Game Rules

The rules to Frail Realities can look intimidating and confusing at first glance. You might feel that there is too much to learn or the game would be too difficult to play. In fact, you will find that when you actually play the game things fall into place very quickly and the rules become self explanatory.

Our rules ethos is simple: the rules are there to structure the game, to allow for strong character development and to encourage the sort of LARP play that we want to see.

There are several reasons why the rules might seem overwhelming:

• The rules are very different to other LARP systems. Though unlike other systems, FR is fairly straightforward and intuitive and pretty easy to pick up.
• There are a huge variety of abilities players can choose from. This allows characters to be very different from each other and gives you many different options, but also means there needs to be a lot of rules to cover those abilities. You only really need to know the rules for the things you can do, not the things everyone else can do, meaning you actually need to learn only a very few rules before you play.
• Because you can create such a variety of characters, you might be at a loss as to what to play. There is a lot of advice available within these rules and also a very supportive mailing list.
• The ‘rule of three’ means that for your first three events we understand that you will make mistakes and, though you will be corrected, nobody is going to freak out if you get something wrong. Even after your three events, everyone knows that mistakes happen.

In practice, we have found that players with very different experiences of LARP adapt to Frail Realities very quickly.

General System Aims

The game system and the general ‘ethos’ of the club have been woven together so they have become one thing: the rules support the ethos, the ethos supports the rules.  The system seeks, amongst other things, to:

1.      Be fun.

2.      Be accessible to everyone and easy to learn.

3.      Be as scrupulously fair as is humanly possible.

4.      Allow for strong character advancement and development.

5.      Appeal to people with a variety of different attitudes towards LRP.

6.      To be ‘time in’ and ‘in character’ from beginning to end.

7.      Require very minimal ‘battle boarding’ and little maths.

8.      Include nothing that breaks the flow of the game and is hard to physrep (such things as walking on air and so forth).

9.      Not in any way be elitist.

10.   Positively encourage strong role-play, good fighting, good costume and propping.

11.    Allow people with the enthusiasm to add to everyone’s enjoyment of the game (be it rules, prop making, site finding, crewing, organisation or whatever) to make the game better and reward them ‘in game’ for that assistance.

12.    To create an internally consistent world that every adventure will in some way affect.

13.    To create a social environment where people can enjoy each other’s company both in and out of character.

14.    To be more fun.

15.    To be even more fun.

Game Mechanics Overview

The main game system features of FR are:

1.      Everything works from a power point system. Whenever anyone does something, from avoiding taking a wound to invoking the power of the Gods, it costs some power points.

2.      Events are split into scenes. These control the flow of the game, how often abilities may be used and so on.

3.      Every player has a base number of power points of several types plus probably has some free power they can use every scene without tapping these reserves.

4.      Players have a set of abilities that give them access to different ways they can use their power.

The Frail Realities rules are still under development. 'Under development' makes it sound like they are only roughly hacked together. In fact, they are pretty detailed, clear and complete. However, we are still playtesting some elements and still giving the rules and background books their final 'polish'. You should not take this to mean that the game is in its early stages of development; it is not. The core structure of the rules is fully developed and functions very well, the vast majority of the system has been finished. As an ongoing project, however, we are still refining some rules elements and we have yet to add a final, professional, 'polish' to the rules books.

The full rules can be found in the files section of our mailing list. Alternately, you can mail a request for a copy of the rules to justin@frailrealities.com and I will mail you a copy direct. If you can, it is better for you to sub to the list as it will mean you become involved in all sorts of FR discussions, from rules to current events, and also means a ready supply of people to answer your questions.

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