatter though, they are the twitch of muscle, the clang of impact, the spatter on the flagstone.

Your role is not to adjudicate, but to attend:

To telegraph how the world coils like a spring, and how it will blow
To hear clearly what the players reach for,
To let their intentions either bloom or backfire in full.

Combat is not mechanics. Combat is meaning.

And if you would wield it well, you must hone two arts:

• listening (to impact, intent, and position), and

• offering (clarity, choice, and consequence).

Stop narrating abstractions. 

Stop asking for hits that aren’t fictionally real.

Start saying what happens when they are.

(or not. I AM NOT YOUR MOM!)

A LONG PREAMBLE

The Bad Doctor’s post on meaningful combat is a masterclass in FKR-ish fiction-first design. It reminds us that combat is not an abstraction to be resolved—it is a conversation between intentions, limitations, and narrative weight. Characters do not roll to see if a sword hits; they state their Intent—and that intent is only meaningful if it matters what happens next.

You will need to read it to understand. If you are too lazy to do that, here is what I get from her post. Specificity, linkage - and i added something extra to show the importance of context

“I swing at him” is not an intent.
“I swing at his nose” is [and it is important if its done with a dagger or a fist, or whether that nose is hidden behind the bulkhead of a basinet.]

 

“I tackle him and stab him in the eye” is two intents [especially if the other combatant is guarding their face against your malicious intent.]
As a mental rule, stabbing him only works if you first tackle him.

This is a shared commitment to concrete positioning, declared aims, and fictional plausibility. It brings clarity to every blow: not through hit points or damage dice, but through the truth of the world and what it allows. If a blow would kill, it kills—unless the defender compromises or avoids (in the Pyrrhic Weaselry model)

What I want to emphasize, building on that, is the GM’s listening posture.

Not just to what the player says, but to what the fiction itself demands.

• Does the attempted action make sense?

• Is there a meaningful consequence at stake? Can we make that clear before action.

• Does the enemy have a real choice—avoidance or compromise?

The Bad Doctor says:

“The GM may declare that what you intend is not possible if it ignores the fictional positioning… Initiative is common sense.”

This is where our lenses meet. My system doesn’t replace hers. It sits with it, as the GM’s operating stance. An ear to that voice, clarity of thought and moving body :

Listen first. What has already been positioned? What can we all see in the fiction that makes this attack plausible—or impossible?

Clarify next. Before dice are touched—if they are—what’s at stake? Who acts, who suffers, what is being risked?

Offer weight. The GM doesn’t “let” things happen. They recognize when they must happen, because the fiction supports it. The GM doesn’t “deny” a hit—they say what it would take to make that blow land.

There is no combat system in the heart of my roleplaying systems. But the above has stayed true.
When its best, it's just modules that center around a certain physicality around those principles.

Pyrrhic Weaselry is deeply interested in how wounds accumulate, how intentions escalate, and how fictional clarity removes the need for numbers. My concern is the attention required of the GM to make that work:

• Attention to impact.

• Attention to negotiation.

• Attention to mood, rhythm, the humanness of a moment.

My tools—things like f(r)ictional initiative—are not meant to gamify combat. They are meant to make space for it to be vivid, poetic, and consequential without bogging down. A little abstraction creating a lot weight. Tthe same cannot be said for CORPSE//WORK - but that is just me puking procedure onto page. A digression. Moving on.

Her guideline is: “Treat the rules of whatever fiction you have chosen as having weight and internal consistency.”

Mine seems to be: “Say how the blade is angled at their heart. Let the blade fall where it should. Then say what gives way: Heart or Blade.”

Hernan Conde De Boeck

Some would say, wait-wait-wait-wait! Initiative is not common sense in F(r)ictional Initiative: No, not quite. But between instincts and traits and claims and the thousand ways you can get to retort against the edge careening towards your heart, you get your common sense in that tasty-nasty roundabout way.

FKR JOY-GM in combat. A Disclaimer of Power – Precedent, Not Preference

You have no ruleset to hide behind. Only your word, and what came before it.

