#fkr

Justin, if you're reading this, what you need to understand is that Sandra did exactly what you're suggesting in the quote above. For years, she played according to FKR standards, in high-trust groups, using the recommended techniques. She tried everything to make it work – and it still sucked for her. So, in response, she changed her game, and through those changes, she made it fun.

So why is Hamilton still unhappy about blorb?

Firstly, he's unhappy because it should be impossible for an FKR game to suck. Since it allows the GM to use any tool from any game while also empowering them to ignore any rule that causes problems, FKR should have all the strengths of all RPGs with none of their weaknesses. It should be a perfect game, satisfying any and all desires. If that's true, then Snan must be either lying or mistaken – hence, he accuses her of arguing in bad faith.

In reality, Snan's blog earnestly and clearly explains that unlimited GM authority was, in fact, the source of her problem:

I felt like nothing really mattered. The GM just made up what would happen according to their whim of what would fit the drama or what would be cool in the moment or what they thought made sense.

Unmoored from any hard rules, the games lacked tangible, real-life stakes to keep her invested. To fix this problem, she made the GM subordinate to the "prep", creating an non-negotiable bedrock to the game, and with it, the tangible stakes she was missing.

This, as Hamilton argues in yet another article, constitutes a "betrayal of the medium of role-playing".

This statement finally reveals the misconception at the heart of all of Hamilton's confusing contradictions: Hamilton is an RPG essentialist. He thinks that only One True RPG exists, and that all actual RPGs are, secretly, attempts to describe this essential game.

When he writes that we should "allow for the referee to follow their intended role", he genuinely thinks that there is only one intended role for the GM, for all RPGs, for all time. It's not just one possibility that he happens to enjoy – it's the true one, the default one. It was ordained by the universe itself, rather than some mere game designer. This is why he is disdainful of "designer intent": a designer's will is an imposition, their rules a kind of coercion, that are interfering with the essential RPG.

When he writes "the game is yours", he means, "except for these, the essential things".