Freeform Design

[Paganini]

So, I thought I'd do a couple of freeform games to show how they can be different.

#1. Illusion - The One-page Freeform Game for the Authorial Narrator

[Meta Introduction - This is a game designed by a hypothetical gaming group who are narrativists at heart, but who have played D&D, Champions, and GURPS all their lives. Restricted by those games, they've decided that system must be the culprit. Therefore they've created Illusion, based on the following chain of reasoning: "System hampers story; role-playing is story creation; therefore the only real way to role-play is freeform!"]

In Illisuion, a group of people get together to tell a story. One person (called the narrator) guides the story and controlls the game setting. The narrator is responsible for presenting the situation in which the characters find themselves, and explaining the results of the characters' actions.

Each player  (called an actor) controlls the actions of a character - that is, an imaginary person that lives in the game world. An actor is in complete control of his character, narrating what the character thinks, how the character feels, and what the character tires to do.

The narrator never gets to say what a character does, unless the character's actor explicitly permits him to.

An actor must never narrate the result of an action or anything that happens in the game world (remember, that's the narrator's job). For example, you should say "Moran swings his sword at the Orc!" rather than "Moran cuts the Orc's head off!" The narrator decides if Moran really cuts off the Orc's head, or if the Orc manages to escape.

The narrator should use good judgement to decide what happens during the game, always keeping in mind that the goal is to create a good story. The narrator should never worry too much about whether something is realistic or true. As long as it's interesting, it's a good decision.

Actors should always remember the nature of their characters and have them act appropriately. Remember that creating a good story is the central goal, and that interesting characters are integral to a good story.

#2. Wahoo - A Game of Humor

[This is the game used by the TURPS group, more or less.]

The first rule of Wahoo is that anything goes, as long as it entertains the other players. The goal of Wahoo is to burst out belly laugh as many times during the game as possible. However, there are a couple of real rules that must be followed to ensure that everyone enjoys themselves.

The most important rule is that you can't controll another player's character. You can say anything you want to about your own character, as long as it doesn't force another character into something that character's owner didn't intend. In other words, it's perfectly acceptable to say things like "I chop the tree down with my icepick" or "A horde of flying monkeys armed with eggbeaters comes to my aid." If you say it, it happens. But you can never say things like "Boron's sword misses me because I dodge" or "I chop Boron's head off and he dies." If there ever is a situation where one player's character wants to do something to another player's character, the GM must step in and make a call.

As a GM, you should remember that the purpose of the game is for the players to have fun. The actual sequence of events isn't really that important, as long as the players are interracting and enjoying themselves. Your main job is to keep the game flowing by presenting humerous or bizzare elements of plot, situation, character, and so on, at appropriate moments. Other than this, and making a call as described previously, you should pretty much stay out of the way. It may help you to have a predetermined story arc planned out, so that you always have something ready to give the players, but be ready to improvise off it if the players go off on their own!

<Whew! Whacking these games out is harder work than I thought it would be. I was going to do a gamist Dungeon[ The Crawling game, but I think I'll save it for another time. Anyway, there's enough difference between these two games that you get the idea.>

[Jack Spencer Jr]

You know, reading this, especially Wahoo I can't help but notice the similarity to improv.

I have a couple links:
ImprovComedy.Org a good general refernce site with links to other sites.

Most interesting for our purposes are Viola Spolin's theatre games where the improv situation is made into a game of sorts. Not exactly role-playing, but useful nonetheless.

Also the Learn Improv page has several exercises for improv groups.

Maybe they aren't exactly the same, but it stands to reason that there will be some similar tools to use.