When you play without numbers, without hit points, (and in some cases) without initiative order, you hold a terrible and beautiful authority:

• To say when the knife lands.

• To say who bleeds.

• To say how hard, how long, how real it all becomes.

This is power. Own it. Like your gender, Joy.

But let us be clear:

Precedent is not Preference.

You are not the arbiter of fairness. You are the keeper of continuity.

If a guard was killed by a dagger to the throat while asleep, then the next sleeping drunk cannot shrug it off because this one is narratively convenient. But do give players a chance. No rocks fall, you die. That's not a gotcha, that is just pure malice.

If a broken rib hindered one fighter, it hinders the next—unless something has changed.

When we say consistency, we do not mean rigidity. We mean that the world must remember itself, not that it is always the same: The broken rib can be healed, or jury-rig-splinted in combat to avoid dealing with the fallout for a while. There is always granularity to a situation that players and GM should be afforded to dive into.

You are not choosing outcomes as a GM —you are revealing them, from what has already been said, seen, and shown. If done right, it feels to me as if I am drip-feeding the consequence. Telegraph upon telegraph.

Clarity is not Control.

To clarify what’s at stake is not to railroad.
To name the likely outcome is not to dictate.
To offer no roll because the fiction already decided is not to steal their agency—it is to honor their prior actions.

You are not guiding them toward the story you want. You are making visible the weight of what they’ve already set in motion.

Don’t soften what hurts because they looked surprised.
Don’t punish what was bold because it broke your plan.

Tell the truth of the fiction. That is your only vow.

Let Consequences Stand

Gotcha's are not traps laid in secret. They are the echo of an earlier choice that no one noticed mattered.

A dagger left in a desk.
A lie told to the wrong god.
A pact agreed to in bed, while drunk on blood.

Let them hit. Let them scar. Let the world remember.

You don’t owe your players safety. You owe them meaning. And meaning only survives if consequences are real.

Always foreshadow generously. Do not require of yourself that the players notice something for it to take effect. 
Thats a paradox in which you will find your style.
Handle it. 
I AM NOT YOUR MOM-

This system gives you more power than a GM with ten rulebooks.
Use it only to uphold the world you all have built.
If you do well, the players do not fear your rulings.
They rely on your memory.
The blade cuts cleanest when it remembers where it last fell.

Clarify Choice

Don’t offer moves. Offer a world already moving.
Let players find their place in its path.

Too often, combat defaults to a menu: “Here are your options—choose one.” 
Or someone invokes the move "I use dole out harm" 
But this hollows out agency. Real choice requires consequence and and consequence requires clarity of what is at stake. Specificity

Instead of saying what they can do, say these three things:

• What the world is doing

• What will happen if they don’t act

• What stands to be lost, or gained, or broken

This does not mean railroading—it means clearing the fog, so players can act with intention.

“I swing at him” is not a choice.
“I swing at his throat just as he leans forward to spit” is, because it understands time, posture, risk. 

This only works if the fiction is clear, consistent, and upheld: We must know that he leans forward to spit.

So to get there, we adhere to 3 C's:

Consistency

If a blow kills one, it must kill another of the same.
What worked before, works again—unless the fiction changes.
Establish precedent. Then enforce it. Even if it hurts.

• Don’t fudge outcomes.

• Don’t let “main character” logic unmake a blow. Or conversely, let someone be a mook instead of a life. (I mean, i do so myself in CORPSE//WORK, but in that game no one really dies)

• Don’t protect anyone from a world that’s already moving.

Clarity

Everyone must understand what’s at stake.
If the scene is muddled, they cannot act. If intent is foggy, no true risk can take root.

Uncertainty is good. Vagueness is not.
Ambiguity is a knife. Vagueness is a blur.

Clarify:

• What is being attempted

• What success or failure looks like

• Who gets to describe what

And if the world resists, like when you ask, say how, say why, and say it now. Don’t delay impact. Don’t backpedal. Don’t soften blows already spoken.

Commitment

You’re not here to make the rules fair.
You’re here to let the fiction be true.
To remember what’s been declared.
To treat consequences with ritual gravity.

You are not the ruleset. You are the friction.
You are not the judge. You are the echo.
You are not the arbiter. You are the blade’s whisper, saying what of the world just gave way.

But remember, you are a lover first. 

---

Telegraph effects meaningfully

Choice means nothing unless effects are real.
Threat means nothing unless impact sticks.

This is the partner principle. If choice is what action is taken, effect is what happens because of it.
You must make effects land—without fuzz, denial, or retroactive softening.

This is what gives the world its weight.

A system without hitpoints and armor classes is only meaningful if:

• The GM names consequences with honesty

• The players trust those consequences will hold

• The fiction shows its own materiality - it's resistance and fragility.
  
  

So, inversely, when the players act in combat, this is how you should describe the effects:

If it must hit, describe the impact.

No rolling. No negotiation. Just describe what happens.

“I sneak up on the sleeping, drunken guard, and stab him in the neck you said was unprotected.”
He dies. The blood pools around him. That concludes negotiations.

If the fiction makes it obvious, don't pretend there's tension. Don’t roll to "be fair."
Honor the blade. Let it do what it does.

If it cannot hurt them, show why.

“Clink.”
The blade skips off the breastplate.
A grim smile beneath the helm.

This isn't a miss—it’s fictional resistance.
Teach the players what doesn’t work, and let that reshape their tactics.
Make it feel solid. Make it a lesson. They can adapt, if they listen.

Sometimes, this reveals that the threat itself has changed.
Now it is you, exposed and weaponless. Now the initiative shifts.

If you don’t know where it lands, split the authorship

“I swing my axe overhead!”

Happens a lot. Asking for specifics would be remiss.
Now the dice enter, but not to decide whether something happens—they decide what happens and how.

Procedures:

• They choose the tone (the adjective): wild, deft, clumsy, vicious.

• The GM chooses the location or consequence (based on tone and fiction): shoulder, thigh, exposed gut, helm-glance.

In short. Let one side name the target, the other the severity. Or the other way around. This creates:

• Shared, competetive authorship that makes it clear that there are sides 

• A lack of control that fits the idea of doing something wildly—a "more" of an effect with the adjective—not increased or lessened, and 

The same could be used for helping. Two take action, each choose an adjective, and both describe their part where the adjective must be included in the method or consequence. Not sure myself.

Olivier Ledroit

Concrete Play aid - Threats

You don’t need a monster.
You need a world in motion.
You need something that breaks things if they don’t act.

A threat is not an ontological enemy, that cannot be made an ally.
It is not a statblock, or a turn, or a challenge rating.
It is what happens next if no one does anything.

Combat is not a rigid ladder of initiatives. It is pressure that must be seized or resisted.
It is your job, as GM, to name the pressure and say what happens if it goes unrelieved.

Not all threats are announced. But all of them should be felt.

Below are four kinds of threat you can wield at the table. Learn when to show, when to suggest, and when to simply let the blade fall.

GM'ing FKR style became much more rewarding once I stopped statting monsters and started stating the threat their actions pose. And giving myself the time and grace to deliberate before speaking.

Standard Threats – The Knife Is Coming

“The guard raises his halberd for a killing blow—down your neck.”
“The roof groans. The beam will fall. It will break your back.”

These are telegraphed threats. You show the strike as it's winding up, and name its likely impact if no one responds. The world is moving; players must move too, or be moved through.

This is the default mode of threat presentation. You’re not hiding anything. You’re building tension through clarity.

Your job:

• State what is happening. (the method)

• State what will occur if no one intervenes. (the intent)

• Describe the material resistance/fragility (it will tear into your neck, as it is unarmored)

This allows players to make clear, reactive choices:
Do they intercept? Dodge? Let it fall and do something else?
By describing the materiality or weight and consequences of the action, it allows them to gauge how to best respond, and to better identify what is suited to dealing with the threat.

What happens if no one speaks? Say it plainly. Let it bite.

Swift Threats – It Already Happened

“The chain snaps—who’s fast enough to react?”
“The acid sprays from the creature’s carapace—do you have shielded skin, or do you burn?”

Some threats are too fast for description. A twitch. A trap. A spell that triggers mid-sentence.

You don’t roll initiative. You demand a response:

• “Who has a Trait that applies?”

• “Tell me how you counter this—right now.”

If no one can answer with a clever interpretation of the fiction, a useful Trait, or a frictional claim rooted in prior fiction, it hits.

There is no pause here.
If they hesitate, that is the cost. This is how you make the world feel fast.

This is especially good for:

• Sudden traps

• Natural disasters

• Consequences of inaction

• Magics that punish hesitation

Something slices, and only then do they realize they were meant to speak.

---

Hidden or Smart Threats – You Don’t Know It’s There Yet

A scent of burnt cedar. A shimmer in the mirror, just once.
A shadowblade watches from above, dagger already spinning.
The one you kissed last night is murmuring your secrets to someone else.
Your hands move without your full consent.

Not all threats declare themselves. Some coil in the background.
Some come from within.

Your job is not to obscure. Your job is to hint.
Give one clear, sensory clue that something is wrong.
Not a puzzle. A feeling.
The threat Only reveals itself by how the characters face it.

Then let the players respond:

• Investigate

• Hide

• Reach out

• Run too late

These threats are perfect for manipulation, infection, betrayal. Something already close, but unrevealed.

Concrete examples:

• Assassin in a crowd. HIDDEN first. You smell lilac—a perfume you thought only your dead sister wore. then SWIFT. a glint of steel mind-addling poison-coated dagger thrown from the rafters.

• Magical compulsion. You try to refuse her command. It sticks in your throat. Your hand moves anyway. why?

---

Delayed Consequences – It Already Hit. You Just Found Out.

“The poison is already in your veins. You touched the coral without gloves.”
“When you agreed to carry the lantern, the thing inside began to feed on you.”
“When you slept with him, something changed. In you. Going to face the mirror makes you realize.

Some threats are not prevented—they are discovered.

You do not call for a roll. You declare the reality. Generally do so after another consequence allowed this to befall the character.

It’s done. Now the players must work to change the degree or shape of the harm.

Leave clues in the fiction:

• A bloodied glove

• A fever in the morning

• A dead bird outside the tent

Then let the consequences unfold, gradually, unless someone intervenes. At which point, the consequences change.

It grows worse if not tended. It spreads. It marks them. It can be lessened, stopped, transformed, but not reverted.

Ways to respond:

• Suck out the poison.

• Find the one who cursed you.

• Confess what you buried.

• Burn the thing before it hatches.

This kind of threat rewards:

• Investigators

• Healers

• Those who pay attention

It's basically how I run all slowly unnfolding consequences... Like curses.

 In Summary: Threat Is Timing and Clarity

A good GM threat is not “balanced.” It is:

• Fictionally real

• Time-sensitive

• Interpretable

• Consequential

Use this framework to keep combat sharp:

Threat	Timing	Player Response	GM action
Standard	Coming soon	Act or suffer	Telegraph
Swift	Happening right now	Have a trait/fit situation or not - then act or suffer	Ask for counter-claims
Smart/Hidden	Unseen	React to clues	Hint, do not show
Delayed	Already Struck	Mitigate or change nature	Declare and Track

God I hate importing tables into blogspot. Ahem.

If you would GM this way—JOY-style, fiction-forward, breath caught in your throat—
then learn to say what happens when no one stops it.
Learn to wait before speaking, and to mean it when you do.
Let threat live in your world like blood under the skin.
Let it express itself in different ways.

John Schoenherr

The players do not want a fair fight.
They want a fight that means something.
Your job is to mean it. 

Eat the consequences.
Let the blow fall. Let the world change.
Let the next choice be real